A second-person-viewpoint narration of a Pagan journey through a year-and-a-day of the familiar, to find the mystery behind the mysteries. Yes, this is a magical gendershift story.

---

Between Two Fires

--Kiai 24sep03/29jul06/05mar07

 

 

Perhaps it is being brought up Pagan that has brought you to this. Where other religions segregate the sexes with walls of guilt and shame, never to meet except for brief distraught skirmishes in darkened rooms, no such isolation was ever taught you. You have grown up, instead, with a casual knowledge of how girls are shaped, even how they look when they proudly leak blood... but it leaves you to wonder: is this all there is? Partnership based on shape alone? Side by side, complacent and calm, except when the differences are tucked away in each other? All because of the one accidental chromosome issued when that happens, a role assigned by a pedestrian collision?

Perhaps the mystery of women's mysteries is the lack of mystery, the simple fact that they're just like you except for what shape their bodies take, what part they play in breeding. Why, then, this diffidence? Why this mysterious dissociation from your part in the dance as dictated by what you wear between your legs when you are skyclad?

As Beltane approaches, it slowly comes to you: there is something here, something deep, and it is closed to you because you only know the one shape. The mystery is not absent, then, instead it is at a deeper level. Now it taunts: how should this be solved?

Alone, you take the problem to bed with you, communing first with the gods and then the power and then sleep, and awaken with a desperate solution in your mind: to understand the mystery, and why it is a mystery, you need to see both sides. You need to know what the other side experiences, by experiencing it.

Can it be done? Can it be willed? It is one thing to feel the power rise like a prickly tide within a circle, driven by the thrumming of deep resonances, deeper than sound, when all the adult voices in the gathering are humming the power awake. The magic it does, though, is all unseen in its working, all subtle, designed to pass as happenstance and coincidence. The power hides from those who seek to misuse it, or to misuse those who touch it. This magic will be blatant, impossible to hide. Dare you ask something so overt of the gods? Dare you not?

As you make your way through the trees towards the gathering-point of day and night, where the firepits are being cleaned and filled in preparation for the ritual at dusk, you privately take your intent into prayer, then with you to the circle ritual, communing with the gods even as you join the dance at the Maypole. Your own need is plaited into the Maypole weave as, unbound and incomplete, you meet each woman's face and form as she raises or lowers her ribbon to pass you by, silently asking, who are you? What are you? How can you be?

The questions go unanswered. You feel the necessity hardening your resolve. Not only can you dare, you must dare. You will ask but once, and, if it is possible, it must be done; so mote it be. That one thought fills you as you jump between two fires, carrying across with you a wish to somehow leap across the vast space between skins, that lifelong gap between chromosomes in the shadows of each cell.

As the ritual drums falter into silence, you wander out into the darkness and find a place in the forest to sit down. Not alone: you are partnered with the gods in this. You sit crosslegged against a sturdy tree and smooth your robe about your legs, noticing the tingle in your member, the periodic tightness in your scrotum. It is Beltane, after all, but your need is about more than mere ritual coupling.

You rise above that distracting sensation as the the magic calls, feeling your aura touching the tree behind you, the leaf-strewn grassy earth beneath you, the dark and dewy night sky above you. You feel yourself expand into all of this, and give yourself to the process, whatever it will be, if it will be. Time seems to dissolve as you commit yourself to the embrace of those powers, expecting to rouse with at least an inspiration, a insight into the mystery.

 

You wake up in the morning on the dewy grass, wearing a robe such as you never put on, one that's cut low to show a little of your cleavage. It's got familiar markings and stains, such as the wax clinging to the cuff from where you got too close to the working candle last year. It's yours, not someone else's, but it's changed now... like you. The gods have chosen how to answer your prayer; now you must deal with the gift they left.

You get up and amble homeward across the dewy grass, exploring your changed balance as you go, feeling the jiggling that wasn't there before. The breasts are obvious, and they're distracting, but it seems like there's even a little bit of jiggle to your rump. It's padded now, of course, but... that much? Oh, yes, you're quite a healthy girl.

How will you explain it to everyone? They will know it is you, of course; there can be no secret there. But, how will you explain why? Can you? Or must you withdraw from all who expect you in the other form? Perhaps you can go to another school now.

You can envision yourself staying home in the afternoons because you don't fit in with the boys anymore but none of the girls are quite sure how to handle it yet. Must that be?

They're from Pagan families, mostly. They know that magic is all around, and sometimes it swoops in close and touches someone. Will they accept that it has reached in for someone they know?

It is commonplace for those your age to be bored of the stability, but that's because it's familiar, not because it's unwanted. Now you have made that stability seem illusory to them, leaving them with nothing to react against except you. In changing, in growing, you and they need that structure, that order, that fixity of form; and now you've changed all that, emerging from between two fires with your triangles and spirals as inverted as your groin. Can they accept the familiar person within the unfamiliar form? Or must they turn you out for taking them at their word?

You need have no fears of being forced. You're touched by the Goddess now; in their eyes you're special. They will know better than to arouse the anger of whoever it was whose finger reached down from the infinite skies to touch and rearrange you into Her shape.

 

Your family seems tight-lipped, but they're just giving you your space; they know that you need it.

Your mother seems to accept it the most easily. In the quiet of your bedroom she takes you through the steps, showing you how to dress, how to make it more than just putting on clothing. Nature mostly favors the males for bright plumage, after all; the females must arrange for their own. A little of this, a touch of that, just a hint of a blush, and then it's time to survey the result. Yes, you're quite an attractive young lady. Now everyone else can see it too.

Then she must return to her own activities. "If you need to talk..."

At loose ends, you wander down, following her into the kitchen to watch her prepare dinner. She seems complete in her practiced movements, and you silently sit, a companion in that shared space, while you're trying to feel how the role must feel to her.

And perhaps that in itself is sufficient. Some things have changed, but some things cannot. You are her child, no matter what shape you wear, and the closeness that comes from that elemental relationship helps in some fundamental way to bind back the connections that have slipped because of your change.

Your father is another matter. There's an added feeling of isolation now. You two never got along too well; there was just too much of the male challenge, the bluff facade that repels curiosity and affection before it can find weakness. There was always an edge to everything, as if you threatened his primacy by beginning the journey to manhood.

Now that that implicit confrontation is gone, rather than a renewed closeness, it's as if you see each other through a window, an all-too-visible glass wall, an extra isolation formed of questions held, unasked but obvious, in his uncomprehending gaze. Why would you do such a thing? Did you want to be a girl all along? Was that it? Did we do you an injustice by birthing you in a male body?

By now the silence has become thicker, too solid to pierce with words, because the first word will be judged even before the next is spoken.

By expression alone, you try to answer, conveying in your mute response that, no, it was just something you had to do: a part of your life that needed exploring, Something that wouldn't wait.

You had already surmised that the end of school days was not the desperate break for freedom that it was made out to be; why else would it be desperate? Already, in your observations of those around you, you could see all the trappings of the working world: commitments, schedules, all the clutter that ties up one's calendar and pins down one's life so that it cannot move.

Now all that trapping is held in abeyance. Nobody knows what you're going to do, not even yourself. All you have so far is a quiet wondering, as you mutely take in all that must adjust to such a simple change, just one little chromosome.

All the costuming and the markings, the roles in the banter, the positions that are open in the community, all of those, for you, have changed overnight, on Beltane night, the consummation of the great marriage between sky and earth, between the Lady and the Lord who hunts her, when the Lady takes the Lord into herself.

Somehow the lance and the grail have exchanged places in your life, and you need to work out why, in that moment of transcendent awareness and hyperclarity, this was the inevitable choice.

None of this really communicates, and you know it. There's a gulf of comprehension, and all of the meanings fall into the void between along with the questions.

Finally, still in silence, he extends a hand, and you take it, letting his large hand envelop your own for long moments. At least there is peace.

 

Litha, Summer Solstice

Sunbright, and the whole town gathers, dancing in the wooded grove, rejoicing in the sun even as it begins to fade, leaving its heat behind. Here the oak king and holly king meet in ritual combat.

Perhaps that might have been you, testing your horns against your father in joust. Now, though, you are the lady that watches, the ritual prize, affected by but unable to influence the inevitable outcome.

By now, old friends start to eye you in a new way. They are getting over the strangeness and seeing your beauty now. The girls are more casual in accepting your presence among them. The boys court them in their artless way under the summer sun, looking for a spark amid the midday heat. Perhaps they tease you, too, a little.

Are you chased yet? Are you yet chaste?

Next year, perhaps.

 

Lammas

First harvest, the harvest of the grain, and the ripened stalks in fields, standing so proudly erect, are mown down like soldiers. In the high heat of summer, war is at its worst, flaring up in hot tempers and hotter lead, here presented in ritual form: John Barleycorn must die.

So it's not just about the Goddess, is it. This is a sacrifice just for the men.

You're no longer threatened by that, in fact you're ineligible now. You already gave at the orifice, bleeding with the moon.

Instead, you join with the other girls in helping the women at their bread-making. It's simple work, simple fun, and an excuse to socialize and to share. Maid, Mother and Crone can together accept the offering of the slain, and work it into something to give back.

Two of your new friends have something in the oven. They giggle to each other, with rueful grins and lustier complaints for their shared experience, surrounded by the well-meant advice of all those who have gone before, Mother and Crone both. Listening to them all, you find an unnoticed corner in which to press your belly tight as you try to think how it would be for it to no longer softly depress. There would be no give left, instead there would be a swelling, a rounded erection that would take months to come, and show itself as a different kind of bulge in your pants.

Not yet, though, not for you: this is the Maid's mowing, and you are still the Maiden. With clever hands, you work the dough into manniquins and breadsticks to pass through the oven and then offer back to the men, a token payment for all of their seed which is safely stored away.

 

Mabon, Autumnal Equinox

Second harvest, the harvest of the fruit, and your group goes apple-picking. You lift your apron to carry the load from the tree to the waiting baskets, then return for more. The expectant ones carry smaller loads in their aprons, but they do put in their turn; it is the Mother's mowing, after all.

They make a bawdy comment about how these are sexual organs here, or their leftovers. These were once flowers, now swelled and hard. You grin and call back, "Just like you!"

You offer to paint their bellies red and glue on stems. One lifts her apron and proudly points to her bellybutton, already sticking out a little, and laughs, "See, I've already got a stem!"

There is shared laughter at that, an easy acceptance of your implicit part in all of this. Maybe they don't know why you changed, but they know that you're one of them now. You've paid the blood price, once every moon, preparing to ripen as they have.

 

Samhain

Third harvest, harvest of the kine, when the weak are sent on to wait, their bodies blessed with the salt of the earth so that they will keep, to feed those still here. This has always been the time of the choosing of the slain, the Crone's mowing. In their passage, perhaps the veils between worlds are disturbed, enough for glimpses beyond. This is a time for scrying, for seeing what you will see in the mirror of mists.

Perhaps you see yourself in a simple maternity gown, radiant in expectation. It is a simple task if one ignores the labor before the labor, all the work of carrying that messenger around before the message is delivered. Farther still, you might see yourself in gray, labors done, tithing now in knowing.

You work your way deeper into the mists, to find next the man you might have grown up to be. Might he have become a father? A king? He might yet. A year and a day is not forever, it's only made to feel that way. But is that the right course?

It is summer's end, and choices must be made. Preoccupied, still you join in the celebration, bobbing for apples, mouthing these organs, as you ponder, knowing full well what else is shaped like that. You have one within you, bleeding apple-red with each turn of the moon, but is it your rightful burden? Is this what you were meant to bear?

This is the Season of the Witch.

You're touched: of course they come to you. Perhaps you can pierce the veils and see what is ahead or behind, or all around. In the still of the occulted light, you lose track of time: what day is it? There is no time, because there is no time, so see and comprehend everything in an instant if you can. It is overwhelming, that tide of brilliance, washing over your awareness in a wave of everything that might possibly be.

It's like rising above the clouds to measure your progress by the sun, and finding that you've risen into the sun by so doing. Every direction is valid for its own purposes, its own logic. Below is wildness, filled with unruly shadows and storms, all the turbulence of wild forces that sums into the Wild Hunt.

You spy out their course, see what they hunt, see whose spoor they've caught, hastening to fasten the details within your mind. You know that, as you advance into the dark quarter with everyone else, descending inevitably back into time's relentless rush, whatever you don't clutch closely to you will be washed away, forgotten.

"Well? What did you see?"

Now you are trying to parse the unfathomable. All courses run so deep in a sea of change, you are lucky to sift out a few observations which might prove useful in a moment of clarity, for the others and thus for yourself:

This must be done thus, to avoid that. Make this change here to point straight through the coming year. Don't stop, don't look back. Darkness advances, but only because it's natural. It is wild, nevertheless, and precautions must be taken.

Even as you settle back into the dim closeness of this one evening, there is the feeling of wind inside you. You never felt less like a person, not sure if you're a girl or a woman, even driven forward by the tides of blood.

Perhaps, later, musing on your visions, you think of yourself as alone and wish to be otherwise. You are dreaming of a slain lover who is yourself, coupling with him in your fantasies, imagining him taking you to his barrow lair; but his cold seed cannot quicken, and there is starlight behind his eyes. It's as if he has already joined the Hunt and gone beyond. Was this wrong, this change of horse mid-course?

As the dark time advances and the pools freeze, wrapped and curtained by chill rains soon to become snow, there is no bright conviction, and you find yourself crying yourself to sleep sometimes, and wondering why; it is so hard to be so unsure.

 

Yule, Winter Solstice

It is the relighting of the light, the rebirth of the sun, and, for once equipped for this subtle midwifery, you dress warmly to attend. While the men sleep undisturbed beneath the blankets, the women are up before dawn, preparing for the arrival.

In a halo of candles, now you join them, all dressed like angels, poignant reminders of things resolved and resolving. The role is special for you: angels are travelers between earth and sky, openers of the way for the overt touch of magic. Were there others like you? There must have been; this kenning is too important to have been granted only once.

Never mind that now. There is a feast to prepare, and gifts to be brought from hiding. With gentle touch and gentler embrace, mother and daughter share the work, and in that sharing the discrepancies between parent's wish and child's will can be accepted and perhaps forgiven, and both can take comfort in each other and this time of shelter. There was a time when she was your shelter, after all.

"How do you bless a house?"

"I'll show you how I do it."

The two of you go softly through all the chambers of the house, holding candles and carrying oils. You can see the glow around her finger as, like the frost, she does her writing in light upon the glass. It gleams faintly on every door, every window, as she renews the bindings to keep out the dark but let in the sun.

There is a new Yule log burning, started with the last of the last, in a ritual unwillingness to forget: it is reminding the sun, or the son, to eventually return.

Later, after gifts have been exchanged and the feast has been shared, it is time to venture out over the snow. With crisp breath strengthened into song, you go a-caroling and a-wassailing, cheered by every bright doorway and heartened by each dipperful of warmth given for a song.

Your party encounters and joins with others also adventuring this night, another party with one that has caught your eye within it. As bundled up as you all are, there is less visible difference, boy or girl, but you notice him for his voice, and recognize him by his smile, and offer him yours back. Arm in arm you continue, sheltering in each other's warmth, harmonizing in each other's song.

 

Imbolc

In the belly of the Mother and of the earth and of the sky, there is a knowing: it is the time for seeking new wisdom of the fire in the cauldron, the blessing in the well. It is Bride's time, the bride's time.

Will you be one? Will you marry a man? Be his wife? Bear his children? Tend his house and make it your own by making your mark all through it, covering it all with the binding of your attentions?

The blessing is maiden's milk. Afterwards, in solitude, you squeeze experimentally, wondering what it would be like to give milk to make nourishment within your body. It is a secret art, so secret that only women can ever know it. There are ways for men to do it, but only by much coaxing, or by wounding them with needles so that they bleed white, and then it's inflicted from outside.

Only women know how it erupts from within, that milky emission a woman makes, with gain higher than unity: at input he has but one, while at output she has two, with clear secretions below, milky above.

Alone at last, you indulge in fantasies about a few of the boys, and then one in particular. He is still too shy, too unsure, but perhaps the mounting fire in your well can warm his affections.

 

Hieros Gamos, Vernal Equinox

It is the time of the heavenly marriage of earth and sky. There is a quickening in the wind, a warming breeze, powerful in its mildness, and it occurs to you to wonder: how can mildness have force? But the breeze is like water: neutral and yet onrushing, slipping past every challenge without answer, ignoring all such questions.

You remember being male, and imagine what it would be like to have one now, to feel it now stir and rouse, to harden instead of soften -- the hardness that provokes the softness.

Is that what brings the warm breeze? You see the green shoots, the erections of life all around. All the plants are flowering, flaunting their organs. They are teasing the air and sky. The earth herself is erect and ready... and the air is warm and moist...

And there is the inversion of role. If earth is the body and sky is the spirit, here is how there can be both men and women in the dance. Here is how you have danced between two fires.

Now satisfied in your mind, you stand hand in hand, and shyly look over at him, seeing his confused look: he is not sure how to take your approach.

You know that feeling well. You lean and kiss him, and smile, telling him without words that his caution is accepted and appreciated but that you are ready to take a step forward. He smiles back, understanding at least the feeling if not the intent, and that's enough for now: it's time for ritual.

While the wise woman shows you how to hold the knife, he patiently waits with the chalice held out. He has no idea what he holds, but then, you've never seen it yourself, you've only felt its lip and its power. Now you're reminded of how intimate and yet unfamiliar it was to the touch, buried deep and waiting, and marked by a spring gushing forth.

You feel yourself redden at the thought. Even now, dry-eyed and flushed, you can feel yourself start to weep with happiness and hope.

He is offering yourself to yourself for violation, and you plunge the blade into the water. Completing the circuit, you engage yourself to yourself, at once inviolate and veteran.

"Let the Lance ensoul the Grail --
"Let the magic come to Light!"

...and the commitment is made. His gaze catches yours, and you wonder. He is your working partner; will he be your partner when the working is complete?

You go home alone, wondering how it would be with him in another turn of seasons... or sooner. There is Beltane, after all. Will his wand be willing? Filling? Do you so will?

These thoughts tease you as you help with the various birthings, helping to bring out the tiny new forms. You observe them one by one as, once their stems are cut, their simplest, most desperate needs are met. They watch silently with unfocused eyes, still stunned with the immensity of the possibilities, just in from the infinite.

 

Beltane

As it was a year ago, twin fires are prepared, and now you know what those fires are, for you carry one of them inside. It's a familiar feeling by now, that longing, and you look forward to its fulfilment with equal anticipation and dread. Aside from him, there is the Goddess whose form you wear to be faced, after all.

What if this is how you will always be? What if you want to always be this way, but wander back across the line by mistake? Could you? Should you?

The young mothers are at the feast, heathen-proud as they put their newborns to breast. You shyly watch, trying to imagine yourself as the banquet for someone from within yourself. Could you content yourself with being the mother?

You turn away in thought, only to catch him gazing at you. Your eyes meet. Perhaps that will be reason enough.

After sunset, the bonfires are lit, replacing the sun's hot light with their own. The Maypole is erected with its streamers splayed like errant broomstraws. Then the call comes, and all take their places, alternating, male-female, male-female.

The drums begin, and then the sound of drumming feet, as, ducking and arching by turns, all make passage within for all. Again and again you face him as, one with the women, you wind your own spiral against that of the men. It's hard to concentrate as the binding of the spell draws the two of you inevitably together. With dancing eyes and artless stumbling footwork, you two meet and draw apart again, again and again, in the dance of the dual helix, interweaving your energies and your paths, breathlessly grinning at each other with every approach.

There's something uniquely personal about the feeling of this dance, even as you are surrounded by others equally engaged in it. There seems to be no end to the dancing couples in the ruddy darkness, as if they are spiraling out of and back into other circle dances in other rites elsewhere around the globe this night.

'We are all between two fires', you think to yourself, and you wonder if it was like this for your parents on the night they made you. You wonder if you will come away with child, your womanhood confirmed and dedicated to the cause of new life.

If so, his fire will be as much a part of it as your own. There is the smoldering, now, in every shared glance, and a heat that rises to flushed cheeks, hot enough to make palms sweat. The bonfires laid in the firepits are not the only twin fires burning. There are, no doubt, other fires blazing all around you two, but yours and his are all you have room to notice.

When the drums fall suddenly silent, the pounding in the blood continues, echoed in every tight breath. Hand in hand with him, now, you leap through the space between the fires, across the crossed brooms that are laid there, and then hand in hand you walk into the darkness and settle in the shadows to climax this rite.

He folds you protectively in his arms even as he begins to strip you bare, and you adjust to allow him to pull your robe entirely away, then help him with his own. Now there is nothing between you two but the difference of a chromosome expressed in flesh, and you two begin working on merging that.

Then he surprises you between kisses: "What's it like?"

You are left dumb with the impossibility of describing all the differences, the inadequacy of comparisons where there is no experience that can compare because the angles are all wrong. There are no words to describe it; but then you see in his expression that none are needed.

All of this occurs to you as you stare into his eyes, seeing the immensity of his quiet bravery, his determination to dare the dark of the unknown; and not only for his affinity with you, but for his own soul's completion. You realize that the fire in his eyes is familiar: you shone the same, a year ago. This changes things; but not all of them.

"You are thinking of..."

"I thought I might..."

"Then let us do this right."

"Will I remember you?"

"You will remember everything."

Your words feel like a benediction, and then you feel an extra radiance around you, rising, brightening in feeling if not in seeing, the approach of the goddess within. The Bride-fire is rising within you even as your well is overflowing.

Now the dance resumes, of flesh on flesh and fire on fire, celebrating life by living it. Eventually his lance is pressing in beween your legs, seeking your grail, and then it is nestling within, put here for safekeeping again and again, finishing the weaving that began at sunset as two fires spread into one greater one, so hot that you cannot draw breath.

Now at last you see how it will be: the magic is more than within you, it is you, and you are the magic, now, taking control and choosing the pathways between you. You won't stop because of that, you wouldn't think of stopping. It is enough to choose the course between two fires, to annihilate the difference and the distance, as two fires blaze bright enough to become one, burning away everything impure, even thought.

Eventually you rouse, feeling the night breezes across your flesh. He sleeps at your side, his arm still protectively across you.

You watch the change begin, feel the capability rise within you to feel the change spell from the outside, to know its lines, its courses, how it is runed in blood and fire.

You see him reduced to simpler form, hewing to the first shape she had within the womb, soft and delicate. She is becoming such a lovely maiden. You watch the blossoming of her breasts and you look upon her fondly even as you absently cup your own breast, measuring her rise against your smoothing.

Is this all? A sharing and a passing?

No. Here is the difference: now that the spell is run, its paths are available for you to change yourself. When at last her changes are complete, yours can begin, and then you feel an old friend rise to greet you.

You nod: yes, this is as it should be, for now.

You rise up onto one elbow to watch her breathe, rubbing the soft hairs on your chin where there might someday soon be enough for a beard. You consider tickling her with them, but then you decide to let her sleep. She needs it: she needs time to dream. Now responsible for the man's role in the dance, you embrace her protectively, pull her to your hard chest, and shelter her in your hard arms.

Eventually, she rouses, and glances first at you and then at herself.

"Oh. I changed."

She looks up sleepily, then, and sees you clearly, and smiles. "So did you." She sits up and reaches to pull you close. "But you didn't leave me; it is you."

She leans back once more, and her eyes take a shy survey of you.

"Will you stay this way now?"

You shake your head at that. "Not always. I have more to learn from the wise women. I can be this way when we're together, though. I can do that now."

"I'd like that... but I don't think I'm ready for..." She falls silent, hesitant to offend.

You lean forward, gently taking her into a kiss, then, smiling, whisper, "I know. Maybe next Beltane."

She thinks about that, and then her smile grows to a little grin and her eyes sparkle. "If not before then..." There is that soft, trusting smile again, as she yawns and says, "I'm not done, am I."

"No. Dream now; talk to the Lady."

You kiss her eyes shut, gently easing her down against you and down to sleep. Your gaze caresses her naked form awhile, memorizing its landscape, planning eventual journeys of discovery.

Then you reach within, travel along the paths again, and then her cheek is nestled against your breasts, dimpling their softness.

Both of you are hardening against the late night's chill, so you pull up the robes and look them over before draping them across the two of you. Hers has changed, while yours is still as it should be.

You still owe the Lady one more day, after all. The Lady is trusting you; perfect love and perfect trust.

The power is already there, though, for you to decide. It crackles into the night air as you rub your slender palms together and then spread them.

The sky is starting to lighten. It is May Day, one more day to be given to the Lady whose gender you wear.

After that one day, which shape will you wear? What skin will feel the light of tomorrow's dawn? When you may-be either, which, witch?

You are trying to remember the feeling of being above and throughout everything, that feeling that you first found on the other side of the year.

Enlightenment comes from seeing every color at once. Wisdom comes from knowing how they combine, and which shades are right for when. Now you are remembering that height of awareness, and seeking the difference in perspective from that height for your having two perspectives, a parallax which illuminates by discrepancies.

Carefully choosing a path while within that viewpoint, knowing all and choosing for more than the moment: that's the difference between a whim and a chosen destiny, between a want and a Will.

If it harm none, do what thou Wilt.

What is your Will?

The old magic abides. For six friends, that means new experiences in each others' lives, as new magic is spun and a web is woven.

---

Circle of Friends

--Kiai 03jun03/28mar04/16mar07

 

 

Hi, I'm Richard, or at least today I am. Want to know something weird? I'm in the body I was born in.

Yeah, I know, you want me to explain. Okay. Where to begin...

Ever heard the expression, 'walk a mile in my shoes'? It's not funny when it happens, especially when there're more than two sets of shoes for you to walk in. You get used to it, though; I think people can get used to just about anything, really. In this case, there were six of us, plus, eventually, two surprises, but that came later.

We weren't so much a tight crowd in high school as just a group that got along real well and liked to do things together. We could try things out, make mistakes and get messy, and trust that nobody in the group would laugh at us. We laughed with each other at our mistakes and messes often enough, but it was never cruel. So we ended up tight, and I ended up knowing a lot more about a girl's growing up than your average guy. Hey, I helped pull off a sticky sanitary napkin when one of the girls, I won't say which one, was starting to leak and she was too drunk to manage the job herself. That's the kind of trust you don't find too often.

The funny thing is, as close as we all were, and despite the fact that, strictly speaking, we were three couples if we chose to pair off, we didn't get really intimate back then. It was like we were all too close for sex, and anyway we had something better: real friends. I'd fantasize about the three girls sometimes, and so did the other guys, and the girls let it be known that they fantasized about us sometimes too, but nobody got around to doing anything about it physically back then. Not because we were too young, either; there were two temporary pregnancies in our grade already. Maybe we thought we'd break something if we tried. Maybe we would have, at that.

How it started, I don't know. Kim was playing with the occult stuff -- you know, runes and Ouija and crystal-gazing, trying to open her Third Eye, as she put it -- and Matthew was playing around with hemi-sync tapes and two sets of headphones, and giving all of us a try... and I was, well, I was probably astral traveling, though I called it "going someplace interesting". Maybe it was all just dreaming, but it sure felt real while it was happening, and there were a few times when I woke up with bruises from fights I'd been in while I slept, bruises I hadn't had when I went to bed.

Or maybe it was Halloween, when, after all the little kids were in from their trick-or-treating, we all went over to the Old Grove. It was on a rise in an older section of the forest that surrounded the town. That place, if you looked at it in the day, didn't seem like much, not unless you really looked, and then it was impressive.

There were old trees there, I mean old, real old growth. Some of those trees seemed like they were at least a hundred feet tall, and they looked as if they'd been there since the beginning of the world. Maybe they had, which made them real special when you think that nobody'd gotten around to cutting them down, a couple hundred years back when a lot of the forest was cleared out for a while for farming. It couldn't have just been the rocks, there at the heart of the place, because you could walk around them or sit on them. It wouldn't have been that much trouble to plow. Something made the people back then leave this place alone.

It was misty and cold and nice and spooky in that grove, then, and we just sat there in the dark for a while huddled together, boy-girl boy-girl, seeing if we could see anything special, anything at all. We never did see anything, but that place sure gave us all a strange feeling, like there was something there that we should have seen but couldn't. By the time we left there, we were all ready to go sit huddled by a lit fireplace together and drink something hot.

Maybe it was all of the above, I don't know. I just know that, on the seventh of November, all six of us woke up in the wrong bodies, and, just to make it real embarrassing, the wrong sex.

I didn't know about any of the others when I woke up, of course. I just recognized that I was in Kathryn's bed, and then I got up and went to the mirror and found out I was wearing Kathy's face and Kathy's everything-else. And, just in case I wasn't too spooked by it all to even think about exploring how things felt in Kathy's everything-else, I also had Kathy's mother hollering at me from downstairs that I was going to be late for school if I didn't get dressed and get down for breakfast.

That morning was... interesting. I'm sure that Kathy would have chosen different clothes to wear than I did, and I'm sure she would have worn more makeup. I just threw on stuff that looked like what I'd seen Kathy wear and got going, the less said the better. I didn't need Kathy's mother asking me who I was and what I'd done with Kathy. She never had time to notice because I was out the door so quickly. I needed that extra time to find out where the other kids were lining up, and even then I almost missed the bus.

I had homeroom with Kathy and Kim, so that's when I found out that Kathy and me weren't the only ones who got swapped. Kim told me she was Joey, and my own body, Richard, told me he was Sharon, and we wondered what happened, and then it was time for first period. It wasn't until lunch that we could all get together. Fortunately, nobody else was paying attention, because all six of us were acting weird if you knew how we normally acted. Joey's body kept doing these little fluttery hand things while he talked, which was normal for Kathy but odd for Joey, and he had to tell me three times to close my legs and stop showing off what was in my skirt. We got schedules passed around, and advice on who to avoid and what to say to who, but nobody had a clue how this had happened, and that's about when we ran out of lunchtime.

After school, we had more time. I should have gone to chess club, and Sharon had acting, and Matt had track, but we all skipped those to meet in the library to talk this over. Kim thought it was the Old Grove that had done it, and, thinking back, maybe she was right, but at the time we didn't have a clue about Old Magic, and so we all blew that off. We thought this one switch was going to be permanent, so we were pretty much focused on helping each other to manage living in a new body.

That idea of permanence kind of got blown away the next morning when I woke up in Kim's little bedroom, and had to fake being Kim long enough to fool her little sister who slept in the same room. Fortunately, I'd listened in on what Kim was telling Joey, so I wasn't totally lost.

One thing we'd made sure everybody knew is how we all got to and from school, bus numbers and bus stops and everything, just in case, so I knew to allow extra time because Kim walked to school.

This time it was Kim in my old body and Matt in Kathy's body who met me in homeroom. Matt hadn't heard anything Kathy had told me, so I had to warn her to expect her period and even find one of Kim's pads to give her.

Lunch was almost a repeat of the day before, except that I was getting used to girl-sitting, so nobody had to tell me anything about that. Kim did ask me why I was wearing a bra, though; she was small enough that she usually went without. I'd noticed that before, but I wasn't sure if she did that all the time or just for us guys in the group and so I'd played it safe.

This time the after-school conference was all-to-all, with everybody sharing what could be vital details on fitting into their life. Unlike the day before, I didn't feel that we'd near covered everything by the time the late bus left and I set out for home.

That evening, Kim's little sister wanted a bedtime story, and I gave it my best shot. She told me I'd done the voices all wrong, and how could I use that expression when I was pretending to be the fox-woman, but she hugged me anyway and went right to sleep afterwards, leaving me lying in the darkness in the next bed listening to her breathing, and wondering who I'd be when I woke up, and when the change would actually happen.

It was another day before I got to be a guy again. When I went to sleep in Sharon's bed and Sharon's flannel nightgown, the next night, I was worried that I might just wake up as Kathy again, female forever. I woke up as Joey, though.

That morning was strange. Joey has strict Fundamentalist Christian parents, and I had to sit through a morning prayer before breakfast. I was almost out of time by the time that got done and I could eat. Then I was supposed to hug both of his parents, and kiss his mother on the cheek, before I could get out the door. In one way it was neat, and in another way it was very scary. Those parents of his cared a lot about their kids, you could see it in everything they did, but they were so sure that they were right that they didn't have a clue. We, the six of us together, had kept Joey out of drugs, not them, but there was no way you could tell them that.

And so it went. Every night, every damn night, we'd rotate.

We got radios. Fortunately, we all lived within range of each other. Every morning we'd get up early for a group conference, then split off twice to share an update on the previous day. If you weren't up on time, you missed out on your clues for the day, and so did the person you were supposed to brief.

At least, back then, the rotation didn't vary. I'd have three days as a girl, then three days as a guy, with my own body as the last one before I was Kathy again. I could wake up in the morning and know who and what I was without even feeling around.

All of us got awfully familiar with being in both kinds of bodies over the next few weeks. None of us were willing to experiment with each other just yet, but we all had fingers. It made the girl bodies look less foreign, especially when I was wearing one, but it didn't make them less interesting. It made the guy bodies more interesting when I was in a girl body, and that made for interesting fantasies.

Maybe it was that 'been-there-worn-that' familiarity, but it got to where we could sense where each other was, and sometimes what the others were doing. It was like a web was growing, a web with all of us at the same time out on the edges and in the center, and it made the six of us closer than ever. By now we were hanging out together all the time, enough so that other people were starting to try to guess who the couples were within the group.

We actually gave some thought to pairing off so people would have their curiosity satisfied and they'd go stare at somebody else. The rotation worked against it, though; there'd be no way for us to make the pairing look real, not with six people playing the parts on different days, and that'd focus even more attention on us.

That didn't mean we didn't spend more and more time thinking about each other, though. What was weird to me was how, more and more, my fantasies went along with the body I happened to be wearing. On a day when I was Kathy, I might fantasize about any of the three guys in our group, my own body included. When I was one of the guys, the girls were on my mind a lot.

It started to affect how we'd act towards each other. We'd be together as a group, and out of nowhere the thought of being naked and intimate with one of the others would bubble up, and everyone would pick up on it and suddenly be in the mood too. Suddenly we'd have three girls hugging themselves and three guys dealing with the tree that sprouted in their front yard. All of us got equally familiar with, not only feeling the effects, but watching the other side experience them.

It got to where we'd think nothing of being naked and aroused in front of each other, because, of course, we'd not only seen it all, we'd worn it all and felt it all.

We even starting teasing each other. The mood would flash around, and then we'd have the guys showing off their erections, especially those who started out as girls, and those of us who happened to be girls at the time would respond by flashing our stiff nipples. Then we'd hang out like that for a while before putting everything back on so we wouldn't get caught.

Finally school let out for the year and then we at least didn't have to pretend to people our own age; instead, we had to pretend in front of parents who didn't know what we were going through and couldn't have understood if they had. I guess every teenager feels the same way, but in our case we had real reasons for that attitude.

We went on a lot of hiking trips and beach runs that summer, and hung out in the town's parks a good deal every day, at least until mosquito time. Our folks thought it was smart of us to avoid vegging out in front of the TV, but we were more concerned with not having to put on an act in front of them. It gave us a lot more time to learn all the little details about each other's lives, so we wouldn't be caught unprepared when they came up.

On those hot summer evenings, if we had someplace where we could get some privacy, we'd end up with everybody topless, sharing the sweat. We all got real good at getting all the tank tops and bikini tops back on real quick if somebody showed up. It was funny sometimes, when someone would reach for a familiar top and have it pulled out of their hands by the person who really needed it, and only then realize that they didn't need it that night because they were a guy.

Towards the middle of the summer, we got back from one of those all-day beach runs and hung out for a while at Kathy's place, because her folks were out a lot. That happened to be who I was at the time. I went upstairs, pulled off my bathing suit, showered, and then walked into the den wearing a short tee shirt and nothing else, just to see how long it took everybody to notice, and how they'd react.

They reacted, all right. I had the other guys-in-girl-bodies pulling off my shirt and kissing my boobs, and then the guys were doing it too, so the other girls took off everything and got some attention too. The guys got attention as well; there was a lot of fondling going around, all of it playful but all of it seriously affectionate too.

That party went until late, and a few of us fell asleep waiting for the right movie to be on. When we woke up, those of us who'd dozed off were switched all around again; I went home in Sharon's body.

After that, the change didn't just rotate us, it mixed us up every night. At least we had some kind of 'override' on the constant switching, though, now that we knew about it. If you needed to be in a particular body, you could do that if you could get some time alone with the person who was wearing it, long enough to take a nap together.

With all the switching around, relations with our natural families had to suffer. Sharon's family was Jewish, and Joey's were fundy Christians, of course, and the rest of us had laidback parents, but the position of each of us in the family was getting to be just a role, something we memorized to go with the form. With six roles to be played, that's all they could be. That distinction distanced us from our other family members even when we were in our own bodies. Joey had it the worst.

Joey had long since discarded his parents' beliefs, of course. He had to. As intelligent as he was, the glaring logical holes in their doctrine gave a a nursery-rhyme taint to it all, especially once he started seeing it through others' eyes. It would have been like believing in the Tooth Fairy even after you caught your parents in the act of swapping the tooth under your pillow for money. What he was going through just didn't match their dogma at all: knowing your place and being happy in it meant exactly nothing when that place kept moving.

That didn't give him anything to try to replace it with, though, just an emptiness he hadn't expected of life, and it left him lonely and dispirited, forced out of belonging to something that was warm and well-meaning. Now he was beyond them in a way he hadn't asked for, and he was hurting for it, especially so one day when he was sitting alone in his own body and feeling cut off from everything that was supposed to go with it.

The rest of us had to notice, of course. I waved to Kim and Matt and we all gathered around him, sitting close and hugging him. I told him, "You've got a family right here. You know we're going to have to all be one big family. There's just no way any of us can cope otherwise."

There was agreement from the other four, of course. I had crystalized something that we'd been feeling lately: that no one outside our group of six could possibly understand what we were going through, and we would have to build our own family based on that. Now we had a reason to work on that too: replacing some of what Joey had lost.

Over time, there was a little bit of telepathic leakage, and that grew, slowly, with all six of us trying to push it along. It was a survival trait for us, really. When I was Kim, I could think questions at her and at least get general-feeling responses, enough to fake my way through her close family relations. The others were working on their own interconnections, for the same reasons.

It got to where we could do the radio net without radios. That was easier after dark, so we'd get up even earlier, before dawn, using the radios only when things had to be passed precisely.

By then, Kathy and I had a constant connection going no matter who we were wearing. Then Joey and Sharon did too, and Matt and Kim were working on it. Kim still tended to connect easier with me and Sharon than to the others; there was just something about our personalities that made the connections easier.

Meanwhile, we were exploring other connections.

The first time Kathy and I had sex it stunned everyone because "it was so LOUD," as Matt put it.

The others had gone to see a movie that neither of us particularly cared for, so we went to the beach instead. With just the two of us there from the group, we spent most of that time staring at each other and trying to hide the effects from the other people there. When we got back to town, we both knew without speaking what came next.

We were lucky to line up that way on a date night, so we stayed out late. In the woods behind Kathy's house there are deep gullies, good for hiding out, and we'd all improved on that. We'd put up a brush leanto there over the summer, big enough for the six of us to hide in, but that night there was just us two, so there was loads of room.

The fact that I was in Kathy's body at the time, and he in mine, might have had something to do with it. When he pulled the bikini off me it was like it was something he had every right to do. To be honest, though, I was just lying there, hungry to feel him put it in, desperate for some relief and for him.

