Rainbow

Synopsis: Trans girl egg has ability to change into her perfect form and back, didn't tell anyone about it, gets found out.
Content warnings: internalized transphobia, serious dysphoria, self-hate, panic attacks.

I walked along with a bunch of other teenagers; some of them were my supposed classmates, some of them were not. Ahead of me I could see an assortment of clothes, hair, and various glowing or reflective body parts of all colors. There were two people straight up levitating above everyone else, and one guy was even repeatedly jumping several meters up instead of walking. Despite the fact that almost nobody knew anybody, there already were a bunch of groups formed of people just having conversations like they’d been friends for years, which was apparently something people my age did.

And where was I all of this? Well, simple — I was the loner, a bit to the side, not interacting with anybody, not doing anything but looking down to the path, making sure to not get too close to anybody. I didn’t do anything, other than try to be as unappealing to interact with as possible. It’s not like I had anything against any of the people around me, or that I preferred being alone, but…

I had a secret, you see. Something that would make any potential friendliness with people cause me a lot of troubles. And it was all related to my special ability. Most people had their abilities awakened in their teens, which they then would have to register to receive assistance in handling it, after which they’d get guidelines for how to use it safely. But there were also late bloomers, and people whose abilities were too minor to really pay any notice to. I, however, was none of those.

I had an ability; it had awakened several years ago now, I’d just… never told anybody about it. Because of the specific nature of it, I was just too terrified of potential reactions, so I just kept putting off telling anybody, until at some point I decided to just… not. Indefinitely. I didn’t know what my intention for the future was, I’d just assumed I’d figure it out when I’d be older. At first, due to the somewhat uncontrollable nature of it, hiding it was really hard. As I got more of a handle on things, it got much easier, and as months and years passed, it got harder and harder again. But I had it handled.

But my parents didn’t think so. Apparently, isolating myself for a couple of years got them ‘concerned’. Not concerned enough to actually try to help me, or have honest conversations with me that weren’t smalltalk or interventions, mind you, but enough to send me off to a week-long school trip without my consent, so I would get friends, since that’s totally a thing you can force like that. And that’s how I got to where I was now, it was the second day of the trip, and today we were hiking a sizable mountain.

You’d think having a secret to hide, one you barely have a loose control of, in a situation where you rarely ever get privacy or actual autonomy over what you’ll be doing, would be a rather large pain in the butt. And it was, but luckily, due to my absolute lack of social skills and active avoidance of other people, I ended up in the only one-person room at the resort we were staying at, which made things much easier.

And yet still, I found myself wishing it didn’t have to be like this. After all, all the things about my ability that made me so terrified, that made me feel bad and like I was doing something wrong, those all were external. As much as I was ashamed to admit it, my ability itself wasn’t something I disliked, at least in a vacuum. In a perfect world, I could be open about it, and have friends, and maybe even spend time with them when I was—

Oh no. It was happening again.

I was about to transform.

I shouldn’t have thought about this; I’d slipped up. But it was okay, I knew what to do now.

First, look around to see if I could hide anywhere. The path was mostly surrounded by the forest of trees, but to the right a little ahead I spotted a small building without windows that looked like a bigger version of ones with electrical transformers inside which I could hide behind. That was lucky, now just to hold it in and sneak behind. That part was easy, I had a lot of experience in being unnoticed after all. Of course, with so many people around it was impossible to be sure nobody saw me, which was always stressful, but I minimized the chance best I could and went for it, finding refuge in the middle of the wall behind it where nobody could see me.

I let it go almost immediately. The sooner I transformed, the sooner I could turn back, and since I didn’t want to run too much to catch up the rest of our little trip, it was a good idea to just go with it.

Or at least it seemed to be a good idea until the last split second when, in the corner of my eye, I saw somebody come around the corner and look in my direction.

The blue-ish light enveloped me the way it always did during the transformation. It was the couple of seconds of coverage when I had to develop the plan. That was a bit hard, since I spent the last couple years of my life desperately avoiding such confrontation precisely because I didn’t know what reactions to expect and simply didn’t see myself being able to do anything in such a situation. And with practically nothing I could do or even think of, my mind became filled with overwhelming fear.

When the light faded from my vision, marking the transformation as complete, I could get a better look at the person that had just discovered my secret. The person that I recognised as a girl from my class. This was only getting worse.

I stood there, frozen in fear, looking like a tiny girl with unnaturally fluffy light brown hair wearing the hell knew what.

My stomach fell below ground, and it began to coldly sink in that this was it. My comfortably painful status quo was about to collapse into… something. Something I had no control over. Something that was a complete unknown. Something that would probably be so much worse.

