"Look at you," Eva whispered excitedly, having dragged me up to my room in like two seconds flat. She'd been my friend since forever, she knew where it was. 

"Yeah," I laughed, scratching awkwardly behind one of my long ears. "It's been interesting."

"The world has gone crazy," she grinned, wandering over to sit on my bed. "2020 is nuts."

I followed her, hopping up onto the bed to sit cross legged again. She looked a little more done up than usual, probably her Mum's doing. Her fiery hair did look good up in that fancy looking bun though.

Turning to watch me as I sat, she stared down at my tail for a moment, then back up at me. "Are you happy like this?" she asked, gaze roaming my face for answers.

I wiggled my hand in a so-so gesture. "It's more that I hated my old body. I don't mind the girl stuff, and I love the tail and ears. It was a trade up."

"That's good," she smiled. "You do seem happier… and since you’re okay with it, that means I can go back to being excited, right?”

That made me laugh, and I nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, I mean I was excited just to see you, because—“

Eva lunged forward, tackling me into a hug that was very uh… contact heavy. “Good, because you’re so cute!”

I found myself without any breath in my lungs as she crushed me. Batting feebly at her with my tail and hands, I wheezed, “Get off me Eva! I’m small and breakable!”

“Sorry, sorry,” she giggled happily, fumbling her way off of me. I tried to ignore the surge of odd feelings I experienced when her hand briefly grasped at my small waist.

“You are though,” she insisted once she was sitting opposite me. “You’re adorable, and really pretty, and also blushing, apparently.”

“I’m still thinking of myself as a guy in my head and you just jumped on me, of course I’m blushing!” I exclaimed in embarrassment, covering my cheeks with my hands.

“O-oh, crap! Sorry!” she said, joining me in the blush club. “I’m just excited to like, have another girl in our group, I wasn’t… you know, coming onto you or anything.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine… just remember that nothing changed inside, okay?” I grumbled, feeling so very very strange.

I liked girls, I knew that for certain, and I still liked them. Which, I guess… made me gay now? Right? I hadn’t really accepted the gender change in my head, but that didn’t seem to matter to a whole lot of people, including my own mother.

“So you’re still… like, Itias? You’re still gonna be a boy?” she asked softly, deflating a little.

“Oh my god,” I groaned, flicking my tail around and dumping it in her lap, a lame attempt to comfort her. “I didn’t say that. I’m not Itias anymore, I’m Tia… and as for like, if I’m a boy or not… I don’t know. I look like a girl, it’s just that I’ve thought of myself as a guy for my entire life and now it’s suddenly just changed without me even having a say? It’s a bit lame.”

She stared down at my tail for a few seconds, her fledgeling frown replaced by curiosity. “Okay, so it’s like, a big change, and you have to get used to it, figure out if it’s you? Like a haircut or something, you need to let it grow a bit before you judge if it was really right for you.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I agreed, although the analogy didn’t totally match up.

We were silent for several seconds, her playing with my tail and me watching her. It felt funny and kinda nice, especially when she scratched at it gently.

"So soft," she said with a blissful smile. "I'm kinda jealous."

"You can play with it whenever you want," I replied with a smile of my own. She really seemed to be enjoying it.

"That's a dangerous promise," she said with a sly look, eyes locking with mine.

Something about that look caused my heart to speed up, and words to fail me. Wait, was that innuendo? Was she flirting with me again?

“I know,” I smiled, trying to hide my nervousness. “But hey, you seem to be having fun so, whatever.”

She opened her mouth to reply, sly smirk still held by her lips. Then she appeared to reconsider, and simply shrugged. “Yeah, it’s so nice and soft.”

Deciding to change the subject, I flopped down onto my back and heaved out a long sigh. “I hope everyone isn’t a dick about my changes.”

“I’ll fight them if they are,” she told me adamantly, wiggling around until she was laying on her side and facing me.

I couldn’t help but smile at the warmth her loyalty brought to my heart. “Thanks. Although, even if you’re bigger than me now, you’re still pretty short. We’re both pipsqueaks compared to even the other girls in our year.”

“Everyone knows the small ones are the angriest!” she exclaimed dramatically, punching the air without any consideration for technique.

That had me grinning even more and I rolled over to match her position. “Okay, so I’ll do the thing where I get behind them and stick a leg out, you push them?”

“Yeah!” she agreed, eyes bright with mirth. “I’ll push them so good.”

“The pushiest push,” I nodded, caught up in her enthusiasm all over again.

She gave a giggle, shoving at my shoulder with two fingers. “They won’t even know, they’ll be so pushed.”

“This pushed, no lie,” I exclaimed happily, throwing myself onto my back again like I’d just been thrown by a champion wrestler or something.

Looking back at her, our eyes meeting for just a second before we both cracked up laughing.

“Oh my god, we’re so lame,” she giggled, unconsciously wrapping her hand around my arm.

“Don’t tell the boys, they’ll disown us,” I whispered with false urgency. “Can’t be seen hanging out with weirdos!”

“I think they’re the weirdos, personally,” she smiled, shuffling closer. Her expression went serious for a moment as she murmured, “I’m really happy you’re okay, and like, still my friend and all that.”

“I was worried for you at that protest,” I blurted, curling my tail protectively over her. “It looked so scary, there was shooting and… so much.”

“Lucky that a literal super hero was there,” she sighed. Yeah, lucky… definitely not because the hero was worried about you or anything.

“They’re blaming her, you know,” I murmured, side eyeing her in an attempt to gauge her thoughts on the matter. “For all of the crazy stuff that’s happening.”

