Rainbow

  Something that people who don’t struggle with mental health issues will never understand is how easily one negative experience, no matter how silly, can change a day of doing something one loves into an absolute bck hole of misery. In theory, doing a program for teens deciding on the direction they want to take in university showing off just how fun and fulfilling game design can be sounds wonderful. I get to share something I love with others, possibly igniting or solidifying people’s passions for it. Sounds like a wonderful time, even if sometimes we had somebody pedantic try to raise a stink by saying that the block-based game design program for beginners we were using wasn’t ‘real programming’, completely missing the point that it still touches on the same logic skills, the fact that each kid only gets an hour and a half, and that it would be extremely discouraging if they couldn’t actually realistically create anything in that time period.

  What did create an issue was the dress code, if you can call a vague suggestion of ‘something more serious than full casual mode’ from our teacher a dress code. I did not have something more serious than full casual mode; most of my life was lived in oversized hoodies and sweatpants, meaning that the only real option I had was the suit that hasn’t been touched since my high school graduation. It was my sincere belief that it was impossible to be comfortable in a suit, the only ways around it being if you were rich enough to get a custom tailored set, or if you were a woman. There was just always something ill-fitting, a lot of things too stiff, and don’t forget the shoulders square and stiff, because all humanoid men only have one body type, and if they don’t, they need to be forced into pretending that they do, regardless of their consent. I’d tried to go for something fun with mine, repcing the boring bck of the suit jacket with novel light gray, in hopes of the fancy and unique route making it less miserable. It did not.

  Back in the present day, I was absolutely convinced that I looked like I was about to crawl out of my skin and prove to everybody that humans can, in fact, molt. And yet, neither my teacher nor my cssmates doing the project with me, Zoe and Emily, commented on it, which only solidified my belief that suits were nothing but torture devices designed to enforce conformity via emotional pain. However, that was still fine, banced by the opportunity to share what I loved and help other people. I even managed to overcome my social anxiety with a healthy dose of dissociation.

  What wasn’t fine was that during the break before our st group of students, Emily, the smallest student in our css at around 155 cm, asked if she could try on my suit jacket for a bit after I’d taken it off, just to see how silly it would look on her. I agreed of course, seeing no reasonable reason to refuse, possibly not considering the consequences. Consequences being, naturally, that the suit of the tallest guy in css (only shorter than our teacher, Ms. Stone, on account of being an elf) was going to look ridiculously oversized on the cute, small girl in front of me.

  Emily was giggling madly, probably way more than would be considered normal, flopping the long sleeves around, while something deep inside me broke. That suit jacket might have been ill-fitting, but it was by no means oversized, unlike my other clothes — in fact, it was even a bit too tight in some spots. And yet it looked so big on her, and she looked so small in it. How big was I? Was I really this oversized monstrosity? Sure, being a human, I was far from what the bigots of old considered monstrous, yet in another, completely different way, I felt like I was everything that said bigots believed their most hated races to be. Sure, rationally, I knew I was a nice person, but uranium has some really nice uses too, and yet just being around it enough will still hurt you.

  The rest of the day’s activities in the program, as well as the cleanup, were done on autopilot. I still did the same things I would have done on the surface, but they were less things I did and more tasks to be accomplished before I earned my reward of privacy in my bed where I could shut down for good. To call my actions robotic would be an insult to all the wonderful robots inhabiting our world. At a couple points, Zoe and Emily asked if everything was okay, and even Ms. Stone tried approaching me once, but in the end I just brushed them off, making my leave as soon as it was polite to do so.

  Despite managing to dissociate enough to make my previous actions feel like something done by someone else in vague proximity to me, walking to my dorm suddenly became a quick time event. Every step was taken manually, carefully bancing the speed and size of my steps to minimize energy spent while also maintaining a bearable pace, all with the added difficulty of needing to bance my wobble so that the people around me wouldn’t mistake me for a drunk person. It was miserable, but in a way, I welcomed the distraction.

  Speaking of distractions, at some point I was forced to come to a stop by someone standing in my way. I looked up to identify the girl in my way, quickly coming to the conclusion that she was, in fact, a fae. I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of fae, but there was no mistaking the gentle glow of her pink skin and light blue hair for anything else.

  “Hey, what’s your deal?” The fae asked me, rather rudely.

  “E-excuse me?” I stuttered.

  “You are being a huge bck hole of emotions! It’s totally throwing off the vibes of the whole square around you!” She excimed.

  “O-oh, I’m really sorry, I don’t know how to stop it…” I expined.

  Judging by the look on her face, my guilt only made it worse, but then she took a deep breath and seemed to calm down.

  “No, I’m sorry… I understand you must be going through a lot to make that much of an impact on the emotional pne, but some of us rely on it much more than others, so it can be easy to be knocked off by something like that. I can try to help with my powers if you want, but I need your explicit consent.”

  “Oh, uh, sure, go ahead,” I said.

  She made a silly face that I could only assume meant she was focusing, and her eyes started to glow… Well, glow more than they already did.

  As it was nearing a minute of her staring at me, I was considering saying something, but then her face lit up in joy.

