Chapter 9: 9: Fae Surprise

Getting dressed, I wasn’t sure how dressed I actually needed to be. Like, was I going to be running over rooftops, or just hanging out down in the tavern? I figured I’d just be downstairs, so I found some underwear and put that on, then stared at the bra for a minute or so, just trying to figure it out. Did I really have to put this thing on? These little boobs of mine were small enough that I didn’t have to, right? Right?

After putting the bra on, it was casual linen breeches that were rather tight, but that was on purpose. She’d noticed my ass, after all, and for some reason having my ass noticed had me feeling all all… strange, but in a good way. Next came a casual linen button up shirt, which I wore with a few buttons loose at the top, because if I was going to be adventurous about this new body with my pants, I may as well do the same with my top too.

A pair of soft shoe things went on my feet, whatever these leather shoes with no soles were called, I had no idea. That done, I wandered out the door and down the tight stairs, finding the tavern strangely quiet.

Navigator was there behind the bar again, although this time he was quietly cooking food, and my nose picked up the telltale sizzle and pop of meat. Oh, that smelled really good. I almost drifted straight across the room to him, but I spotted Basilisk sitting with her feet up on a table, casually reading a book. For some reason she was wearing thin brown leather gloves.

She glanced up as I saw her, her gently lidded eyes travelling up and down my body for a second before she met my gaze. “Are you still going to insist I address you as a man?” she asked, and for a second I expected her expression to hold animosity. But no, just simple curiosity lay there, her head tilted to the side as she surveyed me.

I opened my mouth to say yes, but stopped… because I honestly had no idea. I bit my lip in thought, breaking eye contact with Bassi in the process. I just didn’t want to… I couldn’t... I squeezed my eyes shut, memory invading once again. Asking my mother why she’d made me a boy, and the subsequent lecture about how it had been god who decided my gender, and that I shouldn’t question it.

“Just… call me whatever you feel like,” I sighed, opening my eyes while still avoiding hers.

Wandering over to the table, I sat down heavily in the seat and chanced a quick peek at her. She was still looking at me with those piercing green eyes of hers, again trying to answer her questions without asking them.

“Well, considering what I just saw… I think I will refer to you as a woman,” she told me quietly, an uncharacteristic gentleness in her tone. “If that is alright?”

As if to confuse me further, my stomach dropped, icing over with fear, but my heart… it soared, aglow with warmth. Jesus, could my emotions just come like, one at a time? Please?

“Sure… and just what did you see?” I asked, finding a smile to put on my face.

“A lot of skin,” she breathed, and now it was her turn to avoid looking at me. “From the back, if that makes a difference to you.”

“Not really,” I shrugged, my smile now more than genuine. “You can practically see all of that stuff with what I was wearing yesterday anyway.”

She snorted, snake eyes finding mine with amusement. “I think there might be a difference, and before you move on, I want you to know that I don’t make a habit of walking in on members of our chapter naked.”

“Oh, so that was special then?” I teased, fighting the urge to add a wink. Goodness, I was really coming out of my shell, huh? I’d never have the courage to say things like that before all of this happened. Now though, now I couldn’t even help myself. The words just came out, no committee oversight from upstairs.

She boggled at me for a second, mouth hanging open again, then she took a deep breath. “I am going to enjoy teaching you magic,” she said, a note of danger in her voice.

“Oh? Onwards then?” I asked innocently, leaning back in my chair.

“Indeed,” she nodded, although her eyes still held mine for a few moments more than necessary. She seemed to be making a habit of that with me. Reaching down, she took out a small orb of dark blue stone. Inside it, little pinpricks of light shone, as though it held a starfield within its confines. “Pick that up,” she ordered, allowing it to slip out of her gloved hands to drop to the table.

I did so, reaching out and plucking it off the table. It was heavier than I’d thought it would be, like it was made of metal rather than stone. Odd. If felt strangely slippery to the touch too, like teflon or something.

As soon as it came into contact with my hand, there was a reaction. Starting slowly in the center, the tiny stars began to wink out of existence. The change accelerated, as though there were a shadow or dark cloud expanding within that tiny universe. In a matter of moments, the orb was pitch black, a void of nothingness that was kinda chilling to look at.

Opposite me, Basilisk was frowning, leaning forward to get a better look at it. She opened her mouth slightly, but didn’t say anything, as though the correct words for the sentence she wanted to form had escaped her.

“That’s weird,” she muttered, and reached out to pluck the ball out of my hands. The darkness disappeared the instant it was no longer touching my skin. I watched the intimidating woman in front of me twist and turn the object before her eyes, humming a gentle tune as she did so. Finally, she placed it down and tugged one of her gloves off.

When she picked it up with that hand, skin to stone, it erupted in colour, greens and reds billowing in clouds within the orb like a nebula forming at super speed. With a grunt, she gave me a look. “That’s what it’s meant to do. Hold your hand out?”

I did so, and she dropped the orb back into my hand. Again, the stars within it slowly died off, until it was once again black.

“That is… incredibly strange,” she told me, concern on her face now. “It’s not meant to do anything if you don’t have magic, and it’s meant to get all coloured and cloudy if someone has magic.”

“Specifically, what kind of magic is it meant to detect?” I asked slowly, ideas forming in my head as I realised something rather important.

“Those with the blood of the goddess,” she told me, searching my face for clues. “Divinelings. What are you getting at?”

