FlitterPuff

Hi everyone! It's been a bit, eh? Sorry for the hiatus, things have been rough lately... I'm back to writing, hopefully for the long foreseeable future. I'm gonna keep throwing strategies at the wall to keep me going until something sticks and I'm writing consistently basically every day. If I can keep that up for a couple of weeks I might consider linking a Patreon and begin working towards making this my new job? That's more of a later long-term goal, though. Either way, there should be a new chapter posted next week, at the very least. Enjoy!

We were making our way to a tailor that Isabel seemed familiar with, and I was growing increasingly nervous. When I had agreed to try on a dress, I hadn’t expected it to involve actually buying clothes from someone. I proposed she give me a spare dress of her own to try. Instead, she firmly shot that down and went on a wild rant about properly fitting clothes and essential experiences of girlhood. I assented grudgingly. However, I still desperately needed a distraction. 

It was not just the dressing as a girl that had me nervous, it was the fact that I’d be doing it all with Isabel. The longer I spent with her, the more likely I was to get caught with her, and here we were on our way to casually chat with a tailor. Isabel had survived this far, sure, but every witch was caught eventually. It was a simple matter of time and luck. If she was found out somehow, was reckless and managed to reveal what she was, what were the chances that they would believe me when I told them I had no idea she was a witch? If Inquisitors stormed down the streets to find her, was it better to help fight her, pretending I’d had no idea, or help her escape, since no matter what I say they might not believe my lie? Was I dead either way?

“So what exactly is this favor that you want from me?” I fretted.

Isabel’s smile, or rather her blatant amusement at how obviously nervous I was, faded slightly. 

“I’m afraid it’ll be better to wait until later to discuss.”

Was it so blatantly wicked that she didn’t want to tell me out in the open? I had been expecting it to be something seemingly small and mundane that would end up having disastrously evil consequences somehow. ‘Go take this simple-looking compass to that man over there,’ or perhaps, ‘Go ask your father this apparently mundane question about his work.’ Then I would have woken the next morning to the city somehow on fire. Though perhaps that was all a bit needlessly dramatic. Of course, Isabel seemed to have a very clear flair for the dramatic, so what did I know? 

“Why?” 

She grabbed my arm, causing me to jolt nearly out of her grasp, and said, “Because we’re here!”

Thus ended my imaginings of curses that would travel through my father and violently kill off every Inquisitor in the city. We turned towards a nondescript little building that had a few wooden steps leading up to a small porch area. The door was open, allowing us to peer inside to see two simple headless wooden mannequins fashioned in colorful dresses, along with various other dresses, hats, and other clothes hung up on display around the small shop. 

“Now that I’ve really had time to consider it, I’m thinking perhaps I’m not that interested in this after all. I mean, really, what use is a dress? They’re just long and would get in the way and --”

Isabel snorted and began pulling me up the steps and towards the doorway. 

“Wait, wait! I’m not ready. I need a moment, or three, or five. Just one quick second!”

She ignored my pleas and continued dragging me by the arm. Truly a witch with no mercy. We passed through the doorway as a middle-aged woman with straight short-cut hair came through a door from the back. 

“Hello again, madam,” Isabel nodded to her. 

“Welcome, welcome. I believe I remember you. It was Isabel, correct? What brings you in today? And who’s the young boy sounding like a girl being hauled off to bed on her wedding night?” 

Isabel gave a small chuckle. “He’s here upon my request. I’m wanting to play a small prank on a friend and he agreed to help, so long as I made his pockets a little heavier.” I wondered if she’d made that up on the spot. “Of course, now that we’re here, he seems to be a bit more reluctant to keep to our deal.”

I eyed her. Was that a hidden threat or was she playing up the story? She’d never specified how we’d spend the day. In fact, she had implied this whole thing was completely optional.

The tailor simply nodded and then looked me up and down. “I expect this prank involves clothes of a more… feminine variety?” I would have thought that assumption odd if the shop displayed anything else beyond women’s clothing. It at least appeared to be all she sold. Most men likely felt a place like this shouldn’t be run by a woman by herself.

“It does,” Isabel confirmed. “If that is alright with you, of course?”

The woman eyed me again. “Quite so.” She walked over and put a hand along my shoulder. Like most people from the slightly better part of the city, she stood just a little taller than me. “Call me Roselyn, and come along this way, child. Let me do some measurements and see what you have to work with. Isabel, feel free to browse around and let me know if anything strikes you.”

She guided me by the shoulder over to a space of empty wall and proceeded to do some quick measurements along my chest, waist, and several other areas. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was all necessary. 

In response to my uneasiness and apparent fidgeting, she said, “Stop fretting, child. You aren’t the first boy to come into my shop wanting a glimpse at the more delicate side of life, and I’ll be damned shocked if you’re the last. I’ve got quite a few years yet left in me.” 