For the two of us, part of the intensity was the fact that we were sharing the feelings of each other's bodies, sensations we'd come to accept as our own, since they were from the bodies we were born in, even when they were felt through the connection. The others picked up on it just fine, though, and it turned what was intended as a social outing into a makeout session that got them some stern looks from the other people in the cinema.

Back in the leanto, in the afterglow, we were laughing about putting Dick's dick into Dick. It was funny at the time, even though I don't like that nickname because of just that pun.

Joey and Sharon were the next to try it, and they even managed to be in the bodies they were born in. It took Kathy and me a couple of months to manage that. We kept trying, though, and, between the two couples, we managed to keep a stash of condoms ready in the leanto for when the opportunity arose. Matt and Kim had a dry culvert that was closer to them, so we seldom saw them at the leanto unless it was to borrow some.

When all three girls went on the Pill, it felt like all six of us were doing it, really. The new mild sensations of false pregnancy became something we were aware of even when male. Not that that was anything new to us, really; almost as soon as the original sharing had started, all three girls' periods had come into sync, independent of any other women in their immediate familes. Our group was just closer.

Eventually we had to impose scheduling rules. The coupling was so intense for everybody, involved or not, that we had to pin down times when it was safe. That often meant doubling up. Fortunately, even with Joey and Sharon joining us, there was still room for Kathy and me in the leanto. It was adequate, but crowded, and we started work on something better to replace it; now that we were using it regularly, we wanted something a little sturdier. It was good protection against being caught, but we needed something to protect us from the weather too, I mean, winter was coming. Even in the middle and end of summer we could see that.

School resumed, and now we were old hands at acting our roles there. One thing that did change was, with our connections to each other, our grades all went up drastically. Not that we didn't study diligently anyway for the classes that went with the day's role, but, once a fact or procedure was learned by any of us, it was there for all of us. It was insurance, and that's how we used it.

Near the end of October, the pull started. By Halloween it was unmistakeable. We were being drawn once again to that ancient bit of old growth, out there in the woods. On the seventh of November, we went up to the Old Grove again, chatting as we hiked in about just how much had changed for us in just one year.

It was foggy that night, but not too damp, just enough to make everything spookily misty. The hush of the still air, combined with the way our own sounds were muffled by the damp leaves, made the place almost dreamlike when we reached it.

The mist also made it rather cold, but we'd brought blankets to huddle in. Sitting together like that, after a while hands started to roam across familiar flesh. Then, since no one could see us anyway, just the six of us, we paired off according to body couples and started celebrating being alive. I was in Kim at the time, but it didn't really matter, the way all of us were feeling everything that any of us felt, with an intensity that went beyond the senses.

We must have all climaxed around the same time, and then, when I next thought to notice, I saw that I had Sharon's breasts. I felt around our web and realized that everybody else had changed too. So we went at it again, and this time when I could breathe again I was in Kathy. We had time and energy enough for one more, and I actually ended up in Richard.

Through it all, there seemed to be an extra something there under the trees, or in the trees. None of us saw it, but we felt it, and we came away from there very sure that, not only was there something there, but we'd not only touched it, we'd shared with it, celebrated with it.

By midwinter we were all in constant contact, even to exact words and images. We could "listen in" on what each other was experiencing, even if we were miles apart. From then on, the radios went unused. We all knew or had ready-to-mind what we needed to know to handle whatever role we woke up in. We also could know what every one of us was feeling at any one time, without reaching, just by paying attention, we were getting that close.

With that kind of sharing, there could be no arbitrary boundaries, so, when Sharon in Kathy's body, and Kathy in mine, wanted to have sex, the logical response was obvious. 'Do it and share it around,' was the vote, actually more like a unanimous instinctive reaction.

I was being Kim at the time, and I crept up to my bedroom. While they were lighting up the link with incandescent foreplay, I was fingering myself, contributing my own heat and lightning, and trying to do it silently, acutely aware of the little sister asleep on the other side of the room.

It felt like I was actually part of that coupling, feeling the female side of it because of what flesh I was wearing, but experiencing the joining along with all the others. As I settled into sleep with a fierce afterglow, the thought occurred to Kathy and was passed around: 'We are all one couple composed of six.'

From then on that's how we played it. We were deep enough into each other's minds by then that no secrets were possible, no emotions were overlooked, so it truly didn't matter what bodies we wore among us anymore.

Back during the summer, we'd started building a dugout in the side of a forested ravine well down off a ridge in thoroughly untended Federal land. With the six of us spending as little time at home as possible, the project went quickly, finished by the second weekend of the fall school term. Bag at a time, we hauled cement down there. It took us a couple of months but we built a half-assed foundation for a cabin. We didn't bother to put a shack up on it, we just roofed it over, put a wood stove in and buried it. Then there was room for all six of us when the horniness was going around. There was even room for the bicycles, which were the only practical way for us to reach it, given our school year schedules.

Now we were putting that hideout to use, gathering there to talk, to have sex, or just to cuddle. It felt like we needed to spend that free time together to reinforce the growing bond that, increasingly, was the one stable thing in our lives. That little hideout felt like our only real home, a place where we could be ourselves. We went through the rest of our senior year that way.

With our near-perfect grades, all of us were accepted into schools in the Boston/Cambridge area, so after graduation we went to the city and rented a house. Then we had the summer to prepare for college life, all of us together, with nobody to tell us what we couldn't do, finally with someplace larger than the hideout to ourselves.

That new independence included getting part-time jobs to help with tuition and expenses. Our timing was perfect: that was when graduates were preparing to leave jobs they no longer needed. The most menial jobs couldn't get too boring when no one had to do the same thing every day. Even if your hands were busy with mindless work, somebody else was usually doing or talking about something interesting, enough to take the distracting edge off the repetition. We did well as a result, and had a couple of quick advancements and raises. Finances were still tight, but, sharing as a group, we were easily getting by.

When the fall term of school began, there was that sharing again, making it easier for us as a group. We all studied for all, necessarily, but it made it easier to learn: the studying seemed to spread solidly across the web of us six, with the knowledge caught and held somewhere among us for retrieval, along with cross-discipline connections and insights. In fact, it could be distracting, if you were trying to discern what you knew as opposed to what one of the others knew. Anyway, that was a waste of effort, since none of us were ever out of touch.

When that seventh day after Halloween arrived again, even though that pull towards the Old Grove was there again, and stronger this time, we couldn't hope to get out to our town, not on our schedules. Besides, it was rainy and cold outside this year, and that would have made any hiking a miserable experience.

Instead, some of us gravitated together downstairs in the living room, which had a fireplace. Four of us quit studying for the evening and settled in, getting cozy under a big blanket, all sitting in front of a nice warm fire, and then hands started to wander and be welcomed.

Suddenly the four of us were standing up long enough to pull off all of our clothing, and then we sat back down under that blanket. The blanket didn't stay on us long, though, with all of the energetic movements under it.

Joey stiffened on top of Sharon's body about the time I orgasmed into Kim. Then Sharon lunged for me as Kim reached over for Joey and those two continued. Sharon and I looked at each other, deep into each other's eyes, simultaneously nodded, and just flowed into each other. Then his hand was bringing my breast back up to full arousal while I stroked his dick to stiffen it back up.

It was the first time any of us had ever intentionally swapped except during sleep, but it was the right thing to do. Kim and Joey sensed it; they did it too.

Matt wandered in, spooked by the changes in vibes. I looked up at Sharon, and he paused and nodded grinning, so I made eye contact with Matt, and we flowed into each other. Then I got busy on Matt's breast while Joey massaged my dick.

Kathy had been napping, but then she woke up and came in already wet. We made eye contact, once again there was the flowing, and then I lay down and spread myself so Kathy could slide into me.

Eventually Kathy slumped onto me, momentarily spent. At that point Kim caught my eye... and then all of us went dizzy. Then I was wearing Sharon again, and we all resumed for one more round before dinner and study, knowing we'd all experienced, not only more loving sex than a normal person could ever know, but a breakthrough as well. We were no longer at the mercy of sleep and random transfers: now we controlled it ourselves.

Later that evening after studies, Kim, who was wearing Kathy and sitting on the toilet, thought at me. I was wearing Matt, with Joey who was wearing Sharon. I reached out and Kim and I flowed across. Then I finished and wiped up and washed while Kim and Joey filled the link with more fireworks.

I could feel trial swaps going on all around, but I had done a lot of that lately and I was more ready for bedtime than bedding. No matter; I sat down on the couch and immediately I was in bed alone wearing Kim, with my fingers at my crotch, two fingers inside.

It had been Kathy, of course; her persistent horniness was a constant by then. So was mine, for that matter: I immediately started stroking my clit and my G-spot, putting more sexual energy into the air and trying to bliss myself out so I could sleep. After a bit, Joey wearing my body came up to finish me off. We were all quite late getting to sleep that night.

The next morning, I woke up in Kathy. I was the only one awake, and it was getting late, so I dressed Kathy's body in Kathy's trademark faded jeans and black turtleneck. Kathy had the earliest class; the others would be up in time, I was pretty sure, since I could feel them drifting towards wakefulness, but that didn't help at the moment.

I was gathering Kathy's books when I felt Kathy wearing Sharon rouse and shake Kim wearing Matt awake. Kim pulled himself out of Kathy and Kathy got up quickly, stumbling a little with Sharon's long limbs, and met me in the downstairs hallway, almost at the front door. Kathy tugged at me from across the room, I turned, and we flowed across. Then she went out the door while I went and pulled Kim into a sloppy good-morning kiss.

Kathy, still minutes out of sleep mentally, slipped and fell on the wet leaves on the steps outside. I felt her part in the mesh go vacant. That brought us all awake. There was a frenzy of belting on bathrobes, then Kim wearing Matt and Sharon wearing Richard went and brought her in. She'd banged her head pretty good on the stone step. There was no blood, but she was out of it for a few minutes, and I could feel the headache as she roused.

I was her public boyfriend, so I swapped with Sharon and got my body dressed, then I took her books and notes and attended the class for her that day before going on to my own schedule.

We all managed to cover all of her critical classes while she was walked over to the medical office. Their diagnosis was that there was no concussion, so Kathy was back into harness next day; but it was a cautionary experience. If something like that happened again, or something worse, what would we do?

Matt had most of the day off, so he spent the time on the Internet looking into healing, magical and otherwise. After classes, the five of us gathered round Kathy in a circle, holding hands and doing our best to prove our love for her by "bringing in the Light". It was haphazard, but after a slow start we could feel something happening. Kim and I put our open hands on Kathy's head, pulling on flows the same way we'd pulled each other across to trade, but this time pulling healing. We could see a little bit of a glow under and around our hands, which was amazing considering how untrained we were, but, after all, it was five people's worth of energy.

It seemed to work, though. Kathy's headache was nearly gone, and she was less pale and she just felt better, safer.

We shut down the circle like Matt had learned, then we gathered around Kathy, just wanting to all be close to her at once, still a little shocked at what we knew was a close call.

"We have to do this some more." We were all feeling that, but it was Sharon who put it into words, and everybody started nodding and talking about it. For self-defense, we needed to learn to do magic, whatever that was, and first we had to find it; so we went looking.

Gardner, Farrars, Cunningham, Cabot, Starhawk, Huson, Castenada, Crowley, even Masters & Houston: topic by author by tradition, we built our library, putting up shelves in the front room, because suddenly we were serious about learning witchcraft, because, from everything we could read, that's where the magic was.

We found that singing helped us to sync up better for moving energy around, so we found Goddess chants and learned those. That led us into music.

We could be in our own bodies when we wanted to now. If we flowed in, we were less likely to trade when we slept. With all of us so deep into each other all the time, it was mainly convention by then, something we did to fit into the world outside and keep it from guessing our secret, but it gave us a little more stability for some activities. Kim's fingers knew her guitar best, though all of us had string-calluses on our left hands by now from her determined practicing. For that matter, all of us could at least play bar chords now, even if the rest of us had nowhere near her speed and dexterity; somehow the skills we were individually learning were spreading across the link, perhaps from our constant casual swapping.

Matt had been nearly tone-deaf before. Now, hearing through others' ears when his voice wandered, he learned to keep himself on pitch. After a week or two, he tried taping it. Surprise, now he could do it when no one else was within hearing. That pleased him no end; he had always enjoyed singing, but hated being told to shut up when he could only add sour notes.

With our link, we could gently sing unison, which came out as a spooky kind of whisper, we were so tightly in sync together. Our six-part harmonies were glorious -- still with that extra-tight synchrony of syllables and rhythms, but in wide chords.

Kim made up a round that we all liked, and we all helped with the words, so it was all of ours, really, and it felt like it. We'd start it off softly with the lighting of the altar candle, barely whispering but in sync, then gradually get louder as each corner candle was lit. We'd be singing full voice by the time the circle was brought up.

That song was powerful. When we sang that song, we would bring up a glow that we all could see. Our auras would get really bright around all our edges when we felt when it was, not only all on pitch, but practically in phase. Our music was leading us into some real power, and we were happily following it, equally pleased with the magic and the music.

Sharon had had some piano lessons. With a little help from a spare-change collection, she bought a used synthesizer. Matt hooked it into the stereo system for her, and then we had more than just Kim's guitar to back us up.

We needed more rhythm, though, so Kathy bought a tambourine. She and Joey took turns with it. She'd be wearing Richard (my body) when she played it, since she liked having strong arm muscles for playing it, and for some reason I liked singing female better, so I usually wore her body when we sang.

We weren't sure how far into the Wicca stuff we wanted to go, but we made a point of singing every full moon for maybe an hour, maybe more, depending on the mood and the music and the magic. It was our version of an esbat, and it usually had a nice silvery feeling to it.

That feeling came easier one evening in particular, with the moon shining in through the front window, peeking over the building across the street. We actually cut a circle that night; Matt used a wand he'd built and Sharon used an athame she'd bought, to cut power-lines we could see and feel, claiming the whole living room for our music-magic.

We were just finishing a new song of Kim's with Matt's words, something really powerful. On the coffee table in the center of the group, the two candles, silver and gold, were starting to glow blue when we reached the ending chord, held it for as long as all of us had easy breath... and then there was a furious knocking on the door.

I swapped with Kathy, went and got my baseball bat, and went down to the door. Matt was waiting for me, ready with his fists. We made sure the door was chained, and opened it.

There were two greying longhairs standing on our porch. They were male and female, we could sense that, but they were both wearing robes, so it took a moment for us to pin down which was which.

The woman stepped up to the door and said, "Merry Meet. May we come in?"

I looked at Matt; he shrugged. I unchained the door and let them in. Kim put the kettle on for more tea while we shared around the spice bread Sharon had baked for afters, and we chatted.

She called herself Marla, and he called himself Herne, and it was obvious that these were their Circle names. That was something we hadn't thought to adopt, though we knew about them; among ourselves, such names weren't needed. Now we had trouble remembering these invented names we were given for them, because they didn't seem to fit them, really. It was more like the names kept sliding off them somehow.

The topic came up: did we know what it was like to be in a real coven? That was a puzzler: we knew we had something special, but we had no idea how being in a real coven felt, so we had nothing to compare it with. Finally, Joey expressed it for all of us: "No, what's it like being in a real coven?"

The woman smiled, a kind of twinkly wrinkly smile in a weathered face. Then we felt a nudge in our network of minds. Startled, we all started zeroing in on the source, and it came again, stronger.

It was her.

Then we felt him join her, boosting her presence, not invading, but... present, and getting stronger by the moment.

At this point we all thought about the shielding we should have been learning, as their presence got more forceful. Then they started pushing their way in, and we reacted automatically and started to close them off. They started to fight that, and then suddenly they were no longer there. They were still there physically, we could see and hear them, but we had shielded them off.

The man mopped his brow with his sleeve, while the woman gave us a sad look and rose to her feet; he rose too. She said, "Some other time, perhaps. You're in our neighborhood; that's why we dropped by."

His comment, as they slipped out the door as soon as Matt opened it for them, was more succinct: "Merry Part."

In the aftermath of that, we all had a long discussion, in spoken words so that we could try out new thoughts. It was our first real conference in a long time, but then, this was a major new development and it had us spooked. Who were they really? How did they do that? What were they trying to do? And why?

We had one answer ready to hand, because it was obvious: they'd tried to take control of us. That meant that they assumed they had the right to do so, and that made us nervous. Over the next week or so, we quietly asked around at the places where we bought our books and ritual supplies, and got more answers.

Marla and Herne were fixtures of the Craft community. They wanted to be high priestess and high priest, which was a dignified role for elders, and for that you had to have covens under you, and lately they hadn't been having much luck in keeping those. In fact, most of their own coveners had hived off and voided, so they needed new coven members for their own circle.

That was the wrong way to go about getting some, though, at least with us. After that, we spent much time learning defense, offense and astral working, and a lot of time practicing how to make high-intensity flows of the power go where we chose. We got good at that, especially when we sang; we could make candle-flames leap on cue when we were all in sync. We also blessed and shielded every wall, every opening and every wire coming into the house, just in case they decided to try it again from outside.

Then we more or less forgot about them. Christmas was coming, and with it a chance for us to reaffirm individual family relations in traditional family celebrations. For the first time in a few years, we could be confident of attending those in the bodies we'd been born in.

That was fun, but sad too. Even as we were sharing out highlights from our own family gatherings, all of us were reaching out to help Joey stay calm and collected, as well as, surprisingly, Matt, whose parents had separated when he was leaving for college, and who had to remain neutral in the face of their increasing bitterness towards each other. Getting through that soap-opera was tricky for all of us.

It was late January when Marla next came to mind. With early classes, we had to be early risers, so we were early-to-beds as well; we could chat mind to mind as we fell asleep, cuddled up or alone as we chose, so there was no need for any of us to stay out late.

We were mostly asleep when a loud wordless cry sounded within our web, and that brought us all wide awake. It was her again, but this time it wasn't an assault on our shields, it was a desperate call for help. We all felt her pain and panic as she earnestly reached for the hidden forces of the world to guide and support her in her time of need. We just happened to be closest, and perhaps the most attuned to her, so we started automatically focusing on her and sending what help we could.

Then, quickly dressed, most of us started running for the subway, because we knew where she'd be.

When we got off at the Charles Street station, we saw the ambulance from the aerial walkway, cutting its way through the traffic beneath us, and we knew it was hers. When we got to Massachusetts General Hospital, she had just been brought into Emergency. We had a few minutes with her then, and, though she was groggy with pain and fighting a concussion, she managed to tell us what had happened.

She'd been hit by a car skidding in the snow through the crosswalk. She'd narrowly dodged getting her legs run over as she fell; she said she had the luck of the Goddess with her on that. She'd taken a blow to the torso on the curb, which had her worried about possible rib and hip fractures. Aside from all that, she had bruises on her face where it had struck the curb, and pavement rash on her face and hands and legs. She wasn't in good shape.

The four of us standing around her stretcher started sharing and dissipating her pain and pushing life at her, making it soak into the broken places and telling them to mend, now, before the doctors got to her, because her older body wasn't so resilient anymore and the decisions of doctors tended to have lifelong consequences.

Meanwhile, Matt and Joey set out searching for Herne. Using the link that the four of us at the hospital had with Marla, they could sense him, track him, and finally found him just getting out of the subway, stumbling up the exit steps into the snowy street.

He didn't so much as blink when he saw Matt and Joey, he just said nervously, "Where is she?" and Matt answered, "We know where she is. Follow us!" and started towards the inbound stairs of the same subway station. Herne nodded, turned and followed them to MGH, saying nothing.

By the time they got there, she'd been in and out of radiology and was waiting in a semiprivate room for the diagnosis, so we all left him at her bedside after giving them our phone number. Marla was even groggier by then, but she came out of it long enough to accept a kiss from Herne and to tell us all, "Thank you."

Herne called us next morning to thank us, and to give us her bedside phone number, something none of us had thought to note when we were there. Then he had to go to work, and we all had our class schedules, but we managed to fit in a daily visit by at least one of us; it just felt like the right thing for us to do. With one of us on-site to guide, the rest of us could pause what we were doing and start humming up the power, and the one who was visiting her would direct it.

We actually did some healing, I'm sure of it, though exactly how much was our doing and how much was other forces is something I guess you never know for sure. The doctors were sure that she had at least one fracture at the thigh as well as cracks in bones and a possible greenstick break, but Marla got up and walking on a cane within a few days. It was a Saturday, so we were all there, circling round her as she walked and doing more healing when the doctors weren't looking. They took fresh xrays to find out why, and all the breaks and cracks were gone, leaving just bone bruises and torn skin for them to mend and tend.

The next day, Marla was discharged into a wheelchair, and of course we were there, crowding into the elevator with her and Herne, who had rented a car. While he went and got the car, we stood around chatting with her on the sidewalk, but as soon as the car pulled up she wanted to talk to just the girls.

Since I was wearing Matt at the time, I was one of the guys helping Herne get her stuff into the rented car, so I couldn't just break off and sneak a listen to what was said, but I didn't need to anyway. The web went live, with the three girls all sending exactly what they heard and adding their own feelings and thoughts to the mix. I had a hard time paying attention to loading her luggage, it was so overpowering, but I was glad I did.

"Did you know that he--?"

She was talking trash about one of the guys, little knowing that the guy she was talking about was one of the girls huddled with her now. There was silent laughter across the web, because everyone knew that the stories were false. The sad thought was passed around: she's still trying a power-grab, now by divide-and-conquer.

The girls didn't say anything to contradict her, they just listened wide-eyed as she talked, and finally she wound down, realizing that she wasn't going to get a response she could use, at least not yet.

Between myself wearing Matt and Sharon wearing Richard and Kathy wearing Joey, we guys managed to get everything packed into the little car, and then the girls were helping her into her seat. Then we all stood and waved goodbye to them as they drove off from the hospital, before heading for the subway, all sadly thinking pretty much the same thing: Merry Part.

Maybe it was to get the bad taste of that out of our minds, but after that we started looking for Pagan get-togethers to attend, other Pagans to meet, and, after we discovered the Horns & Crescent newsletter, we found them. We met others in the Craft, and then other covens, and then we started getting invited to circle. Sharon had a sewing machine, so it wasn't that hard for us to pull together robes, and besides, with the six of us all robed, it looked like fun!

In time we had more trouble from the pair, but then, after our intense exposure to the two of them after the accident, their thoughts tended to leak through our shields, so we usually knew when they were nearby, what they were up to, and how to defuse the situation harmlessly.

Their coveners were another matter. One by one, we would meet them, only to find them usually trying to cause trouble. When we asked them, "Why are you doing this?", the answer was always the same: "You're in our covendom. If you don't like it, you should move out."

"Why should we?" was always our answer. The idea that we lived on their turf seemed like something out of a gangster movie, an assertion that we couldn't accept. We had our rented house, and that was where we did our singing magic, and none of what we did was aimed at them so they had no cause for complaint.

Their response was usually to go away mad and then try something. We knew about the Rule Of Three, but we'd never really seen it in action. We just knew that, with all six of us united in fending off whatever it was, it would bounce back at them; we could feel that much. A couple of times we heard afterwards that the person had left the coven.

Finally we sensed them giving it up as more trouble than it was worth. Whatever their coven was doing, it had nothing to do with us as long as it wasn't aimed at us, so we refused to be budged from the idea of peaceful coexistence, and maybe that was what was needed.

We were more interested in other Craft-oriented activities anyway. There were musical events listed in the newsletter, and we started attending them, wanting to see how others put together music and magic.

At one point we rented a minivan and drove up to Salem. The event was good, but the ride was better. We all came away impressed by the freedom that went with having a vehicle that would fit us all, and the unanimous verdict was, "We should get one of these."

Looking around, we eventually found a used Caravan in good shape, and, with my parents cosigning for the loan, we bought it. Now, between the back storage inside and the luggage rack outside, we had a way of carrying ourselves and our instruments, and we started thinking of adding a few drums to the collection of instruments.

I had picked up a bass guitar, one I could play with Kathy's hands, and a small amp to go with it. Kim had a new 12-string, and we two put in some serious practice, swapping the three stringed instruments around to see what felt better on what songs. The two of us rounded out the sound then, finding ways of putting a chunky bottom under the songs where required, and driving the song forward where that was needed.

Kim was talking about getting an electric, but we all knew that that would put our sound too far into rock territory, losing the openness we had worked so hard to build and perfect. I could just about handle the 12-string in Kathy's body, I'd worked up her hand musculature that much, but no one else wanted to handle any of the guitars, and we needed a six-string acoustic in the mix to keep our sound open the way we liked it. Kim got the electric anyway, just because, but there was no room for it in our sound, not yet.

Even with that limitation, we started feeling pretty good about what we were doing musically. What had started as a way to convince the magic to come when we called had become something we could use to make another kind of magic, the magic of new ideas in song. Now we were starting to feel like we were ready to let others hear it.

One of the places that we'd taken to visiting regularly had music on the weekends, but when we wandered in there on a Tuesday there was nothing scheduled. After talking with the manager, we got up on the stage and performed one of our better songs, using a borrowed guitar and a borrowed tambourine. The sparse audience was appreciative, so we came back in two weeks, fully equipped.

The place was a lot more crowded this time; apparently word had gotten around, just from that one song. The talking stopped when we started singing, and stayed stopped until we took a break. We wowed them, or at least we thought so. We did a couple of sets, filling an otherwise nonmusical weekday night event with our songs, and then we got down and started packing so we could get back to town at a decent hour for school the next day.

Immediately we had people gathered around us talking mile-a-minute. Before we knew it, we were booked for Beltane at a gathering in the central part of the state, and somebody was pressing us hard on the idea, "Ever thought about recording?" We took their card and promised that we'd think about putting a few songs on the Internet in mp3 format to see if anybody was interested.

Packed at last, we were getting ready to leave, and almost missed it on the way out: Herne and Marla at a table, sitting by themselves with a defeated air, shunned by the people around them.

Once again there was that automatic urge to help. We knew these people, after all, especially after linking to them in order to do the working of healing Marla, and we didn't wish them harm. We resented how they'd tried to take control, but that was obviously no longer a problem. Perhaps we could make real peace now, if we could find the proper opening.

As one, we pulled our instruments back out and gathered around them where they sat. Marla looked up at me, startled, so I took the opening and offered, "Sing with us?"

We went back up for one more set, this one of standard chants and rounds and songs everybody likely knew, with Marla and Herne among us. With them involved, it was less of a performance and more of a sharing, and the sharing got infectious, it was so much fun. We got most of the room to sing along with us by the time we were done. I caught Marla grinning, and then I saw Herne, a little lost, smiling and contributing his part.

This was new behavior from them, and our web was thick with discussion of the two of them even as we sang our parts. Maybe she had faults to iron out, but she could guide power as she sang. Him too -- he was right there with her, supporting her, and conducting and enlisting the males in the room, not trying to force anything, but offering the opening. Even for the grumpy solitaries in the corners of the room, it got to be too much fun not to join in.

Then we were all caught up in the moment. We felt both of them at the fringes of the web, not forcing, just there and enjoying, so we touched them a little closer. We let them be part of at least the outermost layer of what was being built in the song, and Marla got wide-eyed, smiling as she sang, and Herne was intent on his part but his eyes were smiling too.

It was getting late when we finally we broke for the evening. As we packed up our instruments for the second time, the group evaluation being passed around was, yeah, that worked. Then, proving it, Marla came up to me and Kim and told us, with none of the superior attitude we'd been seeing, "That was fun. Thank you very much."

Kim looked up, grinning, and said, "We could teach you a few of our songs if you like."

Marla looked surprised and delighted as she responded, "That would be good!"

We invited them over for a songfest the next weekend, and then the next, and then no invites were needed because by then we were thinking of them more as rehearsals, because they really did work as part of our music. So we slowly drew closer over the next few months, they and us, and then as a full moon approached it seemed only natural that we invite them to a sing-at-home esbat.

They brought gifts for the priestess. We didn't know how to take that, really, so all three of us who were female at the time gathered to accept.

"What are you all doing for Samhain?"

When we all drew a blank, she invited us over to join them for a sabbat ritual at their circle, and this time we had no reservations about accepting. In truth, we had no clue about Samhain because we hadn't thought that far ahead, because we were too busy with what our new friends -- because that's how they were behaving now, like friends -- added to our sound.

With Herne putting a gutsy rhythm on the six-string acoustic, I could play the twelve-string parts, and then Kim finally got to use her electric, adding soaring counterpoint leads as well as some real punch within the verses. Sharon got a couple of new keyboards so she could add more than one tonality at a time to the background, giving Kim's electric a solid foundation.

We had both Joey and Kathy on tambourine by this time, playing off each other's rhythms, but lately sometimes they got buried, so Joey went out and got a field snare for some of the louder numbers, and then Kathy got congas. Now Marla added bothran, a kind of flat wide drum that put the bottom on our rhythm where a kick bass would be, and then we finally had our instrumental sound filled out the way we wanted it.

On the vocal side of things, Herne's mature baritone and Marla's smoky contralto added to the richness of our sound. With them in the group, now our sound could go where we wanted it to go, from somber whispering chants to roaring full-voiced themes, without turning it into rock and losing our uniqueness.

We were all settling into a good groove, all eight of us, enjoying this even as we worked harder than ever at covering all our bases -- school, work, music and magic.

And then it happened. We were all together on a Friday night, kicking back and enjoying being done with the workaday week. Sharon had been busy in the kitchen making some more of the spice bread that was a Sharon trademark by now, and, when it was done, pulled it out of the oven and brought it out to share around. Sharon happened to be wearing Joey at the moment, though, and Herne did a doubletake.

Kim was playing at a new chord progression while wearing Richard, which was, of course, my own body. I put down the 12-string and got busy handing around the fresh-cut pieces as Sharon cut them, which was my usual contribution, but then, I was wearing Sharon.

He got it. He pointed at Kim in my body, then at me wearing Sharon, and I nodded. He pointed at Sharon wearing Joey and then at me wearing Sharon, and I nodded again. Then he pointed at Kim and at Kathy who was wearing Kim, and I nodded again, saying in as casual a tone as I could muster under the intensity of his gaze, "Yeah, we're all over, now, sharing it all, whenever we want to be."

He got goggle-eyed, and roughly whispered, "How?" and I shrugged, at a loss to explain all we'd been through in few words, or to explain the magnitude of our changes when so much of the experiences which produced those changes were so deeply private to the six of us. He must have sensed that, because he dropped his gaze, abashed.

In the mental silence which followed his intense scrutiny, I could clearly hear the woman, even as she kept her gaze downcast and averted. She was silently, bitterly laughing at herself for her earlier behaviors, now knowing the impossibility of ever controlling our web.

We could feel him react to her self-recrimination. He hugged her close, and offered up loving energy to her. It was pitiful, but heart-warming, too, seeing how the two of them did whatever they could to try to work together as the six of us now did automatically and completely.

"Hey." I walked up and hugged the two of them together. After a moment Matt in his own form did the same, followed by Sharon wearing Joey and Joey wearing Kathy. The two of them looked up from each other to me, the man craning his neck to do so, and I caught their eyes. Careful to show the right kind of soft smile, I told them, "You're welcome when you share..." Around us, the others nodded agreement.

The woman closed her eyes, and then there were tears leaking out as she was nodding and saying, "That would be good. Thank you."

We gathered together bright energy and wrapped it around her, letting her choose whether and how much she would accept. As it soaked in, it visibly buoyed her up, and then him too.

She looked up. "Would you like me to show you a circle dance we use?"

"Sure!"

She stood up, then gave me a narrow gaze. "Are you a man or a woman?"

Unsure of how to handle that, I looked down at myself, at the bosom that Sharon had grown, at the kind of body I was born to want rather than wear, and asked, "What do I look like to you?"

She gave me a patiently doubting look, and repeated, "Are you a man or a woman?"

This time I had what had to be the right answer because it was true: "Yes!" I grinned, delighted to find that such a simple answer was all it took to be honest.

She looked at me, caught and decoded my grin, and cackled. Then she put my hand in Matt's and took his free one, and Herne took my free hand. We all chained male-female, then listened patiently while she taught us the dance.

Something about the dance was making me very aware of being in a female body. I could feel Matt feeling it too, not arousal but awareness. It was powerful, the way that it pushed genders at each other. This was a dynamic we weren't used to; we were used to flowing through genders, sharing them.

Finally, when all the steps were learned, we danced it. As we circled, the power slowly rose, like a barely-visible mist about our feet and legs, until my legs were getting tingly and goosebumped in the pantyhose I was wearing. I could feel Matt's scrotum puckering as if it was cold, and then my nipples were tightening. As it got more intense, I felt his tightening too. I wasn't so much aroused as extremely aware of being an embodied female and in the presence of an embodied male on each side of me; it was the kind of excitement that makes it hard for you to draw a deep breath, but I had to breathe deeply anyway for the exercise of the dance, while the feeling rose and intensified until I was very sure that I could count each hair on my scalp from the inside.

The two stopped their dance suddenly and thrust their arms high, and we clearly saw the glow that traveled up their arms to a point in the center of the room. We all echoed the move, and the power, for that's what it was, crawled up my arms too and went up in a wave that left me breathless and suddenly more than a little moist underneath.

I could feel all that power, unspent and clinging to the walls and ceiling, ready to be commanded by whoever knew the way to do so, and then Marla took Herne's hand and, together, they raised their free hands and guided the power into reinforcing the shielding we'd raised around the place. Only then did they drop each other's hand. Marla turned, looked around at each of us, smiled, and said, "That was impressive. What you all raised. No, what we raised." Then she grinned at her own words and added, "But you all were most of it." She turned and kissed Herne, taking him into her embrace in a way that told us that that was often how such rites ended. You could just see the sexual tension easing between them, or perhaps being exchanged for a firm promise of later activity.

The thought went around: they are showing us deep secrets of theirs... Can we? Should we? Would they want it?

The idea became an impulse, and we gathered in and hugged them together. They broke their kiss, looked around at us, then began hugging around. I seemed to be the closest to their attention, so I was the one who cleared her throat and asked, "Would you like to see through another's eyes?"

Marla turned and regarded me curiously, and I added, "We can share a little of what we do, if you like. Sit down."

She and Herne did so, and we all gathered round, sitting where we could. Two of us remained standing: Matt on one side, by the woman, and me on the other, by the man. We gently touched their temples with fingertips, then let our nerves conduct them in, and so felt them enter our web. We let them sense a little of each of us, then opened a path between them, reinforcing it with our own awareness but carefully keeping the pathway clear of our clutter.

They stared at each other. His hand went to her breast; she caressed his side. We eased our hands away but steadied our support, letting them set the pace but making the pathways obvious and firm from our experience.

Her eyes shifted focus to deep within his eyes, and then, from Matt, I could see him do the same. Then, unexpectedly, I felt them slip across, and held them up with my mind as they passed, keeping the support strong.

I felt her in his form. His hand went to his new crotch; hers went to the breasts that weren't part of her experience before, gently touching with fingertips. Then she looked up, and he did the same, and I sensed them sensing us all around, trusting us and gratefully taking in the new viewpoint, the the expansion of possibilities.

No one spoke, but then, no one needed to. All of us were sensing the flow of their thought as they examined the new wealth of sensation for more than a few minutes. Then Matt thought at them that perhaps they should turn around and go back. Marla in Herne's body broke eye contact with Herne in her own and looked at me and asked, "Can we keep this for a few days?"

I nodded. "If you both want that." I looked over and got Herne's gaze, in the woman's eyes, and she nodded and smiled, still too entranced by the differences in awareness to speak.

"Come back when you're ready to go back, then." I smiled; "if you're not here already, that is. Or already back."

We felt them sharing the change with each other, groping for valid roles in the exchanged flesh. Sharon went and got more spice bread and passed it around, and the two of them chewed thoughtfully, their eyes still holding each other's gaze, still wrapped in the other the way lovers do. Finally the man-within-the-woman who was Herne asked, "So we're not trapped."

I shook my head. "Nope. You can probably go back yourselves. It's a lot easier when we help, right now, anyway... It just takes practice."

"And the connection, the sharing...?"

"We're always like this."

She nodded, a little sadly, as if we were privy to something she could never be told.

It seemed like the right thing to do, then, for us to back away and let them feel each other more than us. They felt the web of us easing off; there was a moment of panic from Herne as she felt her connection with her male form fade, and she lunged with her mind, clinging to the feeling of the connection, before noticing that it was down but not gone. She realized and relaxed, and I confirmed it, saying, "You're still connected. Both of you are. You just have to sense it. It takes practice, but it's there."

They were back in a week, already back in their own bodies, but arm in arm, physically and emotionally a lot closer to each other than we'd ever seen them, and a lot happier. Sharon, who let them in, asked them, "Not that we mind or anything, but, if you've already figured it out, why are you here?"

Marla grinned in a shy way and said, "To share...?" and Herne smiled and nodded agreement with that.

"Oh. Well, then... Merry Meet!"

And, share they did. They would come over at odd hours, or invite us over to their little apartment, more temple than living quarters, whether to learn or to teach, or to sing, or just because we got along well together, because now we all did. At their place, Herne and Marla were often switched and teaching each other the priest and priestess roles that went with the forms, and we all learned right along with them, adding our own insights to the lessons and boosting the power that they could put into that little circle of theirs so that it was easier to learn with.

We usually ended up singing when they came over, and, over the months, every time we all sang together, the link got stronger when Herne and Marla joined into it, and then eventually we could feel and hear them fully in our web when they were close by one of us, and then it got to where they were part of the web no matter where they were. Increasingly, the only thing separating them from us was their ages and their living quarters.

Samhain came, and, after all the trick-or-treaters were off the streets, we all trooped over to their place for a classic ritual celebration, one which they led. Now we all meshed so well that they didn't try to push, and didn't need to, instead it just worked, with all of us filling our parts as a team, pushing our magic around to fit the turning of the year.

On what we'd taken to calling Seventh Day, all eight of us crammed into the Caravan and their Celica and drove out to our town. We parked at my folks' place and hiked up to the Old Grove. This time we knew just what we were celebrating, or so we thought: new ways, and old ways, joining as equals, the only way an inner joining could ever happen, in 'perfect love and perfect trust'.

Marla and Herne together cast a circle, then, within it, we spread out all the blankets and, discriminating only by who had what would complement what each of us had in abundance at the moment, we began our celebration of life. How many times we exchanged forms I can't tell you; at times it felt as if I was three or more people at once, at one point even pumping into myself. As the afterglow lifted, the thought went around, asking, what is the next step? Then it seemed as if the answer came from the trees themselves.

For some reason, all of us felt that we should get into our birth bodies. It felt as if we had to complete something that way. When the flowing was done, we partnered for a final round of ecstatic intimacy.

In the shared afterglow, Marla looked up at me from within my arms, and then I clearly heard her voice speaking in my mind: 'This is like the Great Rite.'

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Herne raise his head from Kim's breast and grin and nod, and then I knew that this clear speech was being heard by all of us.

Kathy's mental voice responded, 'Isn't it?'

Herne mindspoke then, in an interesting blend of tone which was somewhat in the middle between how his voice sounded and how he sounded when he was wearing Marla's form: 'No, it's better.' He looked around at the rocks and trees of Old Grove, and all of us took in his newcomer's perspective.

We had all played here when we were young, growing up with the place, really, so we were long-familiar with it. Now, through his eyes, we saw it afresh, and savored his discerning view of this place which was surrounded but undisturbed by the touch of man, with its lines of force reaching down through the milennia to the roots of the world. His summation was quiet but clear: 'We didn't call in the Goddess and the God. We went to them instead.'

