Rainbow

  I sighed as I finally finished dragging my suitcase up the stairs. There was no reason for me to have even brought the suitcase, all it had were a backup hoodie and sweatpants, some T-shirts, underwear and socks. The only thing that wasn’t the absolute bare minimum was my shampoo, instead of 2 in 1 body wash (had to take some care of that long hair of mine). Even with my ptop bag inside, half of it was still empty, it was only my own ziness that I didn’t get something more appropriate for the amount of stuff I actually had.

  Having opened the suitcase on the floor of my room, I’ve found myself in the awkward position of not knowing what to do — it was my first time coming back home after moving out to attend university, after all. Sure, I could just come back downstairs and spend the time with my family, but realistically I didn’t know what to do and didn’t have anything new to talk about, so I’d just spend all of that time awkwardly browsing stuff on my phone. Alternatively, I could simply stay up here, and… awkwardly browse stuff on my ptop.

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t the best at this whole ‘being a person’ thing, but nobody has called me out on that so far.

  Luckily, my indecision was conveniently solved by a knock on the door.

  “Come in!”

  The door went ajar just enough to allow my younger sister’s, Sylvia’s, head in. “Hey, you! I hope you weren’t going to spend all holidays just holed up in here. I know it’s only the 23rd, but you gotta get in that Christmas spirit!”

  Sylvia, being only a year younger than me, had always felt like more of an equal than the ‘little sibling’, even if I did end up instinctually caring for her quite a lot as we grew up.

  “Uhm… I’m afraid I’m not sure what ‘getting into that Christmas spirit’ entails,” I said.

  “Well, it’s good that I have just the thing you need pnned! Granted, it might be a bit soon for that, but I’ve already been waiting way more than enough, and there’s not really a point in deying it either way!” she excimed, leaving and going towards the staircase, before coming back, somehow avoiding the usual awkwardness of such a maneuver. “Come on! Gotta have everyone for this!”

  I sighed, and followed the bundle of excitement that was my younger sister downstairs.

  It’s not like I didn’t get along with her, or thought she was annoying; I loved her a lot, in fact. It’s just… well, to put it simply, I was envious, I had been for as long as I could remember. I didn’t hold it against her, of course, and I tried my best not to show it, but years of untreated gender dysphoria had definitely taken their toll, as much as I hated the fact it affected the way I felt about the closest person I’ve ever had.

  We walked down to the living room, connected to the half-open kitchen taken up by our parents who, having recovered from greeting me, were back to already making way too much food, as was the Christmas tradition. I silently hoped that overeating wasn’t a part of ‘getting into that Christmas spirit’.

  Sylvia dashed to recover something apparently hidden in a corner, so I decided to awkwardly approach the old reliable couch, the famed activity hub of the living room.

  Just as quickly as she left, my sister came back, poorly hiding some sort of light blue object behind her, before completely negating the act of hiding it by shoving it towards me without doing anything else.

  “Merry Christmas!”

  It took me half a second to process that it was, in fact, a gift. “But… I haven’t gotten anything for you…” I said, unable to keep the guilt out of my voice.

  “That’s more than okay, trust me, it’s a gift for me, too.”

  I appraised the gift in greater detail — it was a box, seemingly the shape of a perfect cube, covered in light blue packing paper and pastel pink ribbon, almost reminiscent of a certain fg.

  “Well, I have been known to like a cube…” I muttered nonsensically, gently taking the box.

  “Oh, you want to be sitting down for this,” Sylvia added excitedly, clearly struggling to keep herself in one pce.

  Having no reason to doubt her, I plopped down on the couch and pulled on one end of the ribbon.

  To my surprise, that actually worked, magically unraveling all the yers before covering me in a brilliant fsh of light.

  The process of magic working its thing was lightning quick, almost as short as it took me to realize that it had been, indeed magic. Not that I knew much about magic myself, but I had read into magical means of tradition just a bit. Just, you know, a normal amount.

  Of course, having read into it, I also had some understanding of how such a process felt, and it was really hard to not focus on how much that matched how I felt as the light faded.

  I didn’t need to rely on comparisons to second hand accounts though, I could feel the ways my body had changed. A certain body part being very much altered, a couple little things that weren’t there before, and of course, the one thing I didn’t feel the awkward need to talk about even in my internal dialogue, the very notable change of perspective despite the fact that I was sitting. That fact would have also prevented any fatal wardrobe malfunctions, but for the sake of practically I was gd my clothes had been magically adjusted to my admittedly much smaller size.

  For a moment I wondered where all that excess fabric went, but then I remembered how much I’d shrunk, and was thankfully able to reign my brain in before it started considering how big of a bomb that amount of mass converted to energy would make.

  I decided it was enough time spent in my head, and looked back up, only to see Sylvia, literally vibrating with excitement and starry eyed, to the degree one could suspect the gift wasn’t the only magic she got her hands on. The box’s colors were probably not an accident then, huh.

  Looking towards the kitchen, it was almost as clear as it was predictable that our parents were very much shocked by that turn of events. The two of them were definitely well-meaning, and thoughtful enough to not actually stumble much, but they were not the best at paying attention to the little things.

  “Please tell me you’ve warned them about this,” I said to my sister.

  That seemed to have been the push she needed to move towards me and grab me up into a standing position and a rather tight hug.

  “Oh, of course, I told them what I was going to do. They didn’t buy it when I told them what the result was gonna be, but it looks like I was right, so who’s ughing now!” She paused, taking a big breath before continuing. “Anyways, now that my perfect pn has been enacted, it’s time to get my dear sister clothes shopping!”