  “Okay, I figured something out. It might not be the whole cause, but it should be able to help out a lot, and I can do it really easily right now. Do you agree?” She asked.

  “O-okay…” I nodded.

  She focused her magic again, this time causing her pointer finger to glow, and then she… booped me with it. I felt a strange tingle in my stomach for a moment, but it cleared up just as quickly and I was left feeling like nothing changed.

  “It didn’t work?” I asked.

  “Nope, it very much did. You’ll see very soon,” she responded, and then simply walked away.

  Huh.

  On a normal day, I would consider the interaction to be a cause of hope, but being as stuck in the dumps as I was, the best I could do was being thankful for the distraction as I walked the rest of the way to my room.

  Sharing the dorm with my childhood best friend had a lot of upsides, like it being socially acceptable for me to walk in and colpse face first into the couch as I let out a pained groan.

  “Oof, not the best day, is it? Did the anxiety end up getting to you after all?” Kari asked.

  “No, nope, it’s… something else. Not sure what to be entirely honest with you.” I expined.

  “Oh, okay, I see. Distraction protocol it is then! Did something interesting that didn’t suck happen?”

  “Well, there was this one thing on the way back…” I trailed off, before recounting my encounter with the kind of rude fae girl.

  “So, unless it’s someone really simir I don’t know about, that was Estrel. I share a couple csses with her, she’s nice. She’s closer than an acquaintance, but it feels presumptuous to call her a friend. Still, she’s definitely not a prankster type, and I’m pretty sure the type of fae she is couldn’t break the w even if she wanted to after willingly entering the social contract, so you should have nothing to worry about. Still, I’ll check in with her tomorrow, just to be sure,” she said, completely unaware that she’d given me new anxieties I didn’t even think of before, as usual.

  “Bleh… Maybe she actually did something that would help. That would be nice, though I’m not entirely sure what that could even be…” I added.

  We spent the remainder of the day idly rewatching some of our shared favorite shows before we were tired enough to both pass out.

  It turned out that I was in for quite a rude awakening, for I was being poked!

  “Noooooo, let me sleeeeeeeep…” I whined.

  Usually my voice when not on 100% just sounded deeper, but this time, for whatever reason, it was significantly softer and lighter than it regurly was.

  It was nice. Almost as nice as getting more sleep.

  “Listen, I get that you’re probably exhausted given whatever the fuck is happening to you, but you should definitely get up enough to just check said whatever the fuck out,” Kari said.

  I just let out a long displeased (but surprisingly pleasing) sound and turned away from her as I curled up more.

  “Fine, hard way it is then… Just don’t go compining I didn’t ask nicely first…”

  Using her demonic might, she went and straight up picked me up, together with my weighted bnket, and carried me in front of the full body mirror that I had a habit of avoiding.

  Given how comfy cozy and eepy I had been, the process of opening my eyes was surprisingly easy, feeling confuzzled and disoriented but otherwise fine, kinda like the vaguely cute androgynous person in… the mirror…

  What?

  I crawled over my bnket that didn’t feel so weighted at the moment to look closer at the person in the mirror. They looked just as androgynous as they first seemed, with surprisingly small and delicate features, as well as some unexpected spots of pink scales all over, that overall didn’t cover a lot but also didn’t have any discernable pattern.

  I somehow managed to get so hypnotized by my reflection enough to miss Kari coming up behind me again and shoving her hands under my shoulders, picking me up all the way to the standing position.

  “Stand up, you dummy,” she said.

  Deprived from the ground contact without a warning, I started wildly waving my hands and legs in all directions.

  “There are better ways to communicate that!” I yelled, albeit jokingly.

  For whatever reason, I found the touch much less jarring than I usually did, perhaps because I actually looked somewhat nice for once in my life.

  Blessedly set down upon the ground, now in standing position, I started to see why she’d done that — while usually, quite contrary to our dynamic, I had good 10 cm of height over her, now she was practically a head taller than the person in the reflection that I was still processing I apparently got to be, at least for the time being.

  “Oh,” I eloquently remarked, like a true intellectual.

  “Yeah, ‘oh’ is right, short stuff.”

  I felt my face heat up at that, and my reflection decided to match with a cute blush.

  Kari rolled her eyes and continued. “So, one, you have obviously transformed, and two, the transformation is clearly not done. Now, I don’t know about you, but I know just what fae to ask about what the hell is up with that.”

  I vaguely processed the second sentence, but my brain couldn’t help but get stuck at the part where she implied there would be more. In retrospect, my appearance did very much match the ptonic ideal of awkward in-between stage of a transformation, but it was not something I had processed quite yet. I was more concerned with doing things like imagining how much better I would feel trying to perform formality in this body than—

  “Oh, shoot, the project! They need my help! And I totally overslept already, didn't I? I need to find something formal-ish to wear and rush there ASAP!” I excimed.

  I didn’t get to move more than a couple centimeters before I got caught by the the neck of my pajama shirt.

  “Oh no, you don’t. What you need to do is write an email at most and get the rest you begged for three minutes ago while I go fetch Estrel to come here and expin this whole mess,” she demanded.

  “Yes ma’am…” I mumbled.

