The Bit Bucket

A Transgender Paranormal Romantasy

From the Paranormal Visitor Universe

Chapter 1: The Butterfly Garden

By Sasha Zarya Nexus

Only girls can teleport from the butterfly garden to Aislinn's College, so what is middle aged Fred doing on the equinox at the butterfly garden trying yet again to do magic?

Copyright 2025 by Sasha Zarya Nexus.
All Rights Reserved.

Author's Note:

This book, in it's entirety, is available on my Patreon. BCTS will get weekly postings on Saturdays to complete it here.

A giant grin radiates from the lone man, amid a multitude of girls who jeer at Fred, and magic fills him as an overflowing joy. The magic abundance is different, different is good.

The autumn equinox paints the Butterfly Garden in shades of amber and gold, each leaf catching the slanted light like stained glass. Fred stands among the swirling monarchs, their orange wings creating a living kaleidoscope around him as they prepared for their own impossible journey. His heart hammers with anticipation—today feels different, charged with possibility.

He closes his eyes and lets the sensation wash over him: the electric tingle that starts in his chest and spreads outward like ripples on water. For thirty-six years, he'd carried this certainty within him, this bone-deep knowledge that he can step between worlds if he just believes hard enough. The butterflies seem to sense it too, their flight patterns growing more frenzied, more purposeful.

The ancient college, he thinks, picturing the crystalline spires he'd seen in dreams, the halls where students learn to bend reality itself. It's waiting for me.

The joy builds inside him like pressure in a steam engine. This isn't mere hope anymore—it is faith made manifest, burning bright as the equinox sun. Fred opens his arms wide, feeling the cosmic alignment of the season, the perfect balance between light and dark that made all transformations possible.

"I can do this," he whispered to the butterflies. "I know I can."

The world holds its breath. Then Fred takes a step forward—not with his feet, but with his entire being, pushing against the fabric of reality with pure intention. The garden explodes in white light.

When the brilliance fades, Fred finds himself standing in a room that shouldn't exist.

Medieval stone walls rise around him, but they seem to breathe with their own inner light. Tapestries depicting impossible geometries hang between arched windows that show not sky, but swirling galaxies. The air itself feels thick with magic, making his skin tingle as if he'd walk through spider webs made of starlight.

After looking around at the walls, Fred paid attention to the room which was like the medieval cell of a monk or nun. There was a bed with a table beside it. On one wall was necessary things, a larder full of edible food, a bowl of water on a tabletop, a potty, A linens cabinet full of towels, cloths, bedlinens and a comforter. On the other side of the bed along the wall was a writing desk with a slate above it and a bell upon it and a row of bookshelves full of a mixture of ancient and new books.

All of a sudden, Fred found himself over come with weakness and before he fell to the floor, he dove into the bed. It was as though all his strength had been taken away by teleporting wherever he was now. Overcome with exhaustion, Fred entered a deep sleep.

The first image of Fred's dream was a pleasant one of his dearly beloved Sarah. She placed from sitting on her finger to the bridge of his nose a beautiful Monarch butterfly as they both sat on the grass off the ordinary path in the Butterfly Garden. He remembered that this was from five years ago when the relationship between Fred and Sarah had gone beyond friendship to approach romance.

Fred didn't want to replay this experience however pleasurable that might be. He wanted to talk to Sarah about what was happening in the waking world to him. Responding to his desires a portal opened to the room that he was really in with his body unconscious on the cell's bed. Fred noticed a plaque that had been behind him before on the wall but now that he was outside looking in was visible to him. It said, "The Bit Bucket".

"Sarah, what is this place?" Fred's voice came out rougher than he'd intended. "I was trying to reach the college. The ancient one, off-planet."

"Fred, I've read about this, Bit Bucket, as one of the myths, but you have found it to be real."

"I don't want it to be real. I want to be at Aislinn's College instead. That's where I'll get all my answers about who I am in reality." Fred's face twisted in frustration over not reaching his destination instead of joy that he was able to teleport to any place at all.

They both passed through the portal out of the butterfly garden and into The Bit Bucket. They could see the butterfly garden now through the portal.

