“Is something supposed to be happening?” I held my arm and shifted awkwardly on the platform as the machine’s lights danced across my skin for the umpteenth time. It wasn’t exactly easy to keep track of the passage of time inside the circle, but it still felt like I’d been standing here for about half an hour watching Mara try out every movement and expression in the book.

“Don’t rush the process, shrimp.” Mara’s comment came with a smile and a wink, but I could tell she was anxious too. My familiar chewed on her tongue, letting out what almost sounded like a growl. “There’s gotta be a way.”

I was the last person anybody should be consulting about magic, but I wasn’t half bad at solving puzzles. Mara had been able to levitate me. She’d been able to summon the game, even to the point of customizing the machine to flash flirty little messages. What was different now that she was trying to use that same magic source to give me what I had wanted for so long? I crossed my arms across my chest, which brought Mara’s eyes around to focus on me once again.

“Listen, I’m sorry. This shit’s new to me too.” My familiar brought her hand to her mouth and began to quietly chew on her claws. As excited as I was to finally get what I had worked for all this time, it felt bad to be delaying Mara from something she’d been waiting for even longer. It felt even worse to not be able to help in any way. I hated standing around and doing nothing. “C’mon, Holly. Don’t give me that look.”

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to. I was just- I was just thinking.” I finally allowed my body to take a break from holding thirty minutes worth of tension, and I sidled back up to Mara. I leaned my head on my demoness’ shoulder, feeling her skin press softly into mine. Honestly, the hardest part of standing still for so long had been not being able to be near the girl who had made touch so suddenly accessible for me. Mara’s arm slid comfortably around my waist and pulled me closer, and I nestled myself into the crook of her neck. Was this how Marcus and Connie got to live all the time? “What does it feel like when you normally do it? Using magic, I mean.”

“I dunno? Warm?” Mara’s tail bumped idly up against my leg as it flicked back and forth behind her. “Kind of like breathing. I feel it come in, and then I aim that shit and let it go. It’s not something I have to put a lot of thought into, usually.”

“And it just does what you want it to?” Absentmindedly, I ran the tips of my fingers over the bright pink flesh of Mara’s tail. The response I got was more a squeal than an answer to my question.

“H-hey! That’s sensitive!” Mara’s cheeks flooded with crimson, and I couldn’t keep a smile off my face. Who could have known that underneath the tough girl act she was so…

“Cute.” Wait. Had I said that out loud?

“Excuse you?” There she was. The look of a huntress had returned to Mara’s face, and she stared at me with the same eyes I’d seen flash through the darkness when I first managed to summon her. Her tail whipped around my side squeezed me closer, causing me to yelp ever so slightly. Mara wore a cheshire grin that paid compliment to her now very visible fangs. I quickly cast my gaze to the floor, my own cheeks now flush with a damning heat.

“Anyway! If we could just figure out how your magic works- or why it works- maybe we can…” I yipped again as I felt Mara’s hand guide my own back to the base of her spine.

“I didn’t say stop.” My familiar’s words were soft and sweet, so far from the demanding tone she loved to throw around. I giggled. She didn’t need to tell me twice. My fingers returned to their previous task, trailing gentle lines down Mara’s skin. Growing up carrying the weight of my secret had left me chronically touch starved, but at least I had Marcus and Connie. Who had been there to comfort Mara? My heart sunk in my chest, and I pushed my head back into her shoulder.

“Maybe we can reverse engineer it? Let’s try breaking it down.”

“Mhhm?”

“You take in magic. You said it feels kind of like breathing?” I pulled away for a moment to take her hands.

“Something like that. Like if breathing came from every direction at once and went straight through your skin, maybe.” Mara closed her eyes and focused, and even I could feel something in the room shift. It felt similar to the energy that ran through my arm when I placed my hands on the crane machine, but somehow less intense. “Like this.” Whatever she was doing, it was working. I took her lead and let my eyes drift shut, allowing my mind to focus on pulling energy from the only magic source my circle had; the runes I had worked so hard to charge.

At first, nothing seemed to change. I could feel energy moving around me, but I was almost positive it was only the magic Mara had already been pulling into herself. I was never any good at this stuff. Clearing my mind for things like prayer and meditation had always been a mountain I had struggled to climb, my cluttered mind too full of loose threads to pull on to ever let me fixate on one for long. Instead, I tried to center myself on the sensation of my hands resting in Mara’s.

Warm.

Soft.

Movement?

Almost like the feeling of an ocean tide, I began to notice the push and pull of some new force on my body.