  The second the door to our dorm closed behind her I began frantically searching all of my very limited wardrobe for something that would stay on me to rush to the cssroom where we were doing the project.

  Kari was definitely right that, given my track record with times I got sick or otherwise unavaible, Ms. Stone would do nothing but excuse me from my duties after seeing the state I was in. That being said however, people whose job wasn’t checking their email didn’t check their email much, especially when busy with something else. And also, I might have had the slightest bit of anxiety over writing emails, sue me.

  I gently knocked at the door to the cssroom, way too gently for anyone to actually hear, and I opened it, shyly heading inside.

  “Hey Ms. Stone, there’s, umm… an emergency going on…” I said, trying my best to be loud enough to hear, and finding my voice to be actually tolerable to listen to.

  Zoe and Emily were already there, and their faces lit up with shock and then recognition and then more shock.

  “Wait, who…” Our professor’s gsses glowed with the soul sight enchantment she used to accommodate for face blindness. “Oh… Kid, what did I tell you about coming here when emergencies are going on?”

  “To just write an email, I know, but I knew you were going to be busy with preparations and might have been too busy to check it and I didn’t want to make you anxious when I didn’t show up and stuff…” I expined.

  “Yes, it is true that I would have become concerned when you didn’t show up today — and then five minutes in I would have realized something was wrong and checked the contact to me that you do have, which is my email by the way, in case something came up,” she countered.

  I looked down in embarrassment. “O-oh… Yeah, it does make sense when you put it like that…”

  “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Now, just in case it wasn’t clear, you are dismissed and free to go now,” she said, pointing towards the door.

  I started slowly walking towards the exit when I was stopped by Emily’s voice.

  “Hey, can I talk to you for a moment?” She asked.

  “Oh, umm, sure, go ahead…” I answered.

  “I just wanted to apologize for yesterday — I transitioned fairly recently and I guess I’m still not used to it, so when I got the idea to try out your jacket for some cheap euphoria I kinda didn’t think about anything else, and seeing the way you are now, it’s clear that the reason you got so gloomy yesterday was because of that, and, umm… yeah… I’m sorry, genuinely.”

  If I was being entirely honest, I wasn’t sure what she meant or how anything could have been her fault, let alone the fact that I had no idea what the word ‘transition’ even meant in this context, but at the same time… I wasn’t going to let her go feeling all guilty about something that was 100% my fault for being weird and all.

  “It’s okay, I promise, no apologies necessary, I understand,” I said.

  Okay, so maybe I lied about that st part, but if it’s to make someone feel better then it’s a white lie and that means it’s good, right? Or at least acceptable? Maybe? I was too much of a terminal people pleaser to consider my strong (and often wrong) moral sense at every turn, not to mention that if I was honest then she’d expin what the things she said meant and I was running on a tight timer to return to my dorm before Kari got there.

  Speaking of the devil, I opened the door to see Kari impatiently waiting for me with Estrel awkwardly standing behind her.

  “You didn’t even check our dorm, did you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Nope! Now, come here.” She pulled me by the colr of my shirt and let the door close behind me.

  At this point I noticed Estrel looking at us with eyes wide from the surprise.

  I looked at her and said, “Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s okay, I gave her consent to do stuff like that, and not just in a sense of agreeing to what she wanted to do anyways. I literally requested more aggressive help when I get stuck on things and it took her years for her to get this confident in it. It actually helps me, I promise.”

  See, when it came to defending myself, I was about as strong and confident as a wet noodle. And yet, when it came to defending others, especially the person I cared for more than anyone in the world, my BFF (who had asked me out over a dozen times over the years, but that’s besides the point), I could magically become the most collected and eloquent person in the whole world somehow.

  Estrel nodded slowly, then turned towards Kari. “And you’re saying the two of you are not dating?”

  “Unfortunately,” she grumbled, not missing a beat from her jokey-angry expression, before letting me go and returning back to her typical light-hearted self like nothing happened. “Anyways, care to expin your work to the css, young dy?”

  The two of us were not dating for a number of reasons, most of them reted to the fact that I hadn’t ever been good at letting myself receive affectionate touch without feeling like I was ruining it, and that I couldn’t for the life of me ever imagine myself actually in a retionship. Even so, I had to admit she was really precious and adorable despite being the more confident and outgoing one.

  “Oh, well, umm… I was picking up some serious emotional downwards spiral from your friend, and when I talked to them I sort of just picked up on this vibe that I could have sworn was a dormant fae ancestry that was somehow still unawakened, so I thought it would do some good to do something that would need to be done when someone noticed it anyways and, you know, trigger the awakening. I admit I should have been more forthcoming about what I was doing, in retrospect I’m shocked that such uninformed consent even counted, but yesterday was a long day for me, and being so close to someone radiating so much negativity really took it out of me. Even if I wasn’t fully at the power to make a good decision, I am still responsible for my actions and I’m deeply sorry,” Estrel expined.

  “It’s okay, I understand. I think the reason my consent counted was because I… I really was desperate for anything to take me out of the hole I found myself in, and help, even as uncertain as that, was what I wanted,”I said.

  “Okay,” Kari started, “so that expins the why of it, but now it’s time to expin what — I don’t think there are any sorts of fae that have scales, so something obviously went wrong.”

