Rowena was startled awake by a recording of a trumpet playing reveille, played over the camp intercom. Her eyes protested as soon as she opened them, as the pale morning sunlight was shining directly through the window onto her face.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes before releasing a large yawn which caused every corner of her little body to shiver. She really shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night.

She had been reading about the local flora and fauna last night after everyone else had gone to bed. She should have slept too, but well, it was just so interesting. It was also topical too, she rationalized, seeing as they were literally camping in the very forests she was learning about. She had had no idea just how interconnected nature and these forests were to the Magisphere. So many species of animals and even plants around here supposedly had been recorded using it to communicate, or sense prey, or find environmental conditions that were suitable for nesting, and so on. Now that she really thought about it, humans were kind of really the only complex species she could think of that couldn’t use, or really even sense the Magisphere in any way. Why was that?

As Rowena was still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and internally pleading with her body to get out of bed, she felt the brush of another pixie’s wings hustle past her, followed by the small muttering of Eve’s voice.

She absently wondered if Eve would use that illusion spell to look like a catgirl again today. That was really nice. Perhaps she could request--

What was she thinking? No! No no no no no! Not doing that! Not a chance! Rowena was already way too embarrassed with the way she had reacted yesterday! What would cause her to think such a ridiculous thing?

She stood up and bounced on her toes a little to shake out the drowsiness, and to distract herself.

“This is it, this is it, this is it!” Eve rambled, a bit louder this time. She paced back and forth along the little shelf where the pixie beds were located, her long blue hair fluttering with every step. She wore a set of pajamas with adorable kittens on them.

“What is?” Rowena asked, raising her hand and waving timidly. Across the cubby by the window, wearing a simple black camisole, Sybil sat up and yawned.

“The Canoe Free-for-All!” Eve said, giving Rowena a look as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I am so ready for this!” She pumped her fist.

“Wow, I couldn’t even tell,” Sybil muttered drowsily.

“Are you kidding?” Eve said, oblivious to her sister’s sarcasm. “I’ve been waiting to get in the lake all week! You remember that new swimsuit I got a couple weeks ago? The one I had to basically beg Mom to let me get, cause she thought it was ‘too immodest?' I’ve been absolutely dying to use it!”

“No shit . . .” Sybil mumbled, rubbing her eyes.

“That, and I really took to heart what Jeremy said yesterday,” Eve continued. “We gotta get back at Team Red, fair and square today.” Her eyes darkened and the corner of her mouth twisted into a mean grin. “We need to murder them.”

Rowena’s eyes widened. “Murder . . . them?” she faintly asked.

“I don’t mean literally!” Eve corrected, waving her hands. “Like, we just gotta crush them in the competition. Absolutely destroy them. I can’t let Katelyn be the only one throwing hands around here!”

Even after the clarification, Rowena still felt unsure about the level of violence Eve was willing to commit against Team Red today. Sure, she loathed the girls on Team Red as much as any of her other friends, but after what had happened yesterday, she hoped Eve wouldn’t do anything irrational.

“Hmm, I think I’mma go put my swimsuit on right now,” Eve commented, before practically diving behind her curtains.

“You know the canoe thing doesn’t start until this afternoon, right?” Sybil called out half-heartedly, before flopping back down onto her bed.

No answer from behind the curtain.

Rowena had some concerns. Mostly about, well, water. She wasn’t exactly a fan of the stuff. She could swim well enough, and knew logically that she couldn’t be harmed in any meaningful way if she fell in, but . . . she just didn’t like it, okay? Water was filled with big swimming things that might want to eat her, and visibility was so low and it was so dark. Something could literally be swimming a couple yards away and she wouldn't be able to see it. It was just . . . nope. Just a big nope for her. She hoped that she didn’t chicken out by the time the canoe activity actually happened.

Eve stepped out, wearing a monokini that was sky-blue at the top and faded into more of a peacock blue towards the bottom, with mint-green accents. It had an asymmetric shape, with one shoulder strap and cutouts in such a way that made it look as if the entire garment were wrapping around her in a spiral, covering some parts for modesty and leaving so many others deliciously bare.