I mindspoke, 'So they called us into their presence.'

Marla grinned up at me: 'That's what it feels like to me!'

'Then they've been doing that to us for a few years now. It's why we're like this.'

Marla silently nodded, her eyes widened, and we heard her thinking through the religious significance. I looked around.

We were all glowing, now, with what we'd raised in our ecstacies, and it seemed like the glow was partly us and partly what permeated the Old Grove. Now it felt like there was something we were supposed to do with it, something that the Old Grove, or the abiding presence which we could now feel within it, wanted us to do, something that needed to be done.

Sharon got it first. She flowed into Matt, who was on top of her, and then pulled out and stood up, calling out softly in his voice, "Everybody, get in your performance bodies and let's sing 'Build The Light'!" As the wave of background thoughts which he summed into that statement spread throughout us, we all suddenly understood what it was we'd come here to do.

"Build The Light" was that song that we'd all helped Kim dream up, even though she was the one who put it down on paper. It was the one song with the most group effort in it, and maybe that's why it was the most magically powerful in our repertoire. We suddenly knew that, whatever it was that abided at Old Grove, it had helped us create or recreate that song, for a purpose. All songs are spells, of course, but that song was an explicit one just waiting to be noticed.

Now we started singing it softly, with Joey and Kathy clapping the tambourine part, spontaneously putting new accents in it just right to drive the glow higher and brighter, until we all spontaneously got to our feet and joined hands in gender alternation, all of us nude but not naked, clothed instead with intent: sky-clad.

Marla and Herne stood conjoined, in the middle of the group, wearing each other's forms, holding each other tight as they sang. Singing as we circled around them in the dance they'd taught us, and surrounded and supported by the mostly-unseen but forceful presence of the Old Grove, we sang them young.

They had some explaining to do, later, of course. You don't just suddenly change from being near sixty to being in your late twenties or early thirties, not with the kind of jobs they had. Fortunately, they were both out of the broom-closet where they worked, so they could just answer, "Witchcraft, of course."

We kept working on them, of course, now that we knew how it worked. Every time one of us others saw them, we'd make another tweak, healing and youthening them some more. We did it through them, of course; there was nothing forced about it. They were in the link now, so they were part of the decisions on what was needed when.

Marla had to get used to having a period again. She joked about us demoting her from her crone status, but then she'd turn around and tease Herne a little about it when they happened to be swapped at a rainy time of month, and then the six of us, especially those of us who started out as guys, would be in there reminding Herne of how PMS dissipated as it was shared across our web.

They were part of us, now, and they belonged at their full vitality, even though, since they weren't college students, they didn't usually share forms with the rest of us during the week. Their workday jobs were enough alike that they could share freely between themselves, and that seemed to be enough to help the magic work on their bodies.

Even though they had their own close binding, built of their long history together, they shared with us as we shared with them. We knew their circle secrets without being told, and they knew our history almost as if they'd lived it. We knew their Craft lore, too, and their familiarity with the Pagan community-at-large in the area.

We also shared with them an impetus that we'd brought with us from the Old Grove, something hinted at in what we'd done on Seventh Day. It wasn't until the next sabbat that any of us figured out what it was.

We had all gotten together for a Yule celebration which was partly a classic ritual, with Marla and Herne serving as priestess and priest, and partly an evening of song, and, yes, of ecstatic celebration. At the close of the evening, all of us were pleasantly glowing without and within as we sat together under blankets, watching our Yule log burn.

It was Marla, as he casually held Herne close as she sat in his lap, who looked around at the group and commented, "You know... This is a coven..." And then Herne smiled and added her agreement, "Is it ever."

Then we all knew that we'd been waiting for that realization, to sum up what we'd experienced so far, so that we could take the next step. Whatever this way of living conjoined soul to soul had made of us, we were also a coven, and covens often grew and then hived off, propagating from within, carrying the core tradition in each new grouping.

We had already, with Marla and Herne, proven, without ever meaning to do so, that we could initiate others into our ways. They had a closeness of their own, something we six with our own closeness had come to respect and love even as we shared the greater unity with them. There was nothing to prevent us from teaching others, all eight of us, and then this coven could grow and spread, at least anywhere that there was old growth forest.

It would take a special kind of person, though: someone who knew enough of modern Wicca to understand its customs and its magical logic, but who wasn't afraid to 'live with their skin off' all the time, not just in-circle, in ways that we now knew were old-beyond-old.

You don't find many of those these days... or do you?

And that's why I wanted to talk to you today.

We know that you have a deep commitment to the Craft; we know that you have power, and, from what we hear, you use it justly... and what I'm picking up from the thoughts you're radiating now shows me that we were right about that.

You were in a coven, but you're presently solitary.

Would you like to learn from us, sing with us on the sabbats and esbats, and maybe join us?

---

Disclaimer and notes:

The preceding story is fiction. Real places and publications were used in its setting, but any resemblance between any real persons or groups of persons and persons or groups as depicted in this story is strictly coincidental. In particular, the characters Marla and Herne are NOT drawn from nor modeled after any particular persons, rather they're a synthesis of personality types common in the Craft community.

The Horns & Crescent newsletter, the successor to the magazine Harvest, carried a print calendar of events which covered Pagan events in the New England area. It had converted to an online calendar publication, at http://handc.org/ by the time this story was written, now best viewable in the Internet Archive.

For a more general look at witchcraft in the real world, point your browser at http://www.witchvox.com/, The Witches' Voice.

Thanks to one of those viruses, Eric's roommate Charlie was re-engineered as a buxom blonde with a highly-optimized libido. Is this a geek's dream come true?

---

Dear Friend

--Kiai 06sep03/29dec04/05mar07

 

 

Eric got home from work, dropped his briefcase on the chair in the hallway, popped it open long enough to slip his badge into it, and watched as his own miniature face, trapped in the sterile corporate plastic by its holographic logo like an insect pinned to a display, disappeared into the shadows. He felt as if a part of him, the part that they owned, was shed like a snake's skin for the evening, freeing the real him. He let out a weary sigh and slumped a little, relaxing.

Then he tensed again, clutching the handle of his briefcase like it was an anchor on reality, as he heard heavy breathing coming from his roommate Charlie's bedroom.

He knew what awaited him. Not for the first time, he silently cursed retroviruses and the people who thought they would somehow solve the world's problems if they put enough engineering into them before setting them loose. The virus itself might be selective, but its impact on the people around its victim was anything but. He first realized that when he tended his roommate, Charlie, through a retrovirus change, missing five workdays and a weekend because of it. The past weeks provided fresh reminders.

Ever since Charlie became female, it had become a commonplace view. Her door would be open and the bedroom lights would be off, but she would be on her bed, flat on her back, facing the door. The light from the hall would be enough to show her sprawled legs and engorged labia, glistening with fluids, even as her face was obscured by shadow, making her seem anonymous, generic... pornographic.

Now, he realized, she was once again energetically working herself over, seemingly on display specifically for him, and he wasn't sure how he should react, and didn't know what he should say, if anything. It was profoundly embarrassing.

Aroused despite himself, he nodded a greeting to her as he passed her doorway, trying to avoid staring at her genitals, intending to retire to the privacy of his own room to work out the stiffness in his cock in the usual way.

That was the plan, anyway. He had just passed her doorway, still hearing her wordless moaning as she writhed on her bed, when the noises stopped and she called to him, "Oh. Hey. Dude, you got any rubbers?"

Careful to stay out of sight beside the doorway, he turned back and said, "Um, yeah, a few, why?"

"Would you, um, feel okay about using one on me?"

Startled, he let go of his briefcase momentarily, catching its handle by his fingertips just before it hit the floor.

"Is that what you want?"

"Yeah, I'm just getting more frustrated by the minute here. You know how to help, I know it; we talked enough about how to handle girls before."

"All right; give me a moment."

He went on to his own room, dropped the briefcase on its shelf, and fished out a couple of condoms from the box in the bottom drawer of his desk. Then, not sure why he'd agreed to this so readily other than simple sexual frustration and maybe an urge to help, he set about taking off his clothes.

Naked and very aware of it, he walked back to her room with his cock waggling in front of him with every step. She had turned on the bedside lamp, and now her eyes lit up as her gaze fastened on his cock.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!"

She wiggled over on the bed to make room for him. He sat down next to her and asked calmly, "Where do you need help?"

"All over, man, it's just not working when it's just me. Ulp! Yeah, like -- that!" His fingers were at her labia, lightly stroking, with just a little extra attention at the clit end of things, and she tensed, then shuddered, then put her arm around him. He bent over and took her nipple into his mouth, stroking her areola with his lip as he sucked and tugged, and she shuddered again. "Ohhhhh... yeah..." It was a winsome sound, like from one who comes in sight of a goal after losing hope that it was there to find, and it emboldened him. He toyed with her for a good while, finding out where she was already aroused and frustrated and where she was not yet awakened, and using those new points to bring her to several minor orgasms, before turning to the little packet he'd dropped on the night table.

She looked over and murmured, "This is gonna be my first time, y'know."

"You've still got a hymen?"

She nodded. "I think so... Don't think I broke it."

"We'll find out, then."

She pulled him down into a fierce kiss as soon as he had the condom on, coaxing him to come to rest between her legs the whole while. He felt his tip touch her wetness and let it jostle a little, teasing her, until she grabbed his buttocks and pulled him up towards her, driving him in a little ways. She moaned, sharp and short, and then grunted as she renewed her grip and pulled him further into her.

He wasn't surprised when he bottomed out within her without feeling anything give way. She owned a dildo, he knew that from having seen it protruding from her crotch, so she had to have deflowered herself that way long since. Now he began automatically pumping, and turned his attention back to finding places on her skin that were fresh to the touch or had gotten lonely since they last got attention, places he could use to take her higher.

When she started crying rhythmically, he began to worry about thin walls and irritable neighbors, but then she seized up and stopped breathing altogether. When she finally got her breath back, she went back into frenzied sounds. Now bucking up against his pelvis in time with his stroke, she cried out, "Oh, yes, goddammit, yes!" and held her breath again while he kept the rhythm for the both of them.

Several more times, she lost her breath, finding it again in great gulping gasps under him. Finally she started whimpering, low and soft, in alternation with silences where her breathing stopped, and he decided it was time to take his. He pulled her tight to him and started pumping more briskly, and was pleased to see her nodding urgently even if apparently all she could do with her mouth was pant. When his moment seized him, she convulsed up against him, and their rhythm grew ragged while they both forgot how to breathe for a little while, and then he resumed with gentler, slower last strokes to bring her to earth.

He started to roll sideways off her, but she clutched him tightly, holding him close, so he held her to him. Feeling her breasts pressing against him, he realized that he'd missed this: it'd been months since the last time he'd had time to go looking for female companionship, much less a lover.

It was still bizarre and alien to him, though, that it should be his roommate with him now this way. The guy had certainly been enough of a horndog for girls when they met at start of term three years ago, asking him for advice on how to score with the women around here, and pulling out the copies of Playboy in the living room and critiquing the girls on display within. That guy was now the woman in Eric's immediate personal equation.

Now she moved underneath him, adjusting to his weight, so he tried once more to roll over. This time she let him roll to her side, still holding him, so they ended up lying on their sides in close embrace. She looked into his eyes, then she kissed him, and whispered, "Thanks... I needed that. I hope you did too; I haven't seen you with anyone in a while."

She swung one leg over him, pressing his softening cock back into herself, and looked down at herself and the way their flesh naturally conformed to each other's shapes to press together seamlessly, then back up at him with an earnest expression, and told him, "Ever since I changed I've been so damn horny, you wouldn't believe it. This is the first time I've gotten satisfied. You don't know how lucky you are to still be a guy; you only have to get one or two to get there. I get all these little ones, and if they don't build right they don't really go anywhere, and when they hit I get too distracted to make 'em build right. Maybe it's because I wasn't born this way; real girls probably know how everything's supposed to go."

She leaned back, looking him up and down some more, then kissed his chest, and gazed up at him with a strange expression on her face, one composed equally of relief and devotion. She breathed, "Anytime you want me, I mean anytime, just do it. Even if you hafta wake me up, it's all right, I want it. I'll even pay for the rubbers."

He smiled archly, and, he hoped, warmly. "This is a strange relationship we're getting into, isn't it?"

She was dismissive. "Oh, don't worry, this is just sex, okay, 'cuz I'm gonna change back, I just know I am."

"Sure." He let it go at that, not sure why her response had rankled. Pure sex between a man and a woman? Even considering who this woman had been when he first met her, the idea of it felt empty, like she was short-changing him somehow, but perhaps he could settle for that until something changed to either deepen things or end them.

 

Over the following days, they fell into an increasingly natural rhythm. He would arrive home from work to find her freshly stripped and waiting on her bed, now with all the lights on. He'd drop his things, they'd make love, and then they'd bathe together while they talked over the day and planned dinner. Sometimes she would have dinner already prepared and waiting to be warmed up and served. Other times they tackled the job together, constantly touching each other as they passed in the kitchen. On those days when it was his turn to prepare meals and she hadn't beaten him to it, she'd hang out on the kitchen's periphery, waiting to help, or peer at him across the counter from the tiny dining area, apparently not wanting to intrude on his work but not wanting to get too far away from him either. They would dine together, perhaps they'd cuddle together studying or watching one of the movies in their vast mutual collection, and then inevitably they'd go back to her room where she'd pull or tease him back down onto her bed for more sex.

Tonight was to be a break in that rhythm, and something which had been a regular event with them since before her change. There was a bar nearby whose prices fit their budgets, one that had decent food, and, every so often, live performers. On the first Friday of each month, they would go hang out there, have a meal and a beer, and, if there wasn't a band playing, there were always the girls. Sometimes they'd gotten lucky there.

He had already showered their combined sweat off him and dressed for dinner; now he was sitting on the sofa in the living room watching her preparations. She finished brushing out her hair, tossed the hairbrush back into her room where it thumped on her bed, and turned and smiled down at him: "Okay, I'm ready."

Charlie had been a longhair when he arrived, with clean sandy blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. These days, though, she let her hair down when she wasn't working on something. When she allowed her hair to dry into its natural curl, it fell like a gleaming cloud around her face. Even without makeup, she was gorgeous. Eric dreaded having to work to discard his feelings for her when she reverted to male. Assuming she did so; that would probably have to wait until the virus writers happened to release an X-to-Y retro for her genotype, and so far they seemed to be more interested in wiping out genetic predispositions and turning the people around them female. Until that happened, she was delicious eye-candy, start to finish, and he knew he was growing uncomfortably fond of her.

Her attire was another matter. After the change, she pushed her old clothes to the back of the closet and got new jeans, new shoes, new everything, to fit her new dimensions and form, but it was all guy-styled. She seemed to be in a battle with herself, alternating between being a guy-with-tits and a sexpot, sometimes at the same time. Such as now, when she was wearing jeans which were tight enough to follow her labial fold, and a thin tee shirt emblazoned with the logo of a gaming software company and the slogan "Got game?", with her unbound nipples making interesting mobile deformations in the lettering.

"Shouldn't you have a bra on under that shirt?"

"Why do I need a bra? I'm supposed to be a guy, right? This is just a medical fuckup, y'know, I wouldn'ta changed if they'da given me the right vaccine." She looked down at herself, then slowly up at him again with smoldering eyes. "'Sides... Don't you like me better this way?"

She offered a teasing smile and shimmied, causing her breasts to ripple beneath the tee shirt, easily tracked by their nipples, as if her areolas weren't clearly visible enough through the thin fabric, and he felt himself rouse all over again, to his annoyance. Charlie was enjoyable enough to look at in private, at home, but he wasn't sure he wanted to go anywhere in public with her dressed that way. That look, along with her behavior, reeked of tramp, if not hooker, and he felt embarrassed for her at the arch looks people gave her, even if she herself seemed oblivious to them. It was irritating to be provoked into looking at her that way himself, as if he was tricked into complicity with their disapproval.

"The right vaccine?" Rather than answer directly, he seized on her comment. He thought she had simply come down with a virus and changed, in which case all her talk of changing back, short-term, was just wishful thinking.

"Yeah, with my genes I'm vulnerable to Type NX, and they shoulda given me a vaccine for that. They gave me Type PA instead, and it hogged my immune system long enough for NX to get to me. They gave me an NX blocker, and they think they mighta caught it in time; we'll see. If I've got any chimera XY cells left they can synthesize a retro with 'em to push me back the other way so I can be a guy again."

"Think they can do it?"

"Sure hope so!" She nodded enthusiastically, causing her hair to spill down around her face again, and sat down huddled up next to him, clutching his arm to herself. She said fervently, "It'll be good to be a guy again. Man, I'll sure know a lot more about pleasing a woman then. Damn, I haven't felt this good in... ever!"

All this talk about sex and changes was getting to him, and she sensed it. Now she looked up at him with a minxish expression. Still holding his gaze, she reached over between his legs, pulled down his zipper and eased his member out, stroking its urgent stiffness with one hand and murmuring, "I've got this guy to thank for that. Hm, how should I thank him? Ooh, I know..."

As she bent over and her mouth closed around his member, the wall clock behind her was showing the bar's peak hours which they were missing. No way was he willing to go out in public with them both in this state of arousal, though, even if he was a little put out at her presumption that that one part of him was the most responsible for the pleasure he worked to give her. Perhaps if they were quick enough...

He slid his hands up under her shirt, lifting its hem with his wrists, and started kneading her exposed breasts. Their meaty mass was at once foreign for being something he'd never experienced himself and familiar for being presented to him so constantly. The milk glands spread within them were sensitive to his attentions, and that was enough for him.

He playfully worked her nipples, causing them to harden like the member that she was mouthing, and was pleased to hear her gasp and feel her clutch his member tightly. She straightened up and leaned up against him, her mouth slack and hungry against his, and then their tongues danced and teased each other's arousals too. When they finally pulled away for air, she looked up at him with eyes full of lust and half-whispered, "I brought you some pussy; want it?"

They never did make it to the bar that night, instead they snacked out between lovemaking sessions. The next morning, they resumed as soon as he was awake enough to hold an erection as she slid down onto it. Afterward they puttered around together in the kitchen pulling together some brunch. Eric had just put the tray of bagels and cream cheese on the table when Charlie came out with their coffee mugs. He made to clear the clutter of the previous evening's clothing off the chair, but she stopped him with an offhand "Don't bother, I'll sit on the pole."

They ate sitting nude, sideways to the dinner table, with Charlie straddling his lap, impaled on him, and occasionally rubbing her breasts in his face between bites and offering cream for his coffee. Then Charlie had him carry her, still coupled, with her legs clamped tightly around his waist, back to bed to 'work off the calories'.

The rest of the weekend was spent that way, as the two of them enjoyed being casual with each other's skin. At one point Charlie giggled and pointed out to him the growing mound of torn foil wrappers in the bathroom trash, grinning as if it was a trophy or an achievement. Eric shared the laugh, but he increasingly wondered where the relationship was going. Sunday evening, he found himself staring out the darkened window as they sat to another nude dinner, this time side by side. He brooded when he noticed that he was staring at her dim reflection in the glass and mentally mapping the details of her face and figure as if preparing himself for a lifetime of this familiarity.

Over the following weeks, the brooding deepened.

It wasn't that he minded being close to her, not like this when they were so comfortable with each other's touch, but he was starting to worry about losing the other aspects of their relationship in the sex. They had been good friends before, at least; where was this 'just sex' going now?

Eric was already working as an engineering technician, getting some real-world experience to go with his degree, and confidently looking forward to moving up into a design position as the company expanded.

Charlie was in engineering too, but still working on her degree. She had one more year, and had been getting good grades and better reviews for her careful but innovative design style. His own style was more by-the-book, with healthy safe zones and an eye toward economy of manufacturing.

They had admired each other's work, back when they were both male, and tried to learn from each other, but it worked best when they collaborated. Somehow between them they were able to toss ideas around and criticize without offense, so their joint projects came out with minimum chip-counts, few-to-no single-source devices, analog sections that didn't need tweaking, and, when micros were involved, firmware that was clean and robust.

Eric had been looking forward to getting Charlie working with him, thinking that he could pull Charlie in as an engineering technician as soon as he got a rise in position, then see how long it took until the two of them, working together, could leverage Charlie up into an engineer position alongside him.

That collaborative approach had worked beyond engineering. Anything the two of them put their heads together on, it seemed, just worked. Their two collections of music, videos and equipment, for example, went together conveniently with just two rotary switch-boxes, a few relays and some resistor networks, to even play music from or on the computers in their bedrooms when they felt like it.

And now... Charlie was just as bright, but the serious, slightly bookish guy was gone, and the girl that had taken his place, well, most of the time she was either absorbed in her changes or a ditz or both, at least when Eric was around. That started getting obvious a few weeks after she first asked him into her bed, when the other shoe dropped.

 

It was early evening; Eric had been home from work for perhaps an hour, poring over component data books for an upcoming project, when Charlie came home looking somewhere between distraught and despondent. She flatly announced, "I got my answer," and immediately threw herself down on the couch next to him.

He had been waiting for this news, so now he gave up pretending to be able to study, closed his book and put it down. He turned and studied her forlorn expression for a moment. Then, seeing that and the way that she seemed to be cringing into his space, he put an arm over her shoulders. That comfort seemed to help. She came out of her daze and looked up at him. He could tell that she'd been crying. He knew the answer then, but he asked anyway, to get her to talk it out as much as anything. "Well?"

"I... I'm not going to change back. The blocker wasn't in time; they didn't find any chimera cells anywhere. I'm all XX now. So..." She limply shrugged. "This is me from now on." She leaned forward, fumbled with the rear pocket of her jeans, and brought out something which she held out. "I got my new license. See?"

She was holding out her wallet, a man's trifold, open for his view. The stunned-looking girl pictured on the driving license seemed incongruous, nestled in the starkly simple display pocket surrounded by no-nonsense black leather. Some of that opinion must have shown on his face, because she pulled the wallet back to her, turning it around and scrutinizing it. "Guess I oughta get a purse 'n' stuff..." She looked up at him, visibly putting on a brave face, and said, "But at least now I know what to do with my old clothes, right?"

"You can go on the Pill now; that'll be reassuring."

"Already got 'em, got 'em two weeks ago. I'll be good to go in another three weeks, and then we can save on rubbers." She reached into her jacket pocket, then held up a luridly-colored box. "Meanwhile... I got you some more. Let's use one now, okay?"

"Two weeks ago?"

"Well, yeah, they said it wouldn't mess me up for the change back, because it's just hormones, and no telling how long it'd take 'em to sequence a retro... I didn't wanna wait." She waved the box in her hand. "I don't wanna wait now, either, if that's okay. I need something to cheer me up, and you're the best thing I know for that. Please?"

"Sure."

Afterwards, they were lying side by side, each with an arm around the other and holding each other close in the afterglow, when Charlie craned her neck to lift her head so that she could kiss Eric's shoulder. She sighed as she settled back into his embrace, and murmured, "Mm. That was good... And I feel safe, here with you. Safe 'n' cozy."

He smiled at that, turned his head so that he could see her better and said, "So it's not just sex anymore, is it."

Her contented expression evaporated. She turned and gave him a lost and forlorn look and shook her head, "No... not anymore." She stared off into space, saying softly, "Now I need... I dunno... I'm not sure what I need... but I know it's you. It has to be you." Suddenly she was in tears, staring at him again and saying urgently, "You're the only one I can trust!"

A little stunned at her outburst, and chagrined at having caused it, he tightened his one-armed embrace, pulling her closer to him, and reached across to gently cup her cheek with his free hand. "Calm down, Charlie... I'm here."

Her free hand came across to clutch at him. She growled, "I dunno if I can even keep my name, I mean, how's it sound, 'Charlie the girl'?"

"What does it say on your license now? I didn't think to look."

"Charlene." She took in his amused expression and added ruefully, "I know, it sounds dumb, but I couldn't think of anything."

He shrugged. "Charlie's a cute name for a girl. Isn't that the name of a perfume or something? Keep it."

"I guess."

"Well, it doesn't sound bad... And you want people to call you by a name you're used to, so you recognize it..."

"Yeah... Fine, then. If you say so, I'm still Charlie."

"Don't sound so overjoyed."

He was answered by a fresh scowl. "Well, I dunno... Maybe I was thinking of something girly, y'know, to give me a head start on being a girl."

He chuckled, put his hands under her ample breasts and hefted them, rolling their bulk between his thumbs and his palms, then caught her nipples between his fingers. "Seems to me you've got enough of a head start right here. Two of them, even."

"Silly." Smiling again, she craned her neck to look up at him, then brought up one of his hands and kissed it. "Now you've got me all horny again." She giggled, "'Please, sir, I want some more.'"

He grinned. "What's that from... 'Oliver'? You could call yourself Olivia, or Olive."

She snorted at that. Adopting a fake Russian accent, she sighed into his ear as she pulled him over onto herself, "Why don't you ask me about that... later..."

He recognized the quote and nodded agreeably, adding, "Or Tatiana," but her response was to hungrily capture his mouth with her own so that further talk was impossible as well as unnecessary.

 

In retrospect, it seemed as though a new woman arose from that bed, one who took the idea of a 'head start on being a girl' seriously. Her just-a-guy costuming was abandoned and banished. Instead, at times it was like she was trying to be Marilyn Monroe, with adopted mannerisms he could trace to specific movies they'd watched, and frilly dresses and nylons, and artful makeup and salon styling.

At least it was all tasteful if provocative. She was developing a sense of style, and, though the style wasn't what he had expected, he could appreciate her efforts and the look that resulted. He started going out with her in the evenings again, because this was a Charlie with whom he could enjoy being seen in public, taking pride in her choosing to be with him as well as pleasure in her company.

This Charlie was serious about turning her back on the past, too. One afternoon when Eric got home, there were clothes piled neatly in the hallway. Charlie stepped out of her room wearing a pleated skirt, spike heels, mesh stockings and a low-cut peasant blouse showing generous amounts of cleavage, and carrying a black leather trenchcoat. She grunted as she lifted the coat up in offering. "Here."

"Uhh... Thanks, but why?"

"You liked it; it fits you; and it's never going to fit me again."

She leaned over and peered down at her feet, and, even as he surveyed everything that the blouse might have hoped to hide, Eric got the point. In the months since her change, Charlie had gradually lost five inches in height and comparable breadth in her shoulders, as her long bones caught up with the soft-tissue changes forced by the retrovirus. The trenchcoat had been cut long for the fierce winters, and Charlie hadn't been all that tall to begin with, being more a compact shape as a man, so the coat originally came almost to his ankles. Now, with Charlie's slighter female build, the coat was likely to drag on the ground and just as likely to slip off her shoulders unless she wore it fully closed, and then it would look tackily oversized.

Eric nodded as he accepted the gift and her reason for giving it, but he looked up and held it out to her, saying, "You sure? You should hold onto it, just in case."

Halfway back to her room, she turned and showed him a bitter look. "Just in case what? Let's face it, this is how I am from now on. There are no X-to-Y viruses going around, so they must never get written." She sighed. "Whoever's making these viruses, they've gotta be no-life geeks, with the amount of engineering they put into these, so they're just gonna keep making more women until they get dates, if that ever happens. I mean, think about it -- to everybody else, it's a normal cold virus, you fight it off and get over it and it doesn't bother you again. Anybody with the right genetic profile, though, a decent-looking guy, and I was decent... All of a sudden they're no longer competition, instead they're more girls for the girl supply, just like me... And horny as hell all the frigging time too, probably..."

"Just like you."

She nodded, causing her mop of golden curls to shimmer, and, as her eyelids drooped half-closed, she said, with a shuddering sigh, "Yeah... Just like me."

Then she looked down at herself and her tone got bitter. "Just once, I'd like it so those virus writers get a taste of their own... Maybe not do quite so good a job on sequencing their own vaccines." She shrugged and added in a disgusted tone, "Of course, we'd never hear about it, but still..." She reached up to squeeze her breasts with her fingers, hard enough that Eric worried that she would cut herself open with her fingernails through the thin blouse. "It would be nice to know they had to deal with this." She dropped her hands suddenly and looked away.

"I do like how you look in that outfit, by the way. If that helps."

"It does; thanks." A little flushed, she turned and looked up at him and smirked, an expression that stressed wry self-mockery and unsuccessfully masked anxiety. "It's a present for you. Want to unwrap me now?"

His response to that anxiety was automatic. He put his briefcase and the trenchcoat down gently, then in one stride had her in his arms, giving her a fond smile as he bent over her for a kiss. "Yes, please."

 

Then her tastes seemed to change yet again, to housedresses, modest outfits that hid everything behind a prim and proper veneer. That was a surprise, but, as Eric kept reminding himself, it was better than the guy-with-tits outfits that made her look so wanton. This also was a Charlie that he could enjoy being seen in public with. Perhaps she was doing this to reclaim ownership of her changed body, and that had to be a good thing.

Next, she started in on redecorating the place with pink stuff and pastels and muted aquas, like she was propagating her new tastes in clothing outward in all directions, and that was not a good thing.

At first it was just her bedroom which developed frills and lacy gauziness, and that was her territory so it was all right. That, too, Eric tried to take in stride. Certainly his own room had his own stamp of identity on it, from the test equipment under the desk to the three walls of bookshelves. It was understandable that Charlie would change her space to fit the way she saw herself now.

Lately, though, she was invading the common areas as well with the changes. She had the money to spend and she spent it, and the apartment was starting to look domestic to the point of kitsch as a result, with little bric-a-brac shelves nailed to the walls, and artful decorative arrangements everywhere he used to put his feet up, and no wall surface left untouched anywhere that was large enough to hang a schematic or a listing, let alone an extended Gantt chart.

He'd always known that the place could stand some sprucing up, but now it was getting too cluttered for his liking, putting his teeth on edge and making him feel crowded. He spent more time in his own room as a result, working on what interested him, and trying to ignore the festering cloud of homely clutter, through which it seemed like he couldn't see Charlie anymore, much less his own home. Certainly he could no longer see a Charlie he recognized.

As he retreated more and more into his room, Charlie started following him in, bringing him his dinner and lingering in his bedroom while he ate. When he was just browsing the Internet that wasn't so bad, because they could share that, and trade barbed comments about what they saw. Sometimes he could hear her wit in those conversations, and that was enjoyable.

Other times, though, he was engaged in other pursuits which he didn't want to have to interrupt. Such as tonight, when she showed up at his door wearing a sheer nightie that hid absolutely nothing, making it painfully obvious that she had decided to shave her pubes. She sat down on the end of his bed, well within touching distance of where he sat at his desk, and said softly, "Hey... I'm lonely. Can I curl up with you tonight?"

He glanced back at the monitor. "Umm. Sure."

This would have been a good time to tell her about his latest little project. In fact, it was just the kind of project that they'd both enjoyed in the past: he was trying to cram a timetable of lights, radio and alarm sounds into a microcontroller's memory, making it as tight as possible to fit.

The power in the city had been a little unreliable lately, and, every time there was a glitch or outage, his alarm clock would sit there, dark or blinking 12:00, rather than wake him up. Not that its waking him up was a sure thing even when the power was steady: he really needed some lights turned on, and then the radio, and then the alarm, in that order, to drag him out of deep slumber. A small microcontroller could do all that, keeping time and turning on relays in event-chains on a schedule which varied for weekends and holidays, and display the time just like a simple alarm clock.

It was a personal design challenge, to pull something together quickly to run on rechargeable batteries when the power was out, and then live with the result. It was cheaper than putting the computer on a UPS and leaving it up all night, and good practice with small-system embedded design. The other part of the challenge was to do the complete design, both hardware and firmware, using nothing but open-source software, to test how close that had gotten to professional usability.

The two of them used to share challenges like that through their three shared years of school, collaborating on interesting projects. Now it was all as if in an alien language to Charlie, she was so far removed from involvement. She still had the intellect, he could tell, but it looked like she was refusing to use it that way anymore, and that was a frustrating waste.

Maybe, though, this was the right time to bring it up.

With that in mind, he pointed at the screen and said, "Actually, I was hoping I could get your help in this; it'll be another fun project for the both of us. I've done my usual kind of design, but, even after taking in the usual tucks, it won't all fit in the memory, and I don't want to have to put in a bigger part..."

He paused, watching, as her eyes flickered across the screen, taking it all in briefly with a blank expression, before settling on his crotch. Only then did her expression show any sign of life. Now he was feeling annoyed and cheated, and controlling his temper because he knew he could be furious if he dwelt on it. He said, low and hard, "You're just not interested, are you? Are you going to even stick it out for your degree?"

She recoiled as if struck. "I try! There's just a lot on my mind these days... A lot. It's not as easy as it was, any of it." She had a lost look about her, now, as her gaze rapidly alternated between his face and the monitor's screen, obviously avoiding looking at anything below his neck. He sensed that, for whatever reason, she was on the edge of desperation or tears or both.

Gently but firmly, he countered, "Charlie, you're acting as if becoming female has made you stupid. Well, I don't buy it. There are plenty of brilliant women in the world, and I know you're one of them."

"...And how distracted are they..."

"Distracted? By what?"

"Well... Keeping up the place, cooking dinner, decorating..." Her voice trailed off, leaving whatever else was on her list unsaid.

"I don't know as I want the decorating, but the rest are joint jobs, they always have been. You act like we're married."

"Well, that's how I get through the day!"

"What!"

At his outburst, she cringed, then shook her head and muttered in a low, lost tone, "All those guys. And I know if I started doing any of that I couldn't stop, and then I'd be just the kind of bimbo they want me to be, whoever did this to me. So I pretend to myself that we're married and I have to stay faithful, which I wanna do anyway. And I wear wifey stuff to remind myself, and so the guys get turned off by it all so I don't have to fight all those feelings when they come onto me."

She looked up at him again with anguish in her eyes, half-whispering, "See? There it is! The big secret. I'm always distracted, now, always wet. The only way I keep any kind of control over myself is by pretending I'm your wife." She gave a bitter half-sobbing laugh. "Helluva way for a guy from a varsity family to end up, ain't it? And I know it's not fair to you! You didn't ask for this. You put up with me, I know, and, believe me, I'm grateful that you put up with me, but then..." Her expression got resigned, accompanied by a ragged sigh, almost a sob. "Then I have to think about how it all feels to you. So I try to dress it up to make it better for you. And dress me up too. So if you have to put up with someone being your wife without your permission, at least it's a good wife. But it's not working, is it..."

She took in his stunned expression and averted her gaze, grimacing almost into sobbing before she regained control and managed to say through her tears, "I'm sorry, it's just... This is so totally fucked up. I'm trying to be a real girl for you, and I'm just pissing you off, I can see that--" She clutched the air in futility, and her face took on a panicky expression. "--But I don't know what to do..." Her expression crumpled; suddenly she had lunged forward from the end of the bed, holding him tight, and was sobbing openly against his chest while he sat there in shock. When she managed to continue, her voice was almost a moan. "It's just... When I changed, I woke up, and you were standing there in just your boxers, and you were helping me with all this, you were soooo caring..." She sniffled and shook her head. "I've been in lust with you ever since, wanting you in the worst way all the time; maybe I'm in love with you too, I don't know. Which is weird, because I never noticed you like that before I changed. And I've been trying to make it worth your while because you matter so much to me--" Now she was reared back, staring blindly up into his face as fresh tears erupted. "--and all I do is push you away--" She sat back, hiding her broken sobbing behind her hands, defeated and alone in that moment.

He sighed and pulled her back into his embrace. She resisted momentarily, then came willingly, still hiding her face in her hands even as he held her to his chest, and he pulled her gently into his lap while he thought about all of this.

He had known she had to be hurting from everything the change had done to her life, and now he was annoyed with himself for not having seen what her efforts meant; he was just as clueless as she was. Change or no change, she was a good friend, and gradually something a lot deeper since the change had driven them into intimacy. They wouldn't have lasted as roommates this long otherwise. Now he felt like a part of him was hurting with her, filling him with guilt for letting her down.

There had to be more than sex for this to work; and there was, if he could finally get over that long-ago 'just-sex' rebuff. This person in his lap was a good friend with whom he had developed the rhythms of a warm friendship, and at times a partnership, and, yes, a warm and unexpectedly deep affection, otherwise he wouldn't have gotten so angry at what he saw as fakery. She could only stretch just so far, though, to fill all the roles left in the interaction; he had to do some stretching too... and he hadn't thought of her as anything but the girl she presented herself as in quite a while. So, just whose fault was this anyway?

Now it felt as if there was no barrier, nothing between them but an empty space she had just given up on trying to get him to help her fill, and some of it was his fault, a fault he needed to fix. There were possibilities here. She was willing to see beyond the past and try a new interaction; was he? Could he persuade her to help him fill the empty space in the right way, a way that was honest?

"Hey..."

She looked up with wet eyes but said nothing.

"We wouldn't be doing this if I didn't like you. You can get a little annoying sometimes, but..."

As hunched as she was in his lap, still now she seemed to cringe further, and he bit his lip in disgust at himself. That wasn't how this had to go. He had to make the point, though, somehow.

"You remember Janie? I met her down at the pub."

She responded in a hurt tone, "Yeah. So you're already attached? That sure didn't stop you--"

"Nonono. I haven't seen her in over a year. We went out twice, we had some good times, but that was it. There was nothing there. No contact, and nothing in common."

She waited, then said in a still-hurt voice, "So...?"

"So there is, for us. I like how your mind works when you're tackling a design. I like how we work together to solve stuff, and my approach and your approach work better together than either of us could have done alone. In engineering and in a lot of other stuff too. Dammit, I miss that... that working together. That sharing. See, you're beautiful, and that's great, but what I really like to watch is your mind, because it's beautiful too, it's something I admired back when we were both guys. So, how about this..."

He thought for a moment, putting his words in order while she watched him intently, then continued, "I like you, and I like how we are in bed, and I like you when you're being the girl you really are... but I miss my friend, too." He registered her intense gaze and smiled apologetically at her, and said softly, "How about if you just don't worry about how to be a girl. You're already that. Work on being a girlfriend instead. There're two parts to that, girl and friend, and you don't have to worry about the girl part. Like I said, your body's taking care of that... but I need my friend back, okay? Quit hiding: I really miss you. For this to work, you really have to give me my friend back. Please."

Her jaw dropped. Then her expression lightened as she thought. "So..."

Now he kissed her, and said, "So, if you'll stop trying to be who you think I want, just let all that go and just be you, I think it'll work. The things we used to share, I still like to share... want to share... with you."

"And you still want to--"

More confident now that she was hearing what he meant to say, he nuzzled her cheek with his forehead and murmured, "I told you, your body's taking care of the girl part."

Now she grinned with relief and anticipation, and asked, "Can we do some of that, and then see what you've got so far? 'Cuz I meant what I said, I want you in the worst way..." As she got up from his lap, she took in his wry expression and laughed through her tears, "Well, actually I want you in the best way, but I'll take what I can get!"

Smiling, he got up from his desk chair and pulled her down onto the bed with him. He kissed her, and let her work his pajamas off him while he peeled her out of her nightgown. Then there was a moment where they lay side by side, and her gaze traversed him from bottom to top, while his did the same to her, cataloging her shapeliness and freshly judging it desirable.

When he took her by the shoulder and pulled her close, she clutched at him, seeking softly for his mouth, and there was still an anxious desperation in her hungry kiss. He gathered her up in his lap, his erection between them, and her fist softly closed on it even as he kissed her breasts and softly stroked her back. He realized that she needed to know that he wanted her too, so he turned, gently pressing her down onto the bed, onto her back, and took her securely in his arms, trying to communicate with a kiss that could go deep enough into their feelings to find the friend that had gotten hidden within her. Meanwhile, he began to tease and caress her, working at giving the girl in his arms the best avenues to joy that he could open for her.

