Charlie’s arms were shaking as he lifted the mug of tea to his mouth and blew on it. He didn’t look down at his body. He couldn’t handle that right now. At least Jason had been able to transmogrify some clothes for Charlie to wear. Speaking of, Jason sat down at the table across from Charlie and smiled softly at him.

He didn’t respond in kind. Charlie’s mind was reeling and he was numb. How was Andrea going to respond to this when she woke up? And how was Charlie supposed to go back to looking like the man he was supposed to be?

“How are you feeling?” Jason asked slowly.

“How am I feeling? How the fuck do you think I’m feeling?!” Charlie placed the mug down on the table and then propped himself up with all four arms. “What did you do wrong, Jason?! Why am I like this?!”

“Hang on!” Jason cried, throwing up his hands in self-defense. “I didn’t do anything wrong. The magic is working perfectly. I have no idea why you look like this.”

“It can’t be working correctly,” Charlie insisted, beginning to pace the small dining room. “If it were, I wouldn’t look like this. What happened? Was it a girl moth? I thought that didn’t matter.” (”It doesn’t,” Jason tried to interject.) “Maybe the spell was only set up to work for women. Did Andrea’s essence overpower my own, somehow?”

“No, no, no, no, and no,” Jason replied, standing up and walking over to Charlie. He was so much smaller than Charlie, now. “The spell worked exactly as it was supposed to. I was monitoring and making corrections along the way. If anything had gone wrong, I would have corrected for it.”

Charlie scowled and curled his many hands into fists, replying, “Well, it couldn’t have worked correctly, because this—” He gestured at his misshapen body. “—wasn’t supposed to happen to me!”

“I’m sorry,” Jason said, his expression softening. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. And I’ll do whatever I can to help.” He chewed his tongue, clearly deep in thought about something. “But until then, can you calm down for me? Getting worked up won’t help anybody.”

“Forgive me if I’m in something of a bad mood,” Charlie growled.

“Please, just sit down and drink some tea.”

Charlie sighed and did as he was told. The tea was still piping hot, with a strong bitter taste. Truth be told, Charlie was never the biggest fan of tea, but it did do a lot to help soothe his nerves for the moment. Jason sat back down across from him.

“We need to undo this before Andrea wakes up,” Charlie said.

“We have another day or two at most before that happens,” Jason replied. “And this can’t be easily reversed. You understand that, right?”

Again, Charlie sighed and replied, “Right.”

Magic couldn’t be undone. That was the cost of being able to alter reality at a whim. And it’s what made magic so dangerous. If they were going to fix this, it would have to be by adding some magical effects, not removing them.

“Is there anything we can do?”

“I can cast a glamour on you,” Jason suggested, “but actually going back to looking like a man will require some kind of long-term magical intervention. And you’ll risk losing some of the elements of your new body in the process.”

“I hate that,” Charlie muttered, rubbing his fuzzy arms. “I like my new body, except for the whole being a girl thing. Are you sure there’s nothing else we can do?”

“Perhaps,” Jason said, looking off into the distance. “Can I ask you something, Charlie? Why were you so determined to get away from your original human body?”

“Huh? Oh, well…” Jason was clearly trying to distract Charlie from his feelings, but at the moment Charlie felt like he could use the distraction. “I never felt quite at home with my body, actually. It was always nicer to think of myself as some other creature. Wolves, cats, dragons, you know; just anything not human. Moths were always special, though. They weren’t as feminine as butterflies, so I wouldn’t get into trouble for liking them, but they were delicate and pretty and they could fly. I always kind of envied that.”

“You liked how delicate and pretty they are?”

“I liked how they could fly,” Charlie reiterated. “I’ve always wanted to be able to fly. It just felt like a kind freedom that I was never allowed to have in real life.”

“You never talked very much about what your home life was like, even in college,” Jason said. “What did you have that you wanted to escape from so badly?”

Charlie shrugged and admitted, “There were just a lot of responsibilities that I had to live up to as a man that never resonated with me at all. But—you know—being a guy, I never really had a choice in the matter.”