  “There are scaled fae, actually, though I admit they are a rare kind — basically any feature you’d find on an animal, there’s probably a fae that has it as well, it’s all on a personal basis. The wrong reason aside, your suspicion is correct. Fae are made out of magic, not matter, and so all the new features gained in a transformation like this should be composed of pure, concentrated magic, and yet those scales don’t glow at all. As far as I can tell, they are matter through and through, and that’s… concerning,” she expined.

  “Okay, so what do we do then? How do we tell what he’s turning into?” Kari asked.

  “Well, I’m not an expert, despite it being adjacent to my subject of study. I’m not sure how much I could help when the alternative is eating the queue time and going to a doctor about it, but… I guess if we go to the library, we should be able to go through the books on mixed human ancestries and compare the traits until we find something that fits? There’s a lot of those, but most don’t have the right genes or carry enough magic or energy or whatever to be able to remain properly dormant while maintaining the possibility of being awakened instead of just… Manifesting during normal growth as a hybrid, so hopefully we should be able to find something that’s at least close enough?”

  “Okay, so the library it is then, let’s go!” Kari started walking determinedly and all.

  Estrel and I looked towards each other for a second, and I had a feeling that none of the three of us even had breakfast, but we both knew that once Kari set her mind, there was no stopping her.

  Once we arrived at our destination, Kari confidently walked up to the librarian’s desk and asked, “Excuse me, where can we find the books on mixed human ancestries?”

  The dy behind the counter simply sighed. “That would be the [fancy word for science of all different races of sentient creatures] section, corridor 14, bookcase F. All 327 volumes released so far should be there, only one of each, so no borrowing them outside of the library.” She looked in my direction, and then lightened up a little. “Good luck.”

  “Yeah, it’s going to take a while,” Estrel added.

  It’d been over four hours since we arrived at the library, and while I, as a game design student with the entirety of the internet at the reach of my fingertips, had to admit that I hadn’t frequented the pce too much, I could have sworn they had comfy chairs well equipped for those long studying sessions. And yet, at some point, I started becoming more and more uncomfy, and no amount of shifting around could address it. My entire upper back, as well as some area between where the spine ends and butt begins, were so sore and itchy. I could tell that it was distracting to Estrel, who had her nose deep in the volume about mixed ancestries with extraterrestrial lifeforms with official first contact dates between years 1860 and 1920, but I just could not help it. It was like if I was forced to stay in that chair for one more minute, I would explode on the spot.

  “Hey, you know nobody’s forcing you to stay in that chair, right? You can just stand up and stretch, some movement could do you some good given the whole actively-going-through-a-transformation thing,” Kari said.

  She was, of course, right on all accounts. It’d been about three hours since we noticed that while my scales were still not overwhelming in their quantity, they were definitely slowly spreading. I really hoped I wouldn’t end up with no regur skin, that would kinda suck, especially since mine seems to have gotten significantly smoother since the day before.

  Deciding to follow her advice, for my own sanity if nothing else, I stood up and stretched. What I didn’t expect was for her to get up alongside me and turn out to be standing even taller above me than she did at the start of the day.

  “You know, looking from here, it looks like there’s something on your head,” she said as she started parting my hair. “Oh my gosh, I think you’re growing horns! They are just tiny nubs but they’re there!”

  “You know, I’d expect that to be the sore part, but there’s very clearly something going on around my back and getting up did not fix that nearly as much as I hoped,” I compined.

  “Okay, okay, checking it out right now.” Kari walked around to my back before letting out a low whistle. “What a good Fat Tail Friday we’re having on this fine Tuesday evening!”

  What? A tail? I hoped it wasn’t one of the reptilian ones that fell off.

  Estrel finally looked up from her book. “It’s barely noon, and also a Thursday.”

  “Oh, come on, details aren’t important, especially when we also have these babies!”

  I let out an incredibly high pitch and girlish “Eep!” at the touch, and then as quickly as possible covered my mouth in panic.

  She touched my back, but also not? And it extended? And she had her hands around it? Huh???

  “Wow, that was a sound alright, almost enough to distract me from the fact that you’re growing wings! Maybe being able to fly will finally get you used to the heights enough for us to go flying together! And maybe I won’t even need to carry you!”

  Ah, wings, that made sense.

  Wait, what?! Wings too? How many things was I growing?!?

  Estrel finally got up and started looking me over too.

  “Okay, horns, wings, fat tail, that’s significantly more information to go off of. Let me just see.” Her finger started glowing again and she poked my right horn with it, which, to my surprise, I could feel. “Horns are incredibly tough too, almost impossibly so… Of course! I think I know exactly what you are!”

  And just like that, she ran away.

  In the time she was gone, Kari made herself busy touching my growing tail and wings in ways that probably were not appropriate for a library, but at the same time my sense of touch in them hadn’t developed enough for me to be able to tell exactly how I was touched yet.

  I, meanwhile, was still covering my mouth, processing the sound that came out of it.

  Finally, Estrel came running back with her finger between the pages of a particurly rge book. She simply said “Ta-da!” right as she opened it in our faces.