 

Some time later, sated, she sat wrapped up in his bathrobe, perched in his naked lap as he sat in his chair, the both of them momentarily staring idly into the fluorescent starscape vistas of his screensaver. He took a moment to savor his view of her, now that it felt safe to acknowledge the attraction. He really did like how it profiled her face. He wasn't lying: she was beautiful when she wasn't hiding it behind fake beauty and trying to mimic a complete marriage all by herself.

A marriage, though... He idly thought about that, trying it on in his mind. Wife? Her? Hm, well, why not? It felt familiar, and now it felt good, too. Maybe that was how it should go, if she could still focus that brilliant mind of hers. Without it, they had nothing but sex, really. With it, they had a good foundation for the deepening of the fondness that he already felt for her. That was the key, then. And, if that worked, then they probably belonged married; he certainly didn't want to lose the possibilities...

As she forgot the robe, it drooped open, letting the dim light of the screen shine on her breasts, and he smiled at that even as he enjoyed the view. He realized that she belonged like that, too, really, and that the casual closeness of their sex was another aspect of their sharing, sharing emotions and bodies. It was something to be valued, as long as it didn't replace the sharing of thoughts and minds of the past three years.

Now Charlie shrugged the robe off her shoulders and arms, letting it drape around her hips, and said over her shoulder, "I only need it down below, until I stop dripping." She put on a pout as she said that, and they shared a commiserating smile before she turned back to the screen.

She casually flicked out one slender index finger and nudged the mouse with it, and the screensaver went away, revealing a group of xterms and CAE windows on a KDE desktop. She squinted, concentrating, and eventually commented softly, "Oh. Yeah. I see what you mean; you got it pretty tight already. Hmm...."

She leaned in, scrutinizing first his schematic and then his code, occasionally clicking windows up to the front with the mouse and scrolling them. Even at this angle, he could see the extra spark in her eyes, the extra focus of her intellect at work, and it felt like something within him welled up, warm and full and grateful at the sight.

Now she brought the header file up to the front of the group, skimmed through it, and smiled. "Good, you've tokenized events already." She leaned forward again.

He automatically closed his arms around her waist, resting on the wadded bathrobe. His thumbs started idly caressing the skin of her belly as he watched her face. At that, she turned her head and looked down, met his gaze and smiled, then she pulled his hands up so that they covered her breasts, and patted them gently.

Then, with his hands still firmly cupping her, she leaned in with one elbow on the mouse pad, that hand under her chin, and her free hand pointing at the screen, and asked, "Do you need that much precision in the time-of-day? MS-DOS only kept filetimes down to two seconds; you've got tenth-of-a-second here. Does your micro even have enough horsepower to make that kind of precision worthwhile?"

"Barely, but if this thing drives relay closures it'll matter. You know, power-up sequencing."

"Oh, yeah; okay." He watched her eyes tighten as her gaze danced over the screen as she thought, and admired how her intelligence looked when shining through such a beautiful face. Then she pointed at the header file again and murmured, "Hmm, how about..."

 

Half an hour later, working together, suggesting and stepwise refining ideas between them in rapid exchange, they had cut three components from the bill-of-materials, reduced the storage-per-event requirement by a third and were optimizing the state-machine that would handle the events. He was leaning his head around her, looking for any more air they could squeeze out of the design, and idly stroking the bare skin of her back as he did so.

Suddenly, she twisted around grinning, took his cheeks in her hands, pulled his mouth up and kissed him. She said, "I missed this too. Thank you."

He wrapped his arms around her again, smiled up at her and said, "Welcome back," and she kissed him again, harder.

"Dear friend...," she breathed as she let him go, and her eyes glittered with moisture in the light of the display as she said it, even as she smiled.

He grinned. "My feelings exactly." He pulled her down for another kiss.

Hacker slice-of-life: an introspective moment with someone who got a lot more than she expected from his old equipment.

---

Hookups

--Kiai 29aug04/13jan05

 

 

'It's all about the hookups. A place to stay; a place to work; a place to eat; a place to browse... and time to get used to it all.'

That was her short list: that was what you needed when you stepped through the looking-glass.

'Not everything is topsy-turvy. Most places and things still make sense, it's the people and the ideas they exchange that are all screwed up. That's the nouns; the verbs, well... they all change when the pronouns do.

'So, who has the easier time of it, the loner or the social animal? Being a loner can only go so far: you still need people, even if you need to stay apart from them. The rogue wants to stay in sight of the herd after all; that makes each contact count for more.

'You don't need more than a few contacts to survive, though, and they can be replenished. I guess I like being a loner better.'

Not so long ago, this particular loner was a technician in his mid-forties, content if not satisfied at his job, and regarding Boston's "Peace of Mind" as his theme music.

That was before he got all the new hardware, not actually new but new to him, from among all the stuff in, on and next to the dumpsters behind the hi-tech buildings. Or, at least, so she presumed.

New technology had a thing, it seemed, about jettisoning good old computers. It was amazing what you could do with them: fix them up, put Linux on them, and give them to friends who didn't have computers yet, who didn't know how powerful they made you become. You could try out various distributions, too, with all those boxes.

There was always something new you could do with those older boxes, but maybe sometimes they might do something new to you... She never went dumpster-diving anymore, now, instead she looked for the roadside finds left out in front of upscale suburban houses on trash day.

Back when she was a he, it started with a cluster of three beige boxes he noticed, sitting beside an overflowing dumpster. There were nearly a dozen more inside it, all smeared with used coffee grounds and last year's annual reports for a company he had never heard of. They were a gold mine of usable technology, and he took them all home in three trips. They had sound cards, network cards and decent drives, and most of them had decent display adapters. There were even a few 10base-only hubs waiting to be scrounged.

After cleaning them out and reloading them, he hooked up a cluster of them into their own network, and then they were a musical playground for Csound and Timidity and Lilypond and Audacity and any other open-source music program he could get to compile on them.

It was amazing what you could dump out of a soundcard if you were willing to compose the waveform yourself. The card's main output was just a DAC, after all, a sixteen-bit digital-to-analog converter, the same wordlength that a CD used to store music. Rather than do it all on one overworked machine, you could have six machines, all dumping their outputs into a passive mixer and then straight into another soundcard to record to hard disk.

'Have to see about grabbing the output as thirty-two-bit ints and summing them across the network instead. I'll lose a lot of noise that way as the cluster gets bigger. I can pipe the sounds through more soft effects, too... when I get around to it.'

Right now, it was still more fun to play around and see what sounded interesting, whether it was ambience with an amplitude-modulation techno beat and FM scratches, bell-like microtonal clusters of sinewaves, or sound-trails, like listening to the misty shape of Bridal Veil Falls.

Maybe she should put together a second cluster for working on that network mixdown idea? That way she wouldn't take a chance on messing up her current music system until the new one was working. There were plenty of beige boxes to commit to it, after all: nearly a dozen were sitting, cleaned up and waiting, in the corner.

The first step was always to vacuum them out. The layers of dust inside formed an unwelcome blanket buffering the chips from the cooling airflow, making them run hotter and wear out earlier. Even the ones found behind research labs. Especially those.

'You need a breathing mask on yourself, and a wet filter on the exhaust port of the vacuum cleaner. It could have been lethal. I was lucky to get off so lightly, I know that now...'

There was no telling where these machines had been or what they had been exposed to, but it was all recorded in the tendrils of dust that built up inside. Tiny spider webs, fibers from furniture, carpeting and clothing, and anything that was dusty when it spilled or when it dried or was tracked in, were all sucked in by the cooling fans and deposited in microgeological layers all over the circuit boards and the devices soldered onto them.

Disturb those layers and you revisited that secret history. Without a wet filter on the vacuum, you sifted the finer particles right through the collection bag and out into the air... your air. With just the right blend of that dust, from just the right sequence of computers discarded across several nearby industrial parks on a particularly good dumpster-diving day...

She was under for a week, in deep shock in an ICU, while her soft tissues adapted to the imposed new state. All her prior memories were recorded from a male role's viewpoint, with male hormonal biases and implicit self-image expectations. Everything from her awakening onward was recorded into memory filtered by female brain patterns and hormonal biases and an unfamiliar new shape, with no automatic role perspective from which to judge and evaluate them. She no longer had a male role in the play of conversation and civility, but she had not been trained from birth in the girl's part in the script.

It was liberating, refreshing, and confusing unto dizziness, because everything that mattered had to be examined for validity. A lot of habitual evaluations were now reversed in polarity and had to be resolved with her history by introspection. "Boobs-exposed" was now only mildly "opportunity", whereas "stiff dick in public" was no longer "don't look or they'll think you're queer". Even "skirt" was no longer "what does it expose", instead it was now "what does it cover, is it warm enough, and does it match the rest of the outfit". Habit kept the naked female body interesting and arousing, but now a tight male butt was too, naturally so, which made for embarrassingly obvious triple-takes: "Look -- avoid looking -- never mind all that and look".

'Some people would kill for this...'

"Karen? Karen?"

'Oh, yeah, that's my name now... and that's Mike calling it.'

She turned to call out to the open doorway, "In here! I'm swapping a box in the sound cluster."

His voice got closer, clearer. "Oh, okay. How long?"

In a moment he was at the doorway, his darkly electric eyes meeting hers, taking in her appearance and surroundings in the periphery. He stepped in, carefully through the clutter of tools and cables, and leaned in to kiss her uplifted cheek.

"Another fifteen minutes, maybe."

"Cool." He grinned and turned away, walking over to his console, leaving her free to return her attention to her task and her musings.

Despite all the sampling and the laboratory investigations, they never found out what it was that caused it, whether it was the dust from one place or the combination from a few.

'Will I ever revert? Probably not. The male is XY; the female is XX, a foundation subset. We all start out looking female, before androgen brings the boys out to play. And that Y chromosome is a complex little self-contained knot, that much I know from reading the news on the Net. What can replicate it once it's gone?

'Mike's okay. He knows not to push when I'm feeling pressured. Just like girls who started out that way, sometimes I just want to snuggle and be warm and cozy, and sometimes even that's too much proximity because I need my space. And then again, sometimes I need... Well, yeah, sometimes I need. Heh.'

Box by box, she shelled into each one of the machines on this little network and put it into an orderly shutdown. When the last one, the one the KVM box was currently switched to, displayed "Power down," she went down the row, flipping power switches. The relative quiet left behind as their fans stopped reminded her of the hospital they took her to when, still outwardly male but feeling woozy, she collapsed at work as the change got visibly underway.

'Imagine if I hadn't been at work when I went into a coma... I spent a week in that coma while my guts were rearranged. Then recovery: that was three weeks in a hospital, with people in dark suits coming by to ask me everything... but they saw me change. Imagine if it happened at home, how hard it would be to prove I was me... assuming I survived, that is.'

And then, of course, there were the months afterward while the biological changes were propagated outward into the documents that cluttered this civilization, and onward into society itself. The ripples were reflected back as more 'suits' visiting haphazardly to ask just one more question, scrutinize her setup and her movements from just one more angle, and negotiate just one more tweak of their noninvasive but pervasive monitoring of her life.

When she got her vacuum cleaner back, it was cleaner than it had ever been since she bought it, and that was as amusing as it was surprising. She knew that everything which was in it when they took it was now in HazMat confinement in a laboratory somewhere. For all they knew, though, the missing component of the catalyst could have been something in one of the dumpsters she had raided over the past year or so: hi-tech used heavy metals and rare earths a lot, and they were persistent.

Still, she didn't even start feeling strange until she cleaned those boxes, and that was days after the pickup run that brought them home, so one or more of the ingredients in that ambient potion had to have been vacuumed up out of a computer into her handheld vacuum cleaner and thus into her breathing space.

She glanced over at the vacuum cleaner. Her gaze was drawn to the new wet-filter housing over the exhaust port. Mike built and attached that for her shortly after they got together, after he asked why a post-op had periods and she told him the truth. It used moist drip-coffee filters, in a stack to lower its impedance, in a parallel "sandwich-seal" arrangement like a monolithic ceramic capacitor. It was an elegant hack that applied learned electron-flow behavior to moving air.

Mike said that, before, he wouldn't have much cared if it happened to him, because new hardware was always fun, but now that he knew her he wanted to stay plug-compatible with her. And keep her alive and safe, of course.

She realized, with a quick glance at the back of Mike's head, that she hadn't really looked in a while at how the finessing of that compatibility was proceeding. She stood up and took a quick peek in the closest mirror, one of the many that now cluttered the place. She was analyzing that mental snapshot as she knelt back down by the machine she was replacing. The bones of her face were still softening. They were less angular now. 'All that bone is draining down into my hips, following my femaleness around, surrounding that new cluster of organs that I never had when I was a man... Hm, well, that's not quite true.'

After it happened, she read up on it, all over the Net. What was between her legs had never been an 'undifferentiated smear in the pelvic region'. It had all gone from being testicles to being ovaries, scrotum to labia, with a penis which faded inside to peer out from behind a protective hood which was once foreskin... And, who knows where all the intricate details of the uterus were drawn from, but they were all there before in male camouflage, fully functional but just waiting to be reconfigured and repurposed. Even the Skenes Gland, one of her absolutely favorite parts of her new shape, at least when Mike was putting his hands on and in her, had once been an unremarkable prostate.

Now she stared down at the deceptive smoothness of her torso in the area below the crease of her tee-shirt that represented her bellybutton, thinking about what was hidden within it.

'That's one complex piece of machinery, the more complex for being made out of meat, my meat. It's a hormone-driven state-machine, running one sequence now, my menses. It's a two-piston blood engine, because the ovaries alternate their egg deliveries. If I ever decide to do anything with it, it'll run a different sequence, one that runs for forty weeks and takes over the whole damn system before it emits the result, and the return-value is a new person...

'How in the world does that much state-logic get designed into meat and coded into strands of protein? And, even more tricky, it's like Thompson's backdoored C compiler: those ovaries come complete with eggs, so it's already completed seeing to its replication by the time a girl is born. I wonder whose daughters mine are, whose compiler they're carrying. What a moby hack...'

Even as she was getting acquainted with her new hardware, the Men In Suits moved her to a new town and a new circle of acquaintances. They got her into a new job there so that references on her resume wouldn't be checked and open her to awkward questions about her gender and how she acquired it. They even eased her into a condo and a decent used car and a falsified medical history which stated that she had been through SRS. They also ordered her to stop dumpster-diving, and signed her up to get offered the older hardware coming out of their offices so she would comply.

They were thus paying her to pass herself off as a post-op transsexual and shut up about the fact that something environmental, something that humans were doing to the environment in their rush to technological mastery of the planet, could change a person's sex as easily as that of a clownfish. She could understand why: as long as it didn't happen again, or happen too often, it wouldn't cause a panic. A panic, about something like that in the wrong hands, was likely to make heads roll in the places where political power was gathered and kept. They were paying the problem to go away, and they kept checking to make sure it stayed bought.

'Now they're offering me therapy... Therapy for what? They don't know what caused this, they don't know what it's like, and they don't know what's going to happen to me. That whole therapy group looks military, anyway, so this is probably more them putting a monitor in place for if I'm losing it, so they can catch me before it goes public. That, and summarize anything interesting to their researchers.

'Therapy for them, then, and I guess they need it. Fine; an hour a month gives me a face to talk to if I need something. Me, I just take it as it comes, I guess.

'I got over it, really, as soon as my first period was over. That was as bad as it gets unless I decide to make a baby inside me; that's reassuring.'

Her mother had made a comment once: "Take care of your teeth: an infected tooth hurts worse than birth-labor." In spite of the advice, she had one wisdom tooth that went that way, during her forty-plus years of being a man.

'I know how bad that was, so I know childbirth's not that bad. I handled that tooth long enough to get it pulled; I know I can handle pushing out a baby. Do I need to, though?

'Some of it depends on the guy, I guess. But, then, do I want some guy in my life all the time, inescapable, because we're both parents to a child of mine?'

As she plugged all the cabling into the back of the computer she was swapping into the cluster, she tried to imagine being a mother, being tethered to her timeline by a child at the breast who was latched on in abject dependence for eighteen years and never really letting go thereafter. The faceless guy, tethered to her by the baby, and always wanting back inside her to make another one, was easier to visualize, but just as foreign.

'Not yet. I'm still adjusting to being me. For now, let's let the new hardware be the baby.'

She brought the back of her wrist up against the bulk of her breast, compressing it upward, reminding herself of how pleasantly firm and fresh it all was. Then, to even out the sensations, she brought it up against the other one, pushing it up and then allowing it to recoil back into place in turn. No sodden sacks of skin, these breasts: they had real substance. She smiled.

'I've got time. Whatever did this, it reset the aging sequencer. I'm probably something like 22 or 23 inside, they said. I've got time to decide. I'm not at the use-it-or-lose-it point yet.'

She had enough company in her life already: a housemate who was sometimes a mate. Mike.

'Another loner like me, and that suits me just fine. I'm still hooking up my networks, deciding where my signal's gonna go...' She smiled at the thoughts that had come out to play amid her introspection. 'Although...'

She looked up from the cluster, pulling an errant fall of hair out of the way as she did so, to stare at Mike some more. He was intent at the keyboard, and he looked so sharpened, so powerful, that way... His looks agreed with his inner being in that moment, presenting his inner fire to his work. It was escaping through his eyes, its flickers of flame dancing across the screen, waiting to pounce with unexpected thoughts and new ideas.

He was a true hacker: one of those who liked to improve the things around them. They were called 'hackers' because they started by daring to modify things they didn't fully understand, hacking away machete-like at all the implicit hookups until they made things run their way, however inelegant the solution. Then they did it again, smarter this time, using what they'd learned from the first try, but still committing a hatchet-job on the code's prior meanings.

She supposed she was probably a hacker, too, of sorts, but more on the hardware side of things where the hatchet job was all too obvious, a kluge for all to see. 'A hardware hacker with hacked hardware...' She snorted an inner laugh at that thought.

'And then you get better than that, of course: more refined as you learn to intuit what isn't in the documents or comments, only in the code itself, and how it implies what it's connected to. You develop an elegant deftness, aiming for that butterfly touch where you insert one line that changes everything as it folds over the problem space into the solution space, in the sublime perfection of the true hack.' Mike had told her that: that was how he did it, and that was how it felt to him, at least on good days.

She liked to look at that, and liked even more to be involved with it. It didn't matter somehow that he was male or that she used to be, instead it was those hands of his, expressive and powerful and trembling with eagerness at the keyboard, waiting to be unleashed. And, sometimes, with her permission, those hands were unleashed on her, on her hookups, solving her loneliness and his with the connections they made.

She went over to him and gently put her hands on his shoulders, gently rubbing his shoulder-blades with her thumbs as she peered at his screen, comfortable in waiting.

He leaned his head so that his hair caressed the back of her hand. It was an acknowledgement and an offer even as his gaze never wavered from the screen, from the code he was mentally flensing out of its obscurity.

She responded by leaning down against him, letting her breasts compress against his shoulderblades, and felt him lean back against her, increasing the compression, in acknowledgement. She breathed lightly against the nape of his neck, where his braid crossed his collar, and then straightened up and walked away.

She knew that, when he was done with his current task, she would now be at the head of his queue. This was as it should be: he had awaited her attentions and now she was awaiting his, each respectful of the other's processes. She kept all of her interruptions maskable; he returned the trust by assigning her a high priority. As she settled into her new state of arousal, she was consciously doing the same for him.

She walked back over to the cluster. The machine she had pulled out was the slowest of them all, as well as having the crappiest sound card. She already had another use for it in mind, one where she didn't need the sound card at all.

Console unit last, she walked down the line of machines, flipping switches, powering up the cluster, and sat down to watch the boot-time system messages scrolling past. The last item in this machine's rc.local was a ping of all the other boxes on the little network, to check that they had all booted up normally. That script reported good responses from everything, paused for her to read the result, and then the machine started the X layer, switched the screen mode and began composing the overlaying that made up a graphic logon screen.

She logged into the desktop. Then she smiled and looked over at Mike, trying to estimate his time-to-response. Judging by his hunched posture and intent look, she had a few minutes yet before he would get around to servicing her request. She grinned and launched the cluster into the first movement of Beethoven's Third Symphony. It was music that he liked to make love to her by, and that suited her current mood just fine.

Mike turned and grinned over at her, then turned back to his screen with evident new zeal. She knew she was distracting him now, a little, but it was still his choice when and how to respond as his grin promised her he would. She looked him over while she listened and waited, enjoying the fierce look about him as he attacked and defeated incompetence in his own or someone else's code yet again, actively disallowing dissatisfaction. The memory of all the times he applied that zeal to her in his bed aroused her even more now.

She shelled into the new machine and created a directory there for all her music tooling. By now, she had a shell script that would fetch, configure, compile and install each of those applications in turn. She checked the free disk space, then copied over and started that installation script; it would run to completion unattended even as the music played.

She looked over at Mike again. He was typing in quick bursts, which meant that he probably had everything solved in his head and was committing his changes to code. Soon, she knew, he would type a few more lines, faster still for being rote commands, then loudly slap the Enter key on the last command. Then he would turn in his chair and look at her intently.

She sighed and folded her arms across her breasts. Now that she was noticing them, they tingled a little at the tips and ached for attention within. She tightened her arms to squeeze them, causing them to tingle and ache even more. She pressed her thumbs against her nipples, feeling them hardening and teasing her own hunger. She would be ready when he responded. Her older body was recycled and ready for new uses while she cautiously redid her hookups and decided what networks she would join. For now, that would do.

Sharing a history can be harder than having one, but we have to try. Is this a true projection? We won't know until we get there.

---

Island Run

--Kiai 16Mar03/23nov03

 

 

The full moon is overhead, filling in anywhere that your headlight beam cannot. Before you is an archipelagic coastline that, counting interconnecting bridges as well as islands, just goes on and on and on beyond your front wheel, and the bike beneath you howls at them all as it lunges to meet them.

It is a pleasantly warm humid night. The coastal air is making your gloves slightly sweaty from the outside in, dampening the loose cotton clothing under your leathers, as if someone you like is breathing down your collar and up your sleeves... a lover's close attentions delivered out of the night by motorcycle. It insinuates its way beneath your jacket and bells out your shirt a little, idly caressing your unbound breasts. Focused as you are on the curves and turns of the road as it winds its way down the island chain, you idly submit to this invisible fondling, letting it arouse you a little, warm you up for what lies ahead.

The suppressed howl of the semiturbine engine is like a joyous scream that only you can hear, it seems so faint compared to the rush of wind past your helmet. Everything seems to focus into full-moon intensity, coming into an emotional clarity devoid of pretense or precedent, an extended moment that has lasted since you set out on this trip over an hour ago.

The mild waves glitter with moonlight, amusing themselves in solitude on their beaches as you pass. The metal roadbed grid of each bridge roars beneath your wheels, punctuating the smoother hiss of the concrete roadbed across each island. The road teases you with its slow count of alternations, each change in tone marking one step closer to your lover.

You have been lovers for most of the past year, but this appointment is special. It has been well over a year for the both of you, a full turn of seasons since each of you accepted the change, and now at last the both of you have mastered it.

For as long as you have known him, he has been a man who used to be a woman and remembers it all jealously. Even that first time, as he drove you into the wildest of passions, you could tell from his expert touch at your most intimate sensitivities, the masterful way in which he steered your ecstacies, that he knew with innate familiarity everything that he touched. In time, he even passed along ways he knew that you could best satisfy yourself when he could not be with you, trusting you with his cherished secret memories.

Now, for the first time, with your new-found control of your change, you can give him what he has been missing.

A year ago and more, weeks before the two of you ever met, you took the change at the same time. In the months since that first encounter, you have watched the signs of renewal, the visible indications of immortality, as they have stealthily erased the craggy lines from his face, rebuilt his musculature, replanted his hairline and stolen away with his aging.

Only his eyes have never changed: old, with a stark wisdom of bitter years, a charm that comes of long experience with weighing and sifting the essential and dismissing the ephemeral without offense, and an irony that comes from realizing that life is a battle fought in inevitable retreat.

That, at least, has changed: advances in genetics and quantum shifts have made possible advances in the battle of life, but the price is the change that goes with that.

Over the past year, you have explored how you express yourself as a woman who was once a man, learning this shape. Now there is the opportunity to explore further. It is not a reversion, of course: for all its habit and history, your mind has been made female by the year's journey in a woman's brain.

It is your natural form, now, after all. No matter how early in the day or late in the evening you assert your willed control over your form and put on your rejuvenated old male face, you will inevitably revert to this shape while you sleep; there can be no persistence. This youthful reflection of the best that your genes can deliver to a woman is too far removed from your ancient manhood.

You took on the change out of necessity, uncertain of anything other than life and prepared to defend that alone. The sharing that you have found with him, though, has made it all worthwhile. His patience with your menopause-in-reverse, as your female hormones and rhythms flared alight amid turbulence, eased your confusion and discomfort, as he lightened your distress with anecdotes of his own transition to crone. His lustiness for your elder form, even when all you saw of yourself was faded hair and wrinkled skin and withered breasts, helped you to embrace the changes as they restored your figure and face, sweeping away even that final familiarity of age.

He was on the journey with you, after all. Even then, you could see the youthening of his face, close up in the intimate disarray that followed lovemaking, as he struggled not to doze off, and then see in that slightly younger man's dark eyes the caring and the desire he held for you. As the year-mark approached for both of you, you could see in his eyes his delight at a promise fulfilled as he surveyed your youthful figure, fascinated by your loins and your breasts and then your face. He has returned to youth with you and held you close the while; and now he waits for you.

Now you wind down the motor, turning off the main highway into the streets of the island town where he lives, and it is with a sense of fulfillment that you find your space and park the bike. The engine shuts down with a plaintive note, as if surprised that the road would not last forever, but you are intent on what comes next. You pull your helmet off and settle it on your arm, then turn to where the overshadowing trees cloak the ground from the streetlights, where you two have stood sheltered many a time, where you know that your young man must be waiting.

He moves out of the shadows, smiling, and you move to embrace him and kiss him. Then you step back to look him over anew, and your eyes meet his as he does the same with you: nothing is to be taken for granted, now, not since the rules have been amended once again.

Savoring each others' approving gaze is enough for awhile. It is he that first breaks the silence, ready to move onward. Even so, it is in a lover's whisper, at once intimate and urgent and vulnerable, that he says, "Shall we try it?"

You give him back that throaty whisper. "Let's."

He nods. "Yes, let's."

"You first, then."

He concentrates, standing there with eyes closed for long moments, and then he shrinks in upon himself a little in becoming female. You are surprised to see the youthful face she shows, surprised to see her shapely lithe figure unscarred by motherhood. You already knew his female form was attractive to you, because you had offered old photos to each other, but this sylph is like a new dawn, as if time has forgiven her all her earlier experiences.

She leans over, looking down at herself, then back up at you as if proud to show you what she has become. She smiles and gestures broadly, and her directness shows in her bearing.

"Now you."

So you close your eyes and you focus within, finding the presence in the emptiness of self, as you were taught, and you assert without asserting, and then you feel the breasts slip away. The once-was-permanent presence between your legs is back again, clinging to the skin of your thighs once more, no longer unnoticed, now obtrusive. You shrug the heavy jacket into place around your wider shoulders and settle the waistband of your pants on your narrower hips, drowning out the private sensations with overtly public ones.

"Oh, yes..."

"Well, thank you, ma'am." Even now, you can feel the female within you, inescapable: it is what you are, after all, and it is permeating your viewpoint and your attitude. This shape, the gender you were born into, seemingly a double lifetime ago, is your alternate shape now and you know it. "Perhaps we should..."

"Right now?"

"Well..."

Perhaps you're more assertive with it for it being forced; or perhaps there are aspects of your old behavior, with the old viewpoint's underpinnings, that are striking sparks on her year-old manliness by their implicit presumptions.

"I don't know..."

Within moments, you both can feel it in the subtleties of the interaction: she is a man submitting to being a woman for the sake of love and habit and fond memory. You are a woman asserting a maleness no longer yours by rote, and it shows: your approach is too overt, too brusque for the sensitivity of the changed viewpoints. The old learned finesse is gone, along with the easy familiarity on which it was based.

"Let's..."

The clash is communicated by flickers of expression in a glance: you two need room to work this out.

By unspoken agreement, rather than go up to her place, you two walk over to a late-night eatery where you are both well-known.

Friends look up, take in the exchanged genders, recognizing the two of you by clothing and general features, and nod and look away again, perhaps sensing the tension.

Eventually a late dinner is brought over, and then you two are alone in the crowd again, unexpectedly struggling simply to share a meal as lovers do.

"...So, fair lady, what--"

"Oh, but, sir... Hm. Weird..."

All the old conversational spins and turns don't work when the actors have these new faces, these exchanged roles. Even swapping the scripts can't help: both know who originated the lines. The conversation stalls, limps along with wider pauses, then stalls again and is not restarted.

The stillness is made more dense, more potent, as it is compressed by the normal sounds that surround it. You take it in with every breath, until it silences every thought but one: this was a mistake.

The casual talk before the silence still reverberates in your mind, and you pick at it, searching for meaning. The words were the same calm lovers' conversation, but the undertone was getting subtly bitter and strident. She was responding to your manhood as a challenge to her own, because you are too artlessly asserting it; like armor where there should be no battle, but one arises because the armor provokes it.

"Oh." You suddenly realize: this will not last. Startled, you glance over at her and see it in her eyes too, that realization of loss.

The tension lifts, but it's because, still in love, you two are now moving the relationship into endgame, arranging for this unforeseen closure in order to preserve the affection and friendship.

Still in silence, the two of you efficiently finish dining, pay for the meal, make your goodbyes to those still there, and then walk out, hand in hand.

Once outside, you shift yourself back to your normal female form. She keeps her female shape, and you feel her relax somewhat, but now both are groping for the meaning of it.

It's not her fault: it's inherent.

Only then do you see that realizing her fond memories of making love to a man would rudely violate her year of manhood, coming so soon upon it. It would be a rape all the more intimate because she did it to herself.

It's not your fault either.

You did not come here to help her abuse herself; neither of you did. It is an artifact of life and change, something both of you helped construct with your presumptions without knowing, something which now blocks all direct routes forward. You can never be the man you once were. You have yet to learn how to be the man that you now can be. She has the same lessons to learn about her past and present womanhood.

Perhaps in another decade, when both are more comfortable with equal ownership of both shapes, there can be a more middle-of-the-genders mindset from which both can embrace without competing. You have centuries, now; there is time in which to attain this new level of awareness.

For now, though, even abstaining would not solve this contention. The knowing would persist, and taint everything.

You gently pull her hand towards you, and she slowly swings around as if indecisive, then catches her free arm around your waist and draws you close. There is a deep-drawn kiss, then, probably the last, a regretful quitclaim on the other's intentions.

You two will inevitably seek lovers on your own sides of the divide now, for the next stage of this journey which you both now know you must make in separate parallels.

You'll probably seek someone who can respond to your token maleness, and reciprocate with the same just-kidding deftness with which you will try to take the sting out of the presumptuousness of your old ingrained male habits as they're brought out along with the form.

She'll probably seek someone who knows the old way of behaving like a woman, so that her manhood isn't threatened when it's her turn.

Both of you are still too young to it all. This business of being three people in one, a man and a woman and an awareness of what being both means, is so new to both of you that that third awareness is still in its infancy. It's just as well that you're not staying out too late.

You can't stay the night; that would destroy any distant possibilities. Instead, so as not to stay becalmed by indecision, you make to pull your helmet back on; and she immediately clutches you closer. Her momentary blocking of the arm with the helmet hanging on it is her most overt expression of regret. Then she straightens up and leans in close again, eye to eye for the first time in the year, and earnestly whispers her wish that it were otherwise. "Gods, I'm gonna miss you..."

"I'm gonna miss you too..."

"Let's--"

"No. If we promise anything we'll never get there. I love you; I would rather keep that."

"I... I guess I feel the same."

Both hands freed at last, you lift the helmet and pull it down over your head. As you fasten the D-strap, she slides a hand up under your shirt and gently caresses, first one breast, then the other, back and forth, as if she doesn't know which one will miss her most.

You reach down and pull out her hand, bring it up to the face shield opening to kiss it, and then just stand there taking in her beauty, grasping her hand ever so tightly as you look at what is mirrored in her eyes.

You are two women whose longing for each other is overshadowed by your phantom male presences; they glare at each other over your shoulders. She won't shift back to her native male shape until you're gone; you both know that it would be bitter teasing.

The emotions are becoming too poignant. You turn, walk over and start the bike, hearing its lone-wolf moan ascending the octave as you flip closed the clear shield, forbidding tears, saving face. You zip the jacket closed, minimizing your exposure.

You capture one last look as you mount the saddle, seeing how she stands, hands folded on each other instead of you, and then you gently ease in the clutch, trying not to let the bike make you look like you're running away, even though you both are.

Then it's her indistinct form in the mirrors for a moment, twin ghosts of old hopes, before the geometry of the road takes even that from view as you turn the front wheel.

It's the first of many steel-grate bridge beds coming up, and then it's growling under your wheels, and then it's behind you, and you're no longer on the same island. There is the setting moon behind you to one side; you can sometimes spy it in the mirrors when the road twists.

Your headlong passage tears up a cooler wind, now, and a thicker one, teasing your nipples up again, but with cold, now, not with desire, bracing you for the colder other end of the ride.

You fumble with the jacket, finally pushing in that snap at the tip of the double-breasted collar, closing yourself off from that chill caress, and settle down in the saddle for the long ride back. You glance at the two mirrors in turn a few times before regretfully trusting that they're empty, as the past always must be as it recedes.

Don't let the tears obscure your view of the long road ahead: you might miss your turn.

Magic can do many things, but can it save a broken heart? How many times? One who seeks to die will find out.

---

Just A Matter Of Time

--Kiai 03aug03/14jan04

 

The still air is damp and chill, up here in the darkness. I'm well above the occasional cars. I can tell because their little splotches of light as they pass far below are visible through gaps in the trees.

It's frustrating to have to stay silent, even up here in midair, where the bats flit past on their way from one hapless group of insects to another. Up here is where they pause from reaping the harvest of the porchlights, when the nervousness from being near those bright lights gets to be too much. The insects worry about bats, as much as they worry about anything, and the bats worry about owls. I know: I can hear them.

The bats near me are attracted to the cloud of gnats that is attracted to me. Both are repelled by what keeps the broom up, though, and, in the case of the gnats, my antipathy for them. I don't like getting bitten, of course, any more than I like breathing them in by mistake, so I use a little bit of the magic to keep them away.

I can relax up here as long as I don't fall asleep. I have to be careful not to relax too much, though. I might tip over sideways, and it's a long way down to that unkempt lawn with its fences of loose rocks, a ragged velvet deeper dark in the moonless darkness.

I'm still getting used to being on a broom. It's not all that hard, it's just that all of my skills are either slightly off now or just plain irrelevant; I haven't been a witch for long. My balance is a little off because I haven't been a girl all that long, either: only a year, nearly a year and a day for both. And, no, the one does not imply the other -- there are male witches enough -- but it did in my case.

There was a time when I thought that magic existed only for those who were evil. That was what I was taught growing up, all I was allowed to know. By the time I was in high school, I sensed that magic was at my core, an innate and inseparable part of me, so I simply decided privately that I wouldn't use it for evil. That wasn't enough, though. I wanted the magic -- needed it, really -- but it eluded me. I couldn't find a corner of my world that I could grasp and peel up to see the magic clinging to its underside.

After my change, of course, I had no such problem, because I was magic. I existed at all because magic existed, around and through me, and then it was up to me to learn it as well as I could, as with any acquired skill. The barrier of obedient disbelief had been crossed... along with so much more.

Do they tell you to 'Take it to the Lord in prayer'? What happens when you do that? Do your problems get solved, does your confusion and misery dissolve into comfort and enlightenment, and do you wake to a better day than the one where you fell asleep?

Lucky you. I was brought up to do all that, but my prayers were never answered. They were just words. I could never feel anyone there listening no matter how hard I tried to sense it. I spoke the words diligently, while the room got darker, and the darkness pressed close, and it felt as if something was battening down to feed. I would wake in the morning to the same grim existence as the day before, only worse because I would be a little more despondent that there would ever be any way out of the role I'd been given: I was the guy without a clue, and I knew it.

One night it got to be so bad that I just didn't feel like living anymore, and I drank something. It was supposed to kill me so I could sleep. Instead, I woke up standing in cold water, with just my head showing, and it was still dark. I was in a well of some kind, and I couldn't even feel myself, I was that numb.

There was a woman standing over me. She told me that it would be better now, and that I had a job I must do, but I could do it, it wasn't all that hard. The hardest thing for me now, she said, was going to be to get used to the new life that I had been given as a gift from the Goddess.

As she said that, I noticed someone standing behind her, taller than her and all misty and glowing. She put her hands on the woman's shoulders, then the woman bent down and took my hands in her hands and helped me step out of that well. Then the Goddess, if that's who she was, reached around us both and put her hands to either side of my face and kissed me, and I fell asleep.

I woke up in a stranger's bed, but then, when I got up and found my way to a mirror, I was the stranger. I was a naked teenage girl with long black hair and deep crystal blue eyes and a red smile. I didn't know why I was smiling, except that for the first time in a long time I felt good. Not because I was a girl -- I wasn't sure I wanted any of that -- but because I wasn't me, the guy who had hurt so much.

Someone came in then and told me that she was my mother now. Her face was somehow familiar, and I saw it was the woman who had helped me out of the well. She showed me how to clean and dress myself, how to make myself pretty as a girl, and then she brought me downstairs to breakfast.

Afterwards, we talked for most of the day. She told me nothing about herself, but she told me a lot about the life that I had just ended. She spoke of it as though it were common history, not something forgotten as unimportant in the passage of the world, as if someone had thought it worthy of note when I was still living it.

She told me, "Time is flexible when it needs to be; you just have to know how to flex it." Then she showed me the day's newspaper, and pointed at the date. That was when I understood that my old life was over for good, because the date was a year before my life ended. I had been brought back in time.

Later, when I was bathing, she came in and found me exploring myself and pleasuring myself. She told me that there was nothing wrong with it, that everybody did it, but she said that I should do it in private so that other people's energies wouldn't be involved. Not even hers; she said that I now owned myself, for the first time, and I should keep it that way.

Later, up in my tiny bedroom in the little house, I thought about that, and I realized that she was right. That was why I was smiling: there was no one there to push me off- balance with their words and their feelings so that I stumbled wherever I went. For the first time, no one had any claim on my life but her and the Goddess, and she wasn't making demands, and neither was the Goddess, not yet. Perhaps I owed, but I wasn't owned.

That was when I let my hands wander where they would, enjoying how I could make myself feel, with no guilt for the first time that I could recall, and, when I fell asleep, my hands were on and in myself, but, as I slept, it felt like the Goddess's hands were with them, helping me to find how to love life by living it.

I have studied long and hard since I climbed up out of that well. My new mother is a witch, and she has taught me her tradition. There are deep secrets and even deeper secrets, and ways you can weave what the world is made of in little secret ways so that you get what you need, as long as you're careful that others get what they need too. It's not in just words, any of it, and it's not Little Theatre With Athames. It's magic, and I have been trained in its use until I am ready for my next step.