“And if felt more like you were playing a role instead of being yourself?”

Perking up, Charlie replied, “Yeah. Yeah, it did.”

It always surprised him how insightful Jason could be at times.

Jason stood up and said, “I’m going to get some more tea. Wait here a second.”

He took Charlie’s cup and returned with two more. When he sat down, Jason took a long sip and mulled over his tea. Charlie wasn’t sure what he was thinking, but waited patiently.

“How was puberty for you?”

“Um… kind of awful, actually. I hated what was happening to my body. The hair in particular. I like this, though. I like being fuzzy instead of hairy.”

“Uh huh. How do you feel about clothing?”

Charlie shrugged and replied, “Not much? Men’s clothes are so drab and unappealing. At least now, my body is nice to look at. All yellow and orange. Almost pretty, even.”

“What about your voice?”

“My voice was so grating before.”

“What about how tall you were? And muscles? How did you feel about those?”

“Not that bad, actually,” Charlie said. “If anything, I kind of wanted to be a bit taller and bigger. Not buff, but I picked a comet moth for a reason.” He paused, then took a sip of tea. “What are you getting at with all these questions, Jason?”

“Try not to take this the wrong way, Charlie,” Jason said, “but do you think that it’s possible you might actually be trans?”

“What?”

“Trans? A trans girl, instead of a cis guy?”

“What? No, of course not.” Charlie took a long sip of tea, not looking at Jason. “Look, I know that you’re the resident expert on the subject and all, but if I were trans too I’d know by now, right?”

“Not necessarily,” Jason replied, frowning. “It can take a while for people to come to terms with what they really want out of life. It’s perfectly normal for someone to get to our age and not be aware of what their gender identity actually is.”

Charlie shook his head. “I’m not so sure. I’d know if I wanted to be a girl. This… this just doesn’t feel right.”

“I could be wrong,” Jason admitted, standing up, “but it may also just be that you’re not used to the idea yet.”

Once he had finished with his tea, Charlie headed to the guest room. It was small, mostly occupied by a large bed covered by a quilt. All the furniture looked handcrafted. Charlie collapsed onto the bed and laid sprawled out for a while. It was a little too small for him to be comfortable.

“Maybe I should stick to hammocks from now on,” he mumbled into his pillow. “I’ve always liked hammocks.”

Being this big was going to require a bit of a change in lifestyle, even if he could go back to looking like a guy. He was almost tall enough to touch the ceiling. All Charlie’s clothes were going to need to be custom-ordered. At least, knowing Jason, he had access to magicians who’d be able to help.

Charlie sat up and held out his four arms, flexing his hands. He clasped his hands together, interlacing fingers. Then he got up and sent a little buzz through his wings, causing them to unfurl. This body was so much cooler than the one he’d had before. He’d spent his entire life trying to get away from that old body.

Why was that? Why would someone hate their body so much? Charlie had been moderately attractive, for a guy. He’d had to be; Charlie had been desperately looking for a way to make him feel better about the body he had. But it didn't help. Was Jason right? And how was Charlie even supposed to know one way or the other?

“I’d know by now,” he told himself again, sitting back down on the bed.

Puberty had been the absolute worst. Charlie had wanted to do nothing but lock himself in his room for days on end while his body was slowly taken away from him. He’d ended up doing nothing all summer. When the pediatrician he went to had asked about puberty, Charlie had lied and said it hadn’t even started.

No, actually, shaving was the worst. He put off learning how to do it just to avoid facing what was happening to his body. Eventually, he just stopped looking in the mirror altogether.

If Charlie was being honest, it did kind of sound like the way Jason had always described dysphoria.

“No, I’d know,” Charlie insisted, letting his body slump.

There would have been other signs, right? He’d never tried on girl clothes or anything; Charlie had always been too afraid of getting caught to try. Same with playing with dolls, or hanging out with the girls on the block, or… fuck, so much of Charlie’s life had been spent being too scared to try things so he wouldn’t be made fun of for not being masculine enough.