Rowena’s breath caught in her throat, and a flash of heat washed over her from head to toe.

It should be illegal, nay, downright impossible for someone to look so damn hot from just a single piece of clothing! Rowena wanted to avert her eyes as warmth pooled in her cheeks, but she couldn’t bring herself to look away. What was wrong with her? She’d seen plenty of girls naked before, why was this getting her worked up all of the sudden?

“Soooo?” Eve asked Rowena, “what do you think?” She grinned and leaned forward, causing her long hair to tumble all over her shoulders. Rowena thought she might die of heat stroke.

Rowena stammered. “It’s really . . . really, uhhh . . .”

Fantastic! Amazing! The hottest fucking thing I think I’ve ever seen!

“It’s really pretty,” Rowena managed to choke out.

Eve beamed, and Rowena felt all sorts of weird things fluttering around in her gut.

“Hey,” Sybil commented, standing up and pulling on a pair of shorts. “You better put something on over that before we go to breakfast. Not sure how people would react with you flittering around camp half-naked.”

Eve squared her shoulders in protest, placing her hands on her tantalizingly bare hips. Her eyes flickered over to Rowena for just a moment.

“You’d attract a lot of attention,” Sybil said, then lowered her eyes and smiled mischievously, “especially from boys.”

Eve crinkled her nose and her face twisted into a sour expression. “Ugh, fine then.”

She grabbed a pair of sweat pants and morosely pulled them on, then fished a wrinkled t-shirt out of her duffel bag and tossed it over her head.

Such an injustice, Rowena thought, hiding something so beautiful under such bland clothing.

What? No! Rowena just thought that it was a pretty swimsuit. Objectively. Nothing more. And Eve was just a pretty girl. Completely objectively. From an unbiased scientific observation point, she was just very attractive.

If one were to conduct a study, following all the rules of the scientific method and the peer review process, it would conclusively point to Eve being an incredibly attractive girl, that was all. Just facts, nothing more.

Yes, Rowena just needed to approach things logically. And the logical thing to do here was to ignore whatever the fuck this was that she was feeling right now.

 

The rest of that morning, Rowena spent her time trying to bury her thoughts about Eve, as well as her anxieties about the upcoming canoe showdown, mostly unsuccessfully. The morning passed slowly, but eventually lunch came and went, and she, along with the rest of Team Indigo, found themselves standing near the shore of Wildwood Lake, listening to Jeremy spout off directions. Ten beaten-up, native style canoes with raised tips laid side by side across the shoreline, paddles sitting inside.

The sun was high in the sky, and the temperature had risen to a near-blistering level. It was hot, and cooling off in the lake sounded like the perfect thing to do right now. She just wished that she could do it safely by the shore. Y’know, in shallow water, not extremely deep, center-of-the-lake, nightmare water.

The group received life-jackets, appropriately sized for both species. Putting hers on, Rowena looked down at her body in melancholy. She’d always felt self-conscious about her weight, even though she’d been told innumerable times that she was perfectly healthy. It wasn’t like pixies could really go on a diet, they didn’t eat food and got their nutrition by literally breathing, which was something she couldn’t really stop doing. But still, she looked at Eve, who was so athletic and was wearing the most gorgeous swimsuit she’d ever seen; and with her boring black one-piece and chubby exterior, Rowena just felt so . . . ugly.

Even the others in the group were doing better than she. Sybil wore a black one-piece as well, but it had a much more flattering design, and had polka dots on it too. Katelyn wore a triangle bikini top paired with boyshorts, and August had even removed most of his layers and wore a pair of green shorts with a simple white shirt. Rowena could clearly see the lighter patches of his skin through it. He seemed more confident in general too.

And then there was Eve, who was glowing. Well, she glowed all the time because she was a pixie of course, but well, she was glowing in demeanor too. Damn that girl! Rowena felt so boring and stupid by comparison.

“Hey.” It was Eve’s voice. Oh no, had Rowena been staring this whole time?

“You look cute,” Eve said, smiling genuinely.

Oh no.

Oh fuck no. The absolute audacity of this girl.

