I did not even want to think how disheveled I was when I woke up on Saturday morning, I had not done anything the previous day after the terrible mistake I made, I hadn’t eaten, brushed my teeth, or even changed my clothes or covered myself with my weighted blanket, I simply just laid there, wallowing in what I had done.

I had fucked up.

I’d fucked up so fucking much it was unbelievable.

While the things were still fresh, I’d tried to convince myself that I’d done the right thing in the wrong way, but that was futile, and even I wasn’t that good at lying to myself. What I’d done was wrong on so many levels, it hadn’t just not accomplished what I wanted, it’d actively interfered with it!

The worst part of it was that I just kept thinking, even the next day, about how to fix it, and the only thing that I could ever come up with was the fact that things had already been going well, and it was when I’d started overthinking and scheming that everything had collapsed.

All I knew was that I needed to stop, and I also needed to apologize to Mom (demon Mom, that is), but I had to do it when Mom (knight Mom, of course) wasn’t home, and that would definitely not happen on the weekend, or anytime soon, really. Knight Mom usually ended work earlier, not to mention that demon Mom worked that Saturday, which made taking care of it while it was fresh practically impossible.

I also really needed a better way to distinguish between the two, but I refused to call one of them “Mum” on principle.

Even if I wanted to wallow all weekend, I didn’t have nearly enough willpower to do it on an empty stomach, so I eventually gave in and partook in the nutrition.

It wasn’t long after I finished eating that Lottie of all people arrived at our apartment.

“Hi Lottie!” I exclaimed over my shoulder.

“Hey you!” she shouted back.

I did the only thing I could when an unexpected guest arrived, and quickly shuffled over to my room to make myself a little bit more presentable, not to mention replacing all the articles of clothing that should not be worn two days in the row.

When I came back out to the living room, I found Lottie and Mom chatting, which was to be expected, especially now with the whole magical mentorship thing.

“By the way, not that I’m not glad to see you, but why did you come over?” I asked Lottie.

I restrained myself from asking why she did so this early – I had become time-confused due to my wallowing, but I had confirmed it was almost noon. Still early for Saturday, but Lottie was one of those people who never seemed to lack energy.

“We’re visiting your grandma for her sage magical wisdom, remember? You agreed to come with and everything,” she responded, matter of factly.

I did not have a memory of that. Regardless, neither of them knew what had happened, even if they must have noticed I was a bit out of it, so I had to do the only thing I was good at, and lie through my teeth.

“Oh, right, that. Sorry, it slipped my mind, I wasn’t feeling the best last couple of days. Don’t worry, I’m good now, M– Dad helped.” I smiled at the good memories I had ruined.

“He gave you mint tea, didn’t he?” Mom asked.

I took a step back in surprise.

“Y-yeah, he did… How did you know?” I asked.

“Oh, he started having issues back when he was around your age. He said the doctors couldn’t tell what was wrong, and that it wasn’t bad enough to get it seriously tested, but he was convinced there was some sort of beverage that could help with it, he just didn’t know what. The real miracle of this story was that the food court at the mall had a place that sold mint tea in the first place, but it did help. There’s a reason we always keep it around, even though it seems to have gotten better over the years…” she explained.

Hmm… It seemed like my parents had kept each other pretty up to date on all the things back then, aside from their secret identities… Oh my goodness, it was literally inevitable for them to collapse into honesty, why did I have to meddle?

Well, I supposed I wasn’t the only one to meddle, given how much grandma hated demon Mom… Even if I wasn't going to accompany them for Lottie’s sake, I still would have decided to do so just to make sure she didn’t try to mess with the peaceful resolution of the day prior. And speaking of…

“Hey, Lottie, a quick question before we go… Have you ever met my grandma before?” I asked.

“No, I haven’t, why? Is there something I need to know?” she responded.

I simply looked towards Mom.

“That might prove to be a problem, are you sure it’s a good idea? Can’t we at least do something to mitigate the… risks?”

Mom sighed. “Listen, sweetheart, I know my mother isn’t exactly the most agreeable person, trust me, I do, but she only does that because she cares about us, she is polite to strangers, and Lottie is one to her. Granted, she does care about the Magical Knight mantle a lot, but…” She shook her head. “No, she still hasn’t met Lottie before, I’m sure she’ll be fine as long as we don’t bring up your father.”

Grandma cared about me? I supposed it made sense, in a twisted way, she did certainly care about me not becoming wasted potential at least…

“I guess you’re right, I hope you are at least…” I mumbled.

“Uhh…” Lottie seemed concerned.

“Okay, Lottie, I’m sure you’ve got a lot of questions, but you can ask them in the car, we wouldn’t want to be late,” Mom said, before ushering us out of the apartment.

Grandma didn’t live far these days, it could barely even be called the other end of the city, but we still rarely visited, even Mom on her own. Most of my experiences with her were back when my parents went away and I was still too young to stay home on my own, and those were mostly filled with stern tutoring in all kinds of subjects, but mainly the ones that required hard logic rather than memorization.

Regardless, there was still a fair bit of time to talk in the car, and so we did just that.

“So, what’s the deal with her? Why are we not supposed to bring up your dad? Why are you so concerned?” Lottie asked me, as if I was the one to answer those questions.

“Let me take this one, honey,” knight Mom did the knightly thing and saved me from the peril. “My mother disapproved of my choice to date my husband from the very start, and she absolutely hated the idea of us marrying even more. I never managed to figure out why, but she just did. She is… begrudgingly accepting of the reality of the situation these days, but it’s still better not to rock the boat. As for why the concern, well… she does express her love in odd ways. Not abusive, mind you, just… She is a very serious person, very calculating and rather cold, and she does tend to be a fair bit rude as a result, but… I do genuinely believe she means well.”