  One page was taken up entirely by the name of the subspecies and the illustrations of how it looked, the second was dense with text, probably describing a lot of things.

  “That’s right!” Estrel finally excimed. “You, my friend, are a dragon!”

  The illustration did indeed contain drawings of people with simir features to what I was developing: horns, wings, tails, and patterns of scales running over parts of their skins.

  There were drawings of both male and female forms, but the only sexual dimorphism I could see that wasn’t just the human ones were the patterns of scales.

  …wait.

  I finally stopped covering my mouth to look over my arms and the scales that selectively covered them, then I looked back up at the book just to confirm, and then back down.

  Kari looked towards me. “What are you…? Oh, the scale patterns, that’s a good way to check, those are— Wait!”

  She tried to stop me but it was too te, I was already running. Once I realized it, something deep within me clicked into pce, and I knew exactly what I was becoming — a dragon. A female dragon.

  All the secret desires and hopes I kept hidden all my life, even from Kari, appeared to be coming true, and I could do nothing but run — after all, they were hidden for a reason: they were forbidden. This wasn’t something that I could actually ever have, and showing it to everybody was just a recipe for disaster; no matter how giddy I wanted to be, I was more terrified of my life being ruined.

  Unfortunately, whatever clicked into pce also made it so my transformation proceeded at a drastically faster rate. As I ran, I could feel my shirt and pants get torn by the wings and tail, itchy sensations told me that my scales spread a bit more, and of course, there were the most important parts: I had to adjust the way I ran as my hips widened, my ‘good riddance’ finally stopped getting in the way, and the only soreness that didn’t disappear upon completed transformation were the breasts that I was convinced were rge for someone of my new, slight, build.

  With the distraction of the transformation finishing, I barely noticed the fact that I got into my dorm.

  I instinctively walked up to the mirror, despite the years of ingrained fear, and started checking my new form out. It might have been the now fully grown pink wings and tail that were framing my figure, but I was somehow even tinier! Barely big enough for an adult human without any medical irregurities, in fact — at least aside from my assets; holy heck, I thought it was just my perspective messing with my perception, like in countless stories I read, but nope, those breasts were indeed rge on my frame. Not anything ridiculous to the point of being unrealistic, but they were certainly a lot, more than enough to be visible despite my extremely baggy clothes. My hips were also noteworthy, but overall, nothing was actually big or curvy enough to make my small figure look weird or overexaggerated, which was quite literally perfect. I couldn’t have imagined them better in my dreams that I have tried and failed to make lucid many times before.

  I shook myself out of the happiness haze I’d started experiencing! I had to remind myself that this couldn’t be mine for real, and that Kari was a really fast runner between her strength and her wings, so I needed to find a pce to hide fast!

  Of course, I very soon realized that, even with my wonderfully smaller body, our small-ish dorm (which we’d initially chosen because we thought it was cozy) didn’t exactly present any good pces to hide. At least, not in a way that couldn’t be easily found.

  The best spot that came to mind was the corner behind my bed, and I dashed there and curled myself into a ball. Then, instinctually, I wrapped my wings around myself, which created an almost completely isoted hiding spot just for me.

  I knew it couldn’t st — among many things that dragons were known for, turning invisible was not one of them. I somehow doubted I had the capacity to scare anyone, let alone Kari, away, even if I did look the part, and I already confirmed that I very much didn’t; at best, I probably looked immensely huggable.

  The door to the dorm opened, and Kari’s voice soon followed. “Please don’t try to hide from me now, we both know it’s useless and we both know you’re here.”

  I remained silent and still as I could. Being an apex predator afforded me that much.

  I heard Kari’s steps approaching quickly, because of course she’d figure out where I was hiding on the first try, and then she gasped.

  “Oh, you’re in full panic attack mode, huh? Well, come here.”

  She’d tried prying my wing armor open, but either she didn’t try nearly as hard as I expected, or draconic strength really was just that superior to demonic strength. Either one was fine with me.

  Or at least, it was fine for about three seconds before she stretched her arms out around me and then picked me up and plopped me on top of my bed instead — right, no amount of super strength would make me any harder to move, that would be silly.

  “So, are you going to show yourself again, or am I going to need to calm you down from the outside?” She asked.

  I made a noise of refusal.

  “Okay then, you not-so-big lizard you, in the crushing news to object impermanence, I can comfort you just as good even when you can’t see me.”

  She plopped her hand on top of my head (and wings) and I grumbled — I was having a breakdown, her coming in and acting all silly was totally ruining my vibe!

  “Fine, I’ll figure this out on my own, it’s not like I didn’t have suspicions — I’d tried to talk to you about gender stuff so many times, but you kept having panic attacks just like this one before I could ever get to the point after all… And, well, while you realizing what was going on because of scale patterns was a bit silly, it’s not like I wasn’t going to try to check for gendery things right after that anyways, so, you know, the point still stands. The question is, what is exactly the scary part in this? You could just not realize that you want to be a girl, but let’s be honest, I’ve known you for almost as long as I can remember, there’s no way that’s the case. You could have an agency issue with suddenly changing without your consent or any warning, but if that was so, it would have come up hours ago, not to mention that if this could have been caused by you just willing yourself out of your skin out of sheer discomfort then it would have happened ages ago, so what’s next…

  “Well, if you know what you want and you don’t resist that urge within yourself, the only reason has to be external, but I would know if there was something actually stopping you and make sure it was eliminated as soon as possible, so… a perceived threat? You think you aren’t allowed?”