My eyes widened in shock towards her. She had figured us out, despite Isabel’s impromptu fabrication. 

“Of course I figured it out.” She tutted at my attempt to squirm away, holding my shoulders firmly. “That may not have been the worst excuse I’ve heard, but it certainly wasn’t the best either. Now be still.”

She finished her measuring and turned, facing me. I struggled to meet her eyes.

“I won’t judge you here. I’ve worked at this long enough to realize that clothing all comes from the same cloth. I also rather vividly recall wishing to wear tunics and other such things in my own youth. It’s all nothing new to me, I can assure you. And I expect this one here,” she gestured to Isabel, “won’t say a word against you either, if she has any sense of self-awareness. Her first time here, she came in asking for a pair of trousers,” she commented with such mock-distaste you’d think she’d asked for a bucket of live spiders.  

Isabel looked surprisingly sheepish at overhearing the woman’s revelation, and I couldn’t help but question whether it was an act, given what manner of creature she was. She walked over to me and crouched ever so slightly so that our eyes were level. Her own eyes held an uncertainty to them, and she hesitantly brushed the hair away from my face. I couldn’t help the flinch when she touched me.

“Little Bell.” Those two small words struck me hard in the heart, for reasons that were mostly beyond me still. “I will make you into a beautiful girl, a beautiful woman, if it is what you wish.” There was a gentle kindness in her eyes that made me desperately want to believe her, to trust her. Yet I knew I could not. “Thinking back, I may not have been so clear about this before, but I have no qualms with whomever you wish to be. I do hope you believe that at least, despite your nervousness.” 

This sudden and awkward moment was strangely the most acceptance I’d ever gotten over my wish to be a girl, and while I didn’t truly know about the thoughts of the tailor specifically, I knew Isabel’s apparent acceptance ultimately wasn’t real. It was a lie. Isabel was a witch. She didn’t truly mean it. Witches did not feel things for others. They faked it. Regardless of whether she went through on her promise, I could actually believe that she didn’t care about my desires because she didn’t truly care about me. She couldn’t. 

Still, I could not help the slight sense of gratitude that came from the false acceptance, like a small torch of light in the otherwise morose loneliness I sometimes felt from the insensate perspective the people I knew held. I knew the compassion from her wasn’t real, yet couldn’t help how it still made me feel. Part of me hated it as well. I could feel the betrayal and anger at the witch stirring up, though I knew she was just doing what was in her nature. I hated her for it, much as I hated myself for letting her use me like this when at any point I could have turned and left, yet didn’t and wouldn’t. I hated that I was like this, that I would do all this for the chance at an unrealistic dream, a perverse desire. Then of course came the shame, not just at what I was doing, but of the desire itself, the perverted depravity that consumed me and had brought me here. I ignored the slight watering of my eyes.

The next few minutes slipped by in a daze, emotions swirling around, back and forth. They brought me to a small side room, and the two of them coaxed me in and out of several different dresses before settling on one in particular. They asked me questions on which I liked, and I made the seemingly right noises, but I wasn’t truly there with them. It hurt. In that moment, it hurt perhaps more than all the teasing and fights with my crew when the topic came up. It hurt because it was all so close to being real, yet the acceptance was ultimately a lie. It was all a lie, and I was the loathsome fool still going along with it.

“Do you mind if I have a minute to brush her hair?” Isabel asked. 

Roselyn looked between the two of us and replied, “Oh, of course I’ll let you have a moment alone with your… daughter. Feel free to use the brush there on the table.” She left, closing the door behind her. 

Isabel sat me down in a chair facing away from her and began to slowly untangle the matted disaster that was my shoulder-length brown hair. For several minutes we sat like that in silence. 

“I’m sorry,” she said. When I didn’t reply, she continued, “I thought you’d find this a bit more fun than it’s ended up being.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said or lied, at least partially. Silence found us for a brief moment again. “Do you think she actually believes I’m your daughter? Or, I suppose, your son?” 

“Perhaps. Your regular clothes are a bit ratty, though not too outside the norm for what many middle-class boys will sometimes wear. And your ears have enough of a point to mistake you for a human-looking half-elf. It varies, after all.”

What? For a moment I had completely forgotten that the witch was an elf. My hands reached up to feel along the tip of my ears. They did have a small point to them, but that was perfectly normal for plenty of humans. It was how my ears had always been.

“I’m not a half-elf,” I said grumpily. 

I could nearly hear the smirk in her voice when she said, “A lot of humans have at least some elven blood in their ancestry, some obviously more recently than others.” She gave a pointed look towards me. “In some places, they’d consider you more elf than human, actually.” That seemed ridiculous. I was very clearly human.

She moved to my left to begin slowly brushing the hair along my side. I thought for a moment back to when we originally met. “When we were at the market, you mentioned having a daughter. Was that true, or just part of the lie too?”

