Yvette’s eyes slowly opened and she, groggily, stared up at the stone roof. She wondered if it had all been a terrible dream. Was today the last day of her apprenticeship?

She heard the door to the room open and then close, but she couldn’t focus on whoever it had been. She tried to move, but her body felt weak and hollow. There were small, lingering pains in her side where the arrows had been. Everything was blurry and disorienting.

Arrows. It hadn’t been a dream. She tried to sit up again, but the blankets felt too heavy. Her head was pounding as well. She could feel bandages wrapped tightly around her, the only thing she wore. Something metal wrapped around her left wrist. She slowly moved the arm, just enough to see what was on it, her vision slowly sharpening when she focused.

It was Gervas’ metal bracer. She, with great difficulty, moved her right hand to it and tried to unlatch it. However, try as she did to find a latch or binding, it seemed to be solid metal around her wrist.

The door to the room opened and Gervas stormed inside, slamming the door shut and making her jump. “Finally decided to wake up, mage?” he asked.

She recoiled from the angry look on his face. “I-I… I...”

“No. Don’t speak. Do you have any idea how close you came to dying?” he asked, moving forward and gripping her right arm, squeezing it so tightly she swore it would bruise.

“I-I--”

“You don’t have any idea what it’s like out there. All you’ve ever seen is your own little slice of home, your safe little tower. The world isn’t like that, Tebaud. But this? You almost got yourself killed. What in the world would possess you to run off like that?” His hand only tightened around her wrist, making her whimper in pain.

“Y-you’re hurting me!”

“You’re lucky this is the only pain I’m inflicting on you. If you hadn’t been on death’s door, I would have beaten you to an inch of your life myself!”

She let out a shriek of pain, his hand crushing her wrist. He finally let it go and she wrapped her left hand around it, trying to rub away the pain. “Y-you… I… what… happened?”

“You almost got yourself killed, that’s what happened. Your selfishness almost killed you, do you even understand that?” His fists were clenched at his side and he looked ready to start beating her, making her pull the blanket up as if it could protect her. “You’ve been out for days. If your trail hadn’t been so obvious, if those two idiots hadn’t spent so much time arguing. Hell, if you hadn’t been so lucky, you’d have drowned!” He punched the bed by her head, making her whimper and cower.

“P-please...” she whispered, trembling.

“No. No pleases. No more. I’m taking you back to Betan.”

She froze, her eyes widening. “W-what? Why?”

“I’m not just your bodyguard, mage. I’m your judge. It’s my job to make sure you’re worthy of your rank. Of being a journeyman. If you have the bare minimum intelligence to not get yourself killed!” he snapped, before kicking the bed, making it shake.

“W-what? But… but...”

“Don’t get any ideas about trying to cast magic, either.” He reached over and grabbed her left arm by the bracer, forcing it up. “Do you know what this is?”

“N-no.”

“Magevoid bindings.”

Her eyes widened and horror struck her. Magevoid. Dangerous items that were designed to not just disable a mage, but entirely burn their magic away while worn. They were incredibly difficult to make, as they had to be specifically tuned for the mage in question, otherwise they wouldn’t be very effective. Her heart sank when a new realization hit her. For her master to have given Gervas one meant he hadn’t trusted her to be able to do this. No, even worse. It meant he suspected she’d become a danger either to herself or others. Gervas wasn’t just her bodyguard. He was her keeper. Which meant if he took her back, she’d be lucky to just be knocked back down to being an apprentice.

“There it is,” he said, letting her wrist go. “Do you finally understand how much trouble you’re in?”

“Yes.”

“Then I want to know why. Why would you think running off on your own like that was smart?”

“I just… I wanted to be Yvette, I--”

“Stop using that as an excuse!” he yelled, kicking the bed again and drawing a frightened whimper from her. “You’re not a girl. You’re never going to BE a girl. Stop pretending you want to. What is even the point? Are you hoping for attention? Pity?”

“B-but… I just… I’m a girl...”