I don’t know how much time we spent just like that, me frozen in fear, and her just looking at me, clearly surprised and confused. She probably didn’t know what to do or how to react, and honestly, I couldn’t blame her. It was all my fault. It was all my fault for being… me.

It wasn’t until I saw another person come from behind the same corner that something broke and suddenly I could move again. With this new re-gained possibility, I did the only thing I really could — I frantically ran away from them.

Luckily, there was an indentation in the other back corner of the building where I could hide both from the view from the path as well as people who caught the sight of me just then.

Once I reached my new hiding spot, the only thing to do was to change back. Maybe, just maybe, if changed back to looking like the huge ugly guy I was supposed to be, quickly ran back to the rest of the people and continued to be as unnoticeable as possible, they would just decide to not tell anybody and it could all be as okay as it used to be just a couple minutes ago.

As opposed to the transformation to my current form, which was on a hair trigger so sensitive that on some occasions I could swear it happened without a cause, changing back was like pushing a huge rock up a steep hill, but mentally instead of physically. Sometimes it was relatively quick and easy, but others it was like it took all I had to do it, it went on for minutes and many failed attempts, and it left me completely exhausted. Guess which one it was this time.

My eyes were closed so hard it hurt, my head was starting to ache over how much I was focussing on getting back to that… stupid… body. It wasn’t helping that I could vaguely hear voices of people just behind the corner, probably discussing how to mock or punish me. I pushed even more in panic, not caring about the pained squeaks I was most likely responsible for.

My surroundings became strangely quiet as I kept failing and failing to turn back. I didn’t know how much more I could keep trying, I never was on such a time limit before that not being able to turn back became an actual possibility. It was like the situation I was in was determined to keep getting worse and worse.

Just then, I heard a twig snap and opened my eyes in surprise to see that there were now two girls that I recognised as my classmates, standing a bit apart in a way that made another attempt at running away no longer an option. And they were slowly getting closer, and both of them were bigger and probably stronger than me and…

I tried to step back, to gain some safety of distance, but my foot met the corner. I still retreated into it as much as I could, making myself smaller and closing my eyes, my arms making a pathetic attempt at covering me from harm. It was over, all I wanted now was for whatever was going to happen next to be done quick.

“Hey, hey,” I heard one of the girls’ voice. “Shhh… It’s okay, we’re not going to do anything, I promise.”

Her voice was calm and had a certain quality to it that made it nice to listen to. Wait, why was I thinking about her voice? Was it her ability making me let my guard down? Then again, given my now freshly exhausted mental state, I didn’t think I’d be able to maintain that level of fear for much longer, and I was still shaking, so it wasn’t like it all went away.

The question was, was she telling the truth? Could I trust her? My brain, as always, decided to be extremely helpful and give me literally nothing to work with. I slowly tried to open my eyes to notice that one of them was much closer than the other.

“I understand how scared you must be, but I promise, we just want to help,” said the one I now recognised as the blonde girl from my class. She was now just a meter away and was slowly reaching out with one hand.

I winced, turning my head to the side and closing my eyes again as her hand was about to reach my face.

Then the last thing I was expecting happened — when she was close enough, she grabbed me with both her hands and pulled me into a tight hug.

“It’s okay, you’re safe now,” she whispered.

At that point, I was almost sure that her presence being so strangely calming that it had to be some sort of ability, but at the same time, I couldn’t argue with the results. All the cold sweat and shaking limbs that were tense at the same time just melted away into tears. And, probably for the same reason, I didn’t feel the usual urge to hold the tears in. I started to sob into the chest of the girl I didn’t even know, the girl I was so terrified of just seconds ago.

“It’s okay, let it out, you’re going to be okay,” she said soothingly.

Turns out, if you haven’t cried for literal years, a lot of it ends up pent up and you don’t even know how bad it is until you just break down and start to cry. It was so odd, I was pretty sure the person hugging me influenced my emotions somehow to get me to the state I was in, but I found myself preferring it over what I’d feel without that. I still didn’t know if I could trust her about it being okay and me being safe, but I still found myself feeling a strange sense of… relief. Like the years of painful hiding could be over, and while I still wasn’t sure if it actually was over, or what consequences would be or even what was the outcome I did want, I certainly couldn’t have anticipated how it would feel to know that someone knew.

The image of a small girl being hugged by a taller girl and crying into her appeared in my head, and despite rationally knowing it was my reality, it still felt distinctly unreal for me to be in such a situation. I didn’t deserve to be in such a situation; I was the one whose fault all of this was. I was the person who did the bad thing. I didn’t know what ‘all of this’ even was, or what the bad thing I did was, but I could feel that it was something and it was very bad. I wouldn’t feel so guilty if it was just nothing, after all.