Now it is my first day of school, though the school year is already well underway, and supposedly I am transferring in. Somehow the school administration accepts this. I have little false memories that I can call on, when questions are asked about my schooling before, about military bases I've never really seen, and a life with a military father I find few false memories of ever seeing. In this new story of my life, my new mother is a military widow, returning to live in a place she remembered. We live in a small house, and we have passes and cards to use the facilities of the base nearby, but we never go there.

My first day of classes is over at last, mainly getting books and sitting in. I remember these classes well, but it is easy enough to be the new girl, introduced to everyone for the first time.

Then classes are over for the day, and I have someplace I need to go, someone I need to see. Two people, actually: one who was me, and one whom he sought.

He is in the school library because that is where she holds court. Not that he sees it as such, and not that she admits to it, but this is what she does. A touch here, a look there, a slight smile, and she has another courtier ready to vie for her briefest of attentions and wan hopes of her affections.

As intelligent as she is, I know that it is deliberate. She does modeling shoots in the city; this is where she hones her skills at teasing the camera while building up her portfolio of souls. She is young in years, and she knows no magic, but she knows the most ancient womanly art, Hunted Becomes Hunter, and her practice makes her perfect in their eyes.

She draws off their attentions and intentions, draining their impetus until they fall into stable orbits about her, destined never to touch. She shines brighter as they reflect her light back at her in a pleasing array of colors. They are beads on her necklace of lives, buckles on her garter, notches on her bow. She would say that she draws only on their surplus of hope, but some have greater reserves than others. She has drawn him to his death as an insect to a flame: he will batter his wings apart, vainly trying to get through her beaded curtain to quench himself in her glory, and fall to earth spent like a drone.

I cannot change that predestined end, I can only hospice him with affection that eases his suffering as he reaches the end of hope and turns to seek the end of feeling. It is time to begin.

I dawdle at the shelves, knowing already what book I have chosen, until they have seated themselves. She sits at the corner of the long table, speaking in earnest hushed whispers to the people gathered around her. He sits at her side, waiting to be remembered.

Now I pull my chosen book from the shelf and turn, looking around as if seeking a seat, then I walk over to their table. I let my hair fall, curtaining my face so that only my eyes, my smile, are featured.

I know how it looks. I have practiced this look with a mirror, tuning it for the effect that I want, knowing how a lonely boy will be drawn to the mystery that is me if I make it inviting, enticing, both chaste and womanly. It is a woman's art, and I am woman.

"Hey."

He looks up from his book in surprise. I smile down at him, willing him to see me as an equal and not a threat.

"Mind if I sit here?"

He shakes his head no, and moves his books and briefcase, allowing me a space at his side, and resumes his reading and his periodic glances at her. I seat myself, open the book that I have chosen, and begin to read myself, periodically glancing over at him, and, over his shoulder, at her, where she sits on his other side.

I have presumed to encroach on her territory. She notices, and refracts a little more of her attentions in his direction. I am the newcomer, but her glance goes to him, not to me. She is unwilling to let even the smallest and strangest of her catch off her string; her necklace must be complete.

I see through her smile, her momentary inclusion of him in her conversations, even though these are now changed events, events I never experienced a year ago. I see because she is a bull-dancer, and I am no longer one of her bulls, but I remember being one. I surprise myself in momentarily feeling a pang at the loss of even that marginal place in the dance.

Perhaps she reads that longing in my eyes when I glance over at her and catch her gaze for a moment, but then her gaze sweeps on in her grand survey of her court. Perhaps she thinks that I am one of those girls who loves girls; perhaps I am. I know that I loved one: her. I know what he is feeling because I was once him.

Her gaze refuses to return to me. She has dismissed me as inconsequential, and to her I am, but I am not without consequences.

Eventually it is time for us all to leave. The library is closing in time for us to catch the late buses to our homes. I rise and walk away, leaving my bag, then return as if I have forgotten it, as she stands and reaches for her own.

She brushes against me as she passes, and I guide her waist-length mane so that some of the hairs pass close by the metal buttons on my jacket, sifting through their spaces like a thread passes through the tension-adjuster of one of the sewing machines in the Home-Ec class.

She starts and looks back at my jacket with a pained look. I look down, seeing her caught on my jacket, then I apologetically tug her hair free of the buttons and apologize again. She dismisses the apology and the event and resumes her dance of departure, knitting all their emotions so they won't ravel and leak away in her absence.

I wait for him to rise. He, of course, is captured by her performance, and I must allow that, but I wait patiently, dallying without seeming to dally, until, as she moves from view down the hall, surrounded by those courtiers who also take her bus, he looks around.

He is seeking his glove. He already has one on. He will walk home, carrying that briefcase, and the snowy evening outside will be bitter cold without them both.

I have his glove, brushed from his coat pocket by the passage of people as he rose, and, perhaps, helped by me. While his back was turned, I brought it to my lips and kissed its inside lining. Now I hold it out to him.

"Here; you dropped this." I say it with a smile that puts patience and friendliness and amusement and perhaps a bit of caring up on display for him, and he senses it. He smiles, a casual smile that is the only one he knows, one that is honest, and, looking me in the eye, he says, "Thanks."

Then he puts on his glove, picks up his briefcase, and, slumped as ever at the departure of his dream, he leaves; but now I have set my hook, and he has two lines in his mouth. I do not need to pull: he has enough pain without that. I have merely to be there, and, whenever she forgets to pull at the hook she has set, he will be drawn to me.

I walk down to the school lobby, a few paces behind him, willing him to be warmed by my closeness. At least let him accept that much.

Perhaps he does. At the outer doorway, he holds the door open for me, and I give him a grateful smile that lingers a little before I have to turn away to go to the car that is waiting for me, my own ride home, with my new mother at the wheel stolidly watching the buses pull away. Once inside, I look over, meaning perhaps to wave if he seems receptive, but he is already gone around the curved icy sidewalk, heading out into the snow for the cold house where he will eventually die.

At my new home, up in my tiny room, I carefully inspect my jacket before taking it off. Caught in the clinched seam between the bottom and top stampings that make up the button is an inch or two of a hair, a hair that is not my color or his. I prise it free and put it gently aside in a marked and sealed envelope. It will not see use for close to a year, if ever; I have yet to make up my mind about that, but now I am better prepared.

My dreams that night are about him. Somehow we drift together in my mind, and then he puts his hands on me and we gladly begin the most ancient dance of all. They are not dark dreams, though. It feels like we are somewhere that the darkness cannot find us, someplace where we are sheltered by someone, I don't know who, because my attentions in the dream are on him.

I am surprised when I remember my dreams. I did not expect to accept being a girl so willingly, but I wake up happy.

In school, over the months, I pursue my hunt, now that I know my quarry. I know that it has to be done with the heart, not just with magic, so I don't use spellwork. Instead I use patience. He knows where my locker is, somehow next to his, and sometimes little notes, jokes really, find their way from one to the other. The first time I find one from him in response to one of mine, I have to hide my smile for the rest of the day, because I know I have brightened his day and helped push back the darkness around him.

If she is too busy to sit in the library, I am not. If she leaves, I am there. We are friends, and then we are smiling friends, and then we are warm friends, and there is nothing she can do about it, because I do not demand, I simply am. She holds his heart from her superior position, but I gently cup it from underneath. Whatever she lets fall, I catch.

I know that her plans beyond high school are a worry to him. She values her modeling jobs; she says she will go where she can get them while she attends college, but that will take her far far away. He has to go where there is money for him to go.

I know that he has heard bad things about the modeling, what that world does to the person, and he worries about her. She sees his worry as interference. Or perhaps she resents his seeming to advance any emotional claim on her by caring. Or perhaps I am too jaded now by her methods seen secondhand, her artifice turned artless when viewed from the wrong angle, the girls' side.

It is all-but-springtime when, after school, he seeks me out. Even without watching them together, I remember the events of what is to me a year ago, and I know what that means: she has discarded her line, cast him off as a catch she does not want to land. Her words can wound, I know; in broken whispers he tells me now which ones she used like Morgul-knives this time.

I can stay late after school today, past the late bus, because I have the car. My mother told me to drive myself to school this morning, saying that she would be busy over the next few days, so busy that I might not even see her, and I must not be stranded. As so often happens, I am grateful now for her forethought and foresight.

Now we sit together in the school lobby, after all the others have left, and I let him use my shoulder to try to force his tears to stay hidden, and to hide when they will not.

He firmly thanks me for being his friend, as if he is closing an account, and I know what it is that he is saying, because I once felt the same: he does not intend to live past her rejection.

I know better than to mention this directly; it will merely harden his stance. I know why he feels this way: his hopes in her were the only secret he owned. If his life is owned by others, the only thing he owns now is his death, and only because no one else wants it. It is the only part of himself he can feel, now that she has bled all his other feelings away. He cannot step away from it because he has nowhere else to stand.

Instead I gently raise his head so that he and I are eye to eye, and I tell him that I am still his friend, that he cannot stop that, and that I love him that way and more no matter what he says or does, or her, for that matter.

Now his tears are merciless, because I have taken his determination from him, leaving him with nothing. I replace it, gently, with a kiss. Then I tell him that I do not own him, that I cannot make a claim on his heart because it is not mine to claim, but I love him nonetheless and I want to share with him whatever he is willing to share. Then I kiss him again and I hold him to me, willing him to accept the warmth at my center into his own, where the fire has gone out and it is bitterly cold. Over long minutes I stealthily feed my fire into him, sharing it with him, even though it will give him the strength to reject it if that is his will.

I feel him stir, hear him sniff back his tears, and then he looks me deep in the eye for long minutes, gazing deep, trying to fathom why I would care and how I can stand to do so. Finally, failing to find fault with it, he has to accept it, even if he cannot return it in equal measure, and then he pulls me ever so gently to him.

Gently I let him take me into a kiss, and gently I return it, willing him to feel my caring. If this changes his lifeline and I am unmade because of it, it will be worth it; I love him and I wish him to live. Perhaps some of me will persist within him in his new future.

My hand roams up under his shirt, softly caressing his back, and then his hand is under my blouse, caressing mine. I slowly change our angle so that it is easier for him to touch the front of me, and know that I have won, for now, when I feel his hand pause on my breast where it waits inside my bra. I deepen my kiss, willing him to go deeper, and at last he does, his fingers dipping below the fabric edge to touch my nipple and find how hard it has gotten while awaiting him.

I stroke his waist, then hurriedly pull my hand away, and he does the same, as we hear the footfalls of someone in one of the corridors. We hear the rhythmic noises of a pushbroom and I realize that it must be a custodian. It is time for us to leave.

I stand, extend my hand, and whisper, "I want you to come to my house." That is in my words; in my eyes is, 'I want you.'

He nods, takes my hand, and rises, and I lead him out to the car and unlock it for him. It is hard for me to get my skirt to settle right, it seems to ride up so much, and I so much want it to, as I buckle myself in to drive. I glance at him as I push it down again, showing him a mock-rueful smile, and he shares that.

I extend the joke by flipping the hem of the skirt up, letting him see everything it was hiding, then smooth it back down. It is enough to keep him preoccupied for the short drive to my house, and when I let him in there is no one there but us. We pause for another kiss in the small front room, a kiss that allows him to explore me better once I undo my bra, and allows me to touch and caress his hot hardness.

As I lead him up the narrow stairs to my tiny room, I realize where my mother has gone: to the secret place where she and hers hold ritual communion with the Goddess. I would be there in sabbat with her, but my working here is more important.

It is the Vernal Equinox, the time of the Heavenly Marriage, and he is whom I have chosen for my lover. Freed of clothing, I bend down and kiss his erection, then I help him unroll a condom onto it to protect our pleasure from worry. I know it is his first time, and it is mine too, but, as his hands explore me, I whisper words of love and words of advice on how to work me, to make me captive to his hands, and he takes them in and applies them, making it difficult for me to speak or breathe. My hands roam his form too, welcoming him, reassuring him of my desire, and eventually he is at my entrance and then I am welcoming him home even as he batters down my gates with his ram.

Soon enough it is done, and the condom holds his seed, of course, but his spirit is not so confined. I feel it rising within my center, fulfilling me, completing me somehow, and I flow my love back over him even as my hopes rise. If we can be lovers for a year, if that can sustain him, then, even if he leaves after that, leaving me to continue as a woman alone, it will be sufficient just to know that he lives and that I love him.

I do love him. I know him intimately, cherish all his secret wishes and dreams, all the despondent groping towards something to hope for. We are compatible in a way that no one else can even guess at, save perhaps the woman whom I now call Mother though she is a Crone, because no one else but the Goddess knows who I am.

I even know the magic he has vainly sought, that he has never been allowed to acknowledge, though I can't tell him that yet.

How can I not love him, when I have willingly made of myself someone with whom he can fulfill those dreams, and in so doing fulfill my own? All of those dreams, he can find, if he is willing to accept my offering.

All but one... and that one is our hearts' undoing.

None of that is in our actions as we dress. Instead there is a true closeness, a casual touch that bypasses each other's guard with the password of remembered loving intimacy. There is more kissing, more shared amusements and thoughts, as I find us something to eat. Then he puts on his coat and picks up his briefcase, and I drive him to his home. Then we share a tired smile and a last brief kiss before he slouches inside, to somehow explain to the cold people there how he comes to be late.

My dreams that night are disturbed, but it is not until school the next day that I learn why. When I see him, he apologizes, and now I am horrified to see that I have helped him walk into a tighter trap. Now he feels guilt at what he sees as using me, even though I gave myself to him willingly.

I tell him so. I tell him that I know that she has his heart, but that I love him; if in time he feels the same for me, that will be good, but I cannot and do not demand it, and I am happy with what we now share.

Then I see how deeply he is tormented. He whispers that he does feel that way for me, that he loves me, and that he sees it as an equal betrayal of her and me. His despair is obvious, and I realize that, beset by dark thoughts and darker unseen voices, he has come to think that, in accepting a second hope in place of the one she spurned, he has become unworthy of both dreams. I try to tell him otherwise, that I accept him however he is, but he is not to be consoled. Then I see the darkness has already worked its way deep into him through the wounds of her words, closing in on the last of his hope, and I cry, and he turns away, perhaps mistaking my sorrow.

I go through the day heartsick. As soon as I am home, I go to bed, trying to sleep off this poison of the soul, hoping that my dilution is enough for him to shrug off its malice, but I know with inner surety that it is not.

I am awakened suddenly in the evening, feeling things in the air and knowing that those dark forces are exultant in their low triumph. For one petty moment, I look around for that envelope with a piece of her fishline in it, intending malice for malice, but I cannot find it; it must have been misplaced. I catch myself back up, then, returning my focus to what is truly important.

For me, there is inevitability. I have tried my utmost, and I have failed, but I have tried. Now I must tend to the closing of the loop. I dress in silence, pocketing things I will need, then, with a last look around at the room I have lived in for a year, I mount my broom and I fly, to wait through the final seconds close at hand, so that I can guide the pulling of the line that I left in his mouth, so that he will be landed in the Lady's Well, where he can live again in my own past.

It's time. I can feel it. Acting as his friend, I have gotten close enough to him to sense his moods. I know what horrid visions and thoughts they have been hammering him with. I suffered them myself up until a year ago, of course.

Now, floating on my broom in the still airs above his house, I sense it all from the outside as it happens. His spirit has curled up and withered today in the face of their constant mental assault, until, now, despondent without knowing why, he's drunk what he thinks is poison, but it doesn't just end his life, it ends his existence, and I am just in time in steering his departing soul from one Light to another. It's a potion, of course, one that tears him out of Time by the roots, unmaking his history unless someone steps in to fill the void... and that someone is me.

I silently descend to be level with his second-story window. I silently raise my phurba, and at my gesture the window screen slides quietly open. Now I hunch down on my broom and silently glide in through the open window, slipping slowly from lesser into greater darkness. Once through the window, I straighten up, cautiously because the ceiling is inches above my head, and look around.

He is gone, of course: erased from this web of maya. The drinking cup sits innocently on the bureau. I wave at it and it is unmade. I'll replace it later, but for now I want its evil out of the room.

The rumpled unmade bed is next. I gesture at it and its covers and sheets fly up in planes above the mattress, snapping taut, dislodging all traces of who he used to be and what has been done to him, flinging it all into the air where my guiding gestures vent it all out the window, before settling back down into hospital-corner tidiness.

I swish the phurba around, pointing at the floor below me, and a faintly shining circle brightens as it widens from a dim spot to a glowing ring resting on the floor.

Now I have someplace to put my foot down, and I carefully dismount from my broom, my bare feet making no noise as they touch the cleansed floor. I slip my phurba back into its silk-lined velvet sheath. Now my hands are free, and, careful not to step beyond the glowing lines, I set about sweeping outward with the broom, widening the glowing circle that edges the cleared space, until all the visible floor has been swept. Then with a gesture of my phurba I open the closet door and continue to sweep.

Now, pointing the broom two-handed like a weapon, I send clouds of that cleansing force across and through all furniture and impediments, until the very walls and doors are glowing from the baseboard up, a foot or more. Now turning deosil, I send out more cleansing, raising the lines as I work, until every wall, every doorway and the window and the ceiling are gleaming coldly with witch-light, cleansed and claimed.

Now I row the very air with the broom, sweeping everything that has been dispelled out the window until the air itself gleams within the room as if illuminated by hidden moonlight, and indistinct darkening shadows cling to the outside of the window, seeming to peer in after being evicted.

Finally I pull out my phurba again and make the window screen slide shut again. It too gleams: I had not forgotten it.

I walk over and touch the doorknob. The door had no lock before, but now it does, by my command. The door itself is now solid oak where it was a cheap open-core inside door. I reinforce the very natures of the hinges, anchoring them to the bones of the house, making them impenetrable. When I smudge a pentagram onto its surface with my fingertip, the door shines cheerily back at me.

Let the shadows crowd as they will, they cannot get in, nor can anyone open the door until I will it. After being cast out of this bedroom for a year and a day by my own hand, it is once again my domain.

I have changed, though. I slide my broom under the bed, making it cling to the underside, and cover it with glamour. I pull off my sash with its hidden cording, then I pull my robe up over my head and off, and hang both in the closet, leaving me skyclad.

There is a mirror above the desk. I walk over and stand before it, an indistinct shape in the darkness. Conjuring handfire, I hold the light up, letting it illuminate me. I look incongruous, even now, in this room, belonging and yet not belonging. My naked breasts have sharp shadows under them from the angle of the light. My hips seem angled wrong because they catch the light so crazily. My crotch is a hiding-place of warm darkness where all that can be discerned is that I have no manhood there.

If I think about the thoughts that occupied my mind when I last lived here, I could be aroused at the girl in the mirror, the girl whose flesh is mine now. I work at those memories, because now I need to recover that sexual awareness of woman. I need to act like a guy, even down to the inevitable erection when given a vision such as this.

Now I raise the other hand, this hand holding another kind of handfire, slightly different in color and intent. The two of them are the core of my seeming-spell. The interference patterns beat down upon my face and figure in the mirror, showing me a thousand different might-have-beens of size and shape and bloodline and gender, but I guide the effect so that the two shapes that alternate in the moire patterns are the two that I own outright: the girl that I now am and the boy that I was up until a year ago and a few minutes ago.

My male form grows stronger in the light and I begin settling it down about myself. I begin to feel the erection that I induced with my eyeing of my naked female form, and let that feeling pull me across so that, finally, all of the striations of the light show the same boy as occupied this room up until tonight.

I pause and look in sympathy at him, at his questing member that quivers erect and seeks a mate that it can never again find. For a moment I dwell on the memories of him from my year as the girl who was in some ways his girlfriend though only once really his lover.

During my time as a girl with him, I made time for him, made room in my life for him, and found private places where we could get close without being disturbed. We had a lot in common, since we were really the same person, and I leveraged that, to slip into his life, share his affections and brighten his days however I could until his inevitable end.

Now, in my role as the boy I once was, I can say that we cared about each other deeply, and I am still in touch with her, and when I am done with schooling here I will follow her. As long as I am careful in my choice of college, no one will know that they think of me as pursuing a phantasm of myself.

For the rest of my life, I will perhaps be a woman who sometimes looks and acts like a man, but that is an acceptable tradeoff. Their spells cannot bite in, because they are shaped to drill their way into a boy, hollow him out and own him; their bits will break before they can penetrate this girl. When they seek to find and own this girl who has his heart, they will fail even if they find her, for she will be fundamentally the boy they seek to control through her, so their influences will be all wrong.

In time I will learn how to keep this shape even when asleep. For now, I know that my bedroom door must be locked tight at night. No one must come in to see a girl sleeping where a boy is expected.

It's only for a year. One more year, and I'm out of high school, out of this house where devout worship allows dark things to feed, and on to college. I can do this. I can keep my bed magically clean of any secretions and menses from my inadvertent femaleness while I learn to hold my form all night.

Right now, though, I can pull on pajamas that would not fit my girlish hips half an hour ago, long enough to walk down the hall to the bathroom, where, for the first time in a year, I have to carefully aim. I will have to sleep naked afterward, of course.

Tomorrow is a new day, where today was not. I lived through this past year, up until tonight, twice, leveraging my foreknowledge of events to get this far. Tomorrow, the unknown begins all over again. As I fall asleep in a lonely bed that is once again mine, I look forward to it.

The unknown begins to surprise me when I wake up still male. My form feels more solid and stable than I achieved in my practice workings. Somehow my spelling has worked better than I expected; or perhaps it is because no one else now wears this form. That is less of a bitter regret than I expected; perhaps it is that I have had a year in which to know my loss before it arrived.

Now it is an effort to put on that girl's form, the form in which no one has any claim on me but that given willingly, but I assume it and hold fast to it, reassuring myself with its reflection. Then I regretfully retake my masculinity and dress it, having confirmed my grasp of my other shape, but with no time to explore that ancient familiarity or explore how I feel about it. It takes equal effort to assume either form, and that must suffice. It is a school day, and, passing through the cold family as if through a chill dream filled with wraiths, I go.

After classes, I am waiting in the school library with my briefcase at my side. I'm not sure why.

She cast him off with cold words and colder laughter, that I know. Why I should seek her out now, I don't know, I only know that I must know whether she still has the capacity to bleed my hope away, now that I am once again almost and almost entirely a man.

Perhaps it is the dark forces that dwell in the town. Their darkness cannot reach me now except through her. I must know if I am still hooked, and, if so, I must persuade her to discard the line for good, long enough for me to spit out the lure.

Eventually I see her enter, and I feel two years of bitterness welling up at the sight of her terrible beauty, a weapon whose edges have fatally wounded me twice. I cast that feeling aside; that is the poisonous residue of the darkness. This is a new beginning, and a new ending. The board has been reset, and, even though she plays for the dark pieces, I must let her have the first move.

She walks towards me, and, putting on a stiff polite smile, I curtly nod.

She stands facing me. I am in my accustomed seat, and hers awaits her next to mine. Around us, though, the usual pawns are missing. Instead, she is huddled, now, her head hung forward, sheltered by the cascades of her long hair, and I realize that she is sorrowing now.

Was this how it was, two years ago and yet only a day ago? Did she honestly have some feelings? Was my death so long ago something she did not want? Was she just too late to turn back and prevent it?

I watch her with curiosity, now, and now I feel anew the impact of her softly beguiling beauty, her deceptively gentle demeanor. My manhood stirs a little, feeling a connection with her on a primal level. This is more than we ever shared before; why am I feeling it now? We were never lovers, she and I. She still has the capacity to surprise me with my own feelings, it seems.

There is something else there, though.

Our eyes meet. I sit, she stands, both frozen in recognition.

Incredibly, it is him. Dressed in her flesh, it is his intelligence as well as hers, his heart-thrust-forward caring and his piercing scrutiny cloaked in her casual gentility. They are fused, merging, twin strands now spun into one life. I have its near-twin within me, and she is equally stunned to sense my two lives.

She sits beside me, now, and takes my hand in her own, and despite myself I am surprised: this is forwardness I cannot recall, ever, from her; but then, it is him somewhere within her eyes.

She whispers, "I will still model, you know; it is what is expected of me. But I will not be parted from you; not now. When I am old enough, I will go with you wherever you wish."

She peers out at me through that shimmering curtain of her hair, and I see tears glimmering in her deep eyes.

"Please... Wait for me. Don't leave without me."

"And..." Here she drops her hand to my lap, casually so as not to be noticed in this school library, and then, incredibly, I feel her fingertip gently stroking what is rising at my groin to meet it. "...Whenever I have to go model, every time, I want you to meet me afterwards so that I can give you back what you gave to me."

Stunned, I respond to the trivial to buy time in which to contemplate the monumental. One thing common to my life then and my life now is lack of privacy, other than, now, my room itself.

"Where?"

"The old house by the well. It's empty now, but it's ours when we need it."

This stuns me even more. "Empty. Oh. Oh no." I realize that someone I have loved as a warm step-parent for the past year must have crossed over. She sees my dawning recognition and she nods, but then I see someone else in her patient knowing gaze.

Now I recognize at last that her features always were those of the priestess at the well, the woman for whom I was a daughter for a year. I can see in the structure of her face how she might someday grow to be that crone, if she should somehow step back through the years in a closing of the loop. She also is here in her eyes, in her awareness, and, as I reach out with my other senses to learn, her spirit. There are three strands in her braid, and I realize that I love them all.

She nods slowly as she sees my recognition, and whispers a final addition to my first lesson: "I love you. I have loved you longer than you knew. Time does what we need it to. Time is within the Light, not controlled by it. So is form."

I feel one final tap of her fingertip on what is now erect, and then she pulls her hand back, but it is to take both of mine in both of hers. She leans close as for a kiss, glancing around for witnesses, and regretfully holds her position as she sees that she is watched by the librarian. She whispers, "Now that we both know that, we can wear what forms we please."

Her gaze pleads with me to accept her yearlong working that has brought us together at the end of three lives and the beginning of two others. I smile inside as I sense how heartfelt her words are. I feel an easing of a lives-long ache, a cleansing of a wound. The burden of becoming a man once more, of reassuming a form beset by others' strident claims on its life, is no longer so heavy, not when she is willing to respect it and share with it and perhaps sometimes share it.

The connection between us, heart to heart, no longer leaks life now. Instead, it resonates it, stoking and stroking it higher with each pulse, reinforcing us against the petty bitterness of the dark of the town.

I realize her cost now. She must have wrapped herself tightly in magic, allowing her timeline to be twisted to breaking to make amends, or to reach back for a dream too casually discarded as imperfect because someone imperfect dreamed it. This is both a gift from and a claim made by the Goddess, and, though it is not as I expected, I gratefully accept it. I let my eyes show her the kiss that I can promise her. My whisper is my formal acceptance.

"I love you."

The future in the mirror is closer than it appears. If, thanks to new technology, you had to become a girl for a year in the middle of high school, what would you do? Start a blog, of course.

---

Messages In A Bottle Of Estrojen

-- Kiai 29Sep03/03Nov03

 

 

Messages In A Bottle Of Estrojen - http://mestrojen.blogjournal.blog

 

28jun08

Hi.

Seven whole years after the dot-bomb hit, and it's still true. Most blogs are written by teenage girls displaying their awesome angst in badly-spelled prose for the whole World Wide Web to read, just as if they were writing in one of those diaries with a lock on the cover to keep everybody in the world from opening and reading it. Which is where they should have written it in the first place, most of them.

So what's my excuse?

A week ago I wouldn't be caught dead posting to a blog. Now, here I am. But then, thanks to that wonderful state law that my parents and a whole bunch of other people voted for while I'm still too young to vote it down, starting a week ago and for the whole of my high school junior year I'm a teenage girl, so I'm clueing into my birthright. Changeright. Whatever.

Or maybe it's payback to said parents, who will be shocked and dismayed and humiliated at just how much their son-turned-daughter is willing to talk about it all in public (in front of the whole planet no less). More than I will, anyway. I have this weird disconnection going, kind of like knowing that this was done to me against my will just because somebody thought it would be a good idea means it has nothing to do with me. So I can say anything I want about it because I didn't do it.

Or maybe these are just messages found in a glowing bottle on your desk just behind your keyboard (I know a few of you still use CRTs). Be sure to unplug the power cord before you shake the sand out.

Computers start out as beach sand, you know. Some of the little grains grow up to be chips and some of them grow up to be bottles. Or maybe their parents turn them into bottles when they're just getting the hang of being chips so they'll know what that's like.

No offense to the amazing friends (amazing because I didn't realize how much they were friends before because they were and are and apparently always will be girls) who are teaching me to swim in it, but...

Help -- I'm drowning in an ocean of estrogen!

-jen (yeah, that's me for the duration)

---

03Jul08

Well...

Strike last comment from prior entry. Now I'm drowning in a whirlpool of progesterone, as well as... Motrin, yeah, Motrin, that's the ticket. (None dare call it Midol. In my hearing, anyway.)

All of you guys who don't have parents who decided you had to go through this last year or this year, take notes: you WILL be tested on it before you graduate from high school, it's a state law now.

All you guys who were born with this insidious leak waiting to happen and don't have to worry about it for a year right now: :Pthththth~~~~~~~~~~~~~!

You'll get yours in, oh, eleven months and three weeks and five days but who's counting, when you march right up to that little window and they say "That was your one free year-long pass on the guy-ride! Now, which do you choose, this lovely ornamental draft card that in one year can turn into your free ticket into the infantry in one of three global brush wars and your own personal close brush with death on numerous occasions in places where nobody even wants to live there except for the oil... or this nice fluffy tampon?"

Don't rush me. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, okay?

-jen

---

05Jul08

Butt of the Joke

I still can't believe that none of my own summer shorts fit me. I mean, I'm almost a foot shorter now, my wrists are tiny, my hands are so weak that I can't throw a decent curve ball anymore, and yet my hips are way out there mocking me from out at either end of my horribly extended pelvis, daring me to try on yet another pair of last year's oversize shorts. Tell me my Mom put them in with the white cotton wash by mistake and they shrunk, please?

-jen

---

07Jul08

Fright Wig

"We really need to do something about your hair."

This is a frightening statement. Silly me, I didn't realize that simple fact when I first heard it, otherwise my survival instincts would have warned me to RUN.

See, there's nothing wrong with my hair. My hair is cool. It starts at one end, way up in my scalp, and the other end hangs free. Basic stuff. Now it even finishes up a lot lower than it did a couple of weeks ago. "It gives you a head start," they said. 'On what,' I should have thought.

The nice thing with hair this long is that I can tie it back with a rubber band, and then it's out of my face and I don't have to mess with it again for a few days. The not so nice thing is that this is clearly not an acceptable response as far as the Female Parental Unit is concerned.

"A girl your age shouldn't," quoth the FPU. "Can't have you embarrassing the family," uttered the FPU. "Have to take better care of it," proclaimed the FPU, as if wearing it out was a problem. I mean, it grows back, doesn't it?

Back before my body had its lumps shuffled around, the FPU was all for mowing off said hair at frequent intervals. Now it's out of my eyes, which was said FPU's primary complaint about hair back in those halcyon days of yore two weeks ago. Problem Solved, right?

Wrong-o. Said FPU did utter the words at the top of this entry, and thus did declare war on my scalp, a war waged with such utter ferocity that you'd swear that I had an oily scalp and the Texas Oil Barons were determined to occupy it and drill wells in it.

Now my scalp, with its comcomitant hair, is occupied territory. Its once admittedly oily surface has been washed clean with a completeness that would make said Texas Oil Barons weep.

The something to be done about my hair included a visit to a Den Of Uniquity wherein lay in wait several specialists in the Art of the Makeover. Said AM-DOU leveraged its hold on my hair to invade and conquer my face as well.

The hair no longer exists just to have two ends, one of them being emitted by my scalp. The face no longer exists merely as a functional and vaguely pleasing framework to keep my mouth, eyes, nostrils and ears from being pulled out of formation by their mutual gravity.

Now the hair does decorative things in synchrony with the face, to wit, precision posing designed to make the girls giggle and coo and make the guys all have to find books to hold in front of themselves.

As if that fools the girls, guys: I found that out the first day. Maybe I'll talk about that sometime, if I ever get over the embarrassment of having my recent history recounted to me in third-person picaresque reportage.

As expected of occupied territory, I no longer have free rein over it. I scratch at an itch on my cheek and FPU doth decree, "Don't do that, you'll mess up your makeup." I tell her about the itch and she doth retort, "live with it." I brush the artfully sculpted hair away from my eyes and FPU declaimeth, "Don't mess it up". Mess what up? Hair is hair, invulnerable to casual hand motions unless accompanied by cutting tools, chemicals or open flame.

FPU did decree that I must examine the work of the AM-DOU Occupation Forces in the mirror. I did so.

This must be a trick mirror, I decided, because within it I see someone I do not know but would like to know, someone I could enjoy looking at over dinner a lot, and, maybe, someday, over many breakfasts. She should get rid of that funky tee shirt, though, and wear something closer-fitting instead. Something to show off her curves. That would be nice to look at for a very long time.

Then I realize that I've been cheated, that all my earnest conversations with her would be soliloquy.

All this was amid much giggling and cooing. Did I mention that the AM-DOU Occupation Forces had enlisted in addition my current best buddies, all of whom are direct descendants of the Tribes of Venus? That's right: born like it, y'know. Not only that, but every one of them already spent a year seeing how things stood in the Fields of Mars where I come from, and then crossed back over the frontline to report on their year of espionage, their loyalty to Venus apparently never in doubt.

And now they've got me. Pink Rover, Pink Rover, send Jen on over!

The hell of it is that, other than my grave disappointment at finding out that, not only was I to be trapped behind that face I found so interesting for the next year, but as the bearer of it I was henceforth responsible for the maintenance of that trick-mirror illusion... I like it.

This is seriously weird stuff here. Far more than you'd expect from your usual 'boy meets girl by becoming same' scenario. Not only don't I mind having everything from the neck up turned into Performance Art, or at least Folk Art, but... I'm kinda looking forward to expanding the oevre to include the neck down as well.

I still don't know if I'm hiding me from me, or bringing out the me-ness of me enough that even I can see it.

Maybe that's the point.

-jen

---

10Jul08

Okay, Okay!

You can stop IMing me now. The votes are in. I bow to popular demand. Yes, I will be going to the Beach Blast. Yes, I now have a swimsuit to fit the new girly me. And no, you'd better not look. I say that because it's so teeny that if too many people stare at it at once it will evaporate. And then I will cry a lot and run home. Or kick righteous ass. Or something.

Don't expect me to swim in it, either. I am firmly convinced that the first touch of water will leach away all the colors leaving it perfectly transparent. Or it will come off and float away on the waters of the surf, mocking me as it is pulled out with the riptide, which is worse, because then there are two chances for your attention to be pulled to where you should not look.

We are talking about paying good money for holes on a scale not seen since the invention of the transistor. This thing is more not-there than there.

Or at least that's how I saw it when I tried it on. CK, GS, CA, you made me buy the stupid thing, you had better back me up. You promised pasties and you'd better wear them. You're professional girls, I'm a part-timer, you'd better be scoring all the eyeballs so I don't.

Stop laughing.

-jen

---

13Jul08

Aftermath

You can stop laughing now.

It didn't come off, in fact I practically had to tear it off me when I got home, because... Are you ready for this?

It shrunk.

Who the hell designs bikinis that shrink?

Never mind: I know who. The people who like to watch things like that. Guys.

Girls. Dear friends. Please tell me I wasn't really like that last year. I would have watched, sure, but I wouldn't have done anything to make it happen.

Yeah, yeah. That's because last year I was a wuss. I wouldn't have dared.

Speaking of...

Guys. Yeah, you, all the humans who were at Beach Blast who didn't have to wear anything above the waist to keep from getting, well, busted. (Stop laughing, I tell you. Do you think I make these things up on purpose? This is real honesty in e-motion here!)

Guys, thank you for everything you did, and everything you didn't do, to set me at my ease, even when all I had on was that ridiculous little thing. Maybe I dared because you cared, okay? All of you, girls and guys. It's good to know that I still have friends, people I can have good honest fun with, even though I change in the other side of the bath-house now.

Even if most of you guys couldn't give me a straight answer if I were to quiz you on whether my eye color changed, because you never got that far North.

The machine does that, you know. It's not a bug, it's a feature. "Genetic Code Optimizing", they call it. "Brings out the best that your genes can offer", they put in the brochure.

Brings out the most embarrassing parts of your gender, I put it. At counting-the-days-but-still-sixteen, I'm bigger than my mother, just because one of my ancestors, anywhere from the Pleistocene Era onward, was. So they catch the eye. They catch on a lot of other stuff too if I don't watch where I'm going.

(Stop laughing.)

So that's why I told you not to look, and that's why I can't blame you for looking anyway. When I was your shape, I did the same thing. I know how it is. Really I do. Really.

Just try and come up for air every once in a while to let me know my eyes are still on straight, okay?

(Girls... Hey, girls... You can stop laughing now. Please?)

-jen

---

17Jul08

Emily, don't read this entry. Please.

I saw Jason Schmit's welcome home. It was closed-casket drive-thru. He got his E-ticket ride in Sao Tome, and despite the cute manga name he wasn't a girl when he bought it, but I hear he got the one-half part right: cut in two by shrapnel when his truck went over a mine. He wasn't even a combatant. Yet.

We used to shoot hoops together over in the base housing courts while we were waiting for Emily and Jan to get done with their tennis lessons. Jason was seriously cool: he had a good reason for just about everything he did, even if it was a mistake. He wasn't afraid to admit it when he fucked up, either. He could tell you which reasons turned out to be the good ones, which ones were him bullshitting himself and the world around him, and which ones might have been good ones except for circumstances. I guess that last clause got him. I hear Sao Tome used to be a friendly little place when there wasn't a war on, but where there is oil we must send troops, right?

If anybody actually reads this piece of shit blog (yeah, that's real guy talk for ya), Emily needs friends and family now. I went over to help her go pick out a black dress, because she needed a bunch of girl company to keep her mind on what she was doing and off why she was doing it. I happen to be a girl just now so I was eligible.

Now she needs both kinds of friends. Girls that she can share memories and feelings with, and I'm not enough of a girl to be eligible--I can listen real good but I don't have anything to share. And guys, so when she breaks down in tears there's somebody strong there for her to grab tight and cry it out all over your shirt before it poisons her insides. I can't do that either because my boobs just don't feel like that kind of brick-wall protection right now, and it wasn't even a birth defect in my case.

And, hey, guys, she needs it to be non-judgmental. If you care about her at all. I know a lot of you did (okay--me too). And non-pushy if you do. She doesn't need some jerkazoid trying to hustle to be his replacement, she's still trying to cope with losing him, he's the only man she can see and I think it's going to be just that way for quite a while. I think I can see deep enough into this girl shit to say that for sure.

Why does she need non-judgmental support? I'll tell you exactly why she needs it, because she said I could, because everybody knows what already, seems like, but they don't know why.

Jason couldn't marry her while he was in boot, then he got shipped out before he could even kiss her. Now the military won't honor Jason's standing-last-request for a posthumous marriage because he wasn't listed as a combatant when he died. So she's not even a widow, much less a military one, she doesn't even have that much of him, instead she's what's called an unwed mother in training. Guys, if you give her shit for this, in a year when I get my balls back I'm going to kick your fucking ass--you have been warned. This means you, Jan-who-went-back-to-being-John.

Shit, I sound like a guy. I hope they don't take my blog away from me for that. If it helps Emily, though, it's worth it.

-jen

---

01Aug08

It's A Girl Thing

Guys, I think I have a clue to pass on from the girl side of the playhouse. That is, if I haven't gone girl too much to be able to explain it in guy-ese.

