“Unf,” I grunt as I’m woken from a dreamless slumber by my phone, though it isn’t my alarm that wakes me, but rather an incoming call. I try to smile as I click the ‘answer’ button- normally I'd be happy to see the identity of the caller on my phone's screen, but it's much too early- and much too cold- for that right now.

“Good morning, Ian!” Grandma says with a cheerful tone. “Or rather, happy birth-eve!”

“Thanks, grandma,” I say quietly as I prop myself up in bed and huddle my sheets around my shivering form. “Is everything okay in Cardiff?”

Hi Reddit. I am making this post as I wanted to tell people about how my life turned out. You can choose not to believe me, but here it is regardless. I can’t tell you my real name, so I will say my name was Bernie. I was a shy, unassuming teen. I had a rough life, beginning with my father throwing me out of their house on my 18th birthday because he decided it was time that I went my own way. And I never had an 18th birthday party.

My parents never treated me well at home, and I was relieved to leave my childhood house with only the things I could stuff in a backpack.

Jada was a little demon, only about eighteen inches tall, with short horns, bat-like wings similar to mine, short reddish-brown fur, and cute little hooves. I picked her up and gave her a piggyback ride with her legs around my left neck.

 

Britt was an angel of the same height, with feathery wings and mostly-human legs with bird-like feet, wearing a white robe. I picked her up, too, and she straddled my right neck.

“There are days I feel more robotic and days I feel more human. People tip more when my body is shaped like a female human, but they also expect me to act in a feminine way. Some days I can do that and some days I cannot.”

When they returned, Jada was a cyclopean llama-taur and Steph was an octopus-taur. She was riding on Jada’s back, having apparently gotten tuckered out on the way back — she was surprisingly fast on her tentacles, but they’d tired after walking a third of the way across campus.

“You’re heavy. Did it make your bones out of osmium or something?”

On Furry Friday, I had Jill venn me into a two-headed creature with a sheep-like head and a wolf-like head. After some practice, I tried talking with my usual voice with the sheep head and with a fake Scottish accent with the wolf head; I would recommend the meat dishes with the wolf head and the vegetable dishes and salads with the sheep head.

Before she unpacked any more of her stuff, she looked over Jada’s things, including me, but didn’t touch anything — except me. She petted me gently before going back to her side of the room and finishing unpacking.

In the plane was his daughter Amber, seated in the right seat. A newlywed couple was in the back row, and in front of them were Marcia and Sammy. The little boy had come to help take his mind off the terrors of the Fourth of July, but he wanted his Aunt Marcia along with him. Once Sammy and Marcia were going, Amber wanted to fly with her daddy too.

“Let’s try it,” Ms. Paget said. “Joy and I are going to be chibis on Thursday, and I’d like to get some other volunteers to do the same. You don’t have to wear schoolgirl uniforms or anything; you can be chibi mice or chibi dragons or whatever, even chibi robots,” (nodding toward Todd, who was in one of his less humanoid robot forms today). “If it works out, we might make it a regular thing. Chibi Thursdays. Come in anime cosplay, or better yet venned into a chibi form, and get 10% off...”

Freshly sprayed down with Off^®, Marcia, Darryl, and Sammy sat at a picnic table near the Matanuska River dock. It was a ways from where the body had been found, for which they were glad. They didn’t want Sammy thinking about that either. Whether he understood what he’d seen in the case of his parents’ death, or the skeletal hand, would have to be determined by a counselor.

I finally had my first therapy appointment the Wednesday after graduation. I debated over whether to venn into my human girl body for the appointment — I’d been wearing my dragon-girl body ever since graduation — but decided it would be more honest to meet my therapist in my most preferred body. If she couldn’t handle my being a scaly, it would be good to know that up front so I could start looking for another therapist.

“Pft! No one is going to believe you used to be a boy!”

“I’m sorry, your daddy needs me to help with something,” I told Durom. “We’ll have to continue the story tomorrow night.”

 

“But I need to know what happened to Bilbo,” he said plaintively. “Did the trolls catch him?”

By the end of the first tenday, I had become a friend and playmate to the younger children, an assistant to Bisur in his magical workshop, and an assistant to Mipina in her writing. Razuko, however, remained uninterested in socializing and did not seem to want much help.

“We’re gonna be working together! This is gonna be kind of awesome. I mean, it’s menial service industry work, so that kind of sucks, but it’s about as good as waiting and busing tables ever gets, from what I hear. Mr. Paget’s a fair boss, unlike that asshole at my old job, and you get to work in all kinds of cool bodies.”

Marcia watched as her brother and friend eyed each other. She wasn't sure how the meeting was going to go after the occurrences of three years previous, but she hoped both could reign in their feelings.

There was an uneasy silence that was finally broken by Chet. "Hi, Trish. Nice to see you." He stepped up to her and put one arm around her in a friendship embrace.

It was as if there was a collective sigh of relief as they embraced. Darryl glanced at his sister, and saw a small bit of stiffness that quickly evaporated. It was as if Mage consciously made the decision to be friendly.

“Household spirit, manifest before me,” said the man in the workroom. The language he spoke was new to me, but apparently someone had installed a new language module without my knowledge; I understood him perfectly.

Author's note: I am still working on my edits of The Return of Lilith. It has been taking me a lot longer than I planned it too. I hope that these edits will make the story better overall. I decided today that I was going to take a break from editing and knock out the prelude to the next adventure of Lilith and her family. This one will contain some violence against women and some graphic descriptions of rape and abuse. I wanted to warn you up front since this will be a common theme throughout the book. I hope you enjoy the new adventures.

“Yes!” I said, and babbled on before I could lose the momentary burst of confidence, “I’m interested in —”

I awoke to the smell of eggs and bacon, my dad's favorite way to start the day. I'd intended to stay up and wait for him to come home but I was too exhausted after the day I'd had.

I dreaded going downstairs to meet him. I didn't know how he'd react. We hadn't spent much time together since I came back home insisting I was now his daughter.

I knew I'd always been a bit of a disappointment. I never really enjoyed the same things he did. He'd tried to get me interested in football, he'd wanted to teach me how to properly handle and shoot a gun.

Francis Holcomb, known as Fran, carefully walked into his sick mother’s bedroom carrying a bowl of steaming soup broth. She had been extremely ill for several months, and was now terminal. Twelve-year-old Fran had taken care of her mostly single-handedly to the best of his ability, but the outlook was very bleak.

“Fran, honey, I don’t think I can get it down,” she said, weakly.

“Pleeeease, mom? I don’t want you to die,” said Fran.

What was Rachel thinking? She should've just told Jesse she was Randy from the start. Then maybe Jesse wouldn't have agreed to give the speech at Randy's memorial and made it that much more awkward for Rachel to come clean with him. But it was too late now.

The day after the memorial assembly, Jesse seemed pretty down in the dumps when he came into Science. "Hey," said Rachel. "About yesterday, I just..."

"Don't be sorry," Jesse said miserably. "It's not your fault."

So Jesse wasn't mad at her. "Well...okay, I guess," said Rachel.

For the next couple days, Rachel mostly just hung out at Pretty And Pink with Vanessa. Ruth still had to do some work to register Rachel to go to school, since she'd be going in as a new student. But it turned out Pretty And Pink was a nice place to be. The cafeteria served good food three times a day, and there was a game room where you could play board games or video games with your friends. The only thing Rachel had to keep in mind was to stay out of Maddie and Hattie's way.