“Then why aren’t you?” he asked, his voice turning cold as ice. He leaned forward, resting a powerful hand on her chest, pushing her viciously into the bed.

“W-what?” she choked out.

“You keep saying you want to be a girl. But you aren’t, are you? You’re a mage. If it’s so important to you, then just do it.”

“I-I can’t...” she whispered, giving a soft whimper. She felt like her bones were going to crack under his hands.

“Don’t even try that with me. I saw you turn into a deer in front of me. I’ve seen what kinds of tricks you mages can pull. Changing the weather, rising houses from stone. I’ve seen one almost stop time. Do you really expect me to believe you can’t turn yourself into a girl?”

“I-I can’t for long enough!” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “You’re h-hurting me! I’m sorry! I’ve tried! I’ve tried to be a girl as much as I c-can! I’ve been trying to for years, b-but magic doesn’t work that way! I can make myself a girl but it only lasts a few hours!” she screamed, the tears falling. “Don’t you think if I could be, if I could fully be me, I… I would?” she asked, her entire body shaking.

She watched his eyes widen and, slowly, he pulled his hand away. She let out a soft gasp, the pain in her chest fading. He watched her for a few moments before, softly, he spoke up. “You’ve been trying for years?” he asked. For the first time since she’d met him, he seemed unsure of himself.

“Y-yes,” she said softly, trembling. “I… I can transform for a few hours at a time, but after that I have to regenerate my magic before I can try again.”

“But you transformed your robes. You spent hours doing it. They haven’t changed back.”

“Robes aren’t living things. Though, even the enchanted ones were harder. Living things, all living things, have a bit of magic to them. The more magic they have, the more they resist change. Even if the most powerful mage in the world transformed a really weak person into something, it likely wouldn’t last very long. The magic knows its form, it knows how the body is supposed to be. Or, at least, the… true form it started as. I can only do that, I can’t alter the true form.”

“Oh… then why don’t you just do that?” he asked. “Transform into a girl whenever you can? There were plenty of times you could have.”

“Then what?” she asked softly. “It uses all of my magic. What if something happened? What if I needed my magic? What if I got hurt or… you got hurt and I needed to heal a wound that would be fatal otherwise? Or any of the other things my magic is needed for? What then? I’m a mage. Am I supposed to go through every day, burning my magic away?” She then closed her eyes. “Besides. I tried that, for a while. I tried to be a girl as much as I could. Master Betan was was furious. He said I was wasting my gift. That I was being selfish and greedy. I’m a mage. I’ve trained my whole life to be a mage. I have a duty to use my abilities for the others who need it. Not on my own selfish wants. That’s why I dress and act like this even if I can’t always transform the way I want. It’s as close as I can get.”

“Oh...” Gervas said softly. “I’m sorry. I thought you were just… trying to find a way to get people to spoil you more. To take an easy way out.”

“H-how is any of this easy?” she asked, her body quivering while the tears flowed. “I-I’ve spent the last… I don’t even know how many years trying to be me. The only time I’ve ever felt right was when I was a girl. When I dressed as a girl, when I was talked to like a girl. When I was treated like a girl. All I’ve ever wanted was to be treated the same as them. I never wanted to be treated better, or be spoiled or get out of the trials I have to face as a mage. The requirements to be a mage, male OR female, are the same anyway!” she said, staring up at him. “You should know that!”

“I did, I just didn’t think you did...” he mumbled, his gaze shifting away from her.

“I’ve only ever wanted to be me. Just Yvette. Not… I just wanted to be me. And all I got was mockery for it. I constantly have to fight for everything. If I want to wear a dress, it’s a fight. If I want to be called Yvette, it’s a fight. If I want to be me. To just be myself, it’s a constant fight. Easy? None of this is easy. It has NEVER been easy. Every day I have to wake up and wonder what part of being myself is going to get me in trouble today. If it’ll just be okay and ignored, or if I’ll have to fight for every little thing all over again. Why would I ever want to be like this if I didn’t have to be? I don’t want easy, I just want to be treated the same as any other woman! Why is that so wrong?”