It's about shopping. It's about a little all day trip that ended up with me driving home with three big bags full of stuff I never thought I'd dream of owning when I started. But that's okay. And that's part of it.

It's about four other girls who I won't indict (hint, they've all got blogs, line up dates and times and do your own detective work) dragging me out of bed in the morning and making me dress up pretty at gunpoint and then taking me prisoner in my own car and one other while we convoyed to alien territory and then...

Well, let me start over before they start mocking me over on those other blogs. Ready? I was lonely. They knew I was lonely. They took steps. Drastic ones that put them in harm's way because of my exceedingly bitter involuntarily-female outlook and viperish tongue.

Better? It's still not the truth. Let's try that again. We all planned this in IM. I didn't lie about the lonely and viperish part. They, kindhearted veterans of the monthly hormone wars that they were, knew how to read a calendar and expected me to be bitchy, and forgave me beforehand. Then we got to planning, and yea, verily, it was fun. There are a lot of shops in that mall, y'see, and one or more of us knew how to read its map. Despite us being girls. We could even read the words, so we knew what they sell beforehand. Without even being told to study the map by me, the temporarily-ex-guy.

So when we set out in two cars, we knew exactly what we were going to do, and we knew to bring a lot of money to do it with. And what were we going to do? Go look. That's right, guys, we were going to go look to see if it looked (and sounded and smelled, and felt, and even tasted, as appropriate) as good as it looked in the online pages.

We did not go unarmed into this mission-critical expedition, no: we each had a cellphone. Thus could we summon our comrades to help us to subdue a particularly good bargain, or judge with a weight of decision worthy of the Supreme Court (albeit with much giggling, something we girls do in our off-hours to mark our territory) whether that green really went with that off-white. Not that I knew all the names of the colors, but hey, I'm usually a guy at this sort of thing.

Now, here's the thing. All of this was done in a spirit of utmost teamwork and cooperation. There were no leaders of the pack, no superstars, no drill sergeants. Nope, not a drum majorette in sight as we trekked through this virgin territory. (Watch that, buddy, I know what pun you were thinking of just then. Ha ha.) It was all done in a wondrous air of calm. And that was comforting. It felt good.

Guys, you know how, when you hang out, there's always a little badder-than, a little extra spin you put on things to liven it all up? And the more you feel you have to measure up, the harder you push? For fun? All the friggin time?

Girls aren't into that. Not when they're not actually in-your-face competing, like in sports or something, and when it's over it's over. The rest of the time, there's that comfort thing going around. Girls don't feel comfortable if the edginess doesn't end. They like the calm with some excitement tossed in sometimes, not the other way around.

So, lose the extra edge and dig the calm when you're around the girls, that's all I can say. You can actually enjoy the calm if you let yourself trust it. I can remember a few times when I got that part right, back before I changed, and I remember now that it was fun then even if I couldn't figure out why at the time. Now I know why. You might even enjoy the shopping. Hey, she does look good in most of that stuff, right?

Oops, there's my guy side peeking out again. No girl feels that she looks all that great when she's trying something on. She knows everywhere she isn't perfect, even if it's in a place where you can't see it. You don't; you see how it all comes together. That's why girls bring other girls with them to help shop, because the others see that coming-together too, though usually not with the same intensity of interest that you do. If she brings you along it's because she wants to look good to you: consider yourself highly praised. Shopping can be good for you. Nuff said.

-jen

---

15Aug08

WHILE YOU WERE OUT

Guys, we lost Emily.

For those who joined us late, no she didn't die. We got her there in time. It didn't even cause a miscarriage, which is just as well because I really don't think she could have taken losing that last little bit of Jason that was floating innocently in the ultrasound. They're pretty sure he bequeathed her a Y, by the way. If you should so much as care.

And they let her out after her 72-hour. And she quietly thanked them and us and I could see that there were no tears left in her eyes because there wasn't any her in her eyes. She'd left.

So it's no big surprise that she packed her bags and vanished the rest of her over the weekend, is it. She'd already left, after all. You can stop ringing her phone at all hours, now, all you're doing is harrassing her parents, and they've got enough to deal with.

And, before you ask, don't ask. Maybe I have a line on somebody who might possibly let me know how she's doing, but my lips are sealed. If you have a birthday card to send to her, or an apology, maybe it'll get there if I read it and see that it'd be good for her, but that's all. Just letting you know.

Oh, and John? You are dead to me until I get my guy shape back. Don't call, don't come around. And once I get that back, dude, you're as good as dead.

-jen

---

24Aug08

Does the phrase "Back To School Sale" strike terror into your heart the way it does mine?

It didn't use to. Back then, it was, "Oh, yeah, school supplies. Fine, any colors will do as long as they're primary or dull and don't have too many pictures." Clashing was when they wouldn't all fit into your backpack at the same time.

Girls have got that calmness thing going, remember, and that requires harmony. Colors have to work together, accessories have to cooperate, and not just across your own ensemble, either. If you customarily hang with four best friends, you'll be on the phone with all four of them making sure that nothing you carry will clash with anything they carry.

The consequences of failure are enormous, you understand.

A minor clash, say, a three-ring binder with the wrong stickers, will only result in feuds, food poisoning, stock market crashes and dogs falling out of the sky. A major misstep in coordination, however, such as your whole collection of binders focusing attention on someone's least-favorite pair of socks, can cause the decor to get so badly out of coordination that the color-clash tears open a hole in space-time and then strange octopus-headed gods will step through it looking for directions to the Mountains of Madness...

Yeah, yeah, how odd, a girl that's read most of H. P. Lovecraft. Every zoo must have exactly one because they're a rare and dangerous species, and they must never meet each other, either, lest they decide to accessorize using the Color Out Of Space, which is the chromatic Three-Finger-Salute for the current Universe.

Then there are affiliations and affections. These must be carefully considered as well. Such as, do I like this Boy Band enough to commit binder space to them for a whole school year? (Mmm, yeah, Boy Bands: that's a topic all its own, we'll have to get to that sometime.)

Maybe it's better to select a new fave for the year and hope that they'll still be on the charts come June. That's a safe option, at least until Yog-Sothoth starts showing up in multipage spreads across the pages of Tiger Beat. I can't wait: him and Shub-Nigurath, oh, yeah, baby.

Then there are the signals. Clues which have the force of tribal markings, or the friend-or-foe insignia painted on military aircraft, and they've got to be done right too.

This is why the obvious solution to the color coordination problem, that of buying the same colors in bulk and passing them out to everyone, will not work: that much sameness sends the wrong signal to the other teams. It says that you're too religious for your own good and your sanity is in peril. All the other teams will avoid you, lest you go postal without warning while they're in the room.

I used to like black leather stuff. I still do, but apparently black leather sends the wrong territorial signals to Real Biker Chicks, and even though in my life as a guy I sometimes rode a (borrowed) dirt bike, I don't know enough Combat With Broken Bottles to cover that bet.

Oh, and the Boy Band stickers you put on things send important affiliation signals too. If your band goes out of favor and you don't replace the stickers in time with someone who's in, you could get burned at the stake.

As you can see, the stakes are extremely high for that Initial Entrance on the First Day Of Class. Wearing the wrong color blouse, I surmise, has been known to provoke Yet Another World War. Yes, I'm nervous. Very.

Now. What's personally frightening to me is the calm (Remember the calm thing? Girls are all about the calm.) with which these girls-at-birth friends of mine can, in the course of two hours of shopping, quickly and quietly resolve all of these life-threatening issues, while I am relegated to stand-and-gape status, utterly at a loss to comprehend the magic that they somehow weave to make all these coordinations come out right. Even my stuff.

Somehow I don't feel that I am ever going to measure up.

-jen

---

04Sep08

Show And Tell

It's just a locker room. I can do this. After all, I've been through the time machine.

Picture the New Girl, dashing into the locker room at gym where at least a classful of half-dressed girls are busy changing into and out of gym uniforms, sometimes All The Way Down To The Metal. Picture said New Girl with a terminal case of embarrassment and trying very hard not to stare. Picture said New Girl not doing a very good job of it. I mean, stumbling against people she's trying not to look at, and then needing help from those selfsame people in getting things taken off her own body and put on again the right way.

Picture said New Girl being helped by those same half-clad girls, and finding to her amazement that it was all right, that it wasn't such a big deal after all, because everybody knew who she was, knew all about her sordid guy past, and nobody cared. And as long as we're being embarrassingly honest here, some of those selfsame girls are people I've had crushes on in the past.

How did this happen?

See, there's this thing that some of you may not know, but it's vital to understanding all of this.

Girls go into puberty two years before guys do.

So, while the guys are still doing little boy stuff out in the playground, the girls are measuring themselves against the adults. Adult women, to be precise: they know what they're going to be, they just don't know all the details yet, like how big they'll be where.

Think about it, guys: that's right about when the girls all got really mysterious and incomprehensible, enough to be more than a little scary, right? It's because they knew something that we didn't. They knew they were growing up; we didn't. We thought that recess would last forever.

Now, here I am on the other side of the playground, and I've gone through two years of the stuff in an instant. (Or however long the change-machine takes to do its thing. They put you under for that, in case you don't know, so I didn't get to see any of the gory details, I just woke up a day later and had to learn how to walk upright all over again. Because of the hips, you dork, not the weight of... Stop laughing, this is serious!) Even for somebody as clueblind as me, that's a big enough change in my own awareness to get noticed.

At first I thought it was just me being a girl now, you know, ovaries instead of testes, estrogen instead of testosterone, that kind of thing. Now that I've had a chance to talk it over with my friends, though, I'm pretty sure it's that jump in physical (as in, brain as well as body) maturity. Suddenly I'm two years older than I was, with a lot of catching up to do because of it.

Why do I suddenly know this?

Like I said, some of this is from talking with my Best Buds, my dear girlfriends.

And, hey, why is it that if I'm a girl and I say 'girlfriend', people know I'm talking about a close friend that I hang out with and do friend stuff with, but if I was a guy when I said that, people would automatically think we were doing that whole Mating Thing, you know, going steady and preparing to spawn? Why doesn't this stupid culture allow guys and girls to be friends except in the bedroom?

I think it goes back to that mystery thing. The girls are clued into the mystery for two whole years before they let the guys in through the gate. There's a culture gap there that never closes. Never. It's why I'm thinking now that maybe this Year On The Other Side thing is healthy even if it is mandatory.

A lot of this is from doing a lot of reading followed by a lot of thinking. (Hey, we've gotta have something on our minds when we're giving the hair its Hundred Strokes, otherwise it gets boring even for us. Calm only goes just so far, at least for me.)

The rest of it is probably me taking a time machine two years into my own future and noticing the difference, catching the change-fairy in the act.

Suddenly I feel a lot better about certain girls my age that I had crushes on getting together with guys two years older than me. They were the same age inside, after all. I don't need to say who; it turns out they all knew at the time, every single one of them, and were kind enough not to say anything.

Well, guess what? Now we're friends.

I don't get shy and tongue-tied around them, I don't lose track of what I'm doing when they show up, instead I can really enjoy them for what they always were before this whole hormones thing turned them into Mysterious People From The Future: my friends.

Maybe the change has insulated me from all that by hiding the testosterone under a layer of estrogen. (What? Check your Biology books: girls have testosterone, just not as much of it, and there's this whole estrogen/progesterone thing running on top of it.) And, let's face it, I've got girl-programming running in my brain now, making me more apt to notice guys than girls; it's a part of this whole I'm-a-girl thing that I've had to accept.

Or maybe the mystery is gone now that I've arrived in the future myself. I don't know.

All I know right now is, right now they're people who look Just Like Me. And we're friends.

This is cool. I guess.

-jen

---

17Sep08

Seventeen on Seventeen

Thank you for the party. With the following qualifications, it was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed it.

Qualifications:

I have officially sworn off Themed Birthday Parties. I shall not run the gauntlet, and if elected I will not serve the cake. Truly, the mind boggles at the refined levels wherein the Theme Creators' intellects must dwell, and in the absence of comprehension I must henceforth abstain.

The Twin Peaks birthday cake was a study in subtlety and understated aberrant psychology. Particularly expecting me to make the first cut, and to take that first bite right there without using hands.

Of the themed party games, 'Pin The THAT Back On The Jen' was a triumph of sophisticated symbolism over native common sense. Especially when people with perfectly good blindfolds somehow unerringly wandered over to me rather than towards the two-dimensional cardboard replica on the wall while armed with said THAT already impaled on a pin. No matter who I hid behind.

You will have duly noted that I did not venture near the Hooters Dartboard game until well after end-of-play, when I had accounted for all the darts and verified the absence of any spares in private hands. I just wanted to make sure that the three-dimensional Jen was not targeted by mistake instead of the cardboard one.

I mean, Basic Biology here. If stuck with a dart, the two balloons that I went home with would not go softly pop, neither would they politely go hiss. Instead, they would cause the owner to emit extremely loud and unfriendly noises involving commitments to perform mayhem on the perpetrator. With extreme prejudice. At great length.

So it was in your own interest that I would not pose alongside Miss Sudden-Deflation 2008 for photo-op.

All things considered, I think it was a master-stroke of party planning and a Very Good Thing that no Responsible Adults were there to witness the festivities. As it was, both Male Parental Unit and Female Parental Unit were duly appreciative of the humor presented in the inevitable debriefing. I doubt they would have been so appreciative had they received the full visual impact.

I mean, I'm female enough to be flattered that you think me attractive, but some of these things I would be embarrassed to wear in bed. Under a heavy quilt. Who is this Victoria person anyway and why can't she keep a secret?

Which is why I was so thoroughly opposed to modeling said secrets. No matter how loud the chanting got.

Seriously, guys, there were a few times where you scared me a little. I'm glad you girls were there with me. Not because of any 'us versus them' kind of thing, but to help keep it on an 'all one us' basis like a party's supposed to be.

-jen

---

24Sep08

I do not think the Last Beach Blast of '08 was a good idea.

Let me count the reasons.

That was the wrong beach to be an alternate. I don't care if it was the last one still open for the season. It had mosquitos.

It did not have cooking grilles or firepits. It did have Rangers to object to our creating same. Cold hot dogs is oxymoronic and the first two syllables are silent.

Seeing how much IT had shrunk was not an adequate excuse for an all-day festival, not to anybody but guys and mosquitos.

Particularly for the girls, who see such as a minor curiosity rather than being of particularly major prurient interest, and are not fond of mosquitos.

Plus there were mosquitos. Was there repellent? No, but there were mosquitos.

It got cold after dark. Blankets were duly brought out. One per two people. Hm, methinks there was a plan at work in how those blankets were divvied up one per guy. Perhaps he was meant to share it with the mosquitos?

Sunset comes earlier. So do the cold winds. So do the mosquitos.

They were goosebumps, okay? Both of them.

So now you know for sure that when they vacuum-molded those things onto me they did not forget the detailing. Just like on all the other girls. Now that we were all reassured and satisfied on that point we could all go home. Away from the mosquitos.

I lied. They were mosquito bites.

-jen

 

---

04Oct08

Report from the Front

Oops, that didn't sound right. I don't think I'm going to use that header anymore. (Stop laughing.)

I think I'm beginning to understand this Boy Band thing just a little. But for me to pass on that understanding, we (meaning those of us who were or are or will be guys, me being in the once-and-future category) are going to have to talk about centerfold models first.

That's right. Playboy, Penthouse, even (ecch) Hustler. You know, the ones where you're 'only reading the articles' if anybody's looking. The stuff we under-age types aren't even supposed to be exposed to until we're released into the wild, without a clue, to mate. As if that stopped us. All this estrogen flooding my system now hasn't erased those memories, it's only changed how I feel about them; I think I'm in the middle somewhere right now. Maybe that's why I can be so analytical about it. You know, the both-sides-now thing.

Okay, think about it. There you are, out in public where you can't really do anything about it, maybe over at the Pubic Library downtown where they're sold, and you're staring at the latest centerfold. Why are you doing that?

Repeat, this is not about you hidden safe in your own room with the door locked where what you do is your own business. This is in public where, however it makes you feel, you'll just have to put up with that for the rest of the day.

What makes you look? What makes you want to look?

I mean, let's face it, she's an impossible goal. You can look but you can never touch. You do know that, right? Look at her expression, no, look at her eyes: she's thinking about the money she's going to get for this photo shoot, money that will put food on her table. It's strictly business to her: she's a camera hooker. If you talked to her and she mentioned love, and she was honest, it'd be something like, she loves how people like you are good for business.

No matter how much a vampire says she loves you, she's only comparing dining experiences.

You know all that on some level. Yet you make an effort to look at her anyway, right? Why?

It makes you feel more alive, right? On a gut level, it makes you feel a little more like you matter, like you haven't quite faded all the way back into the two-dimensional painted backdrop of real life yet. And that's a feeling we all need. We need to feel real.

And, let's face it, she's a safe impossible goal. She's a specimen, pinned (or staked) down by the camera onto that page where she can't get loose and enter your life for real. You can stare at her as long as it suits you, but you're never going to have to experience how grumpy she is before breakfast or what she looks like without her makeup. She's never going to say something utterly vapid, or blow off something that matters a lot to you because she can't understand it and it doesn't matter enough to her for her to try. She's never going to spoil the mood.

And, until you grow tired of how limited that all is (I mean, let's face it, she's just a printed image, made up of dots of colored inks on white paper, that's what you're really reacting to), you won't ever have to cope with your disappointment in her by hurrying to find someone else to stare at. You can dump her but she can't dump you.

She's unattainable and that's why she's safe for you to fixate on. Not only for raising the flag on the old flagpole, but for something a lot deeper.

Okay, now we can get to the Boy Band thing. Are you ready?

Same thing.

My buds have introduced me to the Boy Bands, and my (remember: female now) brain wants to get caught up in that whole thing just a little. We girls can compare notes and fantasies, defend favorites while we keep an eye out for something better, and it stirs that something-deeper and makes us feel alive, just like the guys who are passing around the centerfolds.

Just like the guys.

See, they're safe, those boys. They sing and dance, they pose, and it's something to get the blood flowing. (And no, we are not going to talk about where it goes when it does that now. This whole subject already puts enough of it in my cheeks as blush that I'm going to have to change my whole makeup scheme to work around it, without any Comparative Anatomy.)

But they're never going to get grabby when you're trying to have a serious discussion about how something makes you feel. They can't keep you nervous all evening that they might decide to use force when charm has failed. Their eyes always meet yours instead of CAT-scanning your chest or trying to use their X-Ray Vision to see if you're wearing a pad. They're never going to put you down for having ambitious goals because you're just a girl.

They're airbrushed perfection because they're perfectly unattainable. Though that's the part of the illusion that my best buds don't want to focus on, because it would dispel the illusion. Any more than you want to zoom in on Miss June enough to see how the ink dots line up.

What? You didn't think they're airbrushed? Come on, I know the crowd around the standup urinals taught you to be more cynical than that. They're airbrushed. Just like Miss June. Even their adorable paint-by-the-numbers quirks go through the Art Department on their way to Page Layout. Just like hers.

But it's fun for my (remember: female now) mind to imagine. They're safe, and it makes me feel more real.

Just like you.

-jen

---

21Oct08

Tell me again why I was supposed to be a cheerleader?

Oh, yes. I have friends who are still guys. Guys who want proof that I'm a girl.

It's not like I need proof that I'm a girl. The identity police still come calling every month like clockwork just to see if I have the requisite plumbing for them to "palp" (lovely gynecological word, that, palp, almost like "pulp", which is what it leaves me feeling like--try it on your balls sometime), and leave the Red Badge of Inevitability at the door on the way out. They've been doing it since I started being a girl, and they'll keeping doing it until I start being a guy again (they'd better).

So, why is it that I felt impelled to engage in an activity in which I am to wear skimpy clothing and jump up and down?

Because they (G, T, G again, W, F and N, and not to forget S and S and S) asked me to. They thought I would look cute, they said, which is a word that I know from my guyhood days to mean sexy.

Let me clue the guys in the congregation: by half-time, those secondary-characteristic orbs do not feel sexy, they feel pummeled. Wearing a normal bra merely confines them in a smaller chamber which mitigates, or, if it continues long enough, refines the punishment by enabling its extension. Sports bras would help, but they do not match the Cheerleader Aesthetic, now, do they? That's why girls who are naturally apt to such work by virtue of possessing a trim physique are not recruited for such work, right? As opposed to those of us who were born to be mighty, or to whom the change machine returned coinage in improper fractions, right? (Betcha didn't know a girl could use such big words. Hey, my buds suggested most of 'em, and they were born that way! Ha!)

I have in mind a slight revision to the tradition known as 'cheerleading'. It goes as follows.

In addition to the current scantily-clad females of the girl persuasion (no matter how temporarily persuaded), there shall be boys clad only in jockstraps and speedo shirts. Where the girls carry pompoms, the boys shall each carry a large nerf priapic wand (if you don't know what that means, follow the link, dickhead), to be held in such a way that, each time one of the girls leaps up, daring her mammary glands to tear themselves free at last and float off into the stratosphere (or so I remember the standard guy impression of their contents, judging by the jokes that I unthinkingly believed when I first heard them--who starts these stupid things?), and extends her pompom-bedecked arms to the side as she does now, she shall fetch a mighty wallop to the top end of said wand, causing the nether end of said wand to clip the adjacent male mightily in the groin.

I expect to see every one of you guys out on the field at 0700, dressed to rehearse.

Equal pain for equal work. That's fair, isn't it?

-jen

---

01Nov08

Ha, ha, ha.

I blame myself and that last entry for giving you all the costume idea, but...

The sight of the nine of you in Jen's Cheerleader Kickline, with all the helium boobs floating away...

I would have fetched all your Priapic Wands a mighty wallop if I wasn't laughing so hard. And if you hadn't won first prize with it.

I had no idea I was embarrassing myself in public in front of so many local people with this blog. Yeah, I get a little full of myself sometimes.

Thanks. I needed that.

I want a copy of the DVD. Maybe we'll do a fundraiser with it.

Can we add all of you to the lineup, just like that, for the Thankgiving Game?

-jen

---

27Nov08

Let's not salute it, and not even say that we did.

Okay, guys, before we even get started... I've been there, done that. Okay? I know what that little head of yours is thinking while the big head is just trying to cope with the sudden loss of blood pressure. I know because I've been socially betrayed by the very same mutinous uprising.

Now that we've got that out of the way...

We're going to talk about that woody now. Yeah, I've talked to my friends, dealt with my own embarrassment, and now I think I'm ready to talk about it.

It's natural, of course. It's what happens when your thoughts dwell on some goodlooking babe who's got your attention, and then you find that your body has just assumed that it's about to go on active duty, so it comes to attention too.

Most of the time you've got a book handy to carry in figleaf position. A jacket over your arm, the back of a chair, almost anything will do. Don't think it's not noticed anyway, but what you do about it does send signals which we'll get to in a moment.

What if you don't have anything handy to cover it with, to take it out of public view?

Simple. Leave it alone. Don't apologize. Don't pay any attention to it and it'll go away. That I do know. And it really is the safest move.

See, the problem is, if you draw attention to it, suddenly it's not just Nature in action anymore, now it's you doing it, and now it's a threat.

Girl brains are just as capable of mentally undressing people as guy brains. As expected, girl brains normally mentally undress guys, and normally this goes back to that feels-more-real thing and there's no more harm done than when your guy brain is mentally undressing girls. Until something changes.

Therein lies the problem. While you're sitting there, content to mentally undress me and not do anything about it other than that, behind your clothing One-Eyed Pete the Pirate is running up his Jolly Roger. And then my X-Ray Vision nimbly strips away the cloaking device and sees that snake coiled and poised and ready to strike. At me. This sudden vision is hard to accept with equanimity. It's okay, though, as long as it's only natural. That means that Nature did it and you're probably not going to go along with it.

If you call attention to it, though, it suddenly feels like you mean it. And then I feel threatened, for reasons that haven't changed at all since Nature first started stocking this planet with human herds. They are as follows.

You are male; I am not. You've got big muscles; I don't. You can probably force things before I can damage you enough to make you stop. And then you can get up and walk away afterwards, while I will probably get to feel the results every day for nine months, plus at least eighteen years of motherhood afterwards. Plus having to be female for most or all of those years because the kid needs me that way and my needs don't matter as much. Plus years and years of therapy.

In other words, the threat is that you are going to make all of my life-choices for me, right now, against my will, by invading my body, and that I am physically helpless to oppose that.

The hell of it is, I know that the big head doesn't intend any such thing; I've had this happen too, remember. But the big head might not have a choice if it hasn't learned caution. See, I've also had the little head do that sudden-reality-inversion thing on me, back when I had one, where stupidly aggressive actions suddenly seemed to make sense in a hazy sort of hormonally-overly-simplified way. It's that kind of 'what the hell got into me just then' self-humiliation that teaches you, or taught me, anyway, to be wary of letting my thoughts dwell on such things in public, as in, if there was anybody else in the room.

But what if you haven't mastered that kind of being-wary thing yet? Remember, if it goes too far, you play but I pay.

I think (since some of my good guy friends privately apologized afterward and asked me just what it was that crossed the line so we could avoid a repeat) that this also pins down just what was scaring me so much at my birthday party. I think that, without ever meaning more than good harmless highly-suggestive fun, you were triggering fears I didn't realize I had inherited along with the rest of my XX-Files. Fears of being raped.

Believe it or not, the "carry a book there" figleaf cover does reduce the tension. It sends a signal that you don't really mean it, and that the big head is firmly in charge here. But do it so as to dispel attention, not attract it; if you're obvious about it, we're back to that "uh-oh, he really means it" thing again, and it is scary.

This is probably a reason why us girls tend to cluster in herds large enough to repel a predator.

Damn, I never thought the change would be this intense.

-jen

---

23Dec08

Settle the Score

Two more guys from our school came home for Christmas; that makes an even twenty this year. This is not a Merry Christmas for their families. It was a joint service. I got to use my black dress again like I hoped I wouldn't. I knew those guys. It was not a happy time for me.

It's strange, you know. Those guys were decent but not close friends. I knew them only when I was a guy. Had I attended their funerals as a guy, I would have been really depressed, and I would have missed those guys terribly, and maybe I would have gotten righteously pissed at how they died and why, but I would have probably stayed dry.

Instead, me being the girl that I am now, I cried. The tears started when their parents stood up to say a few words, and they just wouldn't quit, I mean, TK had to drive for me because I couldn't see clearly through them. It really really got to me.

That meant that it stayed on my mind, though. Preyed on it is more like it. Until I paid attention.

We're not all that big a student body because we don't live in a big town. That makes the numbers harder to ignore. We lost twenty guys this year to one Oil War or another (because, let's face it, that's what they are: our government is holding up other countries at gunpoint for their oil). That's about three percent of our student body, over seven percent if you just count guys. That's PER YEAR. How long is a tour of duty? How many will come home alive? ALL FOR WHAT?

We don't even have a Selective Service Lottery anymore. When you're old enough, you will go.

It wouldn't be so bad if there was really any way to justify it, but this isn't a Hero War like World War II was, where people knew that the enemy would reach our shores soon if we didn't help stop them while they were fighting our friends, and a bunch of the guys volunteered to help save the world for freedom, even knowing that it would cost a lot of them their lives.

This isn't that. I really really think we're working for the bad guys here. And, because of that, I'm wondering if I should skip the change in June and stay this way, rather than go kill somebodies and then have one of them kill me, for something I not only don't believe in but can't even excuse.

There's something wrong when I have to tell my guy friends, "I think maybe you should be a girl for a few years because our government is going to waste you for sure if you're a guy." But... I think that's what I'm doing right now.

Guys, it's a big change, but I'm still me. And, if I'm going to stay this way, I'd really rather a lot of you stayed that way, for purely natural and selfish reasons. But, more important, I'd really rather you stayed alive, all of you.

I've learned a lot so far; I can help. And there are a lot of incredible friends of mine who helped me and I'm sure they'll help you.

Maybe we'll be awfully short of guys for a while, but we won't lose as many permanently, like we've lost GAC and RP and CW and TN and... Dammit, am I ever going to stop crying??

-jen

---

29Dec08

Slight Change

One of my both-sides-now girlfriends just clued me to something. I just found out that you're allowed one final change for free, just after you get your diploma.

So I'm going over to the blue side in June, because I feel that I need that. Especially if it's for the last time, I need to be a guy for my senior year. And then, if things haven't changed, I'm going back to the pink side, maybe for life.

You guys who are currently guys and who aren't currently seniors, maybe this makes your plans, whatever they are, a little easier. I thought you should know. In case you missed it like I did.

-jen

---

13Jan09

Fashion Or Survival

My amazing best buddies made sure I got some long skirts well in advance. As in, August. "You'll need them," said they. "You've got to be kidding me," said I. "It's damn hot outside," said I. "You'll see," said they.

Now I see, and I am supremely grateful once again for the timeless girl wisdom and attention to girl details ( my girl details) with which they have guided me. Never mind that we look like an Eskimo choir when we walk around together all bundled up; at least we are halfway warm.

Not that that sits well with the guys in the group. I get questions like, Why don't you wear miniskirts anymore? Why do you hide everything now? Is this part of that new plans thing?

Now, I'll admit that I got lucky with that change machine. They said it tweaks up your genes, and that was no lie. So this is not something I did, this is something I got given. And this is not me bragging about me, this is me being grateful to a stupid machine for that Genetic Code Optimizing thing, for not having anything in the looks department to be really ashamed of.

That said, I can admit that I like my legs. I like the way they look in a skirt. Even when I catch myself giving me a guy-look and spend way too much time staring in a mirror and get all embarrassed about it. I like the look and I want to show it off.

The problem is, the air gets cold in the winter, and that air is not sitting still, it's got some real wind backing it up. So what little warm air is inside that little skirt gets replaced real quick by air that's freezing, and that's seriously not fun.

So maybe you guys who are complaining about us girls hiding everything need a little object lession. Like maybe being thrown out in the snow in your underwear for an hour or so. Because that's kinda what a miniskirt is like.

Maybe I need to stop shaving my legs. You know, get some real fur action going down there. Then I can wear those miniskirts and sheer pantyhose and still be warm. You guys'd like that, right?

-jen

---

14Feb09

You Must Know This

You had me in tears. You know that. But you don't know why. Please sit down while I tell you.

Today was... Well, it was a surprise. Valentine's Day was never too special for me before, for a lot of reasons, most of which amounted to my being too immature to appreciate it, and at least I realized that.

To get cards today was... interesting, for what they illuminated about my current form, my current role, my current self, as seen by others. Thank you, everyone.

Then there were the gifts.

Not the chocolates. I threw those away. I thought they might be drugged and I didn't want to go there. On the off chance that you meant more than I thought, please accept my apologies. We do have a history, and I reacted to that.

There were... three.

One of you gave me a pin, and one of you gave me a charm for my bracelet, and one of you gave me a scarf.

I want you to know that I was touched, deeply, by each of these. Individually.

I'm telling you which ones because I really want each of you to know that I'm talking about you. Yes, you. You know who you are now. Now, please, listen, because you have to know this and I couldn't say it in person.

You are special. Why? Because you took the trouble to understand, which didn't come easy. I know, because I don't find any of it easy to understand myself.

I have dear friends who can help me with some of it. They're girls. They've seen both sides and they know which side they belong on. They can only help me just so far, though: they were born female, you see, and, as you know, I was not. And, as you know, I will not remain this way.

So trying to pin down my female feelings is like catching wind in a Klien bottle, like halting a wave, like painting on a rainbow. Yes, I know I've just named those three gifts again, their symbols, as you each explained them to me. I told you they were special.

You each told me that you cared about me, even knowing that things are temporary, and that you wanted me to have that gift so that I could remember being cared about. Even though the caring had to be, in some ways, as volatile, as evanescent as the form. That you hoped we could be good friends, without embarrassment, after we were back on the same side of the world, but that right now the caring went deeper than friendship and you wanted me to know that.

I would tell you that I wasn't offended: how could I be? You understood. But that's why I don't have to tell you that: you understood.

I just want you to know that I wasn't crying out of sorrow that it couldn't last. I was crying out of happiness that it could happen at all. You made me feel so good that even the crying felt good.

You know who you are. Thank you.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

-jen

---

22Feb09

So she told me today...

(Those of you in the know, I don't have to tell you who she is, and you can guess the rest. All the rest of you, just kick back. You don't need to know exactly who all the players are out here on the field to see how the game is going, and staying in the bleachers means you get a better chance to dodge the inevitable stray bullets, right? We are professionals at this, kids; do not try this stuff at home.)

She told me today that she thought I should be a little nicer to someone, someone who was too shy to come and tell me outright how he felt about me.

And I thought, but this is silly. I'm trying to treat everybody fairly, just because. Friends get all the behaviors in the Friends Agenda. Jerks get all the behaviors in the Jerks Agenda. Unmitigated Contemptible Assholes get... You get the drift.

So why should I change all that, just because she surmises that she suspects that she has an inkling that someone might possibly in some respect and regard have feelings for me?

I mean, feelings are nice, everybody's got some: they come in two main colors, Appropriate and Inappropriate, and some of the Inappropriates you have to pretty well put aside, bundled up and carefully labeled, until you're wearing a form in which they are Appropriate. I've done that, believe me, and it's really not something that you feel that you want to do, but it's something that you have to do. It feels like you're letting yourself down, letting opportunities go to waste, but you're letting yourself down if you don't.

You don't pull them out and wave them around and blame everybody else LOUDLY for being in the wrong shape because the feelings don't fit. People aren't like that: they don't owe you feelings. We're not just talking about trading Manhattan for trinkets, here, this is a life.

People don't owe you let's-pretend this until that changes and then it will all fit together; nobody knows that it will, and the one thing I know is that the let's-pretend won't work.

Right now my girl brain likes guys. Prior to this latest adventure, I've got a sixteen-year history of just liking girls. The fact that right now those feelings are not there for those girls (NO I'm not going to tell you who they are. Trust me, they don't want to know. They don't even want me to know.) tells me that when, at the end of this school year, the change machine returns me to the blue side of the gym, those feelings for guys won't be there. So expecting me to like a guy when I'm a guy again, when the guy won't even be honest that I'm a girl right now because he only likes guys, and is loudly unhappy unless I'm a girl-pretending-to-be-a-guy around him, is wasted emotional blackmail. I'm not anti-gay. I'm pro-truth.

And for those of you guys who might have been wondering why I don't settle on one of you and get close, just think about this.

In June I go back to being a guy. Unless you've got a change coming up then, that's exactly how long anything can last. And even if you do have a change scheduled, we don't know that either of us will have feelings for the other's new shape. Not unless you've got fourteen to seventeen years of guy-liking history behind you, and unless you're on that short list of girls, the one that I won't even look at right now because I literally don't feel like it, and unless I was and will be on your short list.

Not that I blame you for having feelings right now. So do I, and I like feeling them. Some of you are very good about helping me feel good about feeling them, too, and I hope I help in turn. If you feel like this fits you, you should be feeling the gold star on your forehead right about now. Believe me, some of the other girls, the permanent ones, have that star's coordinates carefully noted for no later than when I leave the starfield. (We've talked about it; we've even gone over stellar navigation and orbital strategy. I want them to be good for you. You deserve it and each other.)

But I know how long we don't have before those two bundles, Appropriate and Inappropriate, change places.

So I zoomed out the camera and looked at everything all over again in the wider context, scrutinizing everything for potential conflict resolution, and reran the Standardized Temporary Girl's Evaluation And Selection Criteria For Association Classification, and you know what?

Nothing changed except I reclassified a supposed friend as a neutral. Way off in the background, the UCA remained a UCA.

Warning: The creep in the mirror is closer than (s)he appears. If there's someone in the room with you, stick out your elbow. It's good self-defense practice for you and for them. If not... take a good... long... hard.. look... for... yourself.

I did. So should you.

-jen

---

04Mar09

Did you really think that I wouldn't find out?

If it wasn't supposed to be a secret, then why were you all sworn to silence around me? Was it because I'm a girl now?

I thought we were friends, y'know, as in, friends. As in, somebody I could trust.

You know how I found out? They move in frequency or something when the batteries get weak, and then my cordless phone wouldn't work because of the jamming. That's how I found one. Then I got my father to bring home a bugsweeper and then we found the others.

Oh, yeah, you had me staked out good. Three in my bedroom, two in my bathroom. That leaves three channels. I guess we need to take a bugsweeper to my parents' rooms now. No telling what you watched them do. I'm sure they're delighted that I know someone like you guys.

How long were they there? What all did you see? Who else did you show?

Never mind, GTK, NVS, ATL, AYT. I know better than to ask you for honest answers, and now I hope everybody else does too. Especially all the other girls. Girls who don't want their privacy violated. Girls who don't want to feel violated, period.

I got your attitude loud and clear when you told me, "It's not like you're a real girl so you shouldn't mind."

I AM A REAL GIRL.

More to the point, I am a real person.

I don't think I have anything to add to that.

-jen

---

07Mar09

We had The Talk the other day.

MPU (that's Male Parental Unit, and, I suppose I should confirm, though it's still pretty much safe to assume so far, born that way; male, that is) booked a couple of my hours well in advance for this, that's why I knew what was coming. The Talk.

See, we haven't really talked much in quite a while. It's not that we don't get along, we just don't intersect much. So I thought this was going to be one of those Pronouncements At An Intersection, after which he'd have to get back to work and I'd have to get back to me.

He surprised me, though. This was not The Talk that I expected.

See, we had The Talk already a few years back, when everybody but me noticed that I'd had the visit from the Armpit Fairy.

That The Talk had to do more with What To Expect From Your Hormones than anything else, which, for guys, is mainly More Than Usual of The Usual. You know, more muscles, more hair, more of That (yes, girls, it does get bigger when the fur starts to sprout, that's one thing you miss out on with the Both Sides Now program), but nothing totally new. Not like the way Us Girls who were born that way got blindsided by The Lumps and The Leak. The only real news in that The Talk was why you stink and what to do about it and why singing keeps your voice from cracking on its way down.

And, oh, yeah, there was a short briefing on Nature thinks you're ready but society doesn't yet so don't, on what that white stuff can do to your life if it goes where it shouldn't, on how that's natural and everybody does it but don't do it in public, and where to hide Those Magazines to minimize everyone's embarrassment, you know, FPU for finding them suddenly, and me for having it confirmed that I'm interested. Typical guy stuff.

So I expected a little more about all that, plus maybe late bulletins like Get Your Degree Before You Get A Wife And Child and Keep Your Driving Record Clean.

Not this time.

I am more well-read than I realized. Which is to say that it turns out that MPU and FPU are not as Netblind as I thought. Maybe from the start. So that's why the debriefing on the Last Beach Blast Of '08 didn't go deeper into hard-to-answer questions. And don't ask what they thought about the Woody Talk, because I didn't ask and they didn't tell.

So MPU made the presentation, which felt more and more like the PowerPoint slides should have been up on the wall but were mislaid at the last minute, and FPU attended in a silently supportive and sometimes holding hands with him sort of role.

Because this The Talk was about what a father wants for a daughter. Talk about a weird experience.

It started with a short discussion of The Change, in which the bullet-points were:

We know all about the blog, and keep doing it so we can learn from our mistakes.

We agree that carrying a gun for Texas Robber Barons is not morally justifiable even if it means gas for the car is a little cheaper for a few years, and being forced to do it doesn't excuse it.

Even without the killing and dying part.

We understand and approve your choice whichever it is.