“That’s it, summoner. Just like that.” Mara’s voice sent ripples through the energy around me. My heart jumped. I could feel what was happening! Mara had said that if I knew what I was doing, I could've done any of the magic she’d done while I was in this circle. I suppressed my rising excitement and breathed.

“I need to aim it.” Five words, and it nearly cost me my concentration. How did Mara make this look so easy? Steady, Holly. I took a moment to regain my composure and I spoke again. “How do I aim?”

“You know better what you’re shooting at than I do, babe.” Mara ran her thumb along the back of my hand in delicate circles. “What have you been chasing? What do you want to be, Holly?” There it was, that voice that slid into my body and down my bones. “Can you see her?”

“I don’t- I don’t know.” After all of this, I never thought that wanting to be a girl would be the simple part. Now I had to know what kind of girl I wanted to be? I barely knew myself.

“Focus. What does she look like?” As Mara spoke, I did everything in my power to let my mind roam. The tide I felt moving around me led to the sea of ideas inside my head, to memories and daydreams of who I was. To my past self, moving on from being the man my family asked me to be was an impossibility, a cruel reality of the universe. The creator had dealt us hands and mine had been unfortunate, but one I needed to learn to live with. Defying fate felt both sinful and impossible.

In my mind, I saw myself as a child, confused and uncertain at the world I had to call my home. I saw myself fight, struggle, relent, and redouble. Inside me, an endless cycle of fear and self loathing twisted and wound itself through my thoughts. If I was me, I was damned, but how could I stop being what I was? For years I denied it as the temptation of someone else, the devil calling me to be something obscene and perverse. I made my life about resisting that call, about making the God I was told loved me happy, even if He rarely seemed to care too much about how badly I suffered.

“Holly, darling. You’re drifting.” Mara lightly touched her forehead to mine, lowering her voice to a velvet whisper. “Back to me. Focus. Can you see her?”

Right. Right. I wasn’t there any more, was I? And Mara didn’t believe those things about me. Mara, in all her brazen elegance, had seen me as a beautiful girl the second she stepped into my circle. I wanted to believe the words she’d said to me. I wanted to see myself the way Mara had seen me. I breathed out and felt the energy move through me. I could find her. I would.

Suddenly, almost like slipping into a dream, I finally latched on to something solid. In my mind, a cascade of bodies fell into the casing of a very familiar machine. No, wait, no; there was supposed to be one! My mind was fashioning a game within a game, not that I could blame it with how much of my headspace had been occupied by getting my hands on those stupid capsules. How was I supposed to sort through all those bodies? It was almost as bad as letting my mind roam free.

“There we go. Whatever you did, I can feel it.” Mara squeezed my hand.

“It’s too many. There’s like fifty.” I was getting better at the whole keeping my composure. Talking was slowly becoming a thing I could do, and just in time. “How do I…”

“She’ll come to you. Just reach, okay?” Mara breathed in time with me, following what little lead I could give her. “Reach with me.”

I shut my mouth. I could do this. I was going to do this. If my mind wanted to play games, then we’d play. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been wrestling myself all my life, anyway. If anybody was going to get in the way of what I wanted, it only made sense that it was going to be me. I held onto Mara’s hands and felt the energy move through me. The magic in this circle came from games just like this one; games I’d already won. I focused and pushed forward, and above the pile of potential me’s I saw energy slowly gather to form a three-pronged crane that dangled above the masses.

The ground underneath me shifted.

“What was that?” I didn’t need to ask. I didn’t know if sensing magic came with some kind of arcane knowledge, but in my gut I knew what was happening. “Mara, we need to-”

“With me, Holly. Follow my voice.” Mara was as steady as ever. Did she not know? Could she not tell the circle was collapsing? “It’s going to be okay. Focus on seeing her and reach.”

“Mara, if we don’t stop then-”

“Holly, do it now!” I could hear the desperation in Mara’s voice now. Fear ripped through me as the energy around me became more and more tumultuous. One thing was for certain; whatever we were doing, we had to do it quickly.

I made my decision. I let my fear and anxiety slip beneath the surface of the magic churning around me. I only needed to play the game; everything else was simple. I could stay here and let it pass over me, sink under me, whatever it wanted. The crane moved and more clearly than ever, I could see a picture of where I was moving.

I wanted to be like Constance, effortlessly feminine and strong. I wanted her confidence. I wanted her instincts. I saw her hair, felt her lay her head in my lap. I felt her worry for me. I saw her wings stretch outwards, draping her silhouette beautifully against a backdrop of cherry red.

