The next period of my life lasted…well…an unfathomably long time.

Just a few highlights:

• My son grew quickly. And was almost constantly hungry. That meant parts of me grew quickly to fill his never full stomach.
• Dimensions do not go on for eternity. Sometimes they end abruptly. I won’t say I might have been the cause, but I won’t say that I wasn’t either. Hey, a girl needs to learn, right? Mistakes were made.
• Being a fifty-foot multi-dimensional being plays hell with the fashion sense. I enjoyed finding pretty things to adorn my body. Luckily, since I’d taken the Crystal from the original reality, I still had a gateway back home. I just chose not to use it because they were so rude!
• When junior was a teenager, he liked fire. I found it was better he learned hard lessons, but he insisted on melting several realities into slag. Will the multi-cosm ever miss them? I doubt it.
• We searched for others like us but never found anyone.
• I invented a new language to incorporate the ability to cross realities.
• Math is stupid. And very limiting.
• We found another race of dimensional super-beings. They were not friendly. Junior and I took care of business. It was a proud mama moment.
• There are some places in the Universes that can make you weep with joy. And others that can make you scream in terror.
• Black holes are tasty. The best treats can always be found there.
• Dark Matter is not actually dark.
• Infinity is overrated.
• Junior became…infected is the closest word…with a ViralCosm. He didn’t expire, he…melded. I wish I could be more descriptive but it was too painful.

Finally, sad and alone, I used the Crystal from my wrist to portal back home.

Due to the nature of the multi-cosm, I was able to re-enter the same instant I left.

I came back and the helicopters were swarming, the infernals were blasting, and the rest of Hill Valley was trying to murder me.

I sighed, and reassembled myself back down into Seth.

I hadn’t been a man in so long, it took me a few moments to remember.

“Seth?” Mom said, running up to me. “Is that really you?”

“Yeah,” I said. Speech. So archaic.

“What happened to the Baby?”

My human brain didn’t have the capacity to even process how to relate what had happened to me. Eons had passed. Eternities. How do you describe that?

“He’s…gone.”

“I’m sorry honey.”

The war, apparently over, the helicopters and planes returned to whatever airforce base they’d come from. It made me laugh to think they thought they could ever physically overcome a being like I was. And what Junior had been. Even the tenth of the tenth iota of power could have wiped out this entire existence.

But Mom was here.

“Seth!” Dad said, running up, breathless. “I thought we were going to lose you?”

“Nah,” I said. I ran a hand over my Dad’s head, wiping away his Were nature. It was a glitch in the matrix of this reality that had lead to its existence anyway.

“Seth?” Desdemonia said, making it to our area. She still wore April’s lovely body. April also trundled up, breathless in Desdemonia’s carcass.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said and snapped my fingers, crossing their auras and Essence back into their original locations.

“What?” April said, looking down at her body. “I’m back in my body!”

I nodded, rolling my eyes. Child’s play really. But I didn’t want them to know it. Magic was really just an offshoot of paranormal dynamics afterall.

Jeff Farnum trotted up. “Jesus, man, you scared me.”

“Hey bro,” I said, wrapping him in my arms. It felt good to be a human and able to feel again.

No, I would not think about the way his eyes found mine as he was encorpsulated into that other realm—

I bit back tears, putting my arms around Jeff and Mom.

“How was this done?” Desdemonia said. “Return us back this instant!” Her eyes faded to black.

I realized as a human I was now as vulnerable as I’d been before. I just had the benefit of a bit more knowledge.

With a bit of a twist and a yoink, I pulled Desdemonia’s magic away and wrapped it around my finger. A finger that still held a much miniaturized version of the Crystal. I pulled it into the device, removing it from her reality completely.

Her eyes faded back to the blue/gray they’d always been. “What have you done?!??”

I shrugged. “Look, Magic shouldn’t really exist. This reality is governed by entropy and temporal physics. To have a power that violates that is really not cool.”

“How dare you lecture me!” she said.

The Wizard Blackwater portaled in beside her, Brother Langmore beside him.

I sighed, and performed the same action, removing magic from their vocabulary.

The former wizard blustered and blundered. Now human and very much a victim of his age and infirmity, he looked at us with rheumy eyes. “What have you done to me?”

“What I’ll do to any ‘magical’ being I encounter now,” I said. “Removed your abilities. You’ll live the rest of your life as biology intended.”