And it was a justified fear, too. Charlie’s friends would have called him gay or a girl if he’d ever been honest about that stuff. Even his parents had made it clear that he was supposed to be a real man when he grew up.

Charlie laid down and buried his face in the pillow, mumbling, “Maybe my life would have been better if I’d been born a girl.”

At the very least, it would have made it easier for him to try things he’d always been too afraid to. Girls definitely had it better, even if they didn’t have it easier. At least now, Charlie could wear a dress and not be laughed at for it. He wouldn’t even have to change his name.

Maybe Charlie did want to be a girl. Did that make him a lesbian? Oh, fuck, what would Andrea think? She was straight, right? One hundred percent straight.

Charlie groaned and curled up tightly. He couldn’t afford to lose Andrea. She was the only person who truly understood him. He’d have never trusted anyone else with this plan. And he couldn’t see himself living the rest of his life without her.

When it came time for dinner, Charlie slinked out of the room and toward the dining table. Jason was just putting out a plate for each of them. Neither addressed the other as they sat down on opposite ends of the table.

“It’s a fruit rice salad,” Jason explained. “Your dietary restrictions haven’t changed, but your body probably prefers grains and fruits more than you used to.”

“Thank you, Jason.”

“No problem.”

Charlie did his best not to look up at Jason through the meal. He could still feel Jason’s gaze drilling into him. Finally, Charlie sighed and put down his flatware.

“Alright,” he said, “you might actually be right about me being trans. I admit it.”

Jason didn’t respond right away. Instead, he got up from his chair and walked over. Then, he surprised Charlie by giving him a firm hug.

“It’s okay,” Jason said. “I’m going to support you no matter what.”

A chuckle escaped Charlie. Then another. One more. Then Charlie started to tear up and he realized that it wasn’t laughter; he was sobbing. He closed his eyes and started to cry, leaning into Jason’s hub.

“Thank you,” she sobbed. “Thank you so much.” She sniffed. “What do I have to do next?”

Jason pulled away and wiped his own eyes dry before saying, “Well, you were going to have to go through some legal paperwork anyway because of the transformation. Adding a gender change on top of that basically doubles the paperwork, but the guild has a branch specifically to help people through that.

“The next most important thing will be to find a good doctor, probably also someone from the guild. That will be more expensi— Well, I guess it won’t, since the guild doesn’t need money anymore. To be completely honest, Charlie, you’re lucky you waited until after the singularity. Transitioning now will be a little easier than it used to be.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Charlie said, also wiping her eyes dry as Jason sat down. “To be honest, I’m worried about Andrea. I have no idea how she’ll take it and… I really don’t know if she’ll be attracted to me anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Charlie, I don’t really have anything to offer there except advice: sometimes people surprise you.”

“Yeah, I guess they do.” She chuckled. “Who knows? Maybe Andrea will emerge as a trans man.” Her smile faltered. “Not that it would make a difference. I’m definitely not any more attracted to men than I was before.” She buried her head in her hands. “I think we’re going to have to split up.”

“I’m sorry, Charlie— Is there another name you want to go by?”

“Huh? No.” Charlie shook her head. “I like my name.”

“Well, in that case, let me get a bottle of wine and we can drink: to things both new and the same.”

“Oh, please. I could definitely use a drink after today.”

That night, a little tipsy, Charlie collapsed into bed and wrapped as much of the blanket around herself that she could manage. Her phone was sitting on the bedside table. She hadn’t touched it all day. Maybe she should… But she couldn’t… Or could she?

Charlie picked up her phone and navigated to Facebook. Most of her friends and family hadn’t been on board with this plan when she told them, so this was a little difficult for her. But they were going to find out eventually. Might as well make an announcement.

The nerves kept her awake for a little while longer. Occasionally she’d get a notification on her phone and feel compelled to look. Most of the responses to her post were supportive, and the ones that weren’t were at least predictable. Charlie put her phone back on the table and finally closed her eyes.

QuillRabbit

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