“Perhaps you are a little more observant than I thought,” she said with some emotion I couldn’t parse. 

She continued brushing my hair. For a long moment, I thought she wouldn’t answer, but finally, she quietly spoke, “I do have a daughter. I... It’s been a few years now since I’ve seen her.”

The words slipped out of my mouth automatically. 

“I’m sorry.”

Was I though? She was a witch, why should I have been sorry? She was probably telling me all this just to gain my sympathy. Did witches even truly feel loss? Surely not, considering they couldn’t actually feel emotions. And wasn't it not even truly her daughter? She wasn’t actually the mother who raised her, just the creature puppeting her corpse. 

I spotted a tear drop from her eye, as she looked off to the side. Her hands sat idle, holding the brush. The thoughts came before I could think to stop them. As peculiar as it was, her sorrow certainly appeared genuine. Perhaps, it was all not as simple as everyone made it out to be. Perhaps even as a witch, with all the memories she had of her host’s former life, could still experience the loss of a family. How could you tell real emotions from fake? I hadn’t a clue.

“It’s okay,” she said, though she sounded more as though she were attempting to convince herself than me. “I’ve come to terms with it. Mostly. You remind me of her somewhat.”

“I do?”

“Well, not really, no. She’s a haughty little shit.” She snorted. “There’s similarities, but you’re not that much alike. I suppose it’s more doing all this. The buying clothes and then brushing your hair. It reminds me of times with her. It’s… hard.”

I nearly told her I was sorry once more, though I couldn’t bring the words to my lips. Instead, we stayed silent until she’d gone through all of my hair with the brush. 

“There, that’ll have to do. You should take better care of your hair. I nearly lost the brush to it!” Isabel laughed at her own joke. She seemed back to her normal spirit. Which was the act and which was real, I wondered? Was any of it? 

I stood and made my way towards the small mirror in the corner, curious to what I looked like. The mirror wouldn’t be big enough to see the whole dress. I would have to go see my reflection in the water of the river for that, which was a definite no. But I’d probably be able to see around my face and shoulders. There was no point in looking, really. I knew what I’d see: simply me in different clothes. The boy in the dress. A hand grabbed my shoulder, stopping me.

“Why don’t we try something different before you see yourself?”

“Different?” I asked.

She pulled out a small tin and opened the lid with a small pop. I eyed it with suspicion, and she rolled her eyes. 

“It’s makeup,” she said. 

“You mean the paint those noblemen put on their faces?”

“And some of the ladies as well, yes.” 

“Why would I want that on my face?”

She smiled that unnerving smile she had. “It’s magic. Or this one, in particular, is magical, at least. Though you’d be surprised what you can do with the stuff, even without magic involved.”

I doubted any amount of paint on my face would ever make me appear like a girl. I was somewhat skeptical even of the magical variety. Even magic could only do so much, though this seemed likely in the realm of possibility. 

“You really think I’m going to willingly let you put something magical on my face?”

Isabel gave out a sigh of exasperation. “If I wanted to do something underhanded to you, I wouldn’t have told you it was magical.” That… was a fair point. Though it was still suspicious. “This tin of the stuff wasn’t easy to get. It’s not something even most nobles have, and you should frankly be grateful I’m willing to use it on you.” 

She stared me down until I relented, if somewhat reluctantly. Then, with a small brush loaded with rune-work along it, I allowed her to slowly brush the tan-colored cream across my face. It tickled, partly from the magic and partly from the brush itself, I thought. As she concentrated she spoke. 

“The magic needed here is minor, really. There's not much difference I've found between men and women's faces. Not as much as people imagine there to be, anyways. I've easily disguised myself as a man quite a few times, actually.” She smirked. “I’m not entirely sure the magic would be needed at all if I had all the right things. The real purpose of this makeup is to make you look like someone else, to disguise you as someone completely different, which is a bit more complex. Making you appear a bit more feminine will be much more simple.”

I was thoroughly unconvinced. Men and women seemed so different. It couldn’t possibly be as easy as she made it out to be, could it? 

Thinking about it, I wondered, “Won’t the tailor suspect something odd from this?”

“She could, but it fits with what I normally tell people. I’m a budding alchemical merchant. After all, alchemical products sell quite a bit better than something like fish.” She gave me a grin and a wink. “This won’t be too outside the norm of what she might expect of me.”

She talked about these things so casually, I could only wonder how she hadn’t been found yet. I had only met her a few hours before and she’d already put a knife to my throat right outside the market, made jokes about not being ‘heartless,’ and now discussed openly how she lied about her profession. It made little sense. How could she be sure the tailor wouldn’t overhear her through the door? Was it a matter of incompetent luck, some set of skills, or magic?

She finished with the face paints and pulled me over to the mirror, keeping me just out of sight of it.

“You ready to see the new you?”

I gave her an unamused look and moved in front of it.