Mom, April, Dad, Jeff and I continued walking over their strenuous concerns.

###

Mitzy had found her way to a rain-forest in the Yucatan peninsula. I used the crystal to portal over. I waved my hand over her form and returned her to humanity.

She crouched, naked, near the tree she’d been pollinating.

“Mitzy?” I said, helping her stand. It took her a few moments to remember how to human.

“Seth?” she asked, an incredulous sound in her voice.

“Yeah! Hey, how are you?”

She looked around her, her arms working back and forth as if she were trying to fly. “Umm…what did you do to me?”

“I returned you to humanity, of course.” I smiled. “Couldn’t have you living forever as a butterfly, could I?”

She looked sad at that. “Ummm.”

“You did want to be returned, didn’t you?”

She started to cry. “No?”

“But what about your family? Your friends? Me?” I said.

She nodded. “Oh, Seth, I know, but you can’t imagine how wonderful it is to be a butterfly! I mean…the places I’ve been, and seen…it’s all so…amazing!”

I thought about all the distant places in the macrocosm that I found beautiful. Hollow, now that Junior was gone, but still beautiful.

“Yeah, actually. I can imagine.”

“So can you…put me back? I’m much happier that way, I promise!”

I smiled. “If that’s what you really want.”

“It is!” She gave me a big hug. “But I am happy I could hug you one last time.”

“Well, if you ever want to return…you know how to find me.”

She nodded and smiled. “Maybe…someday…I’ll take you up on that.”

But she never did.

###

I pulled a bag of popcorn out of the microwave. Pouring it into a bowl, I salted it, then took it over to where April and I were sitting on the couch.

“I can’t believe it all,” she said. “You were a Mother!”

I smiled, feeling the bite of tears.

“And…now you’re like…the only person in the world who has magic.”

“Yeah…when I need it.”

I wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close. She’d gone back to her natural brown hair, and subdued makeup. I preferred it much better than the goth Lolita looks of the past.

“And the Who…is truly gone?”

I nodded, feeling sad.

She shook her head, and I pressed the power button on the TV remote.

“Did you enjoy being female?”

I nodded. “I was…female…for a whole lot longer than I was ever male. Still kind of feel that way, actually.”

“Then why are you still a man?”

I shrugged. “Just seems the right thing to do.”

She gave me a punch in the shoulder.

“Ow!” I said. “What the hell?”

“Stupid,” she said. “Why do you think I was feminizing you?”

“Wait,” I said. “You mean you want me to be a girl?”

She shrugged, looking away from me.

I put a finger under her chin, and turned her head back to me. “April?”

“I just thought…it would be fun to see what it’d be like between us. I mean, I love you, don’t get me wrong, but I have such triggers around men. I wondered if I might enjoy—“

I watched her face fall, her cheeks become flushed.

“Being a lesbian?” I said.

She shrugged. “With you.”

I nodded. Getting up, I went into the bedroom. I reached between realities and found the Crystal ring, and slid it onto my finger.

Closing my eyes, I thought of myself…my old self. The Multi-Dimensional mother I had been. I imagined her as a human, with human skin, hair, nails, and everything. Then I passed a hand over my image, and felt the change settle over me.

A lovely dark-skinned woman looked back at me from the mirror. Long dark hair draped over one shoulder with gleaming smooth skin. With another wave, I was wearing a brown silk top with white cotton pants. It clung in all the right places, and displayed things nicely.
I walked back out to the living room.

April squealed. “Oh my God. I didn’t think you’d actually do it!”

I turned slowly in front of her. “You like?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “I wanna know what you taste like!”

I slid back onto the couch beside her and we kissed.

Later, as she slept, I thought about the many many adventures I’d had, and remembered my son. I’d been able to teach him how to be kind, to enjoy beauty, to laugh, run, play. The Universe teaches us pain, solitude, fear and all the offshoots. It takes a relationship to build joy, instill it in others, and find laughter.

My son turned out to be a kind, gentle, sensitive being. It took others to impose their fear to cast him a monster. No-one is born a monster, they are created by the relationships surrounding them.

I snuggled down deep with the girl I loved and breathed a sigh of relief.

Finally, I slept.

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A sincere THANK YOU to everyone who has followed this crazy tale. It was mainly an escape from thinking of horrid current events.

If you'd like to get in touch: [email protected]. If you have an idea for a story or graphic novel, shoot me an email, you never know!