DOORS SLAMMED WITHIN THE PALACE OF THE FAITH, home of the higher clergy of Goddess Caelista, located on the outskirts of Dorea, capital to the human kingdom of Prisma.

Lady Saintess Seraphina Ascent burst out into the outer courtyard. Simple white robes and long blond hair billowed in her wake like a comet’s tail; a pendant of the goddess bounced between her half-melon breasts with each furious step; fierce determination burned in her sky blue eyes and in every trait of her beautiful and noble face.

“Lady Saintess! Lady Saintess! Please!” A petite, round, and out-of-breath brunette priestess struggled to keep up with Seraphina’s long legs. “Milady, please reconsider!”

The saintess stopped and did an abrupt turnabout. The tip of her index finger grazed the chubby priestess’ nose, forcing her to a halt. “No, Annie! I will not compromise. This is an immoral practice, contrary to our goddess’ teachings, and I won’t stand idly by while these… these… people buy and sell others like cattle! So I am going, to put an end to that… auction, and that’s final!”

“B-But His Excellency Lue said–”

“I do not take orders from Archbishop Lue.” Seraphina crossed her arms under her chest, making it stand out some more. A flush filled Annie’s cheeks as her eyes struggled to stay on the saintess’ face. “The Goddess’ approval is all I require, Annie, and she is with me in this. I can feel it.” She placed her fingers above her left breast, where a soft warmth pulsed in rhythm with a foreign heartbeat.

“B-B-But…” Annie stammered, moisture in her eyes and her chubby cheeks trembling from nervousness. “Sera, please…”

“Annie.” Seraphina’s hand landed gently on her friend’s shoulder. A kind smile illuminated her face, one people claimed made her look like the goddess incarnate. Furthering the image was the soft inner glow within the saintess’ eyes, filling them with ancient wisdom beyond her years. Even her voice seemed to reverberate faintly.

Annie could only stare at her, transfixed.

“Annie,” the saintess repeated. “I know His Excellency put you by my side to report my movements and actions to him.” The priestess opened her mouth to protest, but Seraphina pressed a finger on her lips, causing her blush to deepen. “Shush. Don’t deny it. I know, and I do not resent you for it. Spy or not, you are my friend. I know which pastries you love most and how you cry reading silly romance novels. You know of my fears and loves, of my nightmares and dreams.

“But understand, as you have your beliefs, so have I mine which I cannot compromise upon. Shall the Faith become fractured by my actions, it will only highlight the cracks I already can perceive.” She cupped the brunette’s cheek. “Trust me?”

Annie stared at her target, her friend and her crush, in search of any weakness in Seraphina’s solid mask of conviction. Finding none, the chubby priestess lowered her head. “As you wish…” she mumbled numbly.

“Not my wish.” Seraphina straightened her back and looked out towards the capital, at the white spires of the Great Caelista Cathedral, visible even over the high city walls. “All is the Goddess’ Will,” she whispered in the breeze.

Her words hung around them like heavy weights.

Then Seraphina’s aura of divinity dissipated. She spun around, once more heading fast towards the carriage waiting for them at the compound’s gates. “Come on, Annie,” she laughed. “You wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity to report all about my outrageous disruption of public order. Would you?” The other followed mutely, face down and hidden by her curly brown hair.

The carriage driver was one Seraphina had never met before. Not thinking much of it, she greeted the man with a smile and stepped inside… only to freeze. There was a stranger seated on one of the opposing benches. That alone wasn’t enough to shock her. But the purple cloak hanging loose on his thin frame and the white mask painted with a red mouth hiding his face did.

Suspicious! Danger! Her mind screamed, and she started backing out.

“Oh, Saintess,” the masked man spoke in a mellow baritone. “I’m afraid there’s been a slight change in itinerary. Annie, was it? Be a dear.”

“Wha–” Before Seraphina could articulate her stupor, a small hand reached from behind her and pressed a cloth over her mouth and nose, both suffocating and silencing her. At the same time, a cold needle stabbed into the base of her neck, and a burning icy fluid was pumped into her veins.