“That… makes sense, I’ll watch out for that, thank you,” Lottie said. “If it’s okay to ask, how is she about the magic side of things? Was it hard being trained by her?”

I was actually considering asking that myself, but I was glad Lottie did instead.

“Oh, she was… definitely a stern tutor. She never actually showed me how to do anything like I do, in fact, she’s never transformed in front of me, but she taught me a lot and taught me well at that, even if I’m still convinced she didn’t teach me everything she knew,” Mom explained. “That being said, there’s something you two must know… Back when she was fighting the previous incarnation of the Demon Queen, she ended up… killing her in the battle. It was always something that sat wrong with me, but she always insisted that it was necessary for the good of the world…”

Oh.

Oh.

My grandma had ended my Mom’s previous life.

I had no idea what to do with that information, but given that I now knew what I was, my sense of self-preservation was ringing alarm bells in the back of my head.

“Oh,” Lottie seemed to need a moment to process this as well. “Well, umm… Given that, I don’t think I trust her to be our only source of outside opinion, especially given the vibes of yesterday’s revelation.”

I had to pretend to be surprised, because of course I couldn’t get away without even more lying.

“Oh? And what’s that?” I asked.

“Well, sweetheart, you won’t believe what happened during our patrol yesterday!” Mom exclaimed.

Of course, I could believe what had happened, I was there for pretty much all the notable parts, after all…

“...and that’s pretty much it,” Mom finished her recounting of the events.

“So, what do you think of it all? What do you think her daughter was trying to do?” Lottie asked, clearly bothered by what I had done.

I didn’t need to pretend to be in thought, as I actually had to consider what the heck I could say without making the things even worse. Eventually, I settled on being as truthful as I could be without revealing any more secrets.

“It feels pretty obvious to me, if I’m being honest… She has a problem that she can’t really come to anyone with who doesn’t know her Mom’s secret identity, but she believes she needs help, so of course she’d try to get help from the first people who are capable of doing anything in that situation… The fact that the two of you are heroes of truth and justice certainly doesn’t hurt, you know?” I explained.

“So, you think she outed her Mom… to help her?” Lottie asked.

Wait, what?

“O-outed?” I asked, acting more startled than I should have.

Mom chuckled over in the driver’s seat at that.

“You’ve grown so much that I often forget just how naive you can be, sweetie… I already told you Demon Queen was a queer woman, and she has a biological daughter – if she’s hiding her own truth instead of living it, it’s pretty obvious that she’s living in the closet, one way or another,” Mom explained.

I didn’t know you could be a closeted lesbian in a straight relationship in more than one way, but I supposed it was what was happening, demon Mom was clearly not just a woman, but a lesbian at that, and she was living in a relationship not with a man but with a woman, and yet she was still closeted about the lesbian part…

Did knight Mom suspect that the Demon Queen’s civilian identity was not a woman? How could that even happen? Demon Mom was so natural at acting just like any other woman, ever like a mother, and it’s not like this sort of gender reincarnation mishap was common – as far as I knew, reincarnation on its own was already a really rare thing.

Maybe it wasn’t caused by reincarnation, but by something else, like being a non-human species born from a human, and that was common enough for knight Mom to guess? But if that was the case, didn’t that mean that I could also be–

Nope! Not doing that!

It’s an answered question, I was exactly what’s on the tin, and not the secondary, much nicer one. I needed to stop thinking those kinds of thoughts before they got to me too much.

I shook my head and cleared my throat.

“That… makes sense, I didn’t even consider that… Though I think it’s less naivety and more lack of familiarity with the queer topics, I don’t want to intrude, after all…” I finally responded.

Mom giggled in response.

“You know more than you think you do, honey, and I promise you’re not intruding at all. That being said, I think you’re right about the Demon Queen’s daughter, she simply wanted help and made the mistake, and with how scared she looked when she realized we could hear her, I’m sure she realized what she did wrong.”

“We really need something better to call her though…” Lottie mentions, already lost in her own side track.

“Well, the daughter of a queen is a princess…” I responded.

If I wanted everyone to be honest with each other, bringing them up to speed on the same nomenclature couldn’t hurt, right?

“Oooooh, Demon Princess, that’s so cute! And it fits her so well! Thanks for the help, this is perfect!” she exclaimed.

Lottie’s sense of what was cute might have been a bit skewed from the general population, but her heart was in the right place.

And it definitely helped that I was much better at hiding my undesirable reactions in my regular body.

I decided to look out the window to see how far we’ve gone, only for Mom to pull over and park her car in front of grandma’s house.

“Alright kids, we’re here,” she said, as if this was just any other destination.

My usual tiny speck of dread I experienced every time I visited this place was enhanced a thousand fold as I realized I was about to enter the dragon’s den, but with Lottie and Mom there, there was no way grandma would try to do anything to me… right?

Rainbow

This chapter is dedicated to all the parents, teachers, and adults in general, who hadn't given a child a vital piece of information, assuming they'd just figure it out or look it up - you, quite literally, don't know what you don't know...

Anyways, uh oh, the things are getting serious, quick, think of a joke... Oh, I know! Can you believe I ever thought this story concept was going to fit in 10k words?

If you want to read this story to its ending now, you can find it in these places:
Patreon | itch.io

I hope you enjoyed this chapter and have a great day! ❤️?????