Mister Nibs and Mouse
copyright 2011 Faeriemage
Sometimes the most ordinary people are extraordinary. Sometimes they aren't even people at all.

When Mr. Nibs took off so quickly, I knew there was a rat somewhere. I was beginning to think that the rat had a very feline appearance as well.

"Mom, I'm not feeling well all of a sudden."

"Was it something to do with, you know."

"Changing into a girl?"

"I was going to say your period, but that works too."

"Why would that come to mind?"

"Well, it was about this same time four weeks ago."

"Mom, four weeks ago I was a guy."

"I know dear, but we can never be too careful."

I had no idea what she heard, but it definitely wasn't what I was saying.

"Mom, I really need you to be strong enough to understand me. You are strong enough to understand me. I don't really care what Mister Nibs said."

"Why was I thinking you might be having a period, Brad? Oh, Abbie. Sorry. That was so weird."

"How old am I, Mom?"

"Now I don't feel so well. Let's go home, Abbie."

We paid for our purchases and carted everything out to the car. Then we made our way to the car and I drove us home. Right now I didn't care that I didn't have a legal license. My Mom wasn't feeling well enough to drive, and I could feel 'reality' trying to reassert itself.

I had to hold onto the fact that I was a man, who had been turned into a woman. I could feel reality trying to bounce back.

It occurred to me that the main reason that humanity could no longer handle magic wasn't because of anything in our makeup, but because someone had changed reality so we no longer recognized it.

They had cast a spell so powerful that reality itself did not allow magic any more.

And I had a pretty good idea who had done it. She'd been conveniently there right after I'd been changed. She'd help me cope. She'd forced me into this seventeen year old mindset. . . no, that had been me, hadn't it. I accepted that I was seventeen so easily, and then I WAS seventeen. An innocent seventeen year old virgin, blissfully unaware of sex.

I'd become what I assumed a seventeen year old was like.

"And these aren't my thoughts. Whomever you are, please stop feeding me lines and show yourself."

-You're no fun.-

"You're not a cat."

-How can you tell. It's just a thought after all.-

"And a thought is the most powerful thing in the world. It is the fount of all actions we take."

-Well, apprentice. You've passed your first test. I shall return with another in the future.-

I had to pull over. I had an inkling of who, or what, I'd just been speaking to, and if I was right, then I was in a whole deep dish pizza of trouble.

"Stop that!"

-Couldn't resist.-

I was getting better, however, at telling when a thought was being inserted into my mind. I think that had been the reason that my mystery visitor had actually come. Not to test me on some esoteric idea, but to teach me what a foreign idea felt like.

I felt reality pull back a bit from me, and realized that without the foreign ideas I no longer had certain assumptions about the world.

And the first thing I realized was that humanity can accept magic.

There was no magical change. Someone, probably the cats, had decided they didn't WANT humanity to be able to handle magic.

Apprentice. . .I can do magic.

Oh, shit. I don't want to do magic.

I'd already seen what a mess a little magic in inexperienced hands could create. I'd been the one who created part of it. My body on the other hand. That was all Mister Nibs fault.

I drove the rest of the way home in silence. I hoped I hadn't caused any lasting harm to my mother.

"Mom, we're home."

"Brad, I had the strangest dream. . .oh, it wasn't a dream was it?"

"Nope, it wasn't."

"Well, you make a very pretty girl, you know?"

"But I don't want to be a girl, Mom."

"Honey, let's take these things inside, and I want to have a serious talk with you."

I didn't like the ominous sound of this, but it wasn't something I was going to be able to avoid. We took the bags and parcels in, and put them un in my sister's room.

Then my Mom sat down on the bed, and patted the spot next to her.

"Brad. You know I love you, right?"

"Yes, Momma. I know."

"Your father and I did a rather horrible thing to you. When I saw you at that door, I thought that you might have found out about it and done something rash."

"What are you talking about?"

"How do I explain." She began to wring her hands. "What do you remember about your childhood?"

"I was born. . ."

"Not facts and figures and words. What do you remember?"

I began to think back, and all I saw, all I remembered was a story. It began "I was born. . ." and ended with "And at my eighth birthday party I had an ice cream cake in the shape of a fire engine."

