Chapter 25: 25: Confusion and Conversation

Somehow I made it back to the house, stumbling through the front door in a tired fugue.

“Hey Mist, how did the trip go?” Singer asked, being the only one at the door today.

I shrugged and kept my mouth closed, instead unhooking the enchantment thingy from my belt to place it on her table.

Singer ignored the little device, instead blocking my path to frown up at me. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t want to talk about it right now,” I mumbled quietly, and changed the subject my gesturing to the thingy on the table. “That should be full of monster goo. I killed like… hundreds of gurg while I was down there.”

Her response was to sigh in melancholy exasperation, but rather than pushing the point she dropped back into her chair. “Alright. I’ll come find you later about what i can make for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, leaving her there and finding my way up to one of the washrooms, where I had a quick bath, scrubbing my skin to within an inch of its life. The hard bristles of the brush hurt just enough to keep me focused on the task at hand, rather than dwelling on the anvil of confusion that dangled over my head.

When I made it to my bed, it was with a profound sense of relief. Safe at last, in a place where I could cry without being interrupted. I sat up against the headboard, pulling my knees to my chest and burying my face in them so hard my closed eyes saw starbursts of colour.

Tears began to slowly well up as stress overwhelmed me. Fighting for hours had pumped me full of adrenaline, and then I'd been blindsided by my classmates being there, then Victoria had decided to be a bitch again out of nowhere, and finally Beth had slapped me with a "them".

I was only vaguely aware that people had used that kind of thing for themselves. They and them, rather than she and her, or he and him. Except it had always been with a note of derision from the people I had been friends with. My gaming friends online had used them as the butt of a joke more times than I could count. Goddess, those so called friends of mine would be laughing at me now.

Their laughter haunted me, taunting me for wanting to be something I hadn’t been born as. Except I’d been reborn, right? Not really, not totally. For that to be properly true, I’d have had to be reborn in mind as well as body, but my mind had not been touched. My soul was still mine and mine alone.

But it was the body that determined all that crap anyway, right? Like, you had a vagina, therefore you were a woman, you had a dick, you were a man. It was simple. So why did my brain hurt and my gut churn when I even brushed at the idea of going back to how I had been before.

The bed shifted under me, and I raised my head to find a blurry Bassi sitting down tentatively on the bed next to me. I scrubbed feebly at my eyes, turning away in a vain attempt to stop her from seeing the tears.

“Mist,” she whispered, low and kind. “You’re allowed to cry, it’s okay. It’s natural.”

“There’s nothing natural about me,” I hiccupped, voice raw from sobbing. “I’m a freak, a man shoved into a woman’s body. I’m even… I like it like this, or I’m starting to. I don’t know.”

It was true too. I was a freak, an unnatural accident of my own making, a moment of weakness in a fucking character creator and now I was stuck like this.

“Could you elaborate on that?” she asked gently, shifting further onto the bed to get an arm around my shoulder. “I’m here as your friend, not your leader or your bedmate.”

“How… how did you even know I was back?” I deflected, although I really was curious.

The arm around me gave a squeeze, and I was powerless to resist leaning in against her. She felt too good, smelled too nice. Oh, how I enjoyed her touch. Her nose nestled in my hair, words quiet as her warm breath tickled at my scalp. “Singer came and found me, said you looked upset. I came looking.”

“Oh,” was all I could say, unable to formulate words around the simple fact that two people had given enough of a shit about my happiness to coordinate.

“Yes, oh,” she chuckled kindly. “Now, will you please elaborate on what you said?”

My mind tripped at the idea of telling her, not because I didn’t want to, but because I’d been expecting to and found that actually, I trusted her. I felt that maybe, possibly… I could tell her what was happening.

“Before I fell down onto that rooftop… I was a man, I had a dick, facial hair… everything,” I found myself saying, then frowned. “No… that’s not right. It was… when I met the goddess. She changed me.”

Bassi froze, a block of cold iron where there had been a woman. “You… met the goddess?”

“I’m not even from this shithole of a world,” I told her, leaning back to find her expression. She was staring at me in shock. I barrelled on with the story, hoping she would understand. My trust in her wavered with every moment she stayed frigid like that. “One moment I’m travelling home after a day of study off the site of my, um… academy, and the next moment we’re all flying over the edge of a cliff. My whole class.”

She was still staring at me, but her shock was morphing into curiosity now, and I took that as encouragement. “It’s how I was able to design the snake. I was a student of the arts. We all were, in some way or another. Instead of hitting the bottom of the cliff, we fell gently into an endless chamber, overgrown with plant life.”

“And then you met the goddess,” my friend replied, barely above a whisper.

“Yeah… except she was hurt. Rambling about stuff none of us understood, bleeding from wounds, bruised and battered,” I explained, feeling my heart go out for the wounded woman, probably still fighting her losing battle against an overwhelming foe. “I understand now that she was too weak to properly transport us all here.”

“She saved you all? From falling to your deaths?” Bassi asked, wonder in her snakelike green eyes. “Why? And how did you become… this?”