  I made a noise at that that I was sure confirmed her suspicions.

  I wanted to be mad about her dragging it out and spelling out her internal thought process, but I knew it was way more for my benefit than for her enjoyment of teasing me.

  “So that’s it. All this time, you knew exactly what you wanted, but you thought you weren't allowed? Well, you are! There’s loads of people like you, and being yourself is the only way to get rid of those rotten feelings that were torturing you for who knows how long! If you want permission, you have mine! If anybody gets in the way, I’ll make sure to correct them, whether it be with words or with fists!” She started yelling.

  Normally, I would have been spooked by such a reaction, but it looked like my surprise batteries were drained for now.

  “It’s easy for you to say.” I paused to process the sound of my new, definitely feminine voice. “Of course you’ll fight, of course you’ll yell, of course you’ll stand up for yourself and everybody you care about, but, well, I’m not like that. Both of us know I’m not the kind of person to fight against the world when it gets in my way. Even so much as trying to slow it down a bit sounds exhausting and terrifying. Maybe I was refusing to listen because I knew what you were going to say, because I knew that going against the world and ciming myself to be me, to be something I chose that wasn’t just forced on me by chance, was too much for me. Going up to everybody that knows me and telling them I chose it, even if only implicitly, is so terrifying. What if they judge my choice? What if they think that I’m worse for it? What if they think that there’s something so much better, even if it feels skin-crawlingly wrong?”

  The silence after I poured my heart out was longer than I expected, and I knew that, in any other situation, my best friend would have been freaking out about the soft and light sound of my voice.

  I hated myself for ruining that.

  “I’m… I get it… Well, I don’t, not really. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be you, to have something so precious to who you are be locked away from you, let alone being locked away behind something that you don’t think you can do. I want to just tell you that you don’t have a choice now but to choose, that whatever route you take you’ll need to face the consequences you’re scared of, but I don’t want to scare you into this.”

  Was… Was she crying?

  “I’m not good at this, I don’t know what words to give you that will make it all be better, but please, just… let yourself stop hurting. At least for a moment. At least here, with me. I don’t want you to hurt forever. I’d rather take this hurt myself for the rest of time if it meant giving you any time to breathe at all. I want to see you smile with real happiness. I want to see you just live without the weight on your shoulders. I want to see you. So please, just let me in…”

  By the end of it, she was sobbing, holding onto my wing, and I couldn’t help but give in and let her hug me.

  She held me tight, pulling me onto her p, and we both cried deeply. At some point, my wings wrapped themselves around me again, but this time they also included her, holding her close, reciprocating the hug.

  I didn’t know how long we stayed like that, but at some point after we’d both stopped crying, I unwrapped my wings from around us and settled into a more comfortable position in Kari’s p. Her arms were still around me, her head resting on top of my own, and her legs were hanging down from the bed as she kicked them happily, humming a happy melody.

  I had to admit, letting myself just exist like this felt orders of magnitude better than anything that came before.

  I flinched at the sound of a knock, and I had to stop myself from running again, but I was proud to admit I didn’t.

  Having noticed my tiny journey, Kari finally said, “Come in Estrel.”

  Oh, it was her, that made sense.

  Estrel came in and walked in front of us to meet us face to face(s) — I only tensed up a little and almost didn’t look away!

  “So, I’m taking that whatever crisis you were having has passed now?” Estrel asked.

  “Mostly, yeah,” Kari responded and I nodded.

  “Okay good. That means I can tear into you for running away and leaving me and my wimpy-ass fae arms to put away all those heavy as fuck books on my own!” She excimed.

  “O-oh, oh no, I’m so sorry, I promise I didn’t mean to, I know that I shouldn’t have, I just—” I started speaking in a very small voice, before being interrupted by Estrel.

  “Nevermind, all is forgiven, please don’t feel too bad about this.”

  I noticed that her cheeks had gotten a bit darker at that point, but I had no idea what that was about.

  In the end, the three of us ended up spending most of the day together in our dorm, doing random things that didn’t matter as I acclimated to what appeared to be my final form. Said final form was extremely strange, because it was the best and most impactful thing that ever happened to me and brought me an unspeakable amount of happiness (even stronger than my sadness the day prior, according to Estrel), but at the same time, spending time in it just felt… natural. If it wasn’t for the newness of it, I would have even said ‘normal’.

  In a way, Kari’s words made it make sense — if this was truly me being myself, then it would be natural for me to be like this, even if it was also so very perfect.

  With so many wonderful feelings I didn’t want to let go of and so much excitement, both negative and positive, you’d think I would have had a hard time falling asleep, but somehow, I ended up falling asleep very gently and peacefully.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t say that about waking up, or more specifically, being woken up, as it occurred as a result of Kari shaking me bodily, much more than even her usual.

