[Emmett]

Ansel and I returned to the Inner Campus and swung westward to the cafeteria in the West Outer Ring.

I went and reserved us some seats near a back corner, for I had already had my food; I just needed to finish it.

I waited for Ansel to return, and he did, with a surprising salad of mushrooms and lettuce, shielded by a flank of tomatoes. "Oh wow, that's an interesting meal."

"Thanks Em," said Ansel, "I try not to partake in meat when possible, but I will have one meal of it every Enday, or if I'm lucky enough to share with a lover one day. It makes sure my body can handle it if I'm ever in a position where I have to survive in the wild."

"You won't like Golden Palette then," I replied with a chuckle, taking in another bite of pork chop, "They're a very meat-and-potatoes kind of place."

"It's kinda like that when your main attraction is the mine though." Ansel popped a head of mushroom into his mouth and swallowed. "The soil there is also pretty harsh last I remembered, so growing things is gonna be rough."

I reached into my pot and cut another piece of flatbread. "Yeah; still is."

"That where your mission was?"

I nodded.

Ansel took another bite of his food. "I'll wait till you're finished eating before I ask you the big questions, but for now, what did your Squad end up doing?"

I took another few bites of my own. "We had to save some miners from a cave-in at Iron By Right."

"Oh shit, the mine caved?!" Ansel's eyes widened. "We're not gonna have a gold or iron shortage cause of it are we?!"

"Hopefully not." I finished off the last of my flatbread. "Grace did a cool trick where she filled the cave-in with water and froze it."

"Oh that's amazing!" Ansel cheered. "Glad they made it out. Any other highlights?"

"Patrick and Grace tried to preserve the clearing by melting and freezing the ceiling again, but it didn't work out, and Grace overdrew so I ended up carrying her out."

Ansel nodded. "Good on you. You didn't do anything to her, did you?"

I froze and dropped my utensils.

"I'm kidding, I know you wouldn't Em."

I smiled and let out a long, soft sigh, shaking.

"Oh... fuck, I touched a nerve, didn't I?" Ansel looked down. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you-"

I shook my head. "You-you're fine. You didn't know."

Ansel nodded. "Let's finish up our meals and find us someplace out in the open to talk."

"Agreed."

We both ate our meals in relative silence. I took some glances around, and noticed that some of the women seemed to be detouring around to avoid me. Even one man in a couple pulled his girlfriend away from me.

Fuck. Rumors must have circulated.

"Hey Ansel," I said, "I need to put this pot away in my dorm - Hey, um, you wanna come with?"

Ansel shook his head. "Meet me after. There's a nice place to sit and relax on the southernmost part of this Outer Ring."

I nodded. "Will do."

I took my empty pot, stood up, and returned to room 88 on the second story of my new home. I set the ceramic pot on the floor next to my desk, and reminded myself to clean it later.

Climbing back down the two flights of stairs, I left the dormitory hall, and made my way across the clusters of buildings and fields.

It was a good ten or so minutes, at a decent clip. The exercise helped take my mind off of it all for a while. When I got nearer to where the dividing wall was, I glanced around, looking for open spaces, and Ansel. It was still a little light outside, so I figured spotting a dark-skinned man would be pretty simple.

"Hey Em!" Ansel waved from underneath a rather lofty tree on its lonesome.

I swiveled my head around to the right and behind and noticed him jumping and waving.

I had just looked there; what? Is camouflage really that strong?

I shook my head feverishly, and jogged on over. "Was looking for ya!"

"You ran right past me!" Ansel laughed.

"Didn't see you!"

"Oh sod off!" Ansel walked to a particularly soft section of the grass and sat down, motioning for me to follow suit. "Alright, let's get this off your chest, Em."

I walked toward him and sat facing away from the roads and facing him. "Yeah... thank you, by the way."

"I get something out of this too." Ansel looked me seriously in the eyes. "I want someone who can keep me on my toes in PT. If something's dragging you down, then me beating you at races doesn't mean much."

I smiled. At least he saw me in a sort-of positive light. "Alright... um.... where should I begin?"

"How about whatever made you shake like a dying man when I joked about Grace?"

I shivered again. "Um..."

"Ye?"

"I think I should start... at the beginning."

Ansel gave a sage nod. "Then start at the beginning."

I told him about how I had carried Grace. About her telling Patrick to watch out for me, about Jessica's price for a free stay at-

"Emmett," Ansel interrupted, "Em, she was flirting."

"What." My story train decided to go way off the rails in that exact moment.

"Oh fuck, I'm sorry," Ansel burst out in laughter. "Please forgive me! I'm sorry. I'm.... Oh shit Em I'm so sorry. Really."

Grace Telling Me This Was Goodbye
Patrick Asking If I Raped Jessica
The Student Body Avoiding Us At Lunch
Jacqueline Warning Me I Was Dead If I So Much As Touched A Woman

I wanted to break his nose in that moment. My hand clenched into a fist. My teeth gnashed against each other.