At some point, my tears and sobs slowly stopped, and I was unwrapped from the hug. The girl took a step back and looked me in the eyes.

“Are you feeling a little better?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I assume you haven’t told anyone about… your ability?”

I shook my head.

The other girl did a fake cough.

“Oh, right, sorry, I’m doing it in a bad order,” the blond girl said, “I’m Amy, the one behind me is Ruby. I, uhh… I have an empathic ability and can radiate some emotional energies, which is what I used to get you out of that spiral of panic you were experiencing. I’m sorry I did it without asking, but the situation was… well, you know.”

I couldn’t believe she was actually apologizing to me. What was happening?

“It’s okay,” I whispered. I couldn’t really get anything more out of me, I was surprised I was able to speak at all.

“I assume you can change back, right?” Ruby asked.

“I… I was trying to, but… I’m too drained now…” I admitted.

“Your clothes transformed too; can you just change your clothes to be something more climbing appropriate?” Amy asked.

I looked down to see what I was wearing to find a light blue t-shirt, matching sandals, and creamy loose shorts. I didn’t even know what in the situation made my subconscious choose something like that.

“I’ve… never tried before,” I admitted.

I tried to imagine myself in the clothes my mom wears when her and dad go hiking, and then just sort of… extend it. I felt something, and suddenly I was wearing practical jeans, a thin windproof jacket, and a pair of nice hiking shoes.

So I could just wear whatever clothes I wanted anytime just like that? At least as long as I was transformed? I tried really hard to not get excited over that.

“Wow! That’s so cool!” Amy exclaimed.

“That’ll work,” Ruby confirmed. “Now, let’s go, we have a fair bit to go to catch up to the others.”

That just sunk in. Of course this was what was going on. But I couldn’t. People never saw me in this form and I wasn’t… I…

“No.”

“It’s okay, don’t worry,” Amy started, “nobody will recognize you, and the teachers are just going to count us anyways. It’ll be okay, and it’s not like we have much choice anyways.”

It made sense. I hated that it made sense. I nodded.

“Okay, now really, let’s go,” Ruby said.

The two started to walk towards the path, and I tentatively followed them.

Thankfully, I was given some time in silence to calm down and think. I mean, getting lost in my thoughts was usually somewhat counter-productive, as this incident had proven, but now, I actually had new things to think about.

For example, the situation I was in — usually the only time when I was transformed and my immediate concern wasn’t changing back as fast as possible was when my parents weren’t home. Call me a… pervert or whatever, but the truth is, it was extremely relaxing to not have to constantly pay attention to and be stressed by my ability, and I got to wear comfy clothes that matched my mood and always fit perfectly, and for some reason, my muscle memory was actually a bit better than in my regular form. Hell, even now, despite needing to walk faster, I had more spring to my step. Maybe this form was in better shape? Or I had some minor strength boost from my ability? Regardless of the physical side of things, I still felt this strange relief, and also a sort of freedom? Like I could do things now?

It was odd, since my situation didn’t actually seem to have changed drastically. Like, I’d just hike for a bit like that, and turn back to my regular form, and the only thing that really changed was the fact that now, two people knew about my ability, but they seemed really disinterested in doing anything about it. Of course, it could all still change, they could out me the second we reached others, it could all be some sort of prank, all the extremely likely possibilities, and yet… Some part of me hoped that this could be a good thing… A good thing that would last.

Could I somehow become friends with Ruby or Amy? Or both? How does one even do that? Even before I’d gotten my ability, I was the loser and loner that just sat in the corner; the only two people I could probably call friends were the ones who had actively reached out to me. I’d never had any social skills to speak of; hell, I didn’t even know how to start a conversation, I had to wait and hope somebody else would—

“I see you’re doing better,” Amy said.

I nodded.

“I don’t just mean, like the breakdown thing, I mean before that too.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that.

“Oh, right, sorry, I didn’t fully explain the stuff yet. Okay, I told you I’m an empath, right? Well, when you went behind that building, I didn’t exactly notice that by chance. You are a type of person that is rather hard to miss for an empath, which is okay, there’s a lot of people like that, it just happens when you’re going through stuff, but you’re specifically very consistent in negative feelings you emit, outside of the occasional flare-ups, and… And you didn’t have anyone you’d talk to, so I started paying more attention to you in case I could help somehow, and, uhh… here we are,” she explained.

That was surprisingly honest, and it actually made sense — in fact, I’d even thought about stuff like that before; people with abilities that could find out something was off about me, and people who could feel what others feel were pretty high on the list. It was something I was both constantly concerned about, and convinced it wouldn’t actually happen, which, to be fair, after some time not being found out, it did become more of an abstract concept in my mind, even if it was a real possibility.