I wanted to be like Mara, loving and sincere. I wanted her warmth. I wanted to be soft. I could hear her voice and feel her hands in mine. I saw her tail effortlessly dance behind her as she stared at me with those eyes full of want.

I wanted to be like me. I wanted to be the me I never got to be. I wanted to be her, to know what it would be like to fulfill the dream of the kid I once was. I wanted to look in the mirror and tell that child there was hope on the other side of all that suffering.

I felt the crane moving, dropping down into a pile of unfamiliar bodies.

I felt the circle crackle, breaking the air into pieces around me as it collapsed under its own weight.

I felt myself moving, gripped by some unknown force and pulled upwards to where I did not know.

“That’s my girl.” Mara’s words were farther and farther away from me now, but there was nothing I could do. My world was already fading to a milky black, and I was drifting with the relentless current of chaotic magic.

***

My body ached.

When I came to, I was crammed in some sort of small, dark space I obviously wasn’t meant to fit into. There were so many thoughts racing through my head, but more than anything I just wanted out of that-

“-human! She’s got no magic of her- oh goddammit, Hawley.”

Constance? That was Constance’s voice! With everything I had, I pushed my limbs towards the direction I could hear Connie’s voice from. It took more than one try, reorienting myself and putting my whole body weight behind the push before I found myself tumbling out onto the old gymnasium floor. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t graceful, but I was out. My eyes struggled to adjust to even the mild lighting of the ancient school, but I could just make out the figure of one very upset demon marching my way.

Well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen this coming.

“Listen closely, because I’m going to ask you exactly once.” Connie was an imposing figure for being as short as she was. I knew I was in hot water. I was probably about to get a long lecture about putting myself in danger, or how I couldn’t do everything on my own, or- “What did you do with my friend, and where’s the other one?”

Wait. What did she mean by that?

“Connie, I- wait, holy shit, is that my voice?” There was nothing I could’ve done to keep the smile off my face. I sounded like- well, I sounded like me! I sounded like the me I always hoped I would sound like! So much of my life had been spent in moderate discomfort from just my voice alone, and now I got to have this one? “Ha! Haha oh my god!” I absolutely beamed at Constance, and I watched her expression slip from anger and distrust to shock.

“Hawley?” Constance knelt down next to me, running her eyes over my face in disbelief.

“Yeah! I mean, yes! I mean,” I brushed my hair out of my face.  How long was it now? Whatever Mara had done, it had worked! I pushed myself up off the gym floor and nearly fell over in the process, but luckily my tail swung out to help me regain my…

…to regain my… my balance…

…with my tail.

“What did she do to you?” Constance stood up with me, looking my whole body over. “How did she do this to you?”

I blinked. For the second time in a matter of like two minutes, I brushed the hair out of my eyes. Okay, okay, Holly, don’t panic. I took inventory of myself along with Constance, my face no doubt in as much shock as hers was.

Blue skin. Horns. Wings. A tail.

Boobs! Holy fuck, I had boobs.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I was a demon now. I suppressed a giddy laugh. I was a demon girl? Why did that make me so happy? My tail flicked behind me and my wings stretched awkwardly, testing the boundaries of their range of motion. I took a moment to squish my soft new body parts in my hands because how could I not? What the fuck?

“Earth to Hawley!” Constance waved her hand in front of my face.

“Sorry! I’m good! I’m fine, I promise!” I twisted my body around, trying my damnedest to get a better look at myself. It was a fool’s errand, because before I had a chance to do much of anything, Connie had me wrapped in an absolutely crushing hug. Amongst everything, it was easy to forget how much I’d probably worried her.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again!” Constance pressed me to herself with such force that I thought I was going to pop. “We could’ve lost you forever, you self-destructive little brat.”

“M’not a brat.” I wriggled in Connie’s grasp until she finally released a little of the pressure. “Things went a little sideways, but Mara and I can tell you everything as soon as we…” A cold chill ran down my spine. Connie was moving, which meant the circle had collapsed. My memory of those last few moments was a blur that was only slowly coming into focus.

Panicked, I wheeled around to look behind me where the gigantic claw machine had been. The only piece remaining was the bottom prize chute, which must’ve been the thing I’d crawled out of. It looked as if the rest of the machine had just crumpled into utter nothingness. The circle was gone. The machine was gone. I didn’t want to follow that thought trail any further.

“Mara?” I slipped out of Connie’s grasp and ran around the gym, looking for any sign of the girl I had grown to love. “Mara?” No matter how many times I called, there was no response.

Connie looked on at me with what I could only guess was pity.