Raina hugged her knees and sobbed quietly at the foot of her bed. The pain of the black eye she received from her stepfather was still fresh and sharp.

“I can feel your pain… Your desire… Tell me, my dear, what is it that you want?” Raina’s head snapped up to see a naked woman with pointed ears and the lower body of a deer stride into her room. Behind her was a forest from another world. As she stepped further in, her lower body became human.

“I want, I mean I am… but…” Raina struggled to get the words out. “Make me a girl… please…”

Arcturus and Valin were escorted to the teleportation dais, and in a few moments, they were whisked off home, and he was promptly set upon by his immediate family. There was much exchange of hugging and kissing and tears, as well as questions firing off all over the place. But eventually, Valin got to the question that he really wanted to ask.

“Has anyone told Ariadne yet?”

There were a few questioning looks between his parents and his siblings, before they arrived at the answer, no.

Valin sighed deeply. “Well, I guess I’d better get on that. Can’t put it off.”

WARNING: ABORTED SUICIDE ATTEMPT

“Discipline, discipline, discipline.” Valin repeated this mantra in his head, over and over as he prepared himself for the practical exam. He was sure that he had gotten a perfect grade on the written portion, not that he expected otherwise, as he had been training himself for it almost his whole life. Not that he hadn’t done the same for the practical, it’s just that the practical required certain innate qualities that Valin didn’t have.

Rowan sat underneath the maple tree and sighed happily. It had been twenty years since he'd last been here, and this was the first time since then that he'd felt this content.

"Want to play Girly Chicken?"

I blinked and stared at Evan, totally confused. Evan was my childhood friend and current roommate. Both of us were students at the Tiresias College for Mages. He was a pretty tall guy, skinny as a rail, with a fairly androgynous face. And if we're being honest, a fairly androgynous voice too. As for me? Well, I'm... average. Black hair, blue eyes. A couple inches shorter than Evan. Not skinny but not fat. Like I said, average. Oh, and my name is Jason.