“And I didn’t seem like someone who’d rather be left alone?” I asked.

“Nope, you give off more of a ‘someone’s who’s struggling, but is too scared to reach out’ vibe. That is not to say that it’s good for people who want to be left alone to be left alone, but that subject is, like, extremely complicated and messy. Anyways, if you don’t mind me asking, how long have you been isolating yourself like that?” she asked.

“About three years.” I paused. “Actually, it’s closer to four now, isn’t it…”

“So since you got your ability, right? Is that why you’re doing it?”

I just nodded to both of those questions.

“I think that’s enough questions for now,” Ruby finally spoke. “Let’s talk about something else.”

And so we did. Mostly about what games we played, stuff like that. Turns out, between the two of them, they played just about every game I ever did, and they were apparently very keen on introducing me to more.

After some time, we caught up to the rest of the group, and we even managed to not attract any teacher’s attention. To my surprise, we seemed to stick together even after that. I didn’t really contribute to the conversation very often, mostly because I didn’t know how to or didn’t have anything to say, but Amy and Ruby still made an effort to include me and even ask if I was okay every once in a while.

I was honestly feeling rather weird about the whole situation and how I was being treated by these two. I never really expected for it to go like that. At least realistically, I might have fantasized about something just happening that would change my life for the better, but fantasizing was a rather risky thing for me. The point was, I was conflicted, and I didn’t even know what way I was feeling conflicted in.

I could tell one thing for sure though — I was in a situation that made it really easy for hopeful thoughts to surface, and that was bad. Such thoughts might have been a motivation to keep going, but they were also an invitation for the hurt when the things didn’t get better in the end. And the things never got better in the end. And that’s not even to mention that hopeful thoughts, just like fantasizing, involved a real risk of me losing control over things, and even if this time resulted in nothing bad, the next time could always be so, so much worse.

At some point, the entire group ended up stopping for a break next to a building that seemed to be making its money selling severely overpriced food and souvenirs to people hiking on that trail. Thankfully, my own food and water-based drink were not lost in the transformation, so I had that to go for me as we sat down on the grass.

After a bit, Amy asked me, “So do you think this rest will be enough for you to have the energy to change back? Assuming you want to change back as soon as you can, that is.”

“I am planning on that, yes,” I answered, and then added in whisper, “though it doesn’t really work like that.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t work like that?” Ruby asked.

I sighed. “Okay, so the whole thing with transforming isn’t really physical. I mean, it is, but the physical part of it just sort of happens. All the trouble with it comes from the mental part, which initiates the transformation.”

“Oh, if you were mentally exhausted, it explains why you broke down so bad. What I don’t get is why were you having problems with it if you can just will it, I assume,” Amy said.

I shouldn’t have said anything; now they’d know. Granted, I could just not answer now, but at this point it was too late, they’d figure it out anyway.

“It’s activated by thoughts; it doesn’t take that much to transform, just a thought that’s vaguely related to it is enough, really. I also can’t really stop it once it starts, only delay it; that’s what happened when you… found me,” I explained.

“Why can’t you just change back then?” Ruby asked the question I hoped she wouldn’t ask.

“Turning back isn’t that easy. It kinda works the same way as transforming, but it requires an intent, and much more effort for some reason,” I said. “It also kinda hurts, but that’s not really that big of a deal…”

“It requires so much effort that it hurts?” Ruby asked, sounding surprised.

“A little… Sometimes it doesn’t…” I looked to the side.

Amy inhaled deeply. “Okay, this topic isn’t easy for you, so we should probably drop it for now, which, to be clear, I’m going to continue at other time because I can tell there’s some unhealthy behaviors going on here and I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I just ignored that when I know I can help. That being said, I can also tell that when it comes to mental exhaustion, you aren’t quite there yet to try anything intense, so I’d recommend waiting on turning back until we get back to the resort, okay?”

The rest of the day passed mostly in a blur; Ruby and Amy didn’t really talk that much with me anymore, but they still kept close to me ‘just in case’. For what it was worth, I did need more time to be able to turn back, and if I was in such a situation on my own, I’d probably be terrified to my core. Now I was only moderately terrified.

The view from the summit was nice, I guess. Luckily, I was able to hide behind the tall people during the group photo, which was nice, and also another evidence that short people had it objectively better. Besides that, it was just really uneventful.

Sneaking away near the end of our trip back wasn’t any problem, and with that, all that was left to do was change back. I could tell that I had it in me, but also that it wouldn’t be easy. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and concentrated on transformation back to my real form. It hurt a lot, and left me lightheaded, but I was able to tell by how garbage I felt that I’d done it. Bleh.