  “Lemme sleep, I’m comfy,” I mumbled. It was a challenge staying asleep while hearing such a melodious voice come from me, but I managed to hold onto comfy.

  I did realize, however, that somehow, in my peaceful sleep, I managed to lose my bnket. I grumbled as I reached down, and found that absolutely no part of me was covered by the warm embrace. Remembering that I was shorter now and there was still plenty of bed left past my feet, I reached down even further, further than I thought the bed should go, until I eventually finally reached it. As I grabbed it, it seemed to bunch up in my hand because it seemed really thick, and I had half a mind to wake myself up even further by trying to straighten it up, but luckily I was short enough now that it was still enough to cover all of me, and so, despite a very bothersome part of my brain, I decided to let it go. However, there was still something wrong… Don’t tell me…

  “Ugh, I need to get a heavier weighted bnket, this one’s way too light now…” I grumbled.

  “I… don’t think there are materials dense enough to make that work with your new size…” Kari responded.

  “Whaddya mean?” I finally was forced to try to open my eyes as I looked at my best friend.

  “Honey, you’re such a dork sometimes… You’ve changed again,” she stated.

  The surprise of hearing that was enough to get my eyes wide open, only to see.

  That was a very rge Kari. We were having a category five rge Kari event.

  I tore my eyes off of her, only to see that everything else seemed rge too. Category five rge everything event then. Instead of ying on my bed, I was ying on my pillow, and my bnket wasn’t bunched up, it’s just that its edges were thick enough at this scale to make me think so.

  I finally looked down to inspect my body for the changes that caused it, only to find that nothing has changed… except for the faint pink glow coming off of my… everything. The same kind of glow that Estrel had. The same kind of glow that she said meant that somebody’s body was made out of magic. Uh oh.

  “I am going to be entirely honest with you,” Kari started, “I think we can’t avoid going to a doctor with this any longer.”

  About three hours ter, we sat together with Estrel at (or in my case, on) a cafeteria table, in a very awkward silence.

  “So,” Estrel stated.

  “So,” Kari added.

  Oh, yeah, sure, leave the talking to the girl with extreme social anxiety, no way in hell is this going to backfire in any way shape or form.

  “So… it turns out I’m a type of fae after all… A fairy, in fact… When my ancestry was awakened, the dragon part of it also awakened, and because dragons are so powerful, it basically took full priority, so, umm… after that I just sort of woke up as a fairy? I still have all the capabilities of a dragon I had before, I’m just made out of magic, tiny, and my wings changed to those rainbow butterfly ones… At least, that’s what the doctor said on the checkup…” I expined, very awkwardly.

  “Oh, remember how we measured her at 145 centimeters yesterday? Well, it turns out that now, she’s exactly 145 millimeters!” Kari added excitedly, all but proving to me that she left me to do the talking on purpose.

  “Oh, wow, that pout is adorable,” Estrel added.

  “I know, right? She couldn’t be more adorably harmless if she tried!” Kari continued to assassinate my character.

  “Okay now, that’s not entirely fair,” Estrel countered. “Being a fae made entirely out of magic makes one all but invulnerable to all physical damage, and if she still has the full powers of a dragon, then she’s effectively a force of nature capable of destroying armies, packed into a terrifyingly concentrated package. She could wreak havoc on scales never seen before!” She paused. “I mean, she’s not gonna, she’s way too much of a cutie-sweetie for that, but she could. It’s very gap moe of her, definitely enhances the cuteness effect.”

  “Betrayal!” I yelled as I colpsed backwards onto the very soft tissue making up my makeshift sitting furniture.

  We talked, or, more accurately, the two of them continued to embarrass me and call me a variety of things that, if I didn’t know better, I would have thought were pet names, for almost an hour longer.

  I’d kept an eye on the clock, because I had somewhere I wanted to be — the very same cssroom that I had left in a very emotionally charged states both days prior. They were having a break right now, so I thought it was as good a time as any to update my primary teacher of my state which will need to be accommodated, and, well… I didn’t want to leave things hanging with Zoe and Emily either…

  After knocking gently, I opened the door slightly and poked my head in, asking, “Hello, may I come in?”

  “Oh? Sure, come right in,” Ms. Stone said, clearly not recognising me yet.

  Now that I thought about it and saw the look on Emily and Zoe’s faces, she wasn’t the only one that I had to worry about not recognising me anymore.

  Luckily, the familiar glow of a certain pair of gsses saved me.

  “Wow, and here I thought yesterday was a big transformation already…”

  “Wait, you are…” Zoe started, clearly not wanting to use my old name, which I was grateful for, despite not having an alternative yet.

  “Yeah… It turns out that I was in for quite a change… I hope that’s okay…”

  “Why wouldn’t it be okay?” Emily asked innocently.

  “It’s kinda a huge thing having my life suddenly explode only for it to turn out that I’m a… girl… I mean, could any of you say something like that ever happened to you before?”

  “Yes.” All three women in the room stated at once, all in monotone.

  “O-oh… I’m sorry…” I mumbled.

  This time, it was Ms. Stone’s turn to respond. “As I have told you many times before, you have nothing to apologise for, and that includes needing the accessibility options to continue your education, for which I already filed a request. I’m pretty sure it all should be ready before your prescribed rest period that you’ve certainly been given if you went to a doctor passes. I sincerely hope it helps, I can’t even imagine how big of an adjustment such a huge change might be.”

