Crows were great. People really didn’t give them enough credit or attention. On my way out of the store, there were a whole bunch of them just hanging out, cawing and doing crow shit while I sped past them, clothes in hand. And honestly? The fact that more people didn't talk about how cool crows were was a crime. A crime, I tell you. They were all cool and black and foreboding, but also really smart. They could be taught to understand the concept of trading, had really great memories for faces, and even sometimes used rudimentary tools. Plus, they had all kinds of cool symbolic significance all over the world. Why wouldn’t I think about crows, especially when they were right there for me to look at and think about instead of all that other stuff?

I mean seriously, conflicted feelings about gender and bizarre misunderstandings? That was honestly not a big deal at all, it didn’t deserve nearly as much attention as crows did. Like yeah, sure, I felt better in this body than I did in my old one. And yeah, sure, I was pretty disappointed when I took my pill today and didn’t immediately start changing. But just because I wanted to look more like a girl and be seen as one, and didn’t mind any of the changes that were getting rid of the masculine features I was supposed to be proud of, and really liked how I looked in that dress, and really liked being called pretty didn’t mean I was actually a girl. If I were trans, I’d have known at this point, so, obviously this was clearly just an extension of my fetish. And why would I ever choose to think about something as unimportant as a fetish when instead I could be thinking about crows? 

I was pulled away from my crow-related, definitely very important, and definitely not deliberately inconsequential so as to deflect from the actual issue, thoughts by the feeling of my phone suddenly buzzing in my pocket. By the way, this dress had pockets, which apparently was a big deal. Unfortunately, I was very engrossed in my important musings on corvids. And, upon feeling the buzz in my pocket, I yelped an utterly feminine yelp in surprise. After settling myself, I investigated the notification to find a new text from Olivia.

“Hey, babe! Really excited for this evening, I can’t wait to see your pretty face!” I blushed a deep shade of red and shuddered happily at the sight of her calling me pretty. And, god dammit, no matter how much I thought about crows, I simply could not get over the fact that the girl I liked called me pretty. I felt like a giddy, blushing schoolgirl -- schoolboy, and that was a problem. It simply wasn’t possible for me to repress these feelings anymore, I had to confront them head on. My next move seemed obvious; in order to understand my feelings, I needed to talk to an actual trans person. I needed to talk to Dylan. Dylan would listen, I could explain how I was feeling, and then they would tell me about why I wasn’t actually trans. Then I could just move on, and not think about any of this ever again. 

I kicked my little legs into overdrive, my skirt swishing from side to side very enticingly and interestingly and distractingly as I began to type out a message to Dylan, asking if we could meet somewhere private and talk. They replied asking if I was comfortable meeting in their room, I agreed, and sped off. I needed to get this shit sorted, and fast, otherwise it would be on my mind all night. As I power-walked through campus I was getting more and more looks. This was the first time I’d been out and about on campus in broad daylight since the changes started to set in. That, combined with the fact that I’d been laser-focused on my mission before, meant I really hadn’t noticed just how differently people seemed to react to me when they thought I was actually a cute girl instead of a guy. Men leered at me, and women smiled at me in ways that made my heart explode in my chest. 

By the time I arrived at Dylan’s frat house, I had reached the point where, If one more pretty girl I’d never so much as spoken to in my life before flashed her pearly whites at me, I might have just up and gone into cardiac arrest then and there. Luckily I would be home free soon, and get the chance to recover in Dylan’s dorm room while they explained to me why I couldn’t actually be trans. Hopefully by the time all that was said and done I’d be chill enough to go out into the world, though, I might need to stare at the ground a bit more to avoid such dangers again. 

Honestly, there should be PSAs about that sort of thing: girls, don’t smile at each other too much, otherwise you might accidentally kill some poor unsuspecting lesbian one day. Not that I was a lesbian, of course, it’s just that they were smiling at me cause they thought I was a girl, and if I were a girl, I’d definitely be one such lesbian.

Dylan was waiting for me at the front entrance to the house, and, after a brief greeting, led me inside, ushering me past all the frat-brothers living there quickly, with an almost guilty look in their eyes. I couldn’t blame them for feeling awkward about it, cause well, if my hunch was correct and Dylan actually was trans, of course living in a house with only men would be a bit awkward and embarrassing. I could only imagine how I would react to living in that situation -- just hypothetically, like if I really were a girl. But also even without that it would still probably make me uncomfortable, l was well aware that the whole ‘guys being dudes’ lifestyle really wasn’t one I fit into well. At least, for the most part, Dylan had done a good job assimilating into it all, poor thing. 

I was brought upstairs to Dylan’s room and ushered inside; I parked myself on the little couch which had been set up along the back wall, and waited for a bit as Dylan locked the door behind us and then settled themself in. There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence as Dylan took a moment to fully process what they were looking at. I couldn’t help but feel bad for them, they were probably incredibly jealous and uncomfortable just seeing me as I was. Still, once we got my problems out of the way, I’d be sure not to rest until I helped Dylan get to a place they were more comfortable in. Both in terms of living space, and in terms of their actual form. There were several moments of awkward silence, but thankfully, Dylan managed to break it.