I operated under the assumption that after I changed back, it would be smooth sailing from there, but that was quickly disproven by concerned-looking Amy waiting for me.

“What in the actual fuck just happened to you?” she asked.

“Uhh, nothing besides the obvious?” sounds left my mouth.

I completely forgot that this time, I’d actually spoken in my other form, which somehow made me hate my regular voice even more. I didn’t know that was even possible. Why did my other form have to be better in every single way? It wasn’t fair.

“Then why did your mood plummet so much that I felt it in my stomach from fifteen meters away?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said the closest I had to the truth, “It just sort of happens, it’s normal.”

“How in the world is that normal?” Her voice raised a little bit.

She really just wanted me to say the quiet part out loud, didn’t she?

“I… I don’t know, it just gets worse the longer I…” My voice dropped to a whisper, “stay transformed...”

Amy put her hand to her forehead and sighed deeply. “Go get some rest, please.”

I just nodded.

I managed to convince our main teacher to let me skip supper and go straight to my room by telling her that I wasn’t feeling well and that I wouldn’t eat anything anyway, which was kinda the truth. In reality, even the thought of stuffing my ugly mouth with food made me want to vomit.

In all honesty, I did lie to Amy about one thing — while it was true that spending more time transformed made me feel worse after turning back, what I was experiencing at that moment was worse. I’d once spent an entire weekend transformed and it didn’t feel nearly as bad.

And I felt truly gross. Disgusting. I had to keep reminding myself that my head wasn’t going to hit the ceiling of the four-meter tall main hall because I felt so huge and deformed. Like a monster.

After I entered my room, I closed the door and triple checked it to make sure it was locked. I barely even bothered taking off my backpack before, without even a thought, I transformed, collapsed onto the bed, and started crying into the pillow until I fell asleep.

I was woken up by a truly awful arrangement of sounds. Are you familiar with the music that plays on some TV channels in the middle of the night if they don’t air anything? The kind that’s seemingly calm or cheerful, but it has just enough of a disturbing quality to it to make the kids who just need to go to the toilet creeped out and bring out the depressing thoughts about the finite nature of human existence, which I was sure was a normal experience for eight year olds to have? That was exactly the kind of tune I had set as my alarm. The hatred of it woke me up rather easily.

I didn’t feel either mentally or physically more rested than I did before my ten hour sleep — I didn’t know how this worked, and at that point, I just didn’t care. I got a glimpse of myself in a mirror on the way to the toilet, which reminded me that I was still, indeed, transformed; and on top of that, I was wearing a set of light blue and pastel pink pajamas with a pattern of white dots. Great. If I felt so garbage while I was still transformed… this was going to be a long day.

I had almost an hour to get ready for breakfast; I didn’t do anything during that time, and I still somehow managed to be late. Still not feeling particularly keen on the idea of eating, I just took a bun from a buffet and slapped some butter in it to avoid more painful stages of hunger. I also got bothered by the teacher, which wasn’t a big surprise given what I’d told her the day before, and that I looked even more like garbage than I usually did. She reluctantly let me go after I assured her that I didn’t have any physical symptoms or anything.

After the day of climbing, the plan was to have a more relaxed day of activities using some school sports equipment we were allowed to take for the trip, and there apparently was a nice flat field next to a forest just five minutes walk away. My plan for the day, of course, was to hide behind some tree and hope no one found me as I distracted myself with my phone. Unfortunately, certain people had other plans for me, as illustrated by Amy and Ruby cornering me next to a brick fence.

“There’s no point in asking, but are you okay?” Amy asked.

“No,” I answered.

She paused for a moment, before saying, “You seemed to be doing better yesterday when you were in your other form; why don’t you just do it again?”

Why was she…? That didn’t make any sense, why would she propose something like that? She did sound genuinely concerned, but she could still be hiding a part of the truth, for… reasons.

I didn’t have any idea what was going on, okay?

The only thing I knew was that I was a terrible person, and that I should probably shake my head to maintain any semblance of… the thing where people don’t hate you.

I might have shaken my head a bit too strongly, considering the hair that got in front of my eyes. Apparently, without even noticing or intending, I’d walked back far enough for my back to be against the fence.

“I… I scared you, I’m sorry. I just want to help, I promise,” Amy said.

I looked down, feeling kinda ashamed.

“Okay then, what about we do something else? Maybe some distractions will help you feel better,” Ruby proposed.

I looked up in confusion.

“You know, we could find some nice place to sit down, and just talk about stuff…” she started.

Was she actually suggesting this? What was she planning to do?

“...or watch some YouTube videos on one of our phones…”

That actually did sound kinda nice, enough for an image to form in my hea— Wait.