  “Oh, umm… thank you. A lot, actually,” I responded awkwardly.

  I continued to spend all of the rest of the break there, conversing. Turns out that all three of them were trans, like me, though only Zoe has gotten as lucky as me to have gotten that revetion handed on a silver ptter of a sudden transformation, even if hers wasn’t awakening-reted. I even got to find out what transitioning meant! Gosh, I felt so stupid about that one.

  Adjustment to how I was always meant to be was going surprisingly well, given the whole me calling it “how I was always meant to be” thing. However, a week after I’ve gone all fairy, one problem was making itself very apparent. I have become a gamer girl, and that meant that I needed a controller to py my vidya games.

  Luckily, while the gaming store nearby had nothing that I could use in stock, a very nice werewolf (or maybe she was a wolf girl? I could never tell, and I felt really bad about it) clerk was more than happy to put in her own time to help a girl out, and after the day that she told me to come back on finally arrived, I all but dragged (turns out that with my tiny body and all the strength, actually dragging people could be a rather painful experience for them) Estrel with me.

  Speaking of, Estrel and I spent more and more time together, a lot of it even without Kari there to keep us company (even though she totally could have, that part confused me to no end), and I had to admit that we really hit it off. There was this strange feeling that there was something about our retionship that I wasn’t quite getting, but I never could put my finger on it.

  Regardless, I was very happy to see the clerk that was helping me out already at the counter, and by the looks of that cute tail of hers wagging back and forth, she was too; it was a bit strange to be that happy to see a client, but I figured she just took pride in being able to do a good job.

  “Oh, hey, good to see you, I’m gd you came. So, I’m not super good at putting together small stuff like this, it would probably be better if I had enough time to order a custom PCB, but I managed to solder together something that should work,” she said excitedly, before pulling out a mass of tiny buttons and cables hot-glued to a circuit board of some sort that was attached to a silver-colored mass that was probably a battery. Despite knowing that it was absolutely tiny for her, it still appeared huge to me.

  “So, umm…” Estrel started, before looking slightly down and then back up towards the clerk. “Millie, I see you’ve made this yourself.”

  Wait, how did she know her name? Was that part of some sort of fae name magic? I hoped I’d get some of that eventually as well. The doctor said I should wait at least a month after the transformation before any serious attempts at doing magic, but I had to admit, for someone with bad social anxiety and even worse memory for names, that kind of magic could be really useful.

  “Yeah, I… I know it’s a bit of a mess, but I figured that if you were to use it as a sort of fighting game board, it should work well enough, and, well… it took a couple hours to solder all the parts together correctly, so I’m really proud of it.”

  Wow, hours? She really took her job seriously.

  Estrel’s face lightened up. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, this is very impressive and all, but you know… your store should absolutely be able to order professionally made accessibility equipment whenever there’s a demand, right? The popution of fairies and other simirly small folks is way more than big enough for stuff like this to be mass produced, even if not on a great scale.”

  “O-oh… I feel silly now… Well, it’s all in the past I guess, I’ll put that order in in a moment, and for now this can serve as a substitute I hope…” She looked back down at me to see me pying with the buttons that, despite everything, appeared rather oversized from my perspective. “So, umm, if you have any questions about the order or in general, or, you know, you maybe want to hang out or something… Here’s my number and stuff, yeah…”

  Millie handed me a cut out piece of the store’s business card with her name and phone number written in clearly as small writing as she could manage. It was still rather rge for me, of course, but I appreciated the thought a lot. It was kinda cute, in fact.

  Then I looked up to Millie and on my way to see her eyes, I saw her nametag that she clearly had all along that said her name was Millie… Once again, I was left feeling rather stupid.

  “Well, thanks a lot for the help Millie,” I said, before turning and flying away, Estrel following after me.

  “Wow, you’re getting really popur with the girls, I didn’t even know that yet another girl had her eyes on you. Are you sure you’re not a love fairy?” Estrel (clearly) joked.

  “Don’t joke around like that, Millie was just doing her job and being nice…” I said. After a couple seconds I stopped in my tracks so completely that I needed to correct my course so I wouldn’t fall to the floor. “Wait… What do you mean ‘another girl’?!”

  “Sweetheart… First of all, I can feel the emotions of others, she is very clearly desperate for you to call her to schedule a date… Second of all, what do you mean ‘what do I mean’, the two of us have been dating for almost a week now…” Estrel said, as if she was stating some obvious knowledge.

  “Wait, what?!? What do you mean we’re dating??? Oh no, what am I going to tell Kari…”

  Estrel pressed her palm against her forehead and sighed deeply.

  “Darling… The two of you have been dating for years now…”

  The entire mall was not prepared for the severity of my next ‘what’.

  Needless to say, after a long conversation with my apparently-girlfriends that once again left me feeling rather stupid, a lot of good times followed. It was very clear that I had a lot of issues to resolve, and I would be far from perfect even after that, but I finally felt I had a real reason to keep going, and that was all that mattered in the end.