“What?” Rowena fumbled, struggling for words. “What makes you say that?”

“I dunno, because you're cute?” Eve responded, shrugging. “And I thought you should know?”

Fuck. How was this girl so sincere? Why was she so perfect?

Rowena felt like crying. “Thanks,” she hastily said, plastering her concentration on buckling up her orange life vest to avoid letting Eve see the tears welling up in her eyes.

“Campers!” The voice of Jeremy speaking through a megaphone rang in everyone’s ears. “Okay, in just a second here, you teams are gonna get your canoes and head out into the water. Humans, you each get a paddle and will be in charge of rowing! Pixies, for you little folks there’s a magic-powered water cannon at the front, middle, and back of the canoe! You guys just pump magic into those babies and they’ll shoot water from the lake at the other teams! Your goal is to sink all the other teams and be the last one floating! And the winner, whoever that may be,”--Jeremy paused dramatically--“will gain this!”

From behind his back, Jeremy whipped out an old toilet plunger, spray painted with gold and covered in various signatures written in permanent marker.

“The famous Wildwood Golden Plunger! The team who wins gains ownership of it for the rest of the week! You'll get first dibs on meals, and you can brag and gloat as much as you want!”

A fancy toilet plunger? Well, that was dumb. Certainly not worth braving a large body of water over.

“Guys, we have to get that plunger,” Katelyn whispered.

Rowena sighed internally. This was just the kind of pointless, gimmicky, tongue-in-cheek object her sister would always fall in love with. She would always find the most random useless knick-knacks in the weirdest of places and bring them home. Sheesh, and people said pixies were the ones who liked collecting shiny objects.

“Alright everyone!” Jeremy shouted, getting obviously more excited. “Once you’re out on the lake, I’ll bang this giant pot as hard as I can,”--he gestured to a conspicuous pot hanging off one of the dock posts--“and that’s your signal to let the games begin! NOW LET’S GO!!”

Mayhem erupted as all of the teams clambered over each other to get to the canoes and get them out into the water.

“C’mon, we gotta go!” Eve exclaimed, flying back and forth, as if her pure force of will would cause Rowena and her teammates to move faster.

“It’s not a race, you know?” Sybil commented. “They don’t start the free-for-all until all of us are out on the water.”

“I know, but . . . just, ah . . . ugh!” Eve practically vibrated as the rest of her team casually walked towards the canoes.

Rowena smiled. Eve’s energy always lifted her spirits. If there was a pixie Rowena would be willing to challenge her thalassophobia and hop into a canoe floating over a giant lake with, it would be her.

Damn, things were getting really confusing.

Rowena had kinda known in the back of her head for a long time that she wasn’t entirely straight, but until recently it had stayed back there, comfortable to hide in the peripherals of her consciousness. But then Eve had reached back there, yanked it from its hiding spot, and dangled it in front of Rowena’s face to the point where she could no longer ignore it. At the very least, Rowena wasn’t particularly torn up over the revelation; her companion Katelyn was both trans and bi, and their family was supportive, so she really didn’t have much to fear on that end. Rowena didn’t know exactly what kind of sexual identity she had, but apparently she was into much more than just boys.

See, when Kate had transitioned, she had very much stayed the same person as she was before. She was still laid-back and goofy, and enjoyed a lot of the same general masculine interests as before, but apparently it just seemed that she’d rather enjoy all those things as a girl instead of a boy. Eve, however, was completely different. Ever since her transformation, as she became more comfortable in her skin, Eve had grown and blossomed, and changed in so many ways for the better. It wasn’t like she was a completely different person now, but it was like . . . like her personality before was just a sketch, and now it was a full painting, full of vibrancy and color. It was like the Eve that Rowena knew as a human two years ago was only partially finished. And this new Eve, well, Rowena was feeling very attracted to.

That caused a whole heap of problems. Not so much over being attracted to another girl, she was fine with that. Everyone in her life was apparently gay or trans or some sort of queer, why shouldn’t she be?