  I felt my face heat up at being gendered correctly. “Well, it will give them some time to process it before we do The Talk.” I’d take anything for a chance at making The Coming Out Talk? less awkward.

  Having been given the shred of permission she needed, Sylvia wasted no time grabbing my hand and dragging me to her car, rushing me all the while on the pretense of me not having a winter coat that fit me.

  After we sat down and she turned on the heating, she hadn’t started driving like I’d expected, instead taking a deep breath, and then another, eventually managing to calm herself and turn toward me with a serious face.

  Right. Just because my sister and I were close, and she’d figured me out, didn’t mean I could get away with skipping all of The Talk? with her…

  “You knew you were trans before today, didn’t you?” She asked.

  “Yes…” I looked away.

  “For how long?”

  “Oh, you know, a year or two… or seven…”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re not kidding, are you?” She asked, though her tone told she already knew the answer.

  “You know I’m not the most assertive person… I tried to tell y’all a couple times over the years, but I never went past the ‘thinking about it and then getting really scared and giving up’ part…”

  She started tearing up and pulled me into a tight hug. “And here I was, thinking I might have figured it out sooner than you… Turns out I was the one being te, huh,” she said, her voice very emotional.

  “I mean, it’s my responsibility, not yours…” I mumbled.

  “You don’t get it, do you? You’ve been there for me all this time, no matter what it was, schoolwork, some stupid argument I got into with a friend, figuring out my sexuality; and hell, you’ve probably been so jealous and you didn’t let it affect how you treated me at all. Even back when I saw how all the other kids treated their siblings and tried to be a little shit to you, you never retaliated, or even got angry at me. You genuinely taught me how to be a kind person more than our parents ever did, because we were equals, and you never acted like it was about rules or some secret code of politeness, instead it simply being something you wanted to be for other people… and I’ve wanted to do that for you so much, for so long, and I could see you were struggling with something you clearly couldn’t deal with on your own, just like I did so many times… getting to do this for you might be the best Christmas present I’ve ever gotten.”

  I was genuinely at a loss of words. Sure, I rationally knew that the two of us were really close and it wasn’t going to change just because I moved away for school, but having her put it into words, especially now, meant a lot more than I could imagine it would.

  Eventually, I managed to mumble a small “Thank you.”

  After a couple of minutes we finally stopped hugging, and Sylvia proceeded to drive me to the mall. As it turns out, magically getting your ideal body did not, in fact, solve all your problems, such as being bad with crowds, or having troubles maintaining stamina during prolonged shopping sessions, but I still decided that we would be going all out today, since that was sure to be better than going to the mall on the actual Christmas Eve day.

  Being completely honest, I didn’t know what to do when we entered the first store, which was not really helped by the fact that Sylvia uncharacteristically stopped at her tracks.

  “Okay, first we gotta figure out your size, because gosh have you gotten tiny. Like, you might be the older sister, but I’m totally the bigger sister now!” She excimed.

  Ah, she stopped to banter, that expins it. I was sure I was going to come up with a witty comeback eventually, but even if that happened now, I wasn’t really in the mood for it.

  “Certainly beats being miserable…” I said.

  She, of course, hugged me again. I had a feeling it was going to become a regur occurrence, and I definitely did not mind.

  All those girls on the internet talking about how transitioning made clothes shopping an absolute joy must have been lying. I mean, sure, cute clothes and getting to wear them were cute and all, but the process was still absolutely exhausting. I’d decided on the hard limit of three new things per trip in the future, but given I was in need of a completely new wardrobe, this time it simply wouldn’t do.

  I’d tried really hard to not fall back on my habit of choosing anything that vaguely fit my body just to get it over with, but as hours stretched on, it became extremely clear even to ever-excitable Sylvia that I simply didn’t have much left in me, so she suggested one st outfit, something I was going to keep on as we returned home.

  “I think that might be a size or two too big for you, sis,” she said, doubt clear on her face.

  Granted, an oversized sweater, a pair of thigh highs and a skirt of type spinny might not have been the most creative or fashionable choice, but it was my choice, and my choice certainly valued the comfy value above all else.

  “No, I think this is perfect…” I responded, putting a sleeve covering my hand to my face to take in the softness of the fabric.

  She rolled her eyes on that one. “You’re ridiculous. Come on, it’s time to go, before you fall asleep in the changing room.”

  While her comment about falling asleep was an over-exaggeration, the tiredness definitely helped me fade into the background until we came back home.

  Then of course, came The Talk?, almost as inevitable as it was greatly deyed by yours truly. It was, of course, still a bit awkward, as it always tended to be with our parents, but between having my girl-ness self-evident from my body and having them already know I was a girl, it was definitely much easier than my anxiety made it up to be. And, well, an occasional nudge or two from Sylvia also helped.

  Sylvia was coming me out to our parents via vehicle of me, basically.

  And then we pyed some Civilization VI on the family Nintendo Switch, the game that I still didn’t know if I actually liked pying, but it certainly never failed to attract my hyperfixation.

  Eventually though, as the proper sleepy hours approached, I found myself struggling to sit up properly, eventually finding myself leaning against Sylvia’s shoulder.

  She simply looked down on me and smiled. “Seriously?”

  “You wanted to be the bigger sister, you deal with the consequences.” See? I told you it’d come to me eventually.

  She gasped in a very deliberately fake way. “That’s gotta be the meanest thing I’ve ever heard you say!”

  “Shup…” I mumbled into her shoulder.

  “That’s the new meanest thing I’ve ever heard you say,” she responded.

  I smiled.

  As I drifted off to sleep, not caring about such silly things as getting to my bed, I thought to myself — this was definitely going to be the best Christmas ever.