Someone once told me: “So ugly, good thing yer a dyke.” They weren’t exactly wrong. People say there’s no such thing as beautiful, that it’s all subjective. They’re wrong. I was ugly. People joked I was gay because no man would sleep with me sober, but I was relieved to be gay. I could fit the butch aesthetic and women weren’t usually as cruel.
Even then, well, I didn’t get much action. There was a difference between “not cruel” and “liking”. Maybe, if I was just looking for a girlfriend, I would’ve had better luck. But I only wanted sex, no strings attached. Hookup apps, bars, clubs—not the best places for me when I had to introduce myself with my face.
I made the best of my life. Friends didn’t care how I looked, so that was nice. A couple were even friends-with-occasional-benefits (and the benefit was sex). In general, I tried to be helpful, useful. People didn’t like me for my looks, so I made them like me for my personality. Not to mention, pity sex was still sex; if I did well, it sometimes led to not-pity sex.
If it’s not obvious, I care about sex a lot. I’m aromantic, but not asexual—the opposite of asexual. Maybe because I was ugly, I loved sex to reaffirm my value as a person. Maybe because it felt the closest I could feel to loving someone and to feeling loved. But, honestly, it just felt good, even without a partner. I had my first orgasm when I was fourteen and my life was better ever since, a warmth to offset the cold of being ugly.
That was all in the past.
“Help!”
A woman’s scream yanked me down an alley where I died. But, thanks to me, she didn’t. There was a phrase that went something like: “Leave the world a more beautiful place than you found it.” Well, I died and she lived, so that was definitely a net gain of beauty.
God didn’t find it so funny when I told him that.
“Bella, please,” he said.
I smirked. “Off to heaven, then? Or do I have to go to hell to not spoil the mood?”
A divine sigh brushed against me, like a breeze. “I’m not actually that God. Do you know about Valhalla?”
“Isn’t that the warrior heaven?” I said.
“Indeed. There are countless afterlives, countless gods who select those to populate them. Or rather, we countless gods have our little worlds and we pick some who pass on to add to our worlds, hoping to make them more interesting.”
My turn to sigh. “And what, you thought an ugly chick is interesting?”
He chuckled. “You have a choice: go on to the heaven you’re expecting, or be reborn in my world—with some benefits.”
After a long second, I asked, “Is the benefit sex?”
“Well, you can certainly ask to be more attractive,” he said, laughter in his voice.
Head down, I hesitated for another few seconds. “Can you make me… not aromantic?” I asked.
“Ah, that is outside my control. Matters of the soul are for that God. I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, it’s fine. I just feel curious is all. Spend your whole life hearing how great love is, easy to feel broken,” I said, rambling a bit.
He didn’t say anything, but I felt his smile.
I cleared my throat. “Well, how about you make me irresistible to women? Not, like, magic, though. Just beautiful. Oh, and a little femme. Taller, slimmer, easier to find clothes that fit. Is your world like earth? Natural turquoise hair would be nice if it’s not, you know, going to get me in trouble. Long eyelashes?” Half thinking, half talking aloud, fully rambling.
He listened patiently, then said, “Well, all of that should be fine.”
I let out a long sigh, smile lingering behind.
“This seems like a good point, so let me just say this: enjoy.”
With those final words from him, I fell. Dark and silent and weightless, comforting, like I was in a deep, warm pool. All my thoughts slipped away and soon it was like a dream. It turned out, that was what being reborn was like. A long, long dream. The dream gradually became more vivid, coherent, full of familiar faces—and a lot of boobs. Women always held me against their chests and I breastfed a lot from a wetnurse. Thankfully, I didn’t have to have my “mother’s” nipples branded into my memories.
Once I was around two years old, I became something like a person. There was still a lot of baby in my brain that made me fascinated with baby toys and games like peekaboo and I had to sleep a lot and oh did I feel like shit when I was tired, but I could walk and say a few words, understand a lot of words, and I was mostly allowed to do what I wanted to do.
This world was kind of Victorian, kind of middle ages, and a little modern. The feeling I had was that other people had come from my world and invented a bunch of stuff. So there were electric lights and radios and running hot water, probably a lot more I didn’t see around the house, and there was a big nobility class, maids everywhere. As for the middle ages part, my father was “Lord of the Manor”, our house on a hill in the middle of farming fields with a village at the bottom of the hill. What his position in the nobility was, I didn’t know.
One thing I did know, my “aunty” wasn’t my aunty.
“Oh honey, bambina is cuter every time I see her,” Aunty Bica said, tickling under my chin. I couldn’t stop myself from giggling and wriggling, and I didn’t really want to, Aunty Bica’s smile pretty.
My mother chuckled and, turning so Aunty Bica couldn’t reach me, she leaned in for a kiss, Aunty Bica happily giving it.
It took me years to properly learn the ins and outs of this. Homosexuality was accepted, but people were expected to have a family. For gay commoners, they usually adopted. For the nobles, it was accepted that love and marriage were separate things, so they had a couple children and took a lover, gender not an issue. Well, not everyone took a lover, but most did.
Some lovers were “companions”, basically members (men and women) of a prostitute guild. Other lovers were fellow members of the nobility and, from what I’d seen, these were always gay couples. Maybe so there weren’t heir issues with noble titles.
Anyway, Aunty Bica was my mother’s lover, a childhood friend from a small, neighbouring barony. My father had two different female companions since I was born, but I didn’t see them outside of meals. Not part of the family like Aunty Bica was. I also had an older brother, Leonardo (it was fun to annoy him by calling him Nard), and a half-sister, Margareta (Greta for short), who was about my age, but stayed in the servants’ wing when she visited.