I licked my lips as I processed something. Technically, I was a direct child of the goddess. She had used her magic, her power over creation to literally build me from scratch. I was smart enough to realise that I shouldn’t be saying that out loud though, no matter how kind and seemingly trustworthy Bassi was.

“I uh… didn’t have these ears,” I said, picking my words very carefully. “Before I landed on that rooftop, I mean. I didn’t have them as I was plunging into that abyss either. It must have happened when I was in the… place inbetween.”

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She was staring at me hard now, again doing that thing where she teased at her fangs with her tongue. Her pupils were blown wide as she blinked, unfocused.

No warning, a burst of speed and she had a blade coming for my throat. On pure instinct, I threw myself backwards out of the chair… and in the process, exploded into tiny slivers of shadow. I seethed backwards across the floor, staring down at my hands in shock. I could see through them, I was nothing but a vague silhouette of a woman, frayed at the edges as wisps of shadow shed from me like flakes of rust.

Basilisk placed her knife on the table, then leaned forward with her chin in her palm, and an excited smile on her lips. “My dear sweet Mist, our Whistle might have given you a far more apt name than any of us realised.”

“Um… how do I go back?” I asked, but no sound came out. Craaaaaaap.

I spun around, waving my arms and jumping up and down in an attempt to get myself to leave this strange form. Nothing happened, and I grumbled silently at her, “Stupid crazy knife lady. What the hell are you up to? Just because you’re scary hot and make me feel all confused, doesn’t mean you can just try and stab me! Honestly! Bloody irresponsible is what it is.”

“It appears to have worn off,” she told me mildly, a tiny smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Uh, how long ago did it wear off?” I asked, feeling my face heating. 

Trying to act casual, I carefully sat back down in my seat as her eyes danced lidded amusement. “Oh, right around the time you said that I’m scary hot.”

“Right. Of course,” I groaned, hiding my face with my hands. “What did we learn anyway? That I’m some sort of shadow monster thing?”

“Far from a monster, Mist,” she said, her teasing tone turning gentle. “Simply a wielder of more wild magicks. The church would have me killed for saying so, but the god and the goddess have not always existed in their current forms. Their predecessors, old and wild gods, along with the races they hold dear, still walk this broken world, and some… they might find their way into the bed of a human man or woman. The ears should have been a giveaway, to be honest, to me of all people. You, my dear Mist, are fae.”

“I got turned into a fairy?” I blurted, my hands dropping from my face as I stared at her in shock.

She laughed, shaking her head. “No, not a fairy. You do not seem to be ten inches tall,” as she spoke, she reached down and grasped my hand, holding it tight while she massaged it with a thumb. The move had sparks dancing in my overstimulated mind, and for a brief moment I forgot how to breathe.

“You’re like a stray cat,” she told me after a moment, her tone quiet and gentle. “Feisty and wild, but in need of a warm place to curl up, and some food.”

I kept staring at my hand in hers, my heart thundering in my chest. She had such soft hands, except where there were calluses from her profession. How would the rough pads at the tips of her fingers feel as they trailed down my back, or dancing across the swell of my hips? For the first time in a very long time, if ever, I acknowledged sexual desire and a real will to act on it.

Sure, I’d like… thought girls were pretty, but I’d always shied away from any imaginings of the actual act. Here and now though? For some reason, now that I was Mist and not Daniel, I could stomach it. More than just stomach it actually, I wanted it, I was craving it.

Rather than voicing my thirst for her, I asked tentatively, “What am I then?”

“A child of the Court of Night, if I had to guess,” she said, using her other hand to tilt my chin up so I was looking at her again. Oh goodness, that action, it did things for me.

Concentrate, Mist, come on. How did this fit in with the goddess? Fae lore from various made up worlds and ancient mythology had a few courts of “fae” but how did that translate over here? Did they cycle in power, the court of night being powerful in the night, and their opposites during the day?

“What… is the Court of Night?” I asked, still trying to think around the feeling of her gentle caress.

“A kingdom of powerful fae folk,” she told me, then gave a shrug. “I don’t know much about them, no one does. Supposedly there was some trade between... my people and yours, back before the war of evil, but now all we hear of them is from wastelanders or pathfinders who get lost and wander into their territory. There are other courts too, too many to count on both hands. The Night are secretive, keep to themselves, even by fae standards. If they still exist, that is. The court of growth was wiped out a year into the war, and many others have fallen since.”

Okay, so they sounded more like elves than hardcore weird spirit things that liked to fuck with humans for their own amusement. Some people liked to get all romantic about fae, but at their heart they were kinda awful.

“Thanks for explaining all this,” I told her, giving her hand a squeeze this time. “I’m kinda lost when it comes to magic. What does this mean for teaching me?”

“It means that we’ll have to try things and see what happens,” she shrugged, then fished out a necklace from her shirt. “People with magic from the goddess need to use these to cast their spells. It’s like… a little book, gems for pages, bound with gold and silver. We call them talismans, and they allow us to remember a spell for later use, calling it forth using whatever gestures or words we set when we placed them in there.”

“But I’m not like that,” I prompted.

She gave a slight chuckle. “No, your magic has nature as its heart, wild and free. Unconstrained, but far more prone to acting in strange and sometimes unhelpful ways. Rather nice metaphor for the woman who wields it, if I’m honest. You cast your spells based on instinct, learning to activate everything in your own strange way, entirely unique even from other wild magic users.”

“So how do we do this then, the learning thing?” I asked, intrigued now. This sounded pretty cool.

“Well…” she grinned, eyes sparkling with mirth as they landed on the knife beside us. Oh. Oh...

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