I envisioned Patrick's image overlapping Ansel's body in that moment.

Ansel took a breath and held his head low. "I should not have laughed. I am so sorry."

My fist loosened, the vision faded, the flashbacks ceased.

I uttered a soft grunt of acknowledgement. "It hurt, but..."

I let myself shake a little. "You're treating me like an actual person, and for that you have my gratitude."

Ansel looked up with wide eyes, and nodded slowly. "Let me guess: you felt pressured to get into bed with Jessica because she said fucking her was the price of admission, and your teammate Grace is holding it against you."

Jessica Greeting Me In A Dress
Following Her Into The Room
Stripping At Her Command

"For the most part." I shook my head feverishly, trying to push the unwanted thoughts out.

Grace Threatening Me With Ice Weapons
Women Don't Rape The Air

"The bit about Grace isn't fully correct though. She hates me because I accidentally implied she wasn't a woman when I asked her how she pulled Æther out of the air."

Ansel's jaw dropped. "For real? You didn't know women and men cast differently?" He shook his head. "Shit, and you probably didn't know about the whole Sex Magick thing either... Is she.... is she alive? Jessica?"

I nodded. "She's alive. She, um"

Helpless Before Her Predations
Body Betraying Mind

"She put me in a Spell Circle so I couldn't kill her. It meant I couldn't move, either."

Ansel tilted his head. "Why would a man need to be immobilized?"

"Supposedly she said the Circle activated for me as if I were a woman."

Ansel stared blankly into my eyes.

"Hey Ansel?" I asked, "Are you okay?"

No response.

"Ansel?"

"Em, I promise I'm not calling you a liar."

I braced myself. Time for everything to come crashing down.

Time to be alone. Time to be ostracized, declared a menace to women, and killed.

"Are you absolutely sure you're saying the truth?" Ansel asked as softly as I felt he could have, "That Jessica was not a Magus and she roped you into a Spell Circle and it treated you as a woman And She Had The Knowledge Needed To Tell You?"

I sat there, mystified in a sense. Now that he explained it, it was very likely Jessica lied to me; tricked me.

I didn't take the time to verify the Spell Circle she bound me in, and even if I did, I probably wouldn't have understood it.

I tried looking through the memories of last night. Every hit on something intimate stabbed my insides.

Jessica had said something to me after the deed was done, but my mind wouldn't let me recall it.

If she had just used me for her own pleasure, why part with an expensive pot?

I needed to come up with an answer to reassure Ansel that I wasn't going crazy.

I needed him to not think I was a liar, or a pervert.

Search, Emmett. Anything that could complement-

"I've never seen a man react like that to being touched," Jessica had said to me.

In reference to-

Her Hand Caressing Me
The Ghostly Wind

"Ah, no no," I was mumbling in the real world outside my thoughts, and when I came to, I was doubled over.

"Hey Em," Ansel said from right next to me, "It's okay. I know what betrayal's like. It... fucking hurts. You were used, deceived, one could say-"

"No," I spoke hard, some of my breaths morphing to dry heaves. "There's... I can't say it...."

"If you want me to know about it, you gotta push through," Ansel said without the faintest hint of judgment, "I won't read your mind."

"Ah... well..." My hyperventilation did not cease. "She... gave.... She gave..."

"I'm listening," Ansel spoke smoothly.

I kept breathing hard. I couldn't tell him about that, but maybe....

"You're sweet, but thank me later:
you're gonna overburn and pass the fuck out."

"She said I'd overburn... and pass out.... after...."

Ansel blinked. "From sustaining a Spell Circle? Doesn't make sense."

"How?" I said, "It wasn't like I could stop the Circle from going off."

"First day of Spell Circles, Em," Ansel chided, "Men can cease channeling Æther into a Circle at will, it's women who can't-"

I waited for him to continue. He didn't. I tried to speak his name, but words refused to form.

"Emmett," Ansel said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

My eyes jolted up to meet his, my breaths starting to slow.

"Very personal question, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, okay?"

I nodded my head slowly. "G-Go for it."

"Are you trans?"

"Wh-what?"

"Ah, shit, never mind, forget I asked." Ansel pulled his hand away and scooted back a little bit.

"Nono, please stay!" I said, and shuddered at how whiny I must have sounded.

"But I must have-"

"You confused me," I said, "Not... anything else. When I said 'What', it wasn't 'What? How dare you.' It was 'What is a trans?'"

"Wait, time out: you don't know?" Ansel's pupils dilated for a moment. "You're a Magus studying at CVAC and you don't know?! Where did you-"

"Charade Gin, burned down five years ago, had a teacher who gave up on me when I couldn't pull in the Æther for a basic spell, literally had to grow food for everyone."