Then there was the main presentation itself, which got weirder still. Key bullet points were:

Why you should complete your education no matter what.

What kind of guy is most likely to make a good husband.

Don't be afraid to bring him around, we won't bite. Much.

Why unprotected sex is more dangerous for a girl.

Why unprotected walking around alone in strange places is more dangerous too.

Why coming home Unmarried But Pregnant would not be good for your social standing or ours or the child's. Plus what it all would cost.

What it was like when we were your age.

Why I was attracted to your mother enough to propose a merger, in case that gives you clues on what our family is good at.

In short, everything that he thought he should pass along to a child of his who took up being female at or near the moment of conception, all highly condensed for easy understanding by this child of his who took it up unwillingly at the age of sixteen and is planning to resume it willingly and maybe permanently at eighteen.

Nowhere in there was a major point in the earlier The Talk, which was Why You'll Want To Continue Our Line And Our Name, which was just as well because, um, yeah, if I go through with this, there is that name change thing. And I know enough about the Guy Ego Thing to know that that cost him.

I think I can see clearly now why FPU decided to take MPU up on the merger offer Way Back When. I mean, this is someone I can seriously respect. Maybe even admire a little.

Which is new.

But, hey, it's okay for a father to be loved in a normal-family sort of way by a daughter, isn't it?

-jen

 

---

17Mar09

If anybody cares, there is a new Jason in the world.

I went over Friday after school to a Place I Shall Not Name.

Emily was there. She'd just gotten out of a hospital again, but this time for a good reason. And there was some her in her eyes again. Along with an awful lot of "would rather not be there."

Except when she looked at Him. Then there was more than just "want to be there", there was "glad to be there". "Ready to fight to be there", actually.

See, Emily's never been pushy. She's never been assertive, at least not when I was around. Even back then, when I was being someone who embarrasses me a whole lot to even admit to ever having been now. She wouldn't push, she'd walk around or she'd leave. If you wanted to see Emily, you went in to get her, she didn't come out to meet you. You know this, all you Emily-watchers.

You also know that Emily's been hurt bad. Bad enough to leave our town. Bad enough to want to leave, period, for good. And she always just took it. Took it in. Accepted it. It was almost like Emily helped those who hurt her by making sure that the blows landed.

Now there was this Emily who I saw pointing out, not in. Like she'd finished inhaling and finally started to exhale.

It was every Emily-watcher's dream, like seeing a sad dark cloud finally finish coming together just right, tight enough to ignite into a star, signaling the start of another stellar system. Hot and new and bright already and getting brighter by the minute, with enough fuel to outlast anyone and knowing it, and the steadiness of knowing it.

So she looked down at Jase (that's what she's calling him), and I could see that she was willing to fight for him at least, and maybe she'd learn from that how to fight for herself, but this was incredibly beautiful, seeing her love him enough to be ready to fight for him.

And then she looked up, and she held him out to me.

I hear gasps of astonishment out there, and I agree. I mean, I can, in my worst nightmares, remember how I used to bug her to give me some attention. Let's face it, whatever I thought I was doing (and we won't go there, okay), I was a pest to her. A junior horndog with way more mouth than manners.

Now, let me point out something else as well: I was not alone there with Emily and Jase. Some girlfriends had come over too, I mean, real girls, not just me suddenly female and trying to get by, trying to make up for past history. But she held him out to me.

I took him into my arms, and they all told me how to hold him, and how to tell when he needed a bottle, and when he needed burping, and when he needed a change, and I remembered all of that, because it was vitally important, but I was seeing this baby in my arms and that's all I could see. Those eyes.

I saw some Emily in those eyes. I saw some Jason too.

Even without his teeth, I thought I could maybe guess about his jawline when he's grown up, and I think that'll be pure Jason. That serious "wear down the stones before you get to me" expression, though... that's pure Emily.

Little hands, I mean, tiny. I took one in my hand and held them palm-heel to palm-heel, and it shook me to not only realize in doing so that this is actually a real person already, already living, but just how tiny that little person is so far. And how brave to dare this, to face up to the world, with that serious Emily expression and a set in that Jason jaw, while he's so tiny still.

And for just a moment, I ached for him a little somewhere (okay, a lot, dammit), for knowing the battle he was just beginning, to fight the world for his own life, his own space, when he was so tiny.

To be honest, I never looked at a child this closely before. I never thought to.

So maybe this was me making up for it, for all those casual thoughtless moments when I'd look at a kid and all I could think was "diapers -- run away".

Because that's what had to be done. Emily was getting a few hours of the evening to go be with friends, to do what Emily wanted to do. And I didn't have to ask for a promise that she'd still be breathing at the end of it. I just had to look at how she looked at Jase to know that if they roadblocked her from this kid she'd claw the cars apart. She really didn't want to leave him, not for a second, but she needed some time to remember Emily!Person so she could get a better grip on Emily!Mother.

So I was babysitting.

And then they were gone. I actually saw Emily smile at something someone said, just before the door closed, and I knew it was going to be good for her. It was that kind of smile that told me, "Emily's back."

And then Jase gave a little grunt, and I had a job to do.

I'd already watched Emily change him once, and my friends told me a lot of tips about how to do it right, in enough variation that I had a good idea of how the procedure should adapt to the problem. Now it was just doing it.

Okay, you've been around babies at some point, all of you. You remember how they smell when they're fresh, and you remember how they smell when they're not fresh. This kid was suddenly not fresh. That was the "run away" trigger for me when I was a guy. And girls have more sensitive noses than guys.

It didn't matter. He needed changing and cleaning. It was my job. I did it. The smell didn't get to me, it simply didn't matter, it wasn't important enough compared with this incredible already-a-person. It didn't even register in my nose, it was so unimportant.

And then he wanted some attention, some grab the finger, some try to capture the hair, some up and down, and some bottle, and some burping, and another change, and some drool on the shoulder, and some slow rocking, and finally some put him in his bed and watch him sleep. That last bit took a lot of time. So that's as far as we'd gotten in the agenda when Emily And Company got back.

But I was good at it. I was actually good at it. He trusted me, and I delivered.

Now let's get something straight here: I was never particularly an animals guy, and I am not particularly an animals, much less baby animals, girl.

Puppies... Enh, I'm okay with puppies as long as there's lots of fresh newspaper and a pen to keep them on top of it.

Kittens... They're kind of do-nothing until they're old enough to start exploring, and then they smell funny.

But Jase...

Help me here, girls.

Is this a normal girl thing? Can I expect this kind of thing to happen every time I see a cute kid? A kid who needs every chance in the world because his father, who would have been fabulous about this, can no longer be there? A kid who nearly didn't make it, because his mother nearly didn't?

Is it normal for a girl to love a kid after looking after him for just a few hours? To miss him just a little right now? I really need to know.

-jen

---

12Apr09

Fashion Survival

You guys don't appreciate what we girls have to do to look good, and that's how it's supposed to be.

It's a lot of work, you know. Makeup has to be done just right, otherwise it looks like makeup. Hair can't look obvious or that's all you look at. I have to make the effort to coordinate outfits, otherwise they look like it took some effort. After all that work, the point of all this beauty stuff is for it not to draw attention to itself.

It's like housework, really (and yes, FPU has been giving me remedial courses on that as part of the whole life-choices thing, along with cooking, and sewing, and, and, and... wow). You only notice it when it's not done right.

Even my amazing friends will admit to this. They told me so right up front (right after FPU paid them to do it, I suspect), a day after I woke up changed, when they came to the door saying "We're your Welcome Committee, now get dressed because your first lesson starts in five minutes." They said, "It's the price you pay to look good," and it was true.

I've gotten used to it, I'll admit to that. It doesn't bother me anymore, getting up earlier to get everything ready. That's because it's my choice. Being a female was not my choice; being a good-looking female was. My amazing friends did not force me to do this, they just made it possible, that's all. They skipped whether-to entirely, figuring that was my business, and went straight to the how-to in case I wanted-to. And, given that I was a girl already and had a how-to, I wanted-to.

However.

I am so looking forward to Spring Break. I'll sleep in, wake up and wash off all the makeup, kick back around the house, wear whatever I feel like wearing, especially my old guy tee shirts, and not care at all how I look.

Well, not much. Not a lot, that is. Okay, not quite as much. I do have standards.

-jen

---

30Apr09

I wasn't around much for Spring Break.

I got to babysit Jase some more. It was neat.

No, it was more than merely neat. It was something I needed. I'm still not sure why. Something about the brave look on his little face just turns me inside out, and I want to see it all happen, you know, be there so I can make sure it happens. Or something.

This is the closest I've ever come to seriously wondering what it would be like to have a child. You know, to have the magic happen inside my own body. Guys just don't think about that, well, not in public, because then there'd be real hard questions asked. But lately I'm not a guy, right? This girl brain of mine sure doesn't think so.

But I would be seriously kidding myself. Because what I'm reacting to is a little boy who's already here. Somebody who's real special to me even though he's not my child at all. He's the product of two people I admired, two people expressing their hope for the world, even if some of that hope was betrayed.

I see that hope in his eyes and I cry when I think about anything that happened to them happening to him. I don't want that hope to die. Like it almost did. With his mother. But maybe I don't have to cry so much.

See, Emily is ready to fight now. She sees the hope in Jase's eyes and she feels the same way I do about it: it must not die. But to fight, you've got to live. And to keep doing that, you've got to want to live. So Emily is ready to fight for Emily. (yes!!)

Which means letting wounds heal and getting past them. Because when you fight you're going to get wounded some more. But it's worth it.

Oh. Okay. Yeah. We got to talk.

Emily is more seriously cool than I thought. She knew what was going on with me when I didn't, and it was okay to her, she just worked around it. Which is probably the best thing that she could say to me at this point, that I didn't get in her way after all. She just forgave it and went around.

She forgave it because I was young. To which I have to plead guilty as charged. I didn't know what I was doing at all then. As opposed to now, when I still don't, usually, but at least I know it.

And now... we're getting to be good friends. Close friends. Which is what I forgot all about when my turn came to get out of recess. See, that was perhaps the coolest thing about Jason's serious cool: he knew how to be friends with the girls, while I was still tripping over my feet whenever I tried and then acting all bad to make up for it. I seriously admired him for that.

So we're friends. Is that all? No, but right now all those feelings are over in the Inappropriate bundle and I really should leave them alone. Emily needs me as a friend, and I need that, I need to be friends with her.

Even if we're both guys. See, she still has to do this both-sides-now thing to graduate, so she might change when I do. Might. She got real behind, what with everything that happened, so she might repeat this year, and a lot of it depends on that. That's up to her. It's her life, and finally she's willing to fight for it. And I want to help that happen because I'm her friend.

So...

John, I know you still read my blog because I hear all about your witty commentary.

Good. Get your ass over here FAST as soon as you read this message, anytime 24-7. We really need to talk.

-jen

---

27May09

Gang, something's up.

I've got two friends who I used to talk to. They don't talk to me anymore. They can't: they're dead. They got shot, and I don't know how or who or why.

I do know where and when. Each one was in front of his own house, and then he pitched over with half his brain spread over his front door.

I can't guess the why, yet, but I'm putting clues together. I can tell you that both guys were conspiracy buffs, you know, Area 51, Illuminati, New World Order, Skull and Bones, all that paranoid stuff.

I have other friends who are also conspiracy buffs, and this is to them:

SHUT UP!!

Don't talk about that in public anymore. Keep it among just our group. If you don't personally know everybody within hearing range, don't open your mouth. If you wear an X-Files tee shirt, don't. If you're a l33t h@x0r, lay off it. If you look like a rocket scientist, lose the tie and the lab coat and act harmless. If you can't do that, act clueless; maybe that'll be enough.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. You were right, I was wrong, and I'm convinced of that now, okay? We just got warned, those of us who are left, and two of my friends paid with their lives for us to get that warning.

Be careful out there. I don't want any of you added to the list of Why I'm Crying... okay? Please?

-jen

---

30May09

Something is definitely up.

Friends don't leave friends out in the dark. There are eleven of you that don't have cellphones. That must be fixed.

If you're one of those people, a deal has been made. Your pride is no longer relevant to the discussion. Get in touch, not on the house phone. You'll learn the details when I talk to you.

No exceptions: this is beyond all our little pissing contests. Real Life just climbed in the back window and it's got a gun.

Update: Calm down. No, my house has not been broken into; bad choice of words. My life has, though, and so has yours.

-jen

---

03Jun09

IM Down

Is anybody still getting through on IM? Call me. Mine has been down all day.

-jen

---

04Jun09

Ping

Anybody whose PC lacks a firewall, talk to C.

-jen

---

07Jun09

ATTENTION ALL GUYS!! GET OUT OF SIGHT NOW!!

Find a girl who'll take you in and keep you hidden, someone who was born that way. Girls who used to be guys are in danger: you have to hide too.

Don't go hide in the obvious places: they've already been down to Riverside and the Staedler place. If they know about them they know about all the others.

Stay away from your home! They're going around house to house and pulling people out, and so far not one of those people that I know of has come back.

These are NOT real Army: look at what they've got pinned to their collars.

All they have is birth records. They freaked when they saw that I was a girl. They really roughed up my parents, trying to get them to tell them where I was 'really hiding'. I think they still don't believe I'm me.

I don't think they're doing this to draft you or put you to work. I think they're going to get rid of you so you aren't a threat. I heard a rumor of firing squads but I don't know if it's true. I'm trying to find out more.

Spread the word, but don't take chances. I have heard gunshots! These people are not kidding.

East side, call up F or T (both girls). West side, call up A or N (girls again). If you don't know the number, call someone who does. Don't call me, they've got people outside 'waiting for me to come home' and they'll hear if I get too many calls.

IM has been offline for days. irc.undernet.org #mestrojen when you can, but don't let them see it or this blog on your screen. If you're port-scanned, assume you're packet-sniffed as well and drop the specifics.

I care about you all.

-jen

---

12Jun09

Peace at last.

All it took was a little counter-coup.

No, I'm not talking about what happened today in Washington DC. That was inevitable.

Even when the vote machines were rigged to give us a monarchy, we always had the French option -- mob rule and the guillotine, that's how they got rid of kings. Then, once we found where those people had hidden the Constitution, we could dust it off, hang it back up and start cleaning house.

We didn't even have to do all that. Targeted boycotts work wonders, if they're big enough, at shaking loose the grip of corporations on our body politic. Returning corporations to being legal non-persons takes away their power to turn us into non-persons. I think constant online exposes can do wonders for prying bad people out of office once the good people know they have enough of a chance at getting elected to make it worth their while to run.

Now we don't have any more troops off dying to make the world safe for Texas oilmen. We aren't paying a certain small country three billion dollars a year just so they can provoke more terrorism to scare us into paying even more per year, along with committing troops for their expansion plans. We don't even have people trying to turn this country into a Fundamentalist republic.

But that was all inevitable, really. I'm just in high school, and even I could see that. This country is full of good people who won't tolerate evil once they see it for what it is.

No, I'm talking about the state law mandating a year spent in another skin. Well, actually it's your own skin, but with all the softish bumps moved around and looking funny.

You might have missed it, what with all the changes in the government. Thanks to a targeted boycott in five towns, the law in this state was changed to conform with most of the others. That's all it took: five towns sending their students just across the river out of state to school so they could get their diplomas without passing through both locker rooms on the way there.

Now it's no longer mandatory for graduation from high school. You just won't get to vote until you've gone through it.

This is good.

There are a lot of things to be said for experiencing it here, in high school, where you have an existing culture and social group around you. There is also something to be said for avoiding experiencing it in high school where you have said social culture. It all depends on whether you have supportive friends or not. I do.

Hello, did you hear me? This is where I say thank you to each and every one of you. Thank you for being supportive, each in your own way, while I've been finding my way through all of this. The worst of you at least had sense enough to back off... after a while. The best of you have been... incredible. Patient, understanding... loving...

Yeah, I guess I should say it now. There are some of you that I do actually love, okay? Enough so that, if I was going to stay this way, I would definitely be getting close to more than one of you on a steady basis while I tried to decide on which one I'd be getting closer still. It would be a hard decision.

And my dearest friends, the girls who didn't let me sit and waste this year in solitary confinement in a bra. They made me appreciate what I am, that's why I can appreciate all of you for what you are.

It's no longer quite such a stark choice, now. No one has to choose between bearing babies in a mock peace at home, or bearing an assault rifle in a trumped-up war abroad. We have our country and our lives back.

Still...

-jen

---

13Jun09

Help me, guys. I need reasons.

You all heard about it, right? Anybody can get a change for a hundred bucks, as often as once a month. That covers the change itself and the costs of getting new documents. Driver's license is extra, but once you've got both of them you keep them both.

I didn't expect this kind of choice.

And here I am looking at a closet full of dresses and a bunch of storage boxes full of pants 'n' stuff, and knowing I've only really got room in the closet for one kind at a time.

Right now the dresses are hanging up, and they look good, and I look good in them, and I like looking good in them. It's a know you're all right kind of thing, and it's real tempting. See, it's familiar. It's where I live right now. Do I really want to have to pack up and move? Even someplace I've lived before?

But I've got some unfinished business over where I lived in those pants. Stuff I had to put away in storage when I moved into those dresses. And a few of those things (and maybe a person) are real important to me, more important than I was willing to admit back when I stored them away in the Inappropriate bundle. Along with my pants.

Plus, I get the feeling that I'm not done with this being-a-girl business until I'm done with it. For a while, at least. See, maybe it's home now to me, but I kinda get the feeling that home isn't home until you can point to it from the outside and say "that's home". So to do that I've got to step outside the front door (now that I'm sure that I won't get shot there), long enough at least to turn around and memorize what it looks like from the outside. So I can say, "Okay, that's home. Now I know."

See, I've already done that for the being-a-guy thing. I closed that door almost a year ago and had a good look at it from the outside when I left for my appointment with the change machine. I know what that place looks like from the outside; I'm outside it right now.

But do I have to do that right now? I mean, I can step out any old time now. I can even step in and out, month at a time, I've got so much choice. (I think I see why that one-month thing. They don't want you to miss your next period's class. Heh.)

So...

Why should I move? Why should I stay? And when?

You guys (and girls) are looking at me from the outside. You can see what home looks like from the outside; I still can't. You might have seen something I missed, something that makes all the difference. Or maybe it's just your opinion, your "Jen should do this now", but I'll listen to that too.

Just so you know, I'm not throwing anything out, but one or the other set of clothes is probably going into the Inappropriate bundle for quite a while.

-jen

---

16Jun09

Did you ever wonder...

No, calm down, this isn't going there. If there's one thing that I've learned about that, it's that it's no good trying to imagine what it will be like until it happens. That one little chromosomal change changes everything because it changes what you perceive everything through. Got that? Abandon all preconceptions (heh) all ye who enter here, and pay close attention to what really happens instead, because it's like... It's like itself, really, and there's nothing else like it.

No, this is about...

Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be someone else entirely? Someone different than you've ever been?

What led to this is that I've got less than a week remaining in which to decide what I'm going to do about all these dresses. Or something.

There's nobody forcing me at gunpoint anymore. Nobody threatening me if I choose to go this way or that. And all of my friends (and I mean all of my friends--you people are so amazing) are being incredibly cool about the whole thing, making sure I know that it's my choice and they're with me no matter what. (You can't buy friends like that. You can't even make a wish for them. I don't know how I got so lucky.)

This set of amazing-but-true friends even includes my parents. Which is more amazing still. I mean, since when do MPU and FPU go strictly-hands-off on anything to do with me being me? But, on this, they do.

It's my decision.

And to make that decision, I have to evaluate the two halves of my life-to-date, the almost-year of being female and the sixteen years of being male before that. Weigh them. Pit them against each other. Make them defend themselves in a court of Me.

But neither of them is fully formed. Which makes measuring them difficult. One of them only goes up to age 16. The other one has had less than a year in which to live.

Plus, there's another person in here that I didn't count on.

And the person that is most fully formed is also the least.

Let's go over that.

We've got the male person. Starts at birth, so he's tight with that whole this-is-your-body thing, and he's got that whole starting-puberty thing on his side, but he only gets to be sixteen, so he's earnestly clueless.

Then there's this female person. Starts with a maturity gap of two years, suddenly plonked down right in the middle of the whole adolescence thing without maps or compass but with amazing guides. Still, she's busy being blown away by the being-a-girl thing much of the time. Clueless again.

I can't really judge between them, either, because neither of them is complete enough to stand on their own.

And there's a third person, seventeen years young. That's the person that knows what it's like to have both kinds of body, both kind of brain, both kinds of life. That person has got the sixteen years plus the one year, so they're the most fully formed.

They're the least formed, though, because I've just begun thinking about myself from that point of view.

And, thinking about who I am when I'm being that person, is amazing me. It's a kind of somebody that I have NO experience at all with. I've never seen this kind of person before, not that I know of. Not in the mirror, and not in any of my friends. See, they all either only know one form, or they've already chosen one form to stay in. It's like they're down on the ground where it's safe, being one or the other leg of this person.

Nobody I've talked to has said a word about this kind of thing, so I guess nobody's tried to stand up in this position, but then it's kinda tricky. See, it's not somebody who's one or the other. Not somebody who's between. It's somebody who's both. Even if they're only one at a time.

I have to be careful when I practice being that person. I can only do it when I'm alone right now, because when I stand up this way I'm carefully balancing my entirely new self on two legs, one standing on the girl me, the other standing on the guy me, and if you push me either way I'll fall.

I'm still learning to walk this way, after all. I'm real young. Real young. See, I can barely even talk about it, I'm that young!

And right now I'm learning to walk. But that means deciding which leg I'm going to step forward on: the guy leg or the girl leg?

-jen

---

24Jun09

Hi.

I'm back. Not for long.

Yes, I took the trip back to the blue room.

Take off, every Star-seeker. For great justice. I mean it.

You see, after this past year I can admit this: I love you all on a lot of levels, but...

I need to go find Emily.

Actually, I know where she is. What I need to find out is whether she wants me to know or not. That, and whether I can help her better in this form, or...

I'll be doing that until school starts, and then I might finish high school somewhere other than here. It depends on what I find. We don't talk much long-distance; I need to go there to find out. I'll keep this blog open until then, at least. It's a good record of when I was a girl.

It seems so strange to talk about that, even here, in impersonal letters made of shadows on a bright screen: I used to be a girl. I was a guy for a long time before that, but... I used to be a girl.

Maybe a part of me still is. Remember what I said about being three people at once? It's harder for me to focus on that, but I think I've still got it somewhere.

If I can get back up to that viewpoint from this testosterone angle, I might just have a good shot at seeing who I am. That'd be good.

And then, I might just...

Well, we'll see.

-jim

---

If you're browsing here, you're familiar with all the body-swap story mechanisms, and then what's interesting is how people deal with the result. This has a familiar theme if you've read 'Sometimes Justice Just Works', but I was pleased with the variation and where it went, and finally decided to let it out into the world anyway.

---

One Good Turn

--Kiai 08jul06/10dec07

 

She turned abruptly when someone behind her called out, "Melanie."

"Oh... Hi. Didn't expect to see you here. It's not really your kind of place, is it?"

"Yeah, well... I knew you'd be here."

In truth, he did look out of place here, where there were more motorcycles parked outside than cars. He wore a light blue business suit and a power tie. His graying hair, such as remained, was cropped close. The steel-rimmed glasses framed his pale blue eyes, making them dominate his cleanshaven face for a distinguished look.

She, on the other hand, was dressed in riding gear: black harness hoots, black leather chaps over black denims, and a black Harley-Davidson tee shirt under a faded blue denim cutaway vest which was woman-tailored, as it must be in order to close over her considerable chest.

He stared at her for a few moments more than it took to complete a survey of her clothing, then sighed. "I miss you. I want us back the way it was."

"Well... I'm flattered. Really. But... I don't think it can work, know what I mean?"

"Why not? We have a lot in common."

"Not in a way I'd want anybody to know about, not now."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I heard how you managed the company after I left... Tell me, what management school teaches 'terminal nose-dive' as a market tactic?"

"That wasn't my fault!"

"Yes it was. You drove off all the really good technical people and replaced them with drones, you outsourced tech-support when our service crew quality was a marketing asset and our premium-response plan was a net profit center, and you confused the market with vaporware like it was Osborne-revisited. I'm real impressed."

"You're just jealous that I took it public."

"No, I'm disappointed that you destroyed it all in three and a half years. Chapter Seven means you burned a lot of investors. That's not the sort of thing you want on your resume."

"Well, you weren't going to do any better."

"Actually, I was. When I left, we were just achieving profitability on a slow growth course that was self-sustainable without bringing in venture capital, just angel investors, so we didn't need an IPO. Doing it that way, I kept control of the company... You didn't."

"You think you were in control. You didn't know what you were doing... You technical types always think you can just pick it up as another programming language. Being CEO isn't like that!"

"I made it my business to learn, and delegated what I had to to make it work. Why do you think I brought in Bernie to head up Engineering? I'm a technical type, agreed, but I never micromanaged my CTO like you did. I'm not surprised he left; I'm surprised he stayed as long as he did. He probably cursed your name as he left for suckering him into it in the first place."

"Your name."

"It's not my name now, you saw to that."

"It can be..."

"After all this, you want to trade back? I never wanted to trade this long in the first place, remember?"

"Then you should be glad to get your body back."

"No. No, I'm not. See, this--"

She pulled her vest fully open now, flaunting the unbound breasts swinging free under the tee shirt. Now the Harley logo could be seen to share space with another corporate logo, one associated with NASDAQ and positive earnings projections fulfilled, along with "MC" in a bold typeface.

"--isn't what I grew up with... but it's workable. The kind of people who respected me then, for the right reasons, still respect me now."

"You used to enjoy being up at the cutting edge."

"Who says I'm not? I'm designing things I couldn't before. Even when I was there, nobody could see past getting the NDA's signed at the door, so we had to go it alone, and it hurt us. If you want to network, you have to network -- trust relationships with peers isn't just about network protocols, it's about consortium-building and making things work together well in a heterogenous world too, even if it takes patent-pools and putting driver details out for open-source. They see that where I am now. I can dream it, and then build it, and know that we can market it, and it will work right wherever it's installed."

"I didn't know you were designing there."

"Then you never looked below the C-levels when you did competitive analysis, if you ever did any. I competed with my old designs and won."

"So it was your fault we crashed! I can sue you--"

"No you can't. As far as the world knows, I worked for you as an executive assistant, a glorified secretary, and never signed a non-compete the whole time I was there. You probably can't even prove trade secrets even if you expose yourself, because I refined everything."

"And you don't think you'll have trouble if your past gets out?"

"No, I've been over everything either of us signed under this name with Legal. I've got no exposure to worry about."

"I meant, who you used to be."

"Nah, nobody in the business will believe you, and the guy I'm with won't have a problem with it; he helped me get my position."

"He will, if I tell him how you used to be a man when I was your glorified secretary."

"Tell you what -- I'll save you the trouble. Hey, Josh! Get over here!"

"Yeah, what's up?"

"I want you to meet somebody. Kevin, this is Josh, our CTO; he does a better job at it than I ever did, so I don't have to. Josh, this is Kevin. You know, the one I told you about."

"The one who...?"

"Yep."

"Well, I can see the same kind of brains... but I like your looks a lot better now."

She grinned. "So do I." She turned to face Kevin. "See? Why should I want all that back after what you've done to it?"

"So that's it. You're giving it all up."

"No, you still don't get it, and I don't think you ever will, so I'm telling you, not for your sake, but for my sake.

"I'm not giving anything up. This isn't what I asked for, but I've made something of it, and made it mine in the process. From what you're telling me... Well, hell, if you had done the same thing you wouldn't be here. Not for what you're asking me."

Josh was giving Kevin a hard look over her shoulder. Now he said, "Hey, babe, I don't want to waste any more of our time here. How 'bout you grab our jackets and helmets?"

She let a little half-smile show and nodded agreement. "You want me to warm up the bikes?"

"Nah, I'll only be a second."

She kissed him on the cheek, then strode purposefully away to the cloakroom. Josh smiled for a moment, watching her, and then his smile evaporated; he turned and loomed over Kevin.

"I suppose I oughta thank you for pushing Melanie my way like that... But I also suppose I should kick your fucking ass for doing that to somebody in the first place... Stealing a life..."

Now he leaned in. His growl was low and threatening.

"So, I'll tell you what. I'll give you thirty seconds before I start swinging. Starting now."

Kevin immediately got up, hands raised before him. "You can't do this--!"

"I'm doin' it. Twenty-eight, twenty-seven..."

"That's my body--"

"No it ain't. That is. Twenty-four, twenty-three..."

"I'll be back--"

"Your funeral. Twenty-one, twenty..."

Kevin was out the front at fourteen, walking at a pace just a little too fast to be dignified. At three, a subcompact out in the parking lot threw gravel. At one, it was out of the lot and headed towards the first hairpin curve of the winding road that led down the mountain and back out to the coast.

Now Josh went over to where Melanie stood, staring out the window, with their leather jackets over one arm and two full-face helmets slid up under them. He put his hand on her shoulder. She started, then put her free hand on top of his, and they both stood there staring down at where the distant subcompact occasionally appeared as it negotiated the mountainside turns, always heading down.

"Second thoughts...?"

She turned with a relieved laugh to look up at him then. "No! I've got what I want: a life I can live on my own terms. Then I got a partner who's willing to do the same, who's got enough in common with me to make a partnership work. No, no second thoughts at all." She turned back to watching the distant car and shook her head. "No, I was just trying to fathom the kind of mind..."

He gently but firmly pulled her around, embraced her and nuzzled her ear; she smiled and leaned in and let him do it. Softly, confidently, he murmured, "Some things aren't meant to be understood too clearly... Just avoided. That was one of them."

She frowned. "But..."

"He brought us together in a way, didn't he? That was his one good deed for this life."

"He didn't mean it to be good."

"That's my point."

This was a spamfic, really, in 2003 when I wrote it, just something I had to get out of my system. Now, though... Have you read your EULA lately?

---

Revolting Development

--Kiai 22Dec03

 

 

I came to in a sparsely furnished bedroom. I glanced around; the place looked big and bland, more bland than any motel I'd ever seen.

"Damn, this looks like Sim City."

It didn't surprise me to hear my own voice pitched in soprano; one whole side of the room was a mirror, and the diffuse bedroom lighting was bright enough for me to see the profile of breasts on what had to be my naked reflection. I sat up and immediately felt them as they swayed, lunging forward like they were with me rather than a part of me. What the hell? Already I could tell that being female would take some getting used to.

What had I been doing? Oh, yeah... I was waiting for a client to get back to me on a site design, and while I waited I booted the secondary machine into Windows to do some gaming. Oh, man... I never knew playing "Tomb Raider" could be so life-altering. The funny thing was, though, I didn't look a thing like Lara Croft.

I crept up close to the mirror and looked myself over. I had long straight black hair, practically to my waist. I was undeniably cute, with big C-sized breasts, pert and firm, as some extensive grasping and groping proved, and a figure to match the upholstery, and a sweet little pan-Asian face. I didn't want to guess at my height; I knew I wasn't a six-foot beanpole anymore, but then again, I wasn't a guy anymore either.

I finished inspecting the new me and turned to survey my new surroundings, and immediately knew that me and boobs were going to be a real problem. I mean, already this jiggling was driving me nuts, more than I otherwise had at the moment. I walked around, checking out the place, and every time I moved they did their best to be distracting. I'd move one way, and they'd take their time deciding to come along, then they'd make up for it by going farther than I'd intended. With all that swaying and jiggling, I'd lose track of what I meant to be doing.

Damn, now my ass was doing it too: not much, just a little quiver, but, sensitized as I was now to the sensation, I could tell that there was a little bit of fat padding there too, enough so that I jiggled coming and going.

I gave up on peeking into all the corners and turned to the dresser. At this point, I figured that anything I could wear had to help damp out the jiggles. I was hoping that, whoever had put me in this shape in this place, they had included a decent range of clothes for this shape. Maybe there'd be some tight jeans; that'd take care of the ass movements. As for up top, a sports bra would help; hell, even an Ace bandage would help.

I was about to pull open the top drawer when...

"I see you're trying to hide your boobs. Would you like some help?"

I turned incredulously to the thing floating in the mirror. It was a talking paper clip, about half as tall as me, and now it ducked and bobbed in some semblance of a bow. I curled my lip. "Such as?"

"Well, you're going to try to hide your boobs, right?"

"Not exactly, but... Go on."

"Well, then, you need something to cover them with."

"So far you get an O for Obvious. Go on."

"Pull out that drawer you've got your hands on."

"I was about to."

I pulled open the drawer. There was only one article of clothing inside, some kind of hard satin leotard thing with stocking legs and a puff of cotton. I reached in and picked the thing up with a thumb and forefinger, then held it up and stared at it.

"This is supposed to hide my boobs?"

"It'll help." Somehow that pseudo-face managed to add to its perpetual leer.

"I... see."

I dropped the thing on the top of the dresser and pushed the drawer closed with my hip. Even that felt weird, the way that my waist tucked in like that, so that the drawer was actually pushed only by the top of my pelvis. I turned back to the paperclip. "What is this place, anyway?"

"I can't tell you."

"Can't or won't?"

"Well... If I won't, it's because I'm not allowed, so it's can't."

"Oh. Okay, then, what am I doing here?"

"Standing. And jiggling, too--quite nicely, I might add."

Again, the leer; that paperclip was really getting off on this, I could tell.

"Thanks; that's very helpful."

The paperclip showed a smug self-satisfied smile. "That's why I'm here."

"So... What can you tell me?"

"Well, I can tell you how to use the drawers right there, and the bathroom door, and the faucets in the--"

"I already know how to use that stuff. You gonna tell me anything useful?"

"Um... Such as?"

"Such as, how I got in here, and why I'm a girl, and how I get out of here--"

"Well, you're here because you're highly valued..."

"Highly valued for what?"

"Development! That's what he wants, developers. And, say, you're nicely developed now, don't you think?"

"Who's 'he'?"

"Bill, of course. And, speaking of Bill, you should start putting on that suit now."

I held up the wispy article of clothing, then, appalled, turned to him again. "It's a bunny-girl suit!"

"Well, yeah. You do want to show off your development, don't you?"

"Not like this, no. I'd rather be valued for my program design and clean coding, thank you very much."

"We can get to that later. Right now, you need to show off your development. It's important."

"This isn't the kind of development I want to have, much less be highly valued for!"

"Look, we've only got about five minutes. I'm telling you, you'd better climb into that bunny-girl suit."

Somehow, while we talked, I'd stepped into the suit, fishnet-stocking legs and all, and had it almost up to my waist, before I thought to force myself to stop. I glared at him. "Why? I don't want to."

"You're going to be in trouble if you don't get that suit on."

"You're talking like I'm owned by somebody."

"Well, of course you're owned. You're in here, aren't you? Bill owns everything in here. Who do you think let me in?"

"What?!"

"Check your EULA. This is Bill's territory. Anybody Bill likes can get in here and do what they want. How do you think I got in here? They retired me a few years back. I was never a part of your installation, but heeeeeere's Clippy!"

He proudly pivoted through a three-sixty, showing off his wiry frame, and, let me tell you, those eyes looked really repulsive from the rear.

"Anybody--"

"Uh-huh. You agreed to that when you installed the latest service pack. Anybody Bill wants to let in here, he can let in here, and he can install anything he likes in here. Like that brain-entrainment flasher that pulled you in, for instance."

I didn't think a paperclip was built to allow for shrugging, but he pulled it off somehow.

"You thought the computer was running a little slower, right? Strobing the desktop at a brainwave rate takes a lot of MIPS--"

"What! A simple on-off--"

"Oh, no, it's got to be sinusoidal, otherwise you would have noticed it before it was too late. And it's got to be an interference pattern from the two sides of the screen, otherwise your two eyes don't get different signals. That takes a LOT--"

"Bullshit." Now it was my turn to shrug, and be immediately distracted by my bouncing boobs. I somehow managed to remember what I was going to say when I cut him off, though. "That still doesn't sound like it takes all that much processing power. I've seen screen-savers that complex running on a Pentium 100."

"Well, that's the beauty of Visual C++! No matter what you do, it'll slow down! There are inheritances all the way from VMS in those classes! Maybe even from CP/M!"

"Maybe. Sounds like a ripoff."

"Yeah? So? You paid for it anyway, didn't you? And now Bill owns you."

"Just a minute. I paid for it, so now Bill owns me?"

"Yep. It's in the EULA. You agreed to it when you clicked through it. And, since he owns you, he wants you to look cute... So it's bunny-girl time!" He added a lecherous grin to the leer.

Now I was struggling, forcing that damn suit down as it suddenly tried to crawl up my torso to my boobs. I growled through my teeth, "I don't want to do this!"

"You've got no choice, really... You are owned."

I glanced towards the bathroom, thinking to do some stalling, maybe some exploring while I was at it... "I should shower first before I climb into this."

"Oh, I wouldn't shower just yet. Otherwise you might end up as clip-art. There are those scissors, see, and--"

"Damn, this is like that motel in Psycho!"

"Oh, now, that's awfully unsporting of you--"

"Bill Gates and Norman Bates, Sitting in a tree, K I S S I--"

"EWWWWWW--That's disgusting. Even if it is true."

"Torvalds!"

The paperclip glanced around furtively, then glared at me. "Uh... you shouldn't talk like that around here, Bill might hear--"

"Stallman!"

"Stop swearing! You'll get us both into trouble that way!"

"GPL!!"

"Stop that right now! That kind of language is not allowed anywhere in this world!"

"Jee-Pee-Ell! Jee-Pee-Ell! Jee-Pee-Ellllllll--"

The paperclip faded away as the mirror went a uniform blue. Backwards lettering started writing itself across its surface, right to left, in white stripes. The room started to dissolve in chunks just as I blacked out.

I heard familiar fan noises as I woke up in my ergonomic desk chair.

I sat there with my eyes closed, feeling and hearing all the little reality noises that tell you you're someplace sane, and just savoring it. I was back to someplace that Bill didn't own. I smiled, took a deep breath and sighed...

...and felt my boobs bounce.

I opened my eyes fast at that point. The monitor screen was still showing that life-saving BSOD. I let it be for the moment; I had other issues to attend to first, such as, finding something warmer to wear. I was feeling more than a little bit chilly wearing just a bunny-girl outfit.

That was a couple of weeks ago. That client never did get back to me, which was just as well.

I ought to have a moire brain-hemisphere-entrainment screensaver ready for release in a few more days; I'm already testing and tweaking it. By itself, it won't do more than just that, but then I'll see about driving the Gnome desktop with it. It shouldn't be that hard; it's all open-source. Besides, the guys at the local LUG fall all over themselves to help a cute geek girl like me. Getting answers to corner behavior questions the documentation doesn't touch is less of a problem now than it ever was.

With any luck, I'll have this thing ready for beta testing inside a month, and then maybe I can get to work on reverse-engineering whatever else Bill put in there that changed me once I was in there. That's the only reason I haven't wiped that partition already.

Maybe I can get my own shape back. This one's interesting, I'll say that much, but this face isn't what's on my driver's license, or my passport, for that matter... so I might go back and forth for a while. Anytime I do some virtual gendershifting, though, I'll be sure to do it in a Linux system. I know the penguin isn't anywhere near so pushy; we've talked about it already.

An incident on a hiking trail through a swamp leads a solitary man to new companionship, a new point of view and a new appreciation for justice at work.