No, what Rowena was most torn up over, was how complicated and weird things would get in a relationship with Eve. Traditionally, the perfect relationship was what was commonly referred to as a “two-by-two”, where the two humans would pair up and the two pixies would pair up, forming a nice love square. Because a bonded human and pixie are essentially two faces of the same coin, if one species was pining for each other, then it wasn’t too difficult for the others to form a romantic, or at least friendly relationship with each other. In fact, a common sign of deeper troubles to come in a relationship was if one of the two pairs hated each other’s guts. Those usually ended in divorce, or cheating, or all manner of problems.

But when they worked out, two-by-two relationships were so clean and pretty, the types you see in Hollywood movies and wedding photoshoots. Religions across the world adamantly claimed that the only God-sanctioned relationships were heterosexual two-by-two's. They were the standard; the default. And well, what Rowena was dealing with here was anything but.

For one thing, Eve was pair-bonded with another pixie, and while human-pixie relationships did happen, they were seen as sexually deviant, and honestly the thought of Katelyn and Sybil being in a relationship together made Rowena’s brain feel itchy. Besides, sure, Kate and Sybil were friends, but really the strongest ties were between Kate and Eve; they were best friends. Rowena and Sybil were good friends too, maybe not quite as chummy as the other two, but still good friends.

And now here Rowena was, pining across the metaphorical table for someone that she had only marginally considered a friend two years ago.

That wasn’t even mentioning the absolute shockwave she would send through the group dynamic if she and Eve got together. When two people pair up, there’s automatically a level of pressure on everyone else bonded to them to start forming relations, and she really didn’t want to make things awkward for the rest of everyone.

Well, Rowena also couldn’t forget that it had been a childhood dream of hers to get married into a perfect two-by-two, ever since she was a little girl. She’d always imagined herself at the wedding, wearing a beautiful white gown that hung several inches, perhaps even a foot or more past her feet, floating across from the man of her dreams. Just below them would be Kate and her partner, although when Rowena was dreaming up these fantasies as a child she still imagined Kate as a boy. Perhaps they would be married on the beach down south, or perhaps in an old brick church, with the sunlight dazzling through the stained glass windows. Or perhaps most of all, she would love to have the ceremony in the forest, with moss draping over every branch, every stone, carpeting every surface.

As she thought more and more about these old dreams, her mind--in what could only be described as an act of treachery--began to fill Eve into the place of Rowena’s conceived soulmate. She imagined that smile across the aisle from her, Eve sending her encouragement without even talking. Would Eve wear a long beautiful dress like Rowena, or something shorter and cuter? Or perhaps even a suit, though she doubted Eve would ever touch one of those again. Would she be excited and energetic, or emotional like Rowena no doubt would be?

What?

What the hell? Where was she letting her mind wander off to?

Back to reality, Rowena.

She shook her head to clear herself from what she referred to as one of her “mindbreaks,” where she got lost in her own thoughts and forgot about what was going on around her. She took in her surroundings, and unfortunately realized that she was now sitting on the stern of the canoe, holding onto what could be compared to a pixie-sized anti-aircraft turret made from home depot supplies. And now, she was being paddled most certainly against her will, towards the center of the lake.

Slowly and forebodingly, the shoreline drifted away from her. As the distance between them grew, so did the pit in her stomach.

Against her better judgment, she ventured a look over the edge, into the water.

Her arcane fluids curdled.

Holy fuck, the water was so clear! And that was most definitely not a good thing! She could see all the way to the bottom, which had to be several yards down, and she swore she saw the moving shadows of large fish and god knows what else. Tendrils of aquatic plants reached up from the lakebed, like horrible grasping, pulsating fingers, waiting to drag her down into the abyss.

Sucking in a huge breath, she plastered herself against August’s back--who sat one seat ahead of her. It was the furthest point from any boat’s edge she could find.

Okay Rowena, stay calm. All you have to do is survive and you can go back to the shore soon enough.

Yes, she just needed to survive, and she would be fine.

CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG!! The sounds of the pot being bashed by Jeremy echoed across the lake.

Immediately a jet of water originating from a nearby canoe swept across her team, shooting just barely over Rowena’s head and pelting August right in the face.

Oh god.

Rowena was going to die.