After a few days, Crystal’s period passed and, soon after, mine did too, the birth control potion making it more annoying than painful. Still very awkward, especially when she told me we were reusing the cloth pads. At least we had a kind of magical washing machine to clean them.

“Do you… maybe feel more like a woman now?” she asked.

“Not really? I mean, that’s just something my body does, nothing to do with me.”

She softly nodded and said, “Okay.”

That fun side-quest took us to the end of our first month in this new world. The property tax going through, we talked about moving again. Sooner was better, after all.

So we went herb-gathering all the way to nearby towns, had lunch and a look around there, then came back for dinner. She was very on top of it all, making notes on the prices of food and property taxes, as well as notes for the properties we liked the look of—how big they were, where the morning light was, what the view was like.

But we were looking at two-bedroom properties, and I was kind of upset by that. Going around, talking about the houses, I felt like we were finally a couple and being reminded that we weren’t was painful.

Worse still, one of the towns was kind of a lesbian town. Half the couples we saw were both women, and maybe they were just good friends, but there were even some groups of three or four walking close together, holding hands and laughing. I mean, it was an echo of a game, so there were a lot of people more willing to try new things or do things they wouldn’t do in real life.

Maybe I wasn’t hiding my feelings well because, when we got home, she didn’t bring up living there, even though we’d both said how much we’d liked it at the start.

Again, I felt the pressure growing for an answer. I thought… pretending would be enough, that I’d start to feel like a woman along the way. But I didn’t. I still felt like a man pretending.

There were just these parts of me that I couldn’t get rid of, stopping me from seeing myself as a woman.

I hadn’t talked about it with her because, honestly, I didn’t know how to talk about my feelings. Every time I tried to put them into words for my own sake, I ended up going in circles. But now, it was getting in the way of our house hunting, so I felt like I had to at least try.

“Crystal?”

She looked up from her book, saying, “Yeah?” When she saw my face, she put the book down and gave me her full attention.

I smiled to myself. She really had been a woman born in a man’s body, such a natural at everything womanly. Realising I was stalling, I took a deep breath and then tried to explain what I felt, at least a little.

“I’m trying, I really am, but it’s… hard. It doesn’t feel natural, I don’t understand half of what you tell me. Even though this is a female body, I can’t make it act like a woman’s body, like I’m missing something….”

She waited before she spoke, maybe in case I had more to say. “It’s okay to feel like that. When I was learning makeup, it was hard for me too, but someone online told me something that I always remembered when I was doubting myself: cis women get to spend their whole childhood learning how to be women, with their friends and sisters and mothers helping. For only a month, you’re doing really well. And even if you don’t act more feminine, I think this enough that, you know, people might look twice, but they won’t doubt you if you have some confidence.”

I wanted to believe her, wanted to be comforted, but my feelings weren’t reasonable. Frustrations and anxieties, so built up in my head. But she’d dug into them and exposed the guilt underneath. Gathering my courage, I showed her that ugly part of me too.

“It’s not… just about other people. I, I look at myself naked, and I don’t know if I only like it because I like women. And I touched myself, but it wasn’t… it felt good, but I was like a man touching a woman. It was sensual and beautiful, then I, I got excited, and it was like I was a man again, desperate to finish.”

Already saying so much, I let it all out.

“I even… thought of you when I touched myself, and I knew it was wrong, but I was too horny. So it’s, it’s not just the outside, it’s the inside too,” I whispered.

Then there was silence. I couldn’t bare to look at her, so I stared at my lap, hoping she would maybe slap me or something. Something to dampen the shame. Maybe she could eventually forgive me, but I knew that wasn’t something I should hope for, entirely her decision.

The longer it went on, the more I needed her to say or do anything. I was being crushed under the anxiety of what this meant for us. If we could even stay friends. But I’d deserve that, deserved being turned into a woman to date my best friend only for her to leave me in disgust. Punished for my greedy desire.

Pulling me out of my head, she softly said, “Alexa.”

I couldn’t speak, just hummed a note.

“Can you… answer me honestly?” she asked.

“Anything,” I managed to say.

“You want to be a woman?”

I winced, that question stabbing right into the very heart of my guilt. “I, I do, but I’m… scared I only want to be because I love you.”

After a second, she said, “If I say I’ll love you even if you are a man, do you still want to be a woman?”

Like that, she left me broken. Every thought and feeling just broken. My life had been built around that for eight years, and I couldn’t think, nothing left to think with. So the answer that came to me fell straight out my mouth: “Yeah, I do.”

Her hand rose to my cheek, turned my face to look at her. She smiled. “You know, I’ve masturbated pretty much every day—except when I was on my period. That doesn’t make me less of a woman.”

Suddenly feeling hot, I swallowed the lump in my throat. “What are you saying?” I asked, hoping I’d somehow misheard.

“I don’t want to tell you how to feel, but, to me, it sounds like you keep making excuses. But why do you need to make excuses? Why can’t you just be a woman if that’s who you want to be?”

When she put it like that, I had no answer. And what she told me before still echoed in my head. Really, it sounded so stupid if I talked about someone else like I did myself. I would never think she was less of a woman for touching herself, if she wasn’t so good at makeup, if she was nervous going into boutiques.

I wouldn’t think she was just pretending to be a woman so I’d love her.

Pointing it out didn’t instantly change how I felt, but it sort of added another voice. “You’re not a woman.” “Yet.”