---

Sometimes Justice Just Works

--Kiai 23may03/11oct06

 

 

It's amazing what changes a simple wrong turn in a hike around a swamp can bring into your life. The trail markings sucked, they were so out of repair, and the trail itself was, well, a trail, only made official by those missing markings. When I made the wrong turn, it must've been a little after noon; by the time I realized it, it was getting on towards evening.

It was twilight when I heard them; muffled, but loud enough to carry through the thick trees adjoining the swamp.

"No! Let me go!" That was a youthful female voice, sounding outraged and panicky. I turned towards the sound, pushing my way through the thick brush and trying to peer through the trees at the source.

"Yes! Now you'll get yours!" That voice was rough, male, and angry. I started running.

"No! Oh, please! Help!" It was the same female voice, and now I was running downhill through dimly seen saplings and brush, trying not to trip, when I saw them at the water's edge.

He had her forced to her knees. When he brought up the hawgleg shotgun, I just had to act. I lunged out of the bushes and tackled him, even as I was cursing myself for my stupidity. Middle-aged men with weak hearts shouldn't play superhero, but charging an armed man was a good way for me to never have to worry about my heart giving out. I was barely inside his guard by the time he got the gun pointed my way, and then I was grabbing it and him and trying to use my somewhat overfed bulk to overpower him, driving us both down into the water away from the girl.

Somehow the gun got turned around as we fought, with me still forcing his aim away from her and trying to get his hands away from the trigger guard, when it went off. I was surprised not to feel anything beyond the recoil, but that was because the blast went up into his chest. He stopped fighting, staring out past me with an expression of frozen surprise, and then he must have twitched, because then the other barrel took the top of his head and most of his face off, pelting me with hot gases and bits of wadding and flesh. I let go and what was left of him toppled backward into the knee-deep swamp water with a splash and went under.

For what felt like forever, the only sounds were the lapping of the water from the ripples hitting the bank, and my labored breathing as I tried to get through my adrenaline crash, tensing my legs in alternation to take some of the load off my heart. My head cleared a little and I realized that I was standing in water. For a moment I wasn't sure what to do about it; I felt unclean with what all was on my shirt and skin.

Then the girl came up behind me, peering around me at the spot in the water where he sank. "Is he dead?"

I was still panting from my efforts, but I wheezed, "Yeah..."

"B-But-- You killed my body..."

"What?" I twisted around to stare at her, stunned at the very idea, but she went on, convincing me that she believed it, anyway.

"She... he traded with me. It was fun being little and sexy, but then he wasn't going to trade back, and he said nobody was going to know, and... he was going to kill me to keep it secret."

"Oh. well, I, um, I'm sorry. I wish I'd known, maybe I--"

"No, there's nothing you could do, it was his life or mine. You saved my life... thank you..."

She was sinking to her knees, staring at that black water where the mud was slowly settling as the red slowly tinted its surface, and her voice got lower and lower too, down to a despondent tear-soaked croak, little more than a whisper.

"...But now I can't trade back."

What can you say to something like that? I didn't have a clue, so I didn't say anything.

I walked out, then over, until I was in water about twenty feet away, water that didn't feel tainted. I pulled off my shirt and used it to splash myself good all over, then scrubbed with a handful of sodden leaves from the bottom. Then I rinsed off my shirt, and slung it around over my head a few times to centrifuge out the worst of the water, twisted it tight, slung it around to straighten it back out, and put it back on. In this humidity, it didn't feel much different than before, except for not having bits of someone else peppered across it; or maybe I had someone else who needed attention more.

When I got out of the water and walked over, she was still staring down into the bloody water. She turned abruptly and walked away, shuddering. "I can't stand to look at that-- that-- my old body like that."

Then she hunched against a tree, openly crying. "And I've got nowhere to go. I can't go back to my old life looking like this. I mean, shit... I'm a girl..."

Abruptly, her sobbing slowed, and she roused, looking up at me through tears with an utterly serious gaze.

"Look -- get me out of here. Please. I'll do what you want -- daughter, girlfriend, mistress, hooker, whatever, as long as it doesn't hurt. Just get me out of here!"

"How do I know I won't get in trouble?"

"It's okay, I'm eighteen, I'm legal, I checked. I didn't want to get in trouble." She looked down at herself. "I didn't think it'd matter this much..."

I wasn't sure how much truth there was in that. She might be as young as fourteen or fifteen; it was hard to tell in this dim light with that scrawny-but-cute face. She was already getting heavy in the chest. I knew she'd be a knockout when she finished growing up. If she made it that far, that is... and if she wasn't there already, like she said.

"You said you checked. Where's her ID?"

She pointed out into the darkness. "She said she was cleaning up loose ends; tossed it out there in the swamp. She... he was going to do that to me." Her expression closed up and she shuddered.

I watched her carefully for long moments. There was something about her, something hard in her gaze, that made me believe her about her age and her situation. She had the kind of self-possession only a lot of miles can bring. Perhaps that really was her natal body down there with its head pulped.

"C'mon... let's go home."

"Thank you..."

It took us an hour to find a road, and another two hours of walking to get us back to where I had parked my car. She stumbled or struggled through rough or brambled places I could simply stride through, but she kept up, silent and determined.

Once we found a road, I was all for flagging down anybody with a cell phone to place a call to the police, but she talked me out of doing any such thing.

"We need to report this."

"Don't. How're you going to explain it all? You can't, not without tying you and me both up with a lot of legal stuff. You shouldn'ta even been there," she summed up with a despondent shake of the head, adding, "Just let me stay missing; maybe I can get to what little I own before somebody notices, and if not, well... It's not like I own much anyway. That shotgun..." She shuddered. "That whole thing scares me... How close I came to dying."

"Are you sure you don't want to phone anybody?"

"You're not thinking. Who would I call? Why would they believe me?" She shook her head, the picture of despondence. "There's nobody. I'm stuck... stranded."

So, instead, we kept to the side of the road, walking calmly the two times when cars went past, until we got to the pulloff at the trail head. The car's dome light was a friendly sight to see after staring into the woody darkness for so long. Maybe that was because it was mine; she didn't seem to be any lighter in mood as she got in and belted up.

We stopped off at a filling station to gas up and clean up, and then we got onto the interstate and headed for my home town, two states away. As we were getting to my exit, I thought about how we looked, and about the kinds of questions that could be asked when an older man had a teenage girl in his car.

"What's your name?"

"Oh... I..."

"What's the name of the body you're wearing; do you know?"

"Oh. Yeah; it's Denise. Denise Jane Weatherall."

"And I gave you a lift back there, and it turns out you're traveling light, so I said you could stay for a few nights while you figure out what to do about it. That's if we're asked."

A little shyly, she responded, "Oh. Okay. Sounds good. And you are...?"

"I'm John, John Burgis Harrison. Hi."

I pulled one hand off the wheel and extended it to her. She put her small hand in mine and shook it, with a grateful grin as she returned, "Hi."

Once in town, we stopped for burgers, then spent some time picking up more than a few pieces of clothing for her at the local bargain-bin store, before we headed for the outskirts and eventually the dirt road that wandered through the trees to get to my house.

Throughout the whole ride, other than that exchange, she said little, mainly staring out the window or down at herself, and occasionally handling her breasts or staring at her crotch when she thought I wasn't looking. That was when I made up my mind to actually believe her story, seeing that.

Soon enough, I parked the car behind the house and we got out, loading up in silence with the bags of stuff I had bought for her. When I unlocked the front door of the house, I held it and the screen door open for her. "Come on in. Welcome home."

"Thank you," she said, though I had to strain to hear it, and stepped aside to let me lead the way.

We dropped off her bags in the spare bedroom -- her room now -- and I showed her where the bathroom was. "Why don't you shower and clean up while I fix us something to eat."

"Okay."

She got to the kitchen about the time I had a freezer meal, chicken and veggies and potatoes, ready to put on the table. She was cleaned up, if a little pale and bedraggled, and her hair could probably use more than just a brushing. She had gotten into the nightgown I bought her, and now she walked over to face me, with her hands tight on the back of the chair, while I finished setting down the potatoes with hot-gloved hands.

"Do you... need me to have sex with you tonight?"

"I don't force people like that. It wouldn't be just. Your company's enough. Have a seat and dig in."

"Thanks," she said with a relieved half-smile, and, visibly relaxed, sat down at the chair she had been gripping. We ate in silence. Once I had finished and she was finishing, I brought up the obvious question.

"So, what do you do now?"

She let her fork droop to stand on her plate, visibly cringing, and shook her head. Soft and low, she said, "I don't know... I don't know what I have to work with until I find out what her, well, my, record is... and I don't want to do that, stir up any questions, until we know if I'm tied to my, his death. If they find anything. I-I guess I have to wait and watch the news, right?"

I nodded agreement. "Makes sense. You can stay here, of course."

"Why? Why are you doing all this?"

"I told you. For your company. If something more happens, fine, but your company's what I'm getting right now, and that's enough."

"Oh. Okay. Well... thank you. Again."

"As long as nobody connects what's in the swamp with two people who happened to be walking on that road, we shouldn't have problems. And if anything's going to happen, it should happen soon."

I forebore to mention that, if anyone's name came up with the body, it would be whichever name was on that ID, assuming there was some; but then, she obviously had that in mind herself.

We went to our separate bedrooms to sleep. I told her to lock her door, and I did the same. I laid awake for awhile, mulling over my new guest.

I was a little surprised by her tacit offer, even though it was in keeping with the deal she asked for. I was still a little wary, though: what kind of man keeps a sawed-off shotgun handy? I assumed it was his; it wasn't something a teenage girl would naturally carry, or easily obtain. Would his being a girl now, and being far from the place where he felt that he needed to carry such a weapon, make him less likely to seek its replacement? I knew I would sleep better, knowing that that kind of person wasn't in my bedroom, in my bed, while I was sleeping. I finally drifted off after deciding to watch to see how she behaved in these new circumstances, to see if such caution was needed.

Over the next week or so, I did careful net searches for any news naming the swamp or the nearest township, and finally got what looked like the right one. The body they pulled out was identified by dental records, and they were calling it a suicide, which told me that any ID in the swamp probably stayed in the swamp.

I searched further back, and got an idea of his police record, a history of drunk and disorderly, DUI and assault. I summed him up as being a dead-ended 'good ol' boy', something he couldn't carry off as a petite girl. I relaxed a little, viewing it as a fresh start for her, if she could surmount her lack of resources, and, since she was polite and cooperative towards me, I decided that I could give her that fresh start as long as she stayed that way.

When I called her by the name I found, 'Davy', she looked up, startled. When I told her the results of my web search, she looked stunned and pale. She retired to her room, emerging only for dinner with eyes that were tear-streaked and reddened, and vanished back to her room as soon as she had eaten. She wasn't coming to me for comforting and I wasn't about to push my way into her room to offer her some. Yes, it was my spare bedroom, but it was hers now.

She gradually came back to life over the next week or so, and then it seemed she had gotten hold of herself. Now she was on the Internet when I wasn't, looking up things and jotting down notes in a notebook. The 'good ol' boy' wasn't totally backwoods, then, I thought; this should make things easier for her.

Now she usually left her door open, even at night, and I could see it change day to day, as it slowly collected clothes and clutter suitable for a female body. It still had none of what I would consider decorations for a female mind; I reflected on what she had to be going through, and decided I wouldn't push it. It was her life, however rearranged; it was up to her how she chose to implement it.

Part of that implementation was sexual, as I found out some few evenings later, when she showed up at bedside clad only in panties and an oversized t-shirt. I gave her an inquiring look.

"Please... I'm lonely."

I pulled open the covers and made room, and she slumped down and curled up beside me with her back to me. I listened to her breathing for a while. It didn't slow into sleep, instead, in a little while, her voice came from under the quilt, asking, "John? Are you still awake?"

"A bit. Why?"

"To tell you the truth, I'm a little bit horny too... So, wherever your fingers do the walking is fine by me."

"Okay."

As I complied with her request, she gradually twisted around to lie on her back, splaying her legs across mine and breathing harshly into the quiet. I was enjoying it; it had been awhile since I was last in a position to share pleasure with a woman. By the time I was moistening my finger with her juices and touching her clit through her panties, she was clutching my arm, and she only let go long enough to push her panties down and off.

She kept the t-shirt on, though, and I took that as a signal that she'd meant what she'd said, that her welcome was limited to fingers. I managed to rock her a few times, and then she seemed to go quiet. I lay there for a while, thinking about going to the bathroom to take care of my urges, but those seemed less important than her company; I drifted off to sleep pleasantly hard and hungry, enjoying the rare feeling of having a warm female in bed with me.

At breakfast next morning she challenged me on it. "I kept waiting for you to get on top of me."

"I figured, with you new to being female, the last thing you needed was someone pushing you into that. I gave you what you asked for."

"I was game to try it. If I'm going to live like this, I ought to get to know what it's like. Tonight, maybe?"

I gave her a lecherous grin. "Okay." Then I pointed out, "But you did keep the shirt on..."

"I kept it on because I was cold. You can take it off me; I want you to. You can keep me warm."

That night, she climbed into bed when I did, and lay facing away from me in the darkness. When I didn't immediately do anything, she simply said, "Please."

I took that as permission to put my hands up under her t-shirt, fondling her breasts, rousing her nipples and then rocking them in a gentle grip, while her breathing grew louder and faster. She sat up suddenly and pulled off the shirt, and, a moment later, shucked off her panties as well before lying back down in the same position. Her voice was half-muffled by the pillow as she declared, "There. Now you've got no excuse."

From her position, I realized that she wasn't ready to kiss a man on the lips, but that left a lot of skin I could kiss, and fondle, and stroke, and she moved a little to help me get to everything I wanted to touch.

As I lay closer to her, she twitched as my member, stiffened already, pressed against her back. Then I felt her fumbling under the covers, and then I felt raw flesh against my member, and then she had it tucked under her, nestled in her folds and maybe pointing out from under her in front. Her fingers and palm fondled it in a familiar way, and I said so: "You seem to know your way around that part of me."

"Well, it feels different, that's for sure... I do this--" She gently stroked the head. "--and I don't feel it like I would. But then, every time you move, I feel it here--" She pressed its length up against her folds. "--and that feels almost as good. Try doing a little bit of pumping? Ohh, yeah, like that, that's good..."

She got one or two that way, and then asked, "John, do you have a condom?"

"Nothing that's fresh."

"Then we need to go shopping. Right now, let's keep doing this -- please. You can get off this way and-- oh! So can I!"

She got maybe a half dozen by the time I came into her cupped hand. When I got my breathing back, she was half-sitting, eyeing me. "I still want to cuddle..." Her rueful gaze went to her closed hand. "...but let me wash this off first." We shared a grin, and went to wash up, and then we did cuddle, and talk.

"You don't mind if I squeeze against you, do you? My boobs like it. I think they want more."

"Should I put my mouth on 'em?"

"No, not now, we'd get right back into it and stay up all night if you did that, and we don't have condoms. I'll just squee-ee-eeze like this..." I heard her grin into my shoulder as she did so.

"You're getting used to this."

"Well, not being scared of your dick was a big step. Maybe soon I can kiss you. I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet."

"I can understand that. It's something to look forward to."

"What, kissing? Yeah, I guess... I'll have to think about it."

 

The next day was Friday, and time for my regular Friday evening shopping run. We stopped off for burgers, then went around town for the things we needed, finishing up with the supermarket. I somewhat diffidently dropped a box of condoms into the basket as we passed them.

At the checkout, I noticed that she had gotten one too. The woman doing the scanning had the grace not to say anything, though I could tell from her suddenly neutral expression that something about 'cross-generation couples' had to be running through her mind. She was wearing a wedding ring, so maybe she had a daughter at home to worry about.

Denise must have seen her expression change too, because she latched onto my arm and stayed there while the rest of our purchases were being scanned in and bagged, looking around with a defiant expression like she was ready for a fight and confident that she would win.

Back home, she busied herself while I was putting groceries away in the kitchen, which, given that it was a tiny kitchen, really was a one-person job. I finished that and put on coffee, and then I heard her calling out to me. "John! can you cm'ere?"

When I tracked her down to the bathroom and opened the door, she asked from the bathtub, "Can you wash my back?"

I grinned. "Put my hands on a pretty woman? Sure."

As I was leaning over, working the washcloth and dragging the hem of my shirt in the water while doing it, she looked crossly over her shoulder at me.

"Get in the tub, will you? How'm I supposed to seduce you if you keep on being honorable?"

"Oh. Well, you didn't say--"

"I am now. Jeez! You make me do all the work!"

Grinning, I shucked my clothes and got in with her, soaping and rinsing her back with bare hands this time.

"Thanks. Now hold still."

She turned herself around and got up on her knees. Closing her eyes, she leaned in for a tentative kiss. She must have found it tolerable, because she put her arms around my neck and deepened the kiss. We started caressing each other; she gradually squirmed forward and got herself on my crossed legs. We enjoyed each other for awhile like that, two soapy wet bodies spreading our attentions on each other.

When she started playing with my member, teasing it harder, I got concerned about hasty actions and their consequences. "We should have a--"

"I've got one right here. Hold still, let me put it on you."

I watched her roll it over my hardon and tug at the tip pocket, checking it for air leaks. She briefly grasped the organ, coaxing it to more urgent hardness. Then I couldn't see it anymore because she was clutching me tight around the waist, but then I felt her touch it, surround its tip, and then slide down onto it bit by bit, rocking it into her and enclosing it in her tight warmth.

"How is it?"

"Feels good... Lemme think about this a bit, okay?"

We bathed that way, washing each other's backs and fronts and legs, whatever was more in reach. Then we just sat there while the water cooled, kissing and fondling and caressing anything we could reach on either of us. Occasionally her fingers would find her crotch, and then she would twitch, and my fingers would take over while hers were too tight to keep moving.

I could reach the detachable showerhead, and use that to rinse us, and that was pleasurable too, especially when I set it to pulse and rinsed her groin with it. As I turned it off, she looked at me hungrily.

"I thought about it. Can you carry me to bed like this?"

"Put your legs around me."

She did so, and I got us out of the tub and into my bedroom, and onto a towel she brought along, her on her back with her legs still clamped around my waist.

She stared up at me, then crooked her finger, beckoning to me, and I met her lips in another kiss that got passionate. We resumed caressing and fondling. When her hips started rocking, I started gently pumping.

She half-whispered, "Ooh, low and slow, I used to do that... Now I know why it worked..." and claimed my mouth again.

With that slow teasing rhythm, we carefully found our way to deep orgasms that had us both spent by the time we were done. I saw her fall asleep, and allowed my own afterglow to claim me.

The next day or so was overcast and colder. With the heater turned off for the summer, the house was a bit chilly inside, even all buttoned up, but we would snuggle up together when we weren't otherwise occupied. Sharing made a blanket fun, and, of course, we warmed each other up at night.

Finally we had another sunny afternoon. I had been out gathering deadwood, thinking we could enjoy a fire in the woodstove if the cold weather returned. With my arms fully loaded, I passed her in what passed for a back yard, a mere sunny spot amid the dappled expanses under the trees.

She was sitting back on a tired old lounge chair, sunbathing topless and reading a magazine she'd picked up. She put the magazine down when I approached, watching me carry the wood and ready to get up and help as I called out, "Avoiding tan lines?"

"No, actually, I'm just trying to get used to them."

"Still?"

"Still."

She stood up, with a moue of annoyance, and moved to open the back door for me, explaining as she went.

"It's weird, having these; it's like they always want to include themselves in everything. I bend over and they flop. I straighten up and they bounce. If I move too fast they hurt. They hurt anyway when I had my period... And that's weird, me saying that."

"When is your period, anyway?"

"That's right, I should be getting it by this weekend, shouldn't I? I'll need more stuff for it."

"We'll go get it, whatever you need."

"Thanks."

I dropped the wood by the stove, into the canvas carrier she was holding open. "Well, thanks for the help. Should we go tonight, just to be safe?"

"We probably should, yeah."

At the supermarket, I spent awhile browsing over foods that were perhaps worthwhile to fix to be shared but weren't worth my while alone, ending up selecting a few that would fit in my freezer, then went looking for her. She was in the feminine products aisle, agonizing over the selection of pads and tampons, long enough for me to get antsy at being in the same aisle for so long. I commented, "This isn't your first period, you said."

She absently shook her head, still staring at the array of boxes on the shelves. "No, my second. Doesn't mean I'm any more used to it than last time."

"Well, play it safe; if you think you might need it, get it."

"Okay, thanks."

With that explicit permission, she pulled down a half dozen packages ranging from tampons to pads to pain-relievers. Then she tossed another couple of boxes of condoms into the cart, with a smirk as she noticed me watching her. "What? I don't want to stop; do you?"

"No."

"Well, then." A little less self-confident, she added, "Besides, if this time's anything like last time, I'll need it to help me cope."

"Rough?"

"You have no idea."

She was right; I didn't. I could sense her pain, but only indirectly by her tension. All I could do was stand ready to give her a back rub or a warm cuddle, and be willing to use up another condom whenever she was in the mood.

 

Less than a week later it was over, and she was substantially more chipper, and also more in the mood to tease. As the weather heated up again, she wore less and less. I came upon her once hanging her undies up on the line to dry, taking advantage of our backwoods location by wearing exactly nothing.

"Do I need to buy you more underwear? Is that what this is about?"

"No... I'm wearing what I want."

"Well, I like your fashion sense," I told her, while giving her a lustful once- or twice-over. She laughed and continued pinning up her collection.

That night, in bed, as we were settling down and getting ready to get intimate, she turned to me. "Ever wonder what it'd feel like?"

"Of course."

"I can show you."

"Oh?"

"Guess I got some of her powers with the body. I've been feeling your dick from both sides when you put it in me. I think I can share it."

She settled herself amid the pillows, then pulled me down onto her. Smiling up at me, she said confidently, "Let's try it."

That moment of penetration will stay with me as long as I live. The feeling was incredible: of being invaded while I was the one doing the invading, and feeling it all equally from both sides, while knowing without question that I was being welcomed within.

She broke off our kiss to ask, "Want to go deeper? I think maybe I can do it... share all of what I'm feeling and what you're feeling."

This time I was sure that, when I caressed her nipples, I could feel them ache for more, and gave them more, intrigued by the hunger for attention hidden in each breast and letting those appetites set the pace and the forcefulness.

We took our time about coupling, focusing more on discovering shared sensation than on rushing towards the first climaxes. I could see by how she handled it that she could feel what she was doing to my organ, teasing it close to the edge with hip shimmies and tight clamping and then calming down to let me keep control so I didn't spoil things by coming too soon.

I noticed that, where past lovers had handled my scrotum too, no doubt responding to its maleness despite its not being a particularly erogenous zone for me, she zeroed in on what had the most potent sensation, fondling it with a sure touch.

Soon I was feeling both our skins, sensing her erogenous areas and mine almost equally, enveloped in a shared realm of feeling where it was sometimes difficult to distinguish whose body contributed what sensation, it was so intertwined. Hands sometimes traded places, swapping my rough fingertips for her softer and subtle ones, as we played our duet, slowly building and then inevitably falling into the avalanche of her orgasms and then mine.

The sharing faded as our breathing slowed, and gradually my mind cleared, alone in my skull and knowing it, and we were just holding each other, caressing for the sake of expressing and occasionally kissing.

"That... That was incredible."

She showed a little secretive smile in response; now her eyes were dancing.

"There's more, isn't there."

Her response was to show more of that smile. "Maybe."

I let my curiosity show, and she explained, "I don't know if I can do it. She did when she was in this body. Whether I can figure out how she did it, and whether I've got the power..." She shrugged. "I don't know. I'm willing to give it a try if you are."

"To trade?"

"Uh-huh."

"For how long?"

"Let's say... a day. If it works, we can do it again if you want."

"All right. I'd like that."

"Let's see if I can do it, then. Stay inside me."

With her eyes focused on mine, we lay side by side, her a little under me, both of us breathing evenly, and, soon enough, at the same time. Soon after that it was like I fell into her eyes and got lost somewhere. Eventually, I woke up again.

I knew by his weight on me that we'd switched, even before I noticed that I felt him inside me. I already knew that sensation from her sharing, but now it was undiluted by my own maleness, because at the moment I didn't have any.

I felt his mouth on my breast, stirring it to fresh hunger with liquid teasing, just as I had done an hour ago; now I felt it from the female side. I felt his other hand exploring, first my other breast, and then the tender hunger between my legs close by where he was filling me. He caught me up again and again into breathlessness that way, and that was even before he started to drive.

Then he held me tight, pumping us both higher, driving me into periodic spasms where I was lost in space. I almost didn't notice his spasmodic clutching as he climaxed, I was so swept away, lost even to the flesh I was wearing.

After a while, our panting slowed. I looked up at him and smiled, sharing the afterglow with him as he lay facing me, equally helpless to move.

He roused, looked at his hand and then at me, and smiled. "So... how does it feel?"

"Feels good."

He pushed himself up off the bed, pulling himself roughly out of me as he did so. "Good, because that's what you'll feel from now on."

Shocked out of disbelief and then outraged, I shouted, "You said a day!"

"I said whatever it took to get you to go along with it."

"Why?"

"Because I never really liked being a girl, that's why."

"I didn't say I did, not for good!"

He shot me a victorious smile. "Better you than me. The only times it really felt good for me was when I could pretend that it was all new to me, y'know, like I'd just been a guy. Then it was fun."

"So... When I found you... You were the girl in the first place!"

He nodded, smirking over his shoulder as he left the room. I lay back and let the tears flow, not knowing anything else I could do about it. After a while, I went and cleaned myself up, then went into the other bedroom and got dressed.

At first I was afraid that he would get rough with me. I decided that, if he was going to force himself on me, I would do my best to enjoy it, that being my best hope of keeping myself sane and together. I did agree to trade so I could see how it all felt, after all; that part was volitional, and it would be hypocritical for me to try to pretend that sex, with him in the man's role, wasn't part of it.

He didn't touch me, though. I slunk into the spare bedroom that night to sleep by myself, scared and more than a little lonely, no longer in any mood to explore. Then, after a day of his coldly ignoring me, I thought that he would just want to get back to his old haunts, leaving me by myself in this young body in my old place.

I was wrong, as wrong as I had been about who he really was. The next morning, bright and early, there were cars in the dirt driveway, and visitors with official-looking badges or business cards. He showed them in and told them his story.

"She told me she was eighteen, and I believed her. I only found out yesterday how old she really was. I'm willing to accept whatever penalty I owe, but I swear I didn't know. Now she needs to go back to whoever is in charge of her before she gets anybody else in trouble."

While one of them was telling him he was a good citizen and shouldn't expect trouble, a middle-aged lady was facing me sternly.

"You're going back to your foster home, young lady. I persuaded the Beachams to take you back; now you've got one last chance to spend this year in a good home."

In half an hour, all the clothes and supplies I had bought for her were packed to go back to somewhere with me, and I was leaning over to watch out the car window, watching him smiling, smirking, really, as we drove away.

 

It wasn't that long a drive, after all; we never left the state. Soon enough, we pulled up in front of a large rambling white-painted house centered on what might originally have been a farm. I had time on the way to face facts: with no way to prove who I was, all I could do was go along with this role I was forced into. I had to be Denise Weatherall, because, physically, I was.

I got a good talking-to from my new foster parents, the Beechams, who were good people trying to be good authority figures under trying circumstances. I got warned that, if I ran away again, I'd go into 'state' instead, which sounded nasty just from the way they said it.

I was in no hurry to run away to anywhere, not unless things got abusive or dangerous. From the vibes, that wasn't likely. There were three other girls and one guy staying there, and I met them all, and all of them gave me calm looks of barely-concealed pity or contempt for running away.

The guy, Raymond, went so far as to mutter, when we were away from the others, "How can you be so stupid, Denise? You throw away the best thing you got going and make trouble for the rest of us doing it!"

All I could do was promise, "I won't do it again."

"Good! You've only got a year until you're eighteen. Stick it out! The Beechams are people like I wished my folks were!"

I nodded. "I understand. I'll be good."

He smirked at that. "Don't make promises you can't keep. Just don't run off, okay?"

"Okay."

And that was that. I was casually polite to everyone, and everyone was casually polite to me. The Beechams seemed to be making a special effort to be warm and supportive, as well as available should I need them. I managed to find my way around without asking awkward questions. I put my new things away in my room, inspected and selected from among those and the older things that the other Denise had to wear, and did my best to fit in and do what was expected of me. At night I locked my door and no one tried the lock. It was all surreal in its peacefulness for my being effectively someone else now, someone who wasn't even male.

Next day, I was sitting out on the back porch, shaded by the rose trellis, and savoring the smell of tobacco smoke on the air as one of the girls, Kimmy, lit up. Denise had been an occasional smoker while we were together, cadging rollups from me until I bought her a pack of her brand, so I knew these lungs recognized the aroma. I sat there, trying to figure out how to ask and whether I should.

Kimmy noticed me looking at the pack and offered me one. I accepted, she pulled out her lighter and lit it, and we smoked in companionable silence, caught up in our own thoughts for a bit.

I squirmed in the seat, trying to deal with an itchy feeling way inside without being too obvious about it. It was enough to return Kimmy's attention to me.

"So...," she breathed out, idly watching the smoke she was expelling drift into the sunlight. "I guess she got to be a guy like she wanted."

"Huh? Explain."

"You don't act a thing like she did. And the way you walk... You used to be a guy, I can tell. Did you want to switch?"

"No... I didn't."

"So she stole that too."

"Why, what else did she steal?"

"I don't know near everything, but... a lot. I guess you'll find out about it. How is it, being a girl now?"

"Oh, I'm... still getting used to it; hard to say."

That itch started up again. I tried not to be obvious about my reaction, but she noticed. She glanced over, gave me a look composed of equal parts worldliness and sympathy, and commented, "She was wild, y'know; better get yourself checked for disease."

"Oh."

"You should get on the pill like I did. Then there's one thing you don't have to worry about, anyway."

"Do you think they--" I pointed my thumb behind me at the house and, by inference, our house parents. "--will let me? I need permission, don't I?"

"You should ask them. They'll sign; they did for me. They know they can only control us just so much, and they really don't want us coming home pregnant while they're responsible for us."

When I asked her about that, Mrs. Beecham looked at me closely, then gave a serious nod. "It's good that you're taking responsibility for yourself. You know that it won't protect you against disease, don't you?"

I nodded. "I know, and I'm not sure if I'll even really have a need for this; I just want to be safe."

She smiled a knowing smile at that, then sat down and printed off a little permission slip on the computer. It had a short list on it, with the checkbox for 'oral contraceptives' marked. I was taken aback that it would be so commonplace a request. She signed it and handed it up to me with a dismissive nod.

With that in hand, I got an appointment with the gynecologist everyone at the house was using. I explained the itch, submitted to a full pelvic exam and a blood test, and signed up for the birth-control pills while I was at it. Maybe the exam would have been embarrassing or humiliating, if I let it get to me, but I just put it down as the price of how good it felt to have a guy's dick in there that one time.

A few weeks later, I had answers. I already knew that the itch was a vaginal yeast infection, something that, while annoying and a little painful, was easy enough to treat. Now I could breathe a little easier, knowing that this body had no VD, no herpes, no HIV, and no baby. It was clean. It was up to me to keep it that way, and that suited me fine.

As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I asked for and got replacement ID, assuming that such a thing had ever really been thrown into the swamp. I scrutinized it as I carried it back to my room to put in my purse. 'Denise Jayne Weatherall' -- she hadn't put any special emphasis on the middle name, but here it was in print with a 'y' in it. Considering how unlikely it was that I would ever get to trade back, now it was mine for good.

I knew I should look into the family history behind this name and the body connected to it, but I felt no urgency. From talking to Kimmy, I knew that there hadn't been any visitors for Denise at the foster home, so whatever dysfunctional family had crashed and burned to land the original Denise here was no immediate concern of mine. Besides, I was too busy with independent study.

Frankly, that was a breeze, even though there was new stuff in the curriculum since I'd last attended school of any sort. The new stuff, and not tripping up on old stuff learned wrong, were just enough of a challenge for me to enjoy setting out to ace those curriculum blocks. After the first month, I was glowing inside from the praise I was getting. Someone said, "Well, you've certainly turned your life around," and I smiled, knowing they had no idea how much truth was in that.

No one seemed receptive to me testing for a driver's license outright using their car, so I settled for the first step, which was a learner's permit. Then the occasional practice drive with one of the Beachams to go get groceries was me proving I could handle a car, and getting used to being in this body behind the wheel, as much as anything. The heights were all wrong, and I had to get used to putting more muscle into the wheel and brake, but, after a few decades behind the wheel, I adjusted quickly.

I adjusted quickly in other areas, too. Even working on independent study, I got a part-time job at a local store. I also got enough exposure to the high school social scene to get noticed, get asked out, and eventually get me a boyfriend who appreciated a tomboy.

He had a motorcycle, a Yamaha 250. He let me try it out on the dirt roads and trails. It was easy enough to get used to riding in this body with its lighter mass; the only place it really mattered was in reaching the controls, and the smaller bike's geometry made that easy. I was confident that, if I could borrow his bike enough times, I could get a motorcycle endorsement added to that driver's license once I got it, just taking things one step at a time.

I kept that guy close, despite his rough edges, partly for that reason. Besides, where he took me sometimes when we'd pulled off into the backwoods bushes somewhere and climbed off the bike was reason enough to ride out with him. I made him use a condom every time, even after the pill was supposed to be in force, because I couldn't be sure he wasn't spreading himself thin; I didn't feel like catching whatever he came home with.

Over the next months, I managed my time, fulfilled my commitments, studied hard and played hard, and got into not so much a rut as a rhythm. I still kept my wits about me, now permanently wary of when the next change would come and where it would come from. With that attitude, I stayed aware of what I had, and savored it. Fortunately the next change wasn't bad for me.

Ordinarily I had no interest in the newspapers, even without a constant Internet connection. This time, when I saw one lying on the sofa in the common room of the home, I had an intuitive urge to pick it up. I took it over to the small table in the corner of the common room and spread it out, idly leafing through it, and I knew that the urge had been intuition only when I happened to read about him. It was an obituary: that weak heart had finally given out. Doing what, the obituary didn't say, but they never did.

Later that day, there was a phone call for me from my old attorney's office. I'd been waiting for it. I'd set it up, after all, though I certainly hadn't expected to be the beneficiary. I had valued her companionship, casual though it was, and, knowing that my heart could fail at any moment, I didn't stint in setting up for her for after I was gone.

Now I myself was the recipient of all that well-meant largesse. Under the terms of the will I'd put in place, I had a modest trust fund coming once I reached eighteen, along with the house and everything in it. The car, the bike, the cabin out back, the computers, all of those were going to be mine again. I'd even get my collection of beloved books back. Somebody I trusted was looking after all of that now.

I had all of that waiting for me once I was legal again, and meanwhile, I had the foster home. That meant I had someone looking out for me for what was left of another year, good people, and friends, too, while I got used to living the female life.

 

Getting ready for bed that evening, I mused over all of that. It brought the changes in my body back to my attention, and of course I did a fair amount of ogling and appreciating of this nubile female body all over again because of it, but my mood ended up back where it had started: quiet acceptance.

Denise hadn't been too good at reading thoughts. Either that, or I'd been too good at hiding mine. My attitude was not exactly gender dysphoria, more like gender ambivalence or indifference. Where, before, I was male, now I wasn't, and there were different capabilities in the new form. Rather than sitting down on the toilet sometimes, depending on my needs, now I sat down all the time, which was simpler than having to analyze whether more than my bladder needed emptying. Rather than fumbling in the dark with one piece of flesh with all of my sexual nerve-endings packed into it, now I would let my hands wander around. And, of course, I talked with a high voice again like I did growing up, and now I was permanently small, and if I ever wanted to be a parent I'd have to either adopt or go through pregnancy and childbirth. Every month, I'd have a few days of messiness, along with cramps which were a physical report on how much I'd stressed myself out since the last one.

None of it really felt like that big a deal, when I actually thought about it; there was nothing there that I couldn't handle and accept. It had been far more disruptive to my sense of self to be suddenly underage again and no longer free of ownership, and wearing a new name, and that latter was most intrusive when I had to deal with this body's history as reflected in other peoples' eyes.

And I could handle that too. I had enough patience to wait out the year ahead, and then I'd be free to develop and define my own lifestyle all over again, this time one where I was female. If I ever got tired of it... Well, I had already gotten in some practice with the abilities that came with this form. Though I wasn't about to switch with my boyfriend outright and thus let someone else in on the secret, I had already begun sharing with him just how good a female orgasm can be; it was enough to keep him good in the sack, because the more I got the more he felt.

Thinking about that last, I crawled into bed, flopped my legs open under the sheets, and reached down there to begin applying Nature's remedy for insomnia. Eventually, pleasurably, predictably, it worked.

 

I'd been asleep for maybe an hour when somebody knocked at my bedroom door. That somebody whispered "Open up... It's Dennis."

I stumbled over to the door and opened it. His face was hard to make out in the harsh shadows cast by the one hall light, but from what I could see he was a slightly-built teenage guy, roughly my new age, and his features were familiar. He might have been a fraternal twin to the face I now wore. His soft voice, almost a whisper, was high enough as he said, "Denise... can I trade back?"

My instinctive response was, 'why should I gamble on a trade when I'm putting in the work as I am and getting results?' Something for nothing was never my style. If you didn't work for it, how could you trust that it was yours?

I turned on my bedroom light and looked him over. He didn't look like anything I wanted to be near, much less wear, as he was offering. He looked like a junkie. I shook my head. "Nope, sorry."

"But I'm your sister!"

I was not liking the feel of this. I gave him a stony gaze. "You're not my sister, because I'm not Denise."

"Who..."

"Denise managed to steal another male body. Mine. Then she died in it. And I like living, and I don't like gambling... so I'll live this way, thanks."

The news of the death of his sibling didn't seem to phase him at all; my opinion of him dropped further. "But it wasn't... I mean, that's my body you've got! I was born in that body! Don't you want to be a guy again?"

Even as I was peripherally noticing the uniformed police officer stealthily coming up the stairs, and was deliberately not allowing my gaze to rest on him, something occurred to me. I locked gazes with Dennis. "You're the one who started all this, aren't you... Trading bodies like this, so you could have his, right?"

He nodded. "I traded us, yeah; it was me that figured out how to do it."

"And now you've gotten yourself in trouble somehow and you want to run away from it. Trade back this body and let your brother take the blame... right?"

Dennis didn't so much nod as cringe. Behind him, the cop's expression went from shock to hard control, and he and I shared a look that communicated disgust. Dennis noticed my reaction and turned to see who was behind him. He froze. In the long silence of the confrontation, I delivered my verdict: "Live with it. That's what I'm going to do."

I closed the door firmly. Then, reacting to hunch and instinct, I leaned against the door, putting my back into it and holding the doorknob fiercely so it couldn't open. The doorknob was tried, then a body slammed against the door, twice. Still forcing the door closed with my shoulders and bare feet, I listened to the sound of a short scuffle, then an adult male voiced called out, "Yeah, I got him."

I felt the pressure on the door ease, so I eased off myself and opened the door a crack. The cop was at the top of the stairs, with his attention focused on his job. Three steps down was Dennis with his arms behind him, the gleam of metal at his wrists confirming that he was handcuffed. He was looking back at my door with an utterly lost expression as I closed my door on that unforeseen chapter of my new life, quietly pleased with myself that I'd stood on principle. Sometimes it's the ones that got away with it that get got; sometimes justice just works.