“Only the crazy people on fox news,” she laughed, rolling her eyes. “For all we know, it was them that caused all this magical stuff to happen. It’s in keeping with how little they are in touch with reality.”

She was sort of right, but it wasn’t the whole picture. The media were having a field day speculating about my appearance at that protest and how it related to magic returning to the world. They didn’t know it was magic yet, obviously, but yeah.

Public opinion was all over the place on the matter. Obviously some were hailing me as a hero, while others were calling me an “irresponsible vigilante.” Then, of course, there was the likes of fox news, who had been hating on me ever since. I didn’t really mind that, they hated on anything and everything.

I wonder if I’d go back out as my alter ego? Being Lette, or Gauntlette… it had been fun, exhilarating even. I could actually legit help people too, or even… even hunt the hunters, if I was willing to go all the way, to actually kill someone. Unless I could figure out a way to like, yeet them into the spirit realm or something, let the spirits get their vengeance. Now that thought had some merit.

“I thought she was really cool,” Eva said stubbornly. “I talked to her, you know? She was amazing, looking so badass out there stopping bullets and stuff. She punched this one guy so hard that he went to hospital, did you know that? Had to get his face reconstructed or something.”

With a wince, I remembered the feeling of his face breaking under the impact of my fist, cartilage cracking and blood spraying everywhere.

“Ouch,” I laughed, covering for my reaction. “Serves him right though.”

“It was scary, before she showed up,” Eva nodded enthusiastically. “They had us, uh… I think kettled is the word they use. They had us boxed in, nowhere to go. She punched a hole for us to escape out of, like, literally.”

“I’m glad,” I said, looking into her bright blue eyes, a sudden wave of caring for my friend hitting me in the heart. “I was so worried that night. Which uh, reminds me… did the guys get out okay too? I haven’t spoken to them since.”

“Ah yeah, they were fine,” she smiled, waving me off. “They had fun, apparently.”

“Boys,” I groaned, rolling my eyes dramatically.

“Boys,” she agreed with a giggle, nudging me pointedly with a hand. “I thought you were one of them?”

Biting my lip for a moment, I stared at her and contemplated talking about my secret, the one that up until two days ago had been my biggest secret ever. It’s not like it even mattered anymore, so why not tell her? I’d never told anyone before, to the point where I’d carefully avoided any blood tests and stuff, even enduring sicknesses that I knew would accidentally expose me.

“Okay, I want to tell you something about my old body, something you can’t tell anyone else, okay?” I asked seriously, shuffling closer to her and dropping my voice to a whisper.

“What is it?” she prompted, her tone a mix of interest and worry.

I took a deep breath, thinking over how I would word this. “So… when I was thirteen, do you remember that night that uh… they found me in the park?”

“Yes?” she nodded, expression falling further into worry. “I remember it pretty fucking well, actually.”

I cringed a little, recalling how worried she’d been. That was like, the only time she’d ever really hit me.

“I wasn’t unhurt, like they said,” I mumbled, cheeks reddening with the shame I felt for having worried her so much. “I um… I smashed my, you know… balls. With a pipe. I’ve stayed short and andro looking because… well, I wasn’t going through puberty, I had no testosterone to signal the changes.”

“Holy shit,” she breathed, staring at me in wide eyed horror. “Holy fucking shit, you… did that? Why?”

I shrugged, feeling awkward. Boys weren’t meant to talk about their emotions, Dad had made sure I knew that much. “I was, sad… and I knew that hitting them would hurt, and I knew that physical pain would, um… distract me, from the mental stuff.”

Her hand fluttered down to land tentatively on my shoulder, the other tangling with the fur of my tail, almost painfully so. “Itia— I mean, Tia… why were you sad?”

God, this visit had been a roller coaster of emotions. One moment we were joking around, the next I was close to tears, recalling the darkest moment of my life. Not even my own death had come close to the mental anguish I’d experienced that night. The worst part? I had no real idea why I’d felt like that.

All I could do was shrug, avoiding her piercing blue eyes as she tried to pin me down with them. “I don’t know, truth. I just… I was just really sad.”

“Okay well, you’re okay now, right?” she asked quietly, thumb massaging at the soft skin of my exposed shoulder.

I gave her a wobbly smile and a nod. “Yeah. Especially now.”

“Okay, good,” she said with a long, drawn out sigh. “Can we hug now? Please? I really want to hug you.”

I blinked, that actually sounded really good right about then. “Um, sure…”

That was all the permission she needed. Suddenly, I found myself pulled over to her, my bigger friend pulling me into a hug where I was very much the little spoon. That was okay though, I was a girl now, right? I could be little and no one would laugh at me for it.

“Instead of the park, if there’s a next time, you come to me, okay?” she murmured into my big, fluffy ear. “Promise, okay?”

“Yeah, I promise,” I mumbled into her shoulder, where my face had been involuntarily smooshed. “I feel happy now though, I really do.”

“Good,” she grumbled, squeezing me tight for a moment. “Don’t scare me again like that either. I still haven’t totally forgiven you for how worried that made me. You’re my oldest friend, you’re not allowed to get hurt.”

“Okay, okay,” I replied theatrically, trying to lighten the mood. This was supposed to be a happy visit.

Well, it still kinda was… I mean, this hug was pretty nice, even if it made me feel a little pervy for enjoying it. I didn’t want to be a creep to my friend, but she was cute. Really cute.

Disregarding that though, this was the most emotionally transparent I’d been with her. We always had fun together, and we did occasionally talk about like, our feelings and stuff but… there had always been that gender divide. I was a boy, she was a girl. That divide seemed like it had just vanished? I could already tell my life was going to get mega complicated… but hey, the whole world was getting mega complicated, I’m sure it would be fine. Right?