“...oh, Amy has a Switch, so we could also take turns playing that.”

Oh no, why did I have to imagine that, it was happening all over again! I couldn’t let it, not here, not then, not like that.

“We could also just sneak away, and go for a nice walk…”

Her hand was suddenly on the bricks next to my head; for stability she needed to lean in my direction the way she did. When did she get so close? And why was holding the transformation back so hard all of the sudden? I was supposed to have at least five minutes!

“...and maybe even find some nice little place…”

Why was her face so close to mine? What’s happening what’s happening whatsha—

“...where we’d have the privacy to do all sorts of things.”

The usual glow overtook my vision as I lost control. When I regained my ability to see, I found myself once again a head shorter than Ruby, which gave me some much-needed breathing room, since I’d apparently been unconsciously holding my breath, leaving me panting lightly.

Then I realized the implications of what just happened. If I somehow hadn’t completely screwed up before, that was the moment it all ended. I had to get out of there.

“Huh, so I guess that kinda confir—” Ruby started to speak, only to be interrupted by my sudden dash in the direction of the forest.

I didn’t know what I was doing, all I knew was that I had to find some place to hide. I couldn’t face them now that they knew how disgusting I really was. Now that they knew I couldn’t even hold a basic conversation without giving in to my stupid perverted thoughts and fantasies.

It wasn’t long after I ran into the forest that I started tripping up on things and had to stop. I sat on the ground with my back against a tree, and I noticed that I was shaking.

I was only able to take a couple deep breaths before a running person tripped and fell right next to me.

That was Ruby. Of course that was her, who else could it be…

“Shit,” she said as she got up and started shoving dirt off of herself before noticing me. “Hey…”

I just hugged my knees and looked the other way.

I heard her sit down against the same tree and say, “Sorry for putting you on the spot like that back there.”

“Why are you even here?” I asked.

“I… don’t understand. Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked.

“Because you already know how disgusting a person I am. You have all the reasons to stay as away from me as possible,” I answered.

After a bit of silence, she said, “Oooh… Okay, now I get it.”

“Wha?”

“Well, I didn’t know what was holding you back like that, but now I do, and lucky for you, I happen to be somewhat of an expert in that sort of stuff. You think you should have scared me away by now, but I’m still here and willing to help, if you’re okay with that,” she explained.

“...How would you help exactly?”

“Well, I was thinking I’d first ask some clarifying questions, if that’s okay,” she said.

I wasn’t sure I could trust her, but I also didn’t have much more to lose.

“Sure.”

“Okay then, let’s start with something simple — how was it like when you transformed for the first time? How did you react?” she asked.

I let out a long, concerning laugh. Close to the kind of laugh that older media would ascribe to a ‘crazy’ person.

“Is… is something wrong?” she asked, sounding concerned.

“Nah, you just… you just hit the big one.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“At this point I might as well, and you might actually have some answers, since I’m honestly confused why I’m like this,” I admitted, then after a bit of pause continued, “I… I first transformed when I was… masturbating… while imagining myself being a girl…”

“Oh.”

“Yeah… I think you’ve got all the possible dirt on me now,” I laughed bitterly, which sounded rather odd given the cute voice this form had.

“Okay, you wanted answers, so here’s one — contrary to what you just implied, there’s nothing wrong with what you admitted doing. You weren’t hurting anybody directly or indirectly, and let me assure you, you were not hurting or insulting some general concept of women or anything either. You were exploring your preferences, and that’s much healthier than forcing yourself to conform to what you’re ‘supposed’ to do. Hell, you might have even decided to finish the job afterwards, it’s still okay. It’s your body and you get to do with it whatever you want,” she explained.

My head felt like it was full of noise, but I also couldn’t grasp any actual thoughts. The worst part of it was, what she said actually made sense — the question was, whether it was the kind of stuff that seemed to make sense but was actually false, or if it was legitimate.

Either way, it didn’t really answer the important question — why.

“What—” I paused as I heard how shaky my voice was. “What else were you going to ask me?”

“Are you holding up alright? You know we don’t have to do it all now if it’s too much.” After a bit of silence, she continued, “But the next question would probably be if you had any… incidents before yesterday.”

I sighed. “Not really, I was pretty good at isolating myself and being unnoticed and stuff. The closest I ever got to something like that was when we had a class about puberty — for some reason, I almost immediately had to hold the transformation back and run to the toilet. Every time I changed back and gathered the confidence to go back to class, I suddenly transformed again; I ended up missing the whole thing and had to apologize to the teacher.”