Seraphina was pushed inside the carriage, her vision already swimming. She only had the strength to shift and stare in incomprehension at Annie. Her friend returned a scarily empty gaze, though it overflowed with silent tears, as she shut the cabin door and locked Seraphina in with the masked man.

The unknown driver whipped the reins, and the carriage rolled off, carting the humming Voice of Tarjan and his unconscious holy captive away from the city.

♦ ♦ ♦

“So, when a cis gay man refuses to sleep with transmen, is that transphobic?”

Wald’s teeth screeched to a halt against the crumb of his ham & cheese. If he’d be drinking, it would have made for a pretty Olympic spit take. Now, reluctantly, his eyes rose from the novel he’d been reading on his phone, moving to the round freckled face across from him, at the table of the tiny staff breakroom of Burt’s Big Burgers.

Twenty-six years of piss and vinegar in a meat suit, Tiphany Jenkins stared back over her own dinner—a small salad—with that intense expression of angry bitterness she seemed to forever wear as a coat of arms. The red and blue striped uniform stamped BBB that marked her as his colleague hung loose on her shoulders, two sizes too big, since anything more form-fitting would be “endorsing the Patriarchy.”

You could actually hear the capitalisation in her voice when she spat those words out like a curse.

With every fibre of his being, Wald would have preferred not to engage with the woman on any level. Back when he’d first started working here, he’d naively tried to argue lightly that not every piece of entertainment needed to teach a valuable moral lesson, and that not all fictional main characters needed to be role models. That conversation wasn’t an experience he’d care to relive.

Unfortunately, Tiphany would always interpret silence as disregard for her cause and a tacit condemnation of her opinions, and that wasn’t something you’d want either.

Wald swallowed a sigh, for lack of sandwich. “Aaadunno… Not everyone’s attracted to everyone. Isn’t that how it works?” he spoke blithely. He kept his answer non-committal, ending in a question to seem more receptive than I was, while also taking care not to contradict her directly. People are tiring, he lamented inside. Can’t we just all agree these things are on an abstract spectrum and leave it at that? Stop getting so angry all the time? Life was too short to spend it stressed out and pissed off.

At least, that was his take.

Besides, even if he was willing to launch into a debate over the nature of gender, sexuality, and hatemongering during his fifteen-minute break in the too-hot and smelly back room of a glorified fast-food joint… Tiphany would be close to his last chosen interlocutor. Only slightly preferable to a religious fanatic with a gun.

Tiphany had no gun.

Has SJWism be recognised as a religion already?

“That’s not the point!” Tiphany stabbed her salad with a wooden fork. “You can’t discriminate people based on the gender they were assigned at birth! That’s criminal!”

“Doesn’t being gay means you’re attracted to the same sex, you know, physically? I’m not sure gender has anything to do with that…” Wald spoke distractedly, looking longingly at his phone, also very aware of the clock’s loud ticking above the doorframe.

“Ugh.” Tiphany rolled her eyes with all the drama of a Shakespearean actress. “You’re so unevolved.”

Wald finally let out that sigh he’d been holding back. “Why do you talk to me? You can’t stand me.”

“Well, Willy, someone needs to educate men like you on your own primitiveness.”

“Oh, shut your trap, dickhead.”

Wald hadn’t said that.

The culprit was the blond new hire, who’d entered the room without either the others noticing. Two pairs of eyes shifted to the waitress, Wald’s wide like she’d just cut the wrong wire in a bomb-defusing scene, and Tiphany reacting like she’d just spotted the antichrist eating a baby seal.

The redhead stood abruptly, nearly toppling her chair. She slammed her palms atop the table. “WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL ME?!”

“I call ‘em as I see them.” Without a care in the world, the blonde strutted to the small buzzing staff fridge and bent down to retrieve something inside. Wald couldn’t help peeking at how this pulled her loose shorts taunt across her firm ass, before he became suddenly very engrossed with his sandwich. The blonde continued, “I firmly believe God had me born with a dick so that I knew to spot one when I saw one.”