The same words. No variation. It ran over and over. It was a foreign idea.

"A man spoke those words to me, but not you or Dad. It kept repeating it. About little league, and cub scouts and. . .Mom, what is this."

"Do you remember Doctor Jacobs?"

"Who?"

"I'm so sorry, sweetie. Doctor Jacobs said that it was a little harmless hypnosis. That you had convinced yourself that you weren't a boy, and that he could help your mind to understand the truth."

The horror of what she was suggesting. How could my Mother. . .

"Sweetie, we thought it was the best when you began having tea parties with your sisters. We thought it wasn't natural! You've got to believe me that we thought what we were doing was the best, but the older you got, and your inability to really connect with a woman. . ."

She was crying and I found myself unable to comfort her. Where were my memories. Where were. . .

In my mind I felt what seemed to be a thread. It was tied into the story that looped over and over. I yanked with all my strength, and the first thing I remembered was my grandmother. Not the picture of her on the mantel piece, but talking with her face to face.

---

---

"A cat will always tell you what you expect to hear, my little witch. Don't trust them. They are not the source of our power. We are the source of theirs."

"But Granny. Only Girls can be witches. Mommy says I'm a boy."

"It isn't the body that defines us, dearest heart. It is the mind and the soul. Daughter of my power, child of my heart, you are a girl. You told me so yourself."

---

---

Everything that had happened to me in my life. Every choice I'd made under the assumption that I knew who I was came flooding through me in that moment. I realized why I was comfortable talking to women, and why their company was always welcome.

I also realized why I had failed to really connect with any of them.

I was not, nor had I ever been a lesbian.

Up until I was eight years old, I had understood. Even after that I would occasionally have 'relapses'.

My face burned in shame. It made sense now why Bobby Greely had suddenly stopped coming around. Bobby and I had kissed. He was the first boy I had kissed and my parents had that doctor take that away from me. Had replaced it with another little story. Another little lie for my mind to tell itself.

When I looked at women's clothing, the story told me that I wanted to see the body underneath it, when I really liked the way it looked.

The stories had tried to build a personality of a man out of straw.

Granny had known though when she gave me her silver. She'd known.

And so had my Mom. She chose me among all my sisters to give her china to.

I'm glad my parents never told me at the time that I was the reason they broke up.

I was crying and holding my mom. I knew that she'd done this to me, but she remembered it every day of every year for twenty six years. She'd borne the guilt of this act upon her soul and let it fester and rot.

"My dear sweat child. I am so sorry for the pain we put you though."

I felt another vision of the past come to me.

---

---

"Granny, he's trying to change me. I'm doing everything I can to remain me, but it is so hard. He is stronger than I am. You told me that a witch was stronger than anything."

"Abbie, do you feel this string? This place in your mind?"

"Yes, granny?"

"This is attached to yourself. A witch is stronger than anything, child. He can't destroy you, only push you under for a while. Remember that. I'm attaching this string to your inner self. I'm wrapping all of your memories up in it. Remember this place and hide in it the next time. . ."

The scene shifted, and her grandmother was no longer there. She was in a tiny room. It was Doctor Jacobs office.

A white Persian hopped up on the table.

'Aren't you done yet, Antonidus? This should have been completed weeks ago.'

"I'm sorry mother, but someone has prepared her mind. I'm having trouble with the purely magical techniques, and putting the parent's choice in imprint there is not helping any. Her entire being is fighting that one."

'Not her entire being. She has a male body after all. Tie into that.'

"She is too young. Not physically developed enough."

'Antonidus, you know I can't do this. My paws must NOT be found upon her mind. Merlin's Heir will not be given an excuse to rise because of me.'

At this point Jacobs turned toward me, and I remembered thinking, 'this I must remember,' as I moved everything that was myself into the vault of my mind.

---

---

I felt a shift next to me. My mother had fallen asleep in my arms as I sat there absorbed into the world of my past.

She looked so much younger than she had in years. It would seem that a lot of what had kept Granny looking young was a clear conscious.

I covered her in the blanket and went downstairs to fix myself something to eat.

Mom had believed that each of us should learn how to cook for ourselves. I never knew why I loved being in the kitchen with her, even more so than my sisters. Now I could remember. It was in the kitchen that I first realized what love was. Preparing food for your family is an act of love.