I tried to recall any other thing that would qualify, then continued, “Besides that, there’s pretty much nothing. I could always hide in time, and my life was really uneventful for the last four years, and before that, for that matter. I just… go to school so my parents don’t pay more attention to me, I do the things that I need to survive, and distract myself from the fact I don’t really have anything else to do with my life. That’s all.”

“Amy told me that you were really depressed, but still, that’s… a lot. Are you sure you want to keep going?” Ruby asked.

“I mean, I don’t know how it sounds from your perspective, but for me it’s just normal. And besides, if you really have something important to say, I really want to hear it.”

“Okay then, we’re getting close, I promise — Do you ever stay transformed for longer than you need in order to change back?” she asked.

“When my parents aren’t home. It’s just… nice, not having to worry about the possibility of suddenly needing to transform…” I admitted.

“Is it really the only reason why?”

“You know the answer to that question.”

“Do I?”

“You were there yesterday when Amy said it. I feel better when I’m like this. I don’t know why, I know I shouldn’t, but for some reason, I can’t stop it even if I try.”

She gave that a couple of seconds before saying, “Okay then, if you know, then please tell me — why shouldn’t you?”

That one left me without words for a bit.

“I… I just know. I’ve known for as long as long as I’ve had these thoughts that I should hide them. So basically, I’ve known for as long as I can remember. I don’t know where I know it from, I just do.”

“Okay, that actually does paint a pretty clear picture.” She walked over to another tree and leaned against it so she could face me. “You, my dear, aren’t an awful person — in fact, you haven’t actually done anything wrong. What’s more, there actually is a single thing you are missing, an answer to why you feel the way you do. To put it simply, there is a demographic of people who feel better when they look like girls — it’s girls.”

“I-I… What?” I felt like I was floating.

“To put it simply, people feel happier when they’re more honest to themselves, and you don’t really have any other reason to feel the way you do when you’re transformed. It might seem to you like some of those things are just better, but trust me, it’s all subjective. Having a cute girly voice, or getting to be a small pretty girl aren’t things that guys want — I actually know a couple of guys who had the displeasure of getting to experience this sort of stuff, and it made them absolutely miserable,” she explained.

All the other times in my life when I felt confused, or at a loss for words, or unable to grasp any solid thoughts, I was wrong. This was the only time where I truly felt those things.

“But… I…”

“Okay, I probably shouldn’t make assumptions like that even if it’s so obvious, so how about we test it. You’ll just need to tell me how you feel when I say this: I think you make a very cute girl.”

My face was suddenly really warm, and for a couple of seconds I was struggling to figure out how the breathing worked again.

“I… I’m… Wha…” I had to take a couple of deep breaths before I could form words properly. “W-what is this… warm… fuzzy… feeling?”

“Does it feel nice?”

I nodded shyly.

“Then it’s most likely gender euphoria — the nice feeling people get when their true gender gets affirmed,” she explained.

What she said was… For some reason, even the thought about it possibly being true gave me more of that feeling, and that was a lot. I didn’t even know it was possible to... feel so much.

She then sat on the ground right in front of me, and took my hand.

“Hey, do you know what that means?” she asked, and squeezed my hand. “It means that you get to stay like this as much as you want, and there’s nothing wrong with it. You could even decide to never change back again from now on, and fully indulge in things that make you happy, and you’d still be doing nothing bad.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, “And I’ll tell you a secret: if you were to do that, nobody would really be able to make you stop.”

I had to try really hard to focus and brush aside all the mess going on in my head, but I needed to know.

“I… Is… Is what you’re saying… r-really true?” I sounded so small and shaky.

“I promise that I’m telling you the truth, and I know it must be so scary not being able to know for sure after so long, but… Okay, remember when I told you that I’m an expert in that sort of stuff? I said that, because at one point I went through the same thing you’re going through. I mean, not literally, I didn’t get an ability to transform like you did, I had to take the route most people take when they don’t look like the gender they are, but… I also used to look like a boy. I used to think I was a boy, until puberty started, and I realized that I absolutely hated it. Every new thing, new expectation, new change that came at me felt like a stab in the chest, and I swore to myself I would do everything I could to stop it, so I started looking for the answers. It wasn’t long before I found out about possibility of being transgender, or trans for short, which basically is the word for people who aren’t the gender they were assigned at birth. At first, I thought I just hated what I was given instead of being something else, but when I actually considered what I’d want in place of what I had, it all suddenly made sense. I’m a girl. And I found out there were treatments that would actually give me girl puberty instead, which worked out pretty well if I do say so myself,” she said.

I couldn’t even begin to count how many times I’d become more and more speechless that day. But I didn’t need to speak, I just had to think.