“Because you’re not one. It--”

“Why? Why is it so wrong for me to be one?” she asked, her voice going low. “If I act like one, dress like one. If I fight to be one. If I… if I give up everything to be a girl, why can’t I? Why am I denied? Am I hurting anyone? Am I so bad? Is being myself really that terrible a crime? All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, was to be Yvette. I don’t want to hurt anyone, or take, or steal. I don’t mind working hard. Using my abilities to help those around me. So why, why does it make me such a terrible person? Why can’t I be allowed this little thing? Why can’t you just… just treat me like Yvette? Why can’t anyone?”

“Tebaud… I...”

“Yvette! I never asked to be this way. I never… never wanted to...” she whispered. “If I could just be like everyone else. If I could feel right, normally? Everything would be so much easier. It would hurt so much less. I didn’t choose this. But I can’t stop it. I’ve tried. I tried to be a guy. I tried to be Tebaud. I hated it. I hated myself. Every time I’m called that name, it’s just another reminder of that person I hate. That person I loathe. I just… I just want to be me. Nothing else. That’s all.”

Gervas sighed and then, slowly, he lowered himself to sit besides her. “I’m sorry, Teb… Yvette. I didn’t realize how you felt about it.”

She nodded, closing her eyes, her hand moving up to wipe the tears away.

“Betan told me that this was just a phase. That you started doing it recently, that you were jealous because you felt some of the other apprentices were getting more attention than you. I thought you’d only been doing it for a few weeks. A month, at most,” he said softly. “I thought you were just another mage trying to find a shortcut to… I don’t even know what you’d hope to get out of this. I thought if I didn’t put up with it, you’d snap out of it and stop being a… well...”

“Yvette?”

“Yes. You’ve really been doing this for years?”

“Since soon after I learned my first transformation spell,” she mumbled. “I’d always felt wrong, until then. But once I transformed a few times, I just felt there was something missing. It wasn’t until I turned into a girl that… that I finally felt right. It was so weird. Strange. But wonderful. Like… like a blindfold had been removed. All of a sudden I was the person I was meant to be. It was so crystal clear. Not fake. Not pretending. But really me. I didn’t realize how big a problem it was for everyone else until after,” she said softly. “Sometimes I wish I’d never discovered it.”

“Why? Can’t you just go back?” he asked.

“Go back? No. You can’t… you can’t come back from this. For the first time ever I was me. All that nagging pain, that discomfort, that terrible feeling? It was gone. It was finally gone. How could I go back to how things were once I knew? How could anyone?” she asked softly, her eyes opening to stare up at him. “I would have been killing myself. If not in body, then in soul. I tried, but you just can’t come back from that. Once I knew the cure, I couldn’t stop it. Just the idea of stopping is the most terrible thing I can imagine.”

“This helps?” he asked, motioning to her. “Wearing outfits and that?”

“Sometimes. It helps a little. Makes the pain a little less. Makes me feel a little less… wrong. Sometimes it’s better. Sometimes I… I can almost feel right. Like when I was called lady,” she said softly, her body trembling again.

“But then I took that away from you...” Gervas said, shame in his voice.

“Yes.”

“That’s why you ran.”

“Yes.”

He stared down at her. Slowly, he reached out and took her left wrist. He tugged at the bracer and, after a moment, it opened, coming off her wrist. She let out a light gasp when she felt the control it had over her fade, the small vestiges of her power beginning to return. “So you can’t do it, then? Fully? There’s no spell for that?”

She stared up at him, before slowly lowering her eyes. “There is one.”

“What?”

“Have you ever heard of the mage Roule?”

“No, should I have?”

“Roule the butcher.”

She felt him tense besides her. “Yes, I have. He was he the one who--”

“Yes. There are others, but he was the most well known one. During his war, he didn’t just kill people. He turned them into animals, usually cattle. Most were slaughtered. Others… kept as beasts. What he did to them, though...” She shook her head and shuddered. “Spells like that don’t just change the body. They change the very magical nature of an object. Alter it to the new form. Changing them back to how they were is incredibly difficult. There’s no longer any basis, since the core, their ‘true form’ has been changed, so there’s nothing to turn them back to. On top of that, there are records of people who have had it happen to them, eventually having their minds shifted. That they were no longer the people they were. People who turned into bears eventually living as bears and things such as that.”