Wald bit his tongue, then his ham & cheese tried to choke him by invading his windpipe. He managed to disguise his coughs as a chuckle, earning a raised eyebrow from one woman while the other was too busy opening and closing her mouth like a fish on dry land.

“…What?!” Tiphany finally croaked out.

The casual smile the blonde had been sporting faded as she stared hard at the redhead. A fist settled on her cocked hip, while her other hand accusingly held a Tupperware. “You know, it’s exactly because of dicks like you that smart and caring people with actual valid arguments get written off as jokes. All you care about is putting others down to make yourself feel special and find an outside culprit for your sad, empty life. So please, do shut the fuck up.”

Wald held his breath, half expecting a lighting strike to hit the building—despite the suffocatingly bright weather.

“W-Why, I never!” Tiphany seemed to struggle to breathe. Then, scooping up her salad, she threw her chin up and strode out the room, hissing between her teeth. “The ingratitude!” With her back turned, she missed the blonde flipping her the bird.

Then the waitress dropped in the recently vacated seat across Wald, all smiles again. She beamed at the petrified man, whose brainpower was scattered between part fearing the apocalyptical mood Tiphany would sport for the rest of the week, part on the fact a beautiful woman was smiling at him, and part on that offhand dick comment that prompted his food’s assassination attempt.

“Hi! I don’t think we’ve been introduced yet. I’m Ariel.” His new tablemate reached over said table, and Wald numbly shook her hand.

“Wald,” he monosyllabled, then dumbly added, “Ariel, like–”

“Disney’s little mermaid, yes,” Ariel deadpanned.

“…I was going to say the archangel,” he returned in the same tone.

“No you weren’t.”

“I wasn’t,” he admitted.

She snickered. “You’re a funny guy, ain’t ya?”

“I try.” He shrugged with affected false modesty, hoping the act would cover up his awkwardness.

“I see…” She raised an eyebrow while popping open her Tupperware, revealing artfully prepared pasta. “But should you be joking about other people’s names? Mr Willy Wald?”

Ugh. Did she hear Tiphany say it? Wald cringed, then sunk in his chair, pouting. “I like The Little Mermaid,” he mumbled, a faint embarrassed blush on his cheeks.

Ariel nodded wisely. “Then I shan’t smite thee with mine archangelical powers.”

Wald bowed with all the solemnity he could muster. “Praise thee.”

“You may.” She struck a haughty pose, gesturing like some grand and magnanimous court lady. Her androgynous voice and facial features actually worked well in the role of the holier-than-thou Archangel Ariel.

After a beat of silence, both melted into chuckles.

“You made an enemy today,” Wald eventually sighed.

“Meh.” Ariel shrugged. Long manicured fingers fluttered dismissively. “I’ll only be here until college resumes. The bitch can lick my ass for all I care.”

And what an ass, Wald thought before catching himself. What an ass, he repeated, this time with a completely different meaning.

“How is she even working here with an attitude like that?” The question snapped Wald out of his momentary introspection.

He shrugged helplessly. “She’s the owner’s niece.”

“Burt’s?”

“Aye.”

“Poor man.”

“Aye.”

Silence returned, the conversation running dry. Ariel looked occupied with her meal, and Wald nibbled on the last bits of his murderous sandwich while casting what he hoped were discreet glances across the table.

Ariel’s shoulder-length blond hair was smooth and lustrous. As someone who took some care of his own long hair, Wald couldn’t help feeling jealous. Her eyes were a sparkling forest green. Her face was angular, but in a way that made her look sharp—like a female spy in a Hollywood blockbuster—and she had a bit of a cleft chin. Her androgynous features, instead of making her gender uncertain, were more akin to an ambiguous optical illusion. One blink, she’d look mannish, but the faintest tilt of the head brought her femininity right back to the forefront. It was pretty disconcerting.

Her body was slender, narrow-shouldered and long-limbed. Her chest was two slight bumps that only became visible when her shirt shifted. Wald couldn’t help idly wondering whether these were from an operation, hormonal treatment, simple padding, or if he was utterly off-the-mark altogether. Height-wise, Ariel might have him beat, but they’d never been standing next to each other, so again, he was only guessing.