“That day, my class and I had been doing an… artistic exercise. We each had to create a character, a fake person… and this body is what I created, but more than that… my abilities and reflexes, they were all part of it,” I told her, motioning down at myself. “I guess the goddess thought that the bodies we had all dreamed up would better help her than the ones we were born with. Unfortunately for me… I was then remade as a woman, or… well into a woman’s body.”

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She tilted her head at me as I finished, eyeing me up and down as though seeing me in a new light. She was silent for long moments, although her arm hadn’t left my shoulder. I felt naked under her gaze, and not in a fun way, but rather awkward, uncomfortable.

“Hence why you insisted you were a man when you first arrived here,” she stated, and I could see her beginning to believe my tale. Slowly, she nodded, giving me a small smile, “We will put aside this matter of the goddess for now, as clearly that is not at the heart of your tears.”

“Right,” I agreed, giving her a thankful smile. I’d been afraid she would focus on that while my inner turmoil over my body change boiled onwards.

Her gaze faltered next, as she asked a very… intense question. “You do not like this new body?”

“No, and that’s the problem Bassi… I love this body,” I said, emphasising the last, because it was true. Even as I spoke those words, their truth crashed through me like a wave. I loved being in this body, irrespective of how anyone else referred to me or viewed me. This body, everything about it, from its strength to its soft curves. Including, the tiny tits and vag. Especially those, actually… given what Bassi could get me to feel using them. Way better than the one and done bullshit that a dick gave.

“That is… incredibly relieving to hear,” Bassi sighed, her hand escaping from my shoulder for a second so she could scrub at her face. “I’m sorry, I was worried for a moment… the implications of what that would have meant concerning our ah… special brand of friendship.”

“Yeah,” I said, finding a wry smile on my lips. “That would have been hella awkward, hey?”

“In the extreme,” Bassi nodded, giving me a wide eyed look for a moment. Then she got all confused again. “Wait, but if it is not hatred of this body that has you in tears, what is wrong?”

“It’s the social aspect that’s fucking me over,” I sighed, brushing my hands down my shins as I thought. “Nowadays, you all just refer to me as a woman, she did this, that is hers, etcetera. And I don’t mind that. Well, that’s not true… I actually kind of like it.”

“That still does not sound like a problem,” Bassi remarked with kindhearted amusement. “If you like it, why bother trying to understand why, trying to match it with anything. Ruins below, we are thieves, it’s already in our very nature to shuck the rules that society tries to place upon us.”

I stopped, froze and sat there blinking, staring at her.

“No… I can’t just… I need to understand why,” I sputtered, frowning now. Also slightly annoyed that a fucking meme jumped into my head to explain my feelings on the matter. Wait, that’s illegal!

“You love your woman’s body, you enjoy being referred to as a woman, what’s the problem?” she asked, grinning cheekily now. “New world, new you. Mist, the very attractive shadow thief. So long as you understand what you are now, you may investigate the how of the matter at your own pace.”

“But I don’t… I don’t feel properly like a woman,” I exclaimed, throwing my hands in the air in frustration now. “That’s the whole problem!”

“So, you are something close to a woman?” she asked, as if that was just a thing you could be.

“There’s no such thing as something other than a man or a woman, that’s silly!” I huffed, even as my heart sort of bounced up and down and pointed excitedly in the direction of ‘close to a woman’.

“You are part fae, my dear Mist,” Bassi laughed, rolling her eyes. “In fact, given your tale, I suspect you may actually be a full blooded fae, if only in body. Your mind is clearly human.”

How was she getting amusement out of this? Pesky woman! “What does being fae have to do with anything?!”

“Because among the fae, there is more than just man and woman,” she winked, reaching out to boop me on the nose with a finger. “Man, woman, fraevi, halwan.”

Right. Okay. Different race… alien race or whatever, why the hell would they have all the same shit as boring old humans?

“Men and women are as you’d expect, although women rule in the land of the fae. Fraevi are born without any genitals of any kind, nor breasts, and their figure differs wildly across the spectrum from male to female. They are more magic given flesh than anything else, and fine wielders of the arcane arts as a result. The halwan are… complicated. They are more malleable, flesh ruled and manipulated by the spirit. Their bodies form however suits them, and each is different and unique,” Bassi told me, stroking at my cheek now, her thumb so soft against my skin. I found my eyelids fluttering at the touch.

“That’s a lot to deal with,” I sighed, giving in and allowing my eyes to close. “Can I just… leave all of that alone, for now?”

“Yes, Mist, you may…” she agreed, her tone almost affectionate. “Which means you can tell me about your meeting with the goddess.”

Ah shit… now I was done for. Although… now that I felt a little better, my wit seemed to have returned.

“Ugh, meetings,” I grumbled theatrically. “Nobody even thought to bring donuts to this one either, like how rude is that?”

“Mist,” Bassi growled, grabbing at my head and turning me to face her. “Tell me, you pesky halwan.”

“You said I could leave that stuff alone!” I cried, aghast.

“Well, maybe if you behave,” she grinned with domineering amusement.

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