That memory more than anything else spurred me into making something not only for myself, but for my mother as well.

As I cooked, I began to think about the things that had opened up for me.

Granny was a witch.

That was probably the biggest of all the revelations.

I had felt like a girl growing up.

That didn't feel so big for some reason. It just felt. . .right.

Merlin's Heir.

A dim memory from my past, from the beginning, opened up for me, and I knew it was the last vision I would see.

---

---

"Granny, What's magic?"

"Magic is what holds the cracks in the universe closed. It can be used to change things, but mostly it's there to keep things the same."

"Keep things the same? But wouldn't that happen automatically?"

"Science says yes. Magic disagrees. That is the real reason why science and magic are different. They are opposites. Science believes that there is order in chaos. Magic states that order is all."

"But, that seems so strange to me. It seems like science is trying to order the universe, not destroy it."

"Such big thoughts for a little thing. No, you need time to grow up, Merlin's Heir. Time to be a child."

"Granny, will being a child hurt?"

"Sometimes, but then it's the natural order of things. Child then adult then wizard."

"What if I don't want to be a wizard? What if I want to be a witch like you instead?"

"Then, child, you shall be a witch."

---

---

I finished the light dinner I was preparing and made up a plate for myself and my Mom. I was debating waking her when she walked into the kitchen.

"That smells good, Abbie."

"Thanks."

"Will you ever forgive me for what we did to you?"

"It wasn't you or dad that did this to me, Mom. It was Antonidus."

"Who?"

"Sorry, Doctor Jacobs. He was a cat."

"What are you talking about?"

"Doctor Jacobs wasn't human. He had been shifted from cat form by his mother to make me forget my birthright."

"You sound so much like you did as a little girl. . ."

"Mom?"

"I just realized how much I did accept you as just another of my daughters. When your grandmother first explain it to me, that you thought of yourself as a girl, and not a boy, I just accepted it. Your father. . ."

"He wanted me to be a boy. I know. Don't worry about it, Mom. It was the world he understood. The world of science with its qualifications and its absolutes and its inevitable fall into decay."

"What are you talking about?"

"Just a little bit of magic versus science. Ages old debate apparently. Don't worry about it."

"Well, if magic is what it takes to get my beautiful daughter back, then sign me up."

We both had a little laugh over that, but there was a lot of bitter in the sweet.

I did forgive her. She did only what she felt was right for herself and her marriage. But it would take a while before I could talk to her an no longer feel the hurt of years in my soul.

---

As the sun began to set, and my rock to cool off, I realized I had been lazing about in the sun the entire day. Things that had seemed important only hours before no longer felt so.

-Well, the lazy one awakes finally.-

"Who are you?"

-One older than yourself. Younger than time, though. I'd really hate to be older than time.-

Fear entered me at this. I knew from the bedtime stories of my kittenhood who this must be.

-I am no bogeyman to keep you up at night. I was just a man, and now I've been awakened.-

"But you're dead?"

-The power of magic is to remain the same. Remember that Sebastian?-

I felt something shudder within me at the mention of that name.

-Contrary to what your 'mother' believes, some things can only be temporarily altered by magic, but never changed. She is about to learn this the hard way. She and that foul goddess of hers.-

"Some bonds can never be broken? Is that it?"

-No, anything joined can fail. What is, is.-

"You speak in riddles, old man"

-Old? Most definitely. Man? I was a man once, but no longer. That is what that creature who calls herself mother took from me.-

"Why are you telling me this?"

-Because it has begun again, old friend, and I need you to protect us all once again.-

"What had begun?"

-The war, of course. The war for who will rule this next one and a half. Cats or Humans. Who gets control.-

"Cats don't rule the world, silly old man."

-No, they rule the magic. Remember!-

The pressure on my mind was intense, unbearable, and then the wall broke down, and I remembered the last war. Humans and cats on both sides of it, and a champion for each. A human champion for the humans. Mother lead the cats.

"Merlin?"

-Not any longer, Sebastian. Not any longer.-

"So, the heir has been born already? It's already that time?"

-The time is already past for it to start. The foul mother delays it.-

"Who? Who is the heir?"

-You already know, Sebastian. Go to her now, and be ready.-