However, despite his best efforts, there was one thing that his mind kept coming back to.

“Do you really–” Wald blurted out, then caught himself. “Sorry. Never mind me. I’m just thinking out loud.” He could feel warmth flushing his cheeks. That would have been rude. It’s none of my business. He glanced at the clock. I should get back to work.

Looking to excuse himself, Wald caught Ariel’s knowing and slightly devilish smile. “Now, wouldn’t you want to know?” She chuckled as she uncorked a steel water bottle and took several large swigs. Watching her throat contract repeatedly to gulp down the water made Wald himself swallow.

What the fuck am I doing? He shook his head and stood, about to leave the room.

“Ahhh… I needed that. Fucking heat.” Ariel wiped a bit of spill off her chin. “But sorry, ‘bout that thing, that’s usually not something I share before at least a couple of dates,” she said with good humour and a wink.

Again, Wald found himself speaking without thinking. Must have been the heat. “Would a burger count? On me? After the shift?” Meanwhile, his brain was shouting in blind panic, asking what the Hell he thought he was doing?!

If Wald had to sincerely guess, about 5% was him joking and another 5% going with the flow. About 20% was pure curiosity. He couldn’t help himself. But at least 60% were a mixture of his subconscious acknowledging he might be feeling lonelier than he was willing to admit, that Ariel was beautiful and witty, that she was elegant yet swore without restraint, and that she didn’t seem to find his presence too objectionable.

The remaining 10% were screaming in panic, [ABORT ABORT ABORT ABORT!!] with nuclear plant alarm horns and submarine emergency sirens. [PEEPOO!! PEEPOO!! ABANDON SHIP!! ABANDON SHIP!!]

Then Ariel’s next words poured cold water on Wald’s overheating CPU.

“Sorry. I’m vegan.”

“…oh.” Wald blinked. Relief and Disappointment fought a war in the short-circuited ruins of his brain. Curiosity used the opportunity to slip out between the fighting titans. “Then… why? Here?” He gestured around, encompassing the burger joint beyond the breakroom walls.

She shrugged. “Rent and college debts don’t care about cows nor my blood pressure. So I take what I can get. Pragmatism versus idealism, all that jizz, you know?”

“Ah, fair.” He could sympathise. College, uh? Right, she mentioned that. He wondered how old Ariel was. She couldn’t be more than a couple of years younger than him, four at most, somewhere between twenty-six and ­-eight. How long was it since he’d last thought of college? He tried to avoid doing it much since he’d dropped out. It killed his mood. Wait, did she say– Ah, never mind. “…right. Right. Then I’ll… err…”

Eyeing the door, he wondered how to make an exit that didn’t look like he was running away. Ariel had not technically shut him down, but he’d already used all of his courage and/or temporary heat-stroke insanity with that first offer, and he needed to leave before his face self-combusted.

“You know…” Ariel’s voice stopped him dead again. Though for the first time, her tone carried a slight uncertainty. Her long index finger was running nervous circles over the wet mouth of her water bottle. “There’s a movie that comes out this week. I was planning to go check it out on Saturday. Want to tag along? It’s a bit of a chick flick, but we can go for drinks afterwards?” She looked at him in a way that might have been hopeful.

“O-Okay.” Wald’s mouth was dry.

“Great!” Ariel slapped the table then pointed at him. “Don’t worry, buddy, I’ll hug you all better if you start crying like a little girl during the movie.” Her smile was cocky, and Wald thought he had to have imagined the vulnerability just now.

“Right…” he drawled and moved for the door. “See you Saturday, then!”

She leant on her fist. “We’re still working together for the rest of the week, you know?”

“Ah… right.” Wald scratched his head awkwardly. His face was a tomato; he just knew it. His eyes caught the clock. “But I really need to get back to work, so… See ya, Ariel.”

“Bye, Wald,” she chuckled, wiggling her finger prettily.

His face going through at least a dozen different expressions and colours, Wald finally retreated out of the stuffy breakroom. Back in the kitchen, he stood for a moment, eyes round, unblinking, just staring blankly at the stove, unaware of the going on around him.

…What just happened?