Sarah's expression softened with something that might have been sympathy. "I know. But the Bit Bucket catches those who don't quite fit the college's usual categories. Think of it as... a waiting room for the metaphysically displaced. A person who's been caught between worlds ends up in The Bit Bucket. The equinoxes are particularly active times for such transitions."

"Caught between worlds?" The words sent a chill down Fred's spine. "You mean I'm trapped?"

"Not trapped," Sarah said carefully. "But the way forward requires mastery of skills you haven't fully developed yet. Teleportation brought you here, but escaping... that requires something else."

Fred stared at her, his mind reeling. The joy of successful teleportation was rapidly giving way to a creeping dread. "How long have people been stuck here?"

"Time works differently in the Bit Bucket. You might find your way out in what feels like days. Each one learns according to their gifts. You might take much longer to learn what you need to know."

As if summoned by their conversation, the air in the room began to shimmer. Fred felt a presence pressing against the edges of his consciousness—ancient, vast, and somehow familiar. The sensation was like trying to remember a dream that kept slipping away.

"The spirits are stirring," Sarah murmured, her eyes growing distant. "They can sense the change you've brought. Your arrival has awakened something that's been sleeping for a very long time."

Fred wanted to ask what she meant, but the words died in his throat as images flashed through his mind: a woman with eyes like starlight wielding power that could reshape reality; another figure wreathed in shadow, her beauty terrible and cold. The visions came and went like lightning, leaving him gasping.

"What's happening to me?" he managed.

Sarah's hand found his shoulder, her touch surprisingly warm and solid. "You're not just anyone, Fred. The Bit Bucket doesn't call to ordinary people. There's something about you—something that connects you to the ancient powers that shaped this place."

The room pulsed around them, the medieval stones seeming to breathe with renewed life. Somewhere in the distance, Fred could swear he heard the sound of wings—not butterfly wings, but something vast and powerful stirring to wakefulness.

"I need to get back," he said, though even as he spoke, he wasn't sure what he was going back to. The Butterfly Garden felt like a memory from another lifetime. "There has to be a way."

"There is," Sarah said quietly. "But it's not the path you think. The way forward isn't back—it's through transformation itself."

Fred looked at her sharply, something in her tone making his pulse quicken. "What kind of transformation?"

Before she could answer, the slate over the entryway wall began to glow more brightly. New words appeared, written in the same flowing script but in a hand, he didn't recognize: The wheel turns. The sleeper wakes. What was divided shall be made whole.

Sarah's face went pale as she read the words. "It's beginning," she whispered. "After all these centuries, it's finally beginning."

"What's beginning?" Fred demanded, but the room was already starting to change around them. The medieval stones began to shift and flow like water, and the air filled with a sound like distant thunder. The dreamscape shifted around Fred. The Butterfly Garden came into focus again, but this was not a day of joy for Fred. It was the day everything changed for him. The day an accident took Sarah's life on the summer solstice.

The events replayed as they did on that terrible day three years ago. Fred was waiting for Sarah in the garden as they had arranged but she never came. Fred had gotten a call that Sarah had been found. They assumed it was an accident with Sarah being alone and falling from the hiking trail on the way to meet Fred. Fred went to where it had happened and took Sarah into his arms. Fred began to weep again uncontrollably as he did that day. There was nothing he could do since once an event had been written there was no power to unwrite it.

Sarah immediately had joined the spirit realm as one herself. The body that he held was only an empty husk now. Some spirits served the living at the interface between worlds. Other spirits gained the capacity for reincarnation for another chance at life.

Fred realized that it was the intersection of joy and sorrow when he embraced both on the just past equinox that summoned the magic for him to actually teleport after trying each equinox for a lifetime.

"If Sarah was right and transformation was my only way out of here, what could i do? I had already done my very best and had come short of the goal. I would need a guide for my journey. Not just anyone but someone who knew me personally and also knew what it would take to get me to the point where i could escape."

But that was impossible. Wasn't it?

The Bit Bucket pulsed once more, and everything went white.