“That’s the spell that can do that?”

“Permanent transfiguration. Permanently turning a person into something else. That’s the only magic that could fix me. But it’s one of the forbidden spells. Due to mages like Roule, it was added to the forbidden tomes nearly… two centuries ago, I believe. All records of it were destroyed, the requirements to cast it, lost. In this age, there are likely only a very, very small handful of people who have ever seen what the spell requires. Even then, such spells are only shown to the most brilliant of grandmasters, only for research. Never to be cast.”

“I see,” he said softly. “Why not try to become a grandmaster, then? It’s difficult, but it can be done. Just live as a guy until then?”

“And what? Spend my whole life working and practicing, so I can MAYBE, if I’m lucky and good enough, become myself?” she asked, glaring up at him. “A grandmaster takes a lifetime of study, to become that good. I’d have to become a master, first. Then find something that would be deemed enough of an accomplishment to be granted the title. It could take forever. My life would be over by the time I was able to be me.”

“Right, sorry,” he said. “I… I am sorry. This must have been incredibly hard on you. I can’t imagine having to make that choice. Is there any way for you to imitate that spell? Aren’t you mages creating new spells all the time? How hard could those spells be, anyway? I’ve heard of them being re-discovered plenty of time.”

“Maybe,” she said softly. “It would require a lot of study and practice. I’d need to hone my craft. That and I would need to find the correct focus items for the spell. But it’s possible. The magic that… was used when that spell was made is different, though. As an apprentice, we’re only taught the basics of each type of magic and spell. From there, we practice and hone them, finding the magic that works best for us, creating our own variants and new spells. It’s why our focus bracers are so important. They allow us to have all the basic components at our fingertips. Of course, more powerful spells require more powerful resources. Some spells require materials so rare or difficult to work with that they have to be acquired separately. Others are destroyed in the spell. It’s possible it could be done with a journeyman bracer, but I doubt it. Possibly with a master one. But… trying to duplicate such a spell would get me in a lot of trouble.” She looked away from him, leaving out one important detail. While she doubted she could ever copy the spell, or create a variant of it, if she could find the original spell and work off from that, she was certain she could create a spell that would work and fix her, even if she couldn’t cast the original. “For now, this is the closest I can be to being myself. I don’t want to be treated differently than any other girl. That’s all I ask.”

“It’s okay, Yvette,” he said before, nervously, reaching out and patting her on the head. “I didn’t realize what you were doing. If this… is the closest you can be to what you want? It’s okay. I won’t try to stop you. You can be you.”

She stared up at him, fresh tears forming in her eyes. “R-really?”

“Yes. It’s-- h-hey. You don’t need to cry again! What’d I say? This is supposed to be a good thing!”

“N-nothing. Nothing bad. J-just no one has ever told me i-it was okay before,” she managed to sputter out, her body shaking. “I-I’m just h-happy. I’m just so happy. F-finally someone finally listened to me.”

She could see the guilt on his face before he turned away. “I see. I’m sorry it took this long. I’m sorry it took me this long. Just rest. Your wounds should heal.”

“Where are we?” she asked, lifting an arm to wipe the tears away.

“We’ll talk about it once you’re better. For now, rest. I’ll bring you something to eat,” Gervas said, before pausing at the doorway. “Rest well, Yvette.” He then stepped out of the room and closed the door behind himself.

Yvette pulled the blanket as tight as she could around herself, unable to keep the smile from her lips. It was okay. She finally had permission to be herself. To be Yvette. She’d been given grudging tolerance a few times. But she’d never been given permission.

Even if she didn’t need it, even if she told herself she didn’t CARE what he said, if he wanted her to or not, it still felt incredible. To, just this once, be allowed to be herself.

MelodyAvant

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