So Ruby was like me then? Wait, that implied that I was like her. Was I? I… wanted to be like her. And if she was really telling me the truth, that was enough for me to be like her. During this entire conversation, I’d been trying my best to not process what it all actually meant for me. Before, I didn’t even realize how much better being in this form could be, because I never allowed myself to think of it as a real option, but now… I wanted to be like this. I wanted to be small and soft and wear cute clothes and… I wanted to be a girl. Not just on the outside, but also on the inside. And it was apparently a possibility. I could actually look at my own essence of self, and have it be ‘girl’.

That last thought filled me with so much joy I couldn’t help but smile. At some point, I didn’t even know when, tears started streaming down my face, and Ruby enveloped me in a hug very soon after. In the embrace, I could feel that I was smaller than her, and that made me even happier.

I couldn’t tell you how long I spent crying, but I knew it wasn’t short. When I finished recovering, and confirmed with Ruby that I’d indeed ‘had the realization’, we decided to go back to Amy. Knowing who I was, and knowing that my ability gave me power to do it, I changed my clothes into something I could feel comfortable with — a slightly too big hoodie and some loose pants.

Ruby said that she’d explain what had happened to Amy. Apparently, all she had to do for that was to call me ‘she’. It’s also all she had to do to make me feel all fuzzy again.

“I wanted to apologize,” Amy started, “for being so pushy before, and yesterday for that matter. I just… I hate to see people hurt, and I want to help when I see it happen, and it sometimes leads me to go too far when people refuse to do things that would make them feel better, even though I know that I can’t force it and that people often have their reasons. So yeah, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’m honestly pretty grateful. I just didn’t think anyone would care,” I responded.

“Aww, don’t worry. I care, we both do,” Amy said.

I decided to grab my chance and ask the question that was bothering me while I could still do it. “Umm… There’s this thing… Could we maybe try to do the thing where at some point in the future we might become… f-friends? I know it’s a weird thing to ask and I probably did it wrong but I don’t really know how this stuff works and—”

I was interrupted by Ruby’s hand suddenly being on top of my head. “Hey,” she said. “We absolutely can do that thing.”

“Totally, I can already tell that you’ll be just a delight to be around,” Amy added.

“And, just for the record, it wasn’t weird — it was adorable,” Ruby said.

I unwillingly let out a long squeak and covered my rapidly heating-up face with my hands.

“I take it we can now sit down and relax?” Amy asked.

I took a deep breath.

“Actually...” I peeked out from behind my hands. “There’s one more thing I wanted to do before that if that’s okay.”

Changing back was both harder and easier than it used to — harder, because I actually knew what I was losing, and easier, because I was only doing it so that I could change back and be myself without the nerves, which was a thing I actually allowed myself to have now.

After Ruby assured me that our class’s main teacher would be cool with telling her about me, we took her aside where no one else could see me transform again.

“So what is it, and why does it require being hidden like this?” she asked.

I hesitated to use my old voice, which, I now realized, sounded terrible to my ears.

“It’s about my ability,” I said.

“I was under the impression that you were my only student that didn’t have one of those.” She raised her eyebrow.

“I… haven’t told anybody about it,” I admitted.

“And why would you do that?” she asked.

I’d thought I was ready for this. I’d thought I could just quickly do it and get it over with, but I couldn’t. Not using that voice. It felt wrong to say it like that.

My thoughts were interrupted by Ruby’s hand on my shoulder. When I turned to her, she said, “You can just show her.”

I nodded, and started the transformation.

I didn’t know if it was something new, or if I just hadn’t noticed before, but the process felt like the most natural thing in the world. The familiar light faded, and just like that, everything was right again.

The teacher looked at me for several seconds, and then gazed over to Ruby and said, “So that’s why you’re here.” She then looked back to me, and took a step towards me. “So what was your reason to think hiding it was a good idea?”

“I… I was scared. I was scared that I was doing something wrong and that people would get mad at me and… and…” By the end of that explanation I was starting to sound very scared.

She let out a big sigh, walked to be right in front of me, lowered herself to my eye level, and said, “Don’t worry, you don’t need to be scared anymore.” She put her hand on my arm and squeezed it. “I take it that you want to stay like this now?”

I nodded.

“I can’t promise that everything will go without any issues, but there’s things I can do to make it easier for you to deal with your parents. That’s for the future though — for now, go spend time with your classmates and try not to worry too much, okay?”

A tiny smile crept onto my face as I nodded.

I could have very easily thought about so many things: my parents, logistics of what my change would affect; hell, I actually had a future I could look forward to, and that included so many potential things I couldn’t even begin to list them. It was somewhat tempting to indulge, but I decided to instead listen to the advice — I didn’t know what the future would bring, but for now, I was going to enjoy myself for the first time in a really, really long time.