This wasn’t the end, but the beginning. I thought of myself as being a level one woman, ready to earn experience and gain skills and unlock new classes, and it was absurd enough that my mind didn’t just shut it down. Or like a movie I’d watched: “You’re without a doubt the worst woman I’ve ever heard of.” “But you have heard I’m a woman?” Well, it didn’t fit perfectly, but I couldn’t remember the exact quote anyway.

“What are you thinking?” she quietly asked.

“Stupid things,” I said, chuckling. After a few seconds, I answered more seriously. “I want to be a woman.”

She hugged me, held me tight, and I cried. I felt so safe in her arms and that huge weight was off and I cried.

Nothing changed, but everything changed. The next day, we went to the woods and I practised walking and talking, not trying to be a woman, but trying to be me. Trying to find how I wanted to walk and sound. I didn’t want to be like the hyper-feminine cute or sexy women in town, or even like Crystal, but I did want to be more feminine.

For lunch, we went back to Eresos, the “lesbian town”, then carried on house hunting. We still hadn’t settled the relationship between us, but there was, well, an understanding, neither of us saying anything about how we were looking at one bedroom properties this time.

In the evening, I practised painting my nails. They came out terrible, but I remembered what she told me, thinking that, if I was born a girl, my first time would’ve been just as bad. Even brushing my hair, that was something I would’ve practised since I was, like, four.

Standing in front of the mirror, I looked at my new pyjamas. Well, they were more like lingerie, but they covered the important parts. Lilac. It was funny to me that, now I was a woman, there were apparently a lot more colours.

Crystal’s first gift to me as a woman, I loved it.

At the end of the month, we cancelled our “lease” in the city and “bought” a cottage on the outskirts of Eresos. I didn’t really care how realistic it was any more, I just wished we got a deposit back or something—that place had cost a fortune to “buy”.

Anyway, moving was easy, the furniture going into our inventories without a problem. But we sold most of it and bought new stuff together, using her measurements and notebook to sketch out how it would look.

“You should’ve been an interior designer,” I said lightly, thankful she knew what she was doing.

“I’m not sure anyone would’ve hired me, no matter how good I was.” She also spoke lightly, like she was making a joke, but neither of us laughed.

By the end of the day, we were in our new house with all our furniture set out. A beautiful cottage. It was only three rooms: lounge, bedroom, bathroom. However, they were decently big, enough for a bathtub and a huge bed and a comfy couch and dining table for two. Wooden floors and beams across the ceiling, the walls exposed stonework, and a real fireplace in both the lounge and bedroom. An earthy and natural feel to it all.

The roof was thatched, and there was a front garden for flowers and a back garden for vegetables and herbs—she’d noted it got a lot of sunlight. Around us were a few other cottages, but mostly meadows and then a woodland, the town centre just a minute’s walk. There was even a stream at the end of our garden, not big enough for fish, but I couldn’t wait to sit on the edge with my feet in it on hot days, or just watch and listen to it at the end of a busy day.

For tonight, we curled up on the couch and watched the fire flicker. It seemed like I’d be levelling up woodcutting from now on.

So close, our shoulders touched, heard her breaths. I sometimes still struggled with my feelings, with my guilt. But I was starting to separate who I was now from who I’d been before. Maybe, in our old world, I was trans. But even if I wasn’t, I didn’t need to hold onto his guilt. I didn’t need to feel guilty for liking a lesbian because I was a lesbian too. I was Alexa, a woman.

My hand crawled over and held hers, softly squeezed, and she squeezed me back.

Over the days, little by little, I learned how to love a woman as a woman. How to love Crystal as Alexa. From holding hands and flirting, to kisses and making out, to sex.

“You have no idea how long I’ve dreamed of this,” she said and dropped her dressing gown.

My heart pounded, mind blanking as my desire started to burn, wanting to touch her, feel her. Then she walked towards me and I knew why she’d practised her swaying walk, her breasts gently jiggling.

Lust wasn’t something only men felt. I felt it, and she felt it, her eyes watching me undress, her fingers desperate to feel my small boobs.

Something could be dirty and beautiful.

She touched me so gently, made me feel so hot, so desperate. But it felt so different, this time like I was desperate for more of her, trying to grind against her, to kiss her, touch her, like I needed to feel her to cum. Everything became about her. Her touch, her smell, the taste of her sweat, and her voice was so different, so rich and thick, erotic to hear.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered, running her hand through my hair. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” I murmured.

Her kiss melted me, soft but forceful, smothering, taking away my breath. Losing myself in it, the tension left me and the feeling in my gut swelled. Her hand kept teasing, a steady rhythm, sending waves of warmth through me, crashing against that tension in my gut.

Intoxicating, yet I knew there was more. Felt so close. I tried to beg, mumbling into our kiss.

Somehow, she knew, her hand on my pussy speeding up while her other hand slid under my back, then she lay on top of me, hugging me tightly. It was like that sudden pressure popped the tension inside me, clenching for a second before melting under her, overwhelmed by this intense feeling of relief.

Dazed, I felt like I came a few times more, but little ones, just lying there and accepting her love, my arms wrapped around her so she couldn’t escape. When I started to sober, I noticed how she was grinding against my thigh, how wet she was.

“Can you teach me how to make you cum?” I whispered.

She answered with a long, sensual kiss before starting the lesson.

The first of many lessons.

mialbowy

The end of another arc! Not so smutty, but I hope anyone here for that enjoyed the last scene. Next up, steampunk vampire?