"Oh, okay. Let me catch you up to speed real quick." Ansel cleared his throat, "When I said 'trans', it's a shorthand for 'transgender', which, for our intents and purposes means your spirit and body are mismatched, or you underwent a transformation to correct that. If you don't know whether you are, you probably aren't. There's more to it, but that requires separating two concepts that only get separated when basic survival isn't on the line."

"And why did you think I would be transgender, if, as you said," I replied, "it required living in comfortable circumstances?"

"Not actually what I said but it's not important," Ansel chided, before taking a breath, "The reason I ask is because there's a chance that you transcast, and the two concepts are related."

"Trans...cast?" Another awkward term that I probably had no reason to know about.

"Yeah." Ansel's brown eyes turned azure and started to glow. "I want you to try gathering Æther around your hand."

I held out my hand, and took a deep breath. I reached out, grasping at the Æther in the air.

"Women don't rape the air around us to fuel our spells!"
Trapped, Helpless Before Jessica
Restrained By My Own Magick

The soft light winked out halfway into formation, and I curled back up into myself, trying to shrink away from the world.

"Emmett?" asked Ansel, "Are you okay?"

"N-no," I said, "Every time I see Magick it reminds me of the room, of her, and... and...."

And when I think of using it myself, I think of how she twisted my power to suit her own fancy, I could not say out loud.

"It's okay, you just went through a lot." Ansel patted my back gently. "But I got what I needed. I focused my attention and used some biofeedback to speed up my perception. And let me guess: your mentor taught you that you began a spell by pulling the Æther out of the environment, right?"

"Y-yeah..."

"You didn't."

"Yeah I know: I'm very fucking bad at it!"

"No Emmett, what I meant to say is, you didn't, ever. Which is to say, Men pull from the environment, I pull from the environment, but you don't. Women tap into the wellsprings in their bodies. Grace draws from within her. I don't. You do."

That... No.

Ansel was wrong. There was no way. It didn't make sense.

If I didn't pull Æther out of the air, why was I able to whip the ambient energy into a soft light around my hand?

I shook my head. "Are you being real?"

Ansel sighed. "Em, I wouldn't lie. However, that you asked that means you don't exactly trust me right now, which, that's okay. You just had a traumatic experience. And, I take back what I said about Jessica lying to you. She probably wasn't."

"What changed?" I slowly sat back up.

"So, this is where I pull a mysterious mentor and decline to answer."

Oh fuck you too Ansel.

"There's a reason!" He held his hands up in surrender. "Magick is rooted in your spirit. If I were to complete the puzzle for you, and tell you again and again how your Magick works, you'd pick it up, but it'd be tied to your faith in me. And if you disbelieved me when I said the truth, you'd never be able to cast, especially as trauma-ridden as you are right now. If you come into it on your own, however, it's yours to keep forever. I'm going to guess it was Ser Lienne or Ser Linn who recommended you for remedials."

"Ser Linn," I confirmed.

"Makes sense. And hey, Em?" Ansel said, "I'd like you to take a moment to cry your heart out when you're home. Then when you're feeling better, pick yourself back up and give that spell another go. Seeing the results will convince you more than I ever will. One more thing."

"Y-yeah?"

"Thank you for confiding in me." Ansel stood up and held his hand out. "It means a lot."

I took his hand and he pulled me to my feet. "Of course. Thank you for listening to me."

"Just remember no casting on Endays."

"I know that!"

"Good. Just making sure. See ya."

"See you."

I walked back home, heavier and lighter at the same time. I returned to my room, locked the door behind me, dressed down to smallclothes, buried myself in my bed, and screamed.

I must have spent many hours either asleep or crying or both, because next thing I knew, I looked up and it was sheer night.

I pushed my body lethargically to sit up and held out my hand.

Strangely enough I noticed I had felt a little better after crying. I'd have to thank Ansel for that advice later.

I went through the motion of gathering the light around my hand, and let it linger there.

I recalled briefly the Spell Circle and being in bed with Jessica, but I didn't lose the spell over it.

"Yes!" I whispered. "It worked. bet it won't next time though."

I thought back to what Ansel had said about transcasting. It was ridiculous. I was a failure of a man; what made him think I'd have any success as a woman when I wasn't even one in the first fucking place.

I thought about pulling more Æther out of the air just to prove him wrong, but that never worked the past twelve hundred times I tried, so why would it this time?

"Maybe...."

I imagined the Magick as if it had come from within me rather than around me. It was stupid, of course; Jacqueline would have noticed if I were some sort of transcaster or whatever he called it.

But I had to give it a try. I owed it to my one friend in life.

I took in a breath, letting the air fill my lungs.

I exhaled, slow and measured. Instead of snatching more of it out of the sky, I imagined the Magick flowing stronger from my heart to my hand.

The light-

Ghostly Wind In The Room
Her Flesh Swallowing Whole
Muffled Screams Into Her Lips

-burst into a violent azure plume of fire, and died just as quickly.

I sat there, in silence.

I had no words, no thoughts.

I had just witnessed something impossible, and I did my damnedest to deny it.