“You, um. You kept changing.” Those words carried a lot of confusion in them, as though something didn’t quite add up. 

“Yeah, I did. What do you think?” I flashed a friendly little smile as I turned my head side to side. 

“You look really nice. I’m not really sure how or why that’s happening, though.” Scratching their chin, Dylan stood and crossed the room to the little spellbook we’d used only yesterday, they settled onto their bed and began flipping through the pages, presumably to find the spell from yesterday. “Yeah, huh, that’s odd. I mean, this is still all theory crafting, but you’ve got to understand, I’m great at theory crafting. And everything I’m seeing suggests that using this spell to impose an entirely new form on someone shouldn’t work as well as it has.”

“Should I be worried?” Suddenly the broader issue of my internal struggles seemed pretty insignificant when faced with the possibility of some sort of magical backfire. What if it started to hurt me? Or what if the feminization effects never stopped and every day I just got girlier and girlier until I was a caricatured version of my ideal view of femininity -- wait, wasn’t that a story I read somewhere? Nevermind, that wasn’t important. And what if, oh fuck, what if it just stopped working all together and turned me back into a guy? Well, a normal guy. That was possibly the worst outcome of all. I shuddered.

“Jesse, hey, Jesse!” Dylan was waving their hand and snapping their fingers in front of my face as I was suddenly pulled away from my thought spiral. They gave me a comforting look, “Hey, stop panicking. As far as I can tell, you’re safe. It’s just perplexing is all.”

“Oh, well, that’s good. Perplexing how?” 

“Well, like I said, this is a reworked healing spell. It’s purpose is to take a snapshot of your ‘typical shape’ -- which under normal circumstances would be your old body -- and then restore you to that shape. Instead we’ve lied to it and set your ‘typical shape’ to a feminine one. What should have happened was, you’d take your first pill, that would cause a sudden burst of transformative magic, but from then on any further feminization would be held back by the fact that the form imprinted on the pill wasn’t your actual ‘typical shape.’ It would ostensibly be fighting against your body the whole time by trying to make you into something other than what your body actually is. And, well, obviously it’s not doing that.” They snapped the book shut and, in a most unhelpful manner, gave a big, confused shrug.

“What exactly is meant by ‘typical shape?’” I asked.

“Oh, well, that’s more of a translation thing. There’s probably a better word for it, but translating concepts from magical runes to people means sometimes the descriptions sound kind of awkward. Just think of it as how you usually look.” As interesting a tidbit as that was, I wasn’t really interested in Dylan continuing this lecture on magic. Lucky me, they went ahead and changed the subject for me. “So this is good, though, right? You wanted to look more feminine.” They sounded fairly concerned, and I could understand why. They were probably worried I was feeling dysphoria in my feminized body the same way they probably were.

“Yeah, yeah it is good. I’m sure Olivia will love the additional changes, though err, I guess I won’t be able to pass them off as anything but magic anymore. And I’m not feeling any dysphoria with the changes happening, so things are good. Thanks, by the way, you’ve probably single-handedly saved our relationship.” I broke out into a wide, grateful smile.

“I’m glad to hear things are good with you. And it’s nice to hear that all of this helped with Olivia too, as an added bonus.” That was a perplexing reply, I cocked my head in confusion.

“Uh, bonus? Nevermind. I’m just glad things with her are going well.” I really was. Our time together the night before had been wonderful; these changes were clearly having a positive effect on our closeness.

“Did you ever figure out what the deal with her was? Like, was she actually cheating on you?” Dylan asked.

“I didn’t really want to bring it up, you know? It was just kind of an awkward thing to talk about. I know I’ll have to talk to her about it eventually, but I’d rather wait until everything gets settled before that happens, you know?” My excuse was, admittedly, pretty lame. In truth, I was just comfortable as things were and really didn’t want to mess up a good thing, plus I was still struggling to blame Olivia for wanting to be with a girl instead of a guy. But Dylan probably wouldn’t be interested in hearing that excuse.

“Alright well, just make sure you figure that out before you get too comfortable. It’s best to work these things out before you wind up getting complacent. I mean, worst case scenario, you can just find some other lesbian to date now that you have that body.” There Dylan went again with the strange advice. It was one thing to feminize myself in the hopes that it would make me more appealing to a queer woman I was already dating. But seeking out a completely new queer woman to date felt like crossing a line.

Regardless, while Dylan’s responses were pretty strange, it wasn’t particularly hard to figure out why they were this comfortable with giving that sort of advice. And, honestly it was probably time to just bite the bullet and  bring up the elephant in the room. 

SapphicSounds

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. The rest of the story is going to be exclusively about crows from now on. I know it's a big thematic shift, but obviously crows are far more important and worth considering than whatever this "trans" stuff is. If you're enjoying things so far, you can currently get early access to all of this story, along with several other benefits such as exclusive audio content, exclusive writing, and pictures of my cat on my patreon for as little as $2 a month (cat pictures are gonna cost you extra though, sorry).