I wasn’t short of friends to play with, though.
“Happy birthday, Bella,” Martina (I called her Tina) said, greeting me with a hug.
I squeezed her back, then patted her head when she stepped back. She was far too adorable. My hair was the turquoise I’d asked for, straight and shiny, whereas Tina had pastel blue hair in fluffy waves. It was so puffy that it hid the edges of her face, making her look so small. Ever since I first met her, back when we were only three, I just had to pat her and she hadn’t ever complained about it.
“Oh Tina, thank you, and thank you for coming to the party,” I said, grinning.
She gave me a cute smile back, her nose wrinkling. “Will you be having tea parties from now on? Oh, I just cannot wait until I turn eight too. You will come to mine, won’t you?” she said, chattering a hundred words a second.
“Of course—to both,” I said.
Holding both my hands, she squeezed them. “Just wonderful,” she said nodding.
I nodded back. “Indeed.”
The first guest, she stayed with me for now and we chatted in the foyer, not long until the next carriage arrived. Well, car-riage. Someone, who I strongly believed came from my world, had worked on refitting carriages with electric motors. The batteries weren’t great yet, but could be swapped out; it was only nobles currently using them, so we had fully-charged spares for visitors if they weren’t staying long enough to recharge.
Anyway, I recognised Matilde’s (Mattie) carriage long before she was helped down and escorted to the door. Her father was an important duke, which showed in how she handled herself at such a young age, but she didn’t have an arrogant bone in her body.
“Bella, Tina,” she said, curtsying for us.
We hurriedly curtsied back. A strange game of the her recognising the host, then us recognising her father. “Mattie, I am so glad you could make it,” I said, opening my arms wide.
She dutifully stepped forward and hugged me, then left a kiss on my cheek as she drew back. Her hair tickled me as she did. She kept it fairly short and the curls gave it volume, the colour a darker green that wasn’t as sharp as emerald, but a beautiful shade nonetheless.
“How could I not? Will you have another piccolo debutto?” she asked, smiling.
My “little début”. Until now, it had been more like our mothers visiting and bringing us along to play, but now I could invite them over. Of course, our parents still had to agree, but this was a first taste of growing up—for these girls who hadn’t been reborn. For me, it was better than nothing, but I looked forward to our mezzo (half) and grande (big) débuts more. After our half début at thirteen, we could host balls and formal parties (girls only), and our big début at eighteen was adulthood.
But that was a long time away.
I laughed off Mattie’s joke and, linking arms with both of them, I led them through to the parlour. “Please, have some snacks. You hurried over and I worry food won’t be served for a while,” I said.
Tina and Mattie didn’t argue, sitting at the table, inspecting the snacks on offer. “Why, my favourite biscuits,” Mattie said, picking one up with a toothpick. Tina hadn’t the patience to say anything, stuffing her mouth with chocolate chip muffin.
I giggled watching them. “Of course—I know my friends well,” I said.
Mattie covered her mouth as she looked at me, but I could see her smile reach her eyes. As for Tina, she was only almost eight, devoted to her treat. I liked that, her cheeks puffing out, a chocolate smudge on the corner of her mouth, utterly adorable.
With those two settled, I returned to the foyer to wait. Next to arrive was a guest rather than a friend, Miss Ludovica, daughter of the neighbouring count. We got on well enough, but she tried to act mature and didn’t like hugs and stuff like that.
After her, there were a couple more acquaintances, then finally another friend: Gabriella (Ella).
“Oh Ella, look at you! What an outfit,” I said, melting at her cuteness.
Ella giggled behind her hand, head bowed in shyness. “Please, Bella, this is nothing.”
She looked like an angel, dressed in a simple, white dress with lace added in an elegant touch. Her hair already like threads of gold, the perfect yellow hue and very glossy, she had it braided into an updo, with a loose strand dangling beside her face.
“Emma prepared you today, yes?” I said.
Nodding, Ella idly twiddled with that loose strand. Emma was her mother’s lover—a companion, not a noble, but she was family to Ella. I didn’t know the exact details, just that Emma loved dressing up Ella and Ella’s mother.
“Well, make sure you tell her she did a wonderful job,” I said, then paused to giggle. “I worry everyone might think today is your debutto.”
She gasped, both hands covering her mouth. Teasing little girls was too fun.
“I am just making a joke,” I said, pulling her into a hug.
After a second, she squeezed me back. “Why do you bully me?” she asked and I could practically hear her pouting.
“That is because I love you, so you must bully me back, okay?” I said.
She giggled and I took that as my cue to stop hugging her and send her off. Of course, her favourite maritozzi awaited her in the parlour—a small, sweet bun, served cut in half with whipped cream in the middle; not exactly a scone, but not too different.
Another few acquaintances arrived before the last of my friends did: Stefania (her family called her Fanny, but I couldn’t bring myself to, knowing what it meant in English, so I called her Stef).
“Bella, pleasure to be here,” she said.
“I am so glad you could make it, Stef,” I said, letting her swallow me in a hug.
She was two years older, but looked and sounded even older than that. With lavender hair, she liked to dress in purples, today no different, giving the calm and elegant impression that made her our group’s sorellona (big sister), thus we were her little sisters.
Sure enough, when I led her to our table in the parlour, she asked, “How are my sorelline?”
The others all giggled, then happily greeted her with a reserved plate of her precious cannoli.
I had to go back, a few more guests expected, but took a moment to look at my friends, filling up on happiness. Being an ugly kid wasn’t easy, maybe worse for girls. In my old life, I’d lost a lot of friends, had to put up with a lot of “honesty”, and now I had four friends that I loved so much. They were so young it was more like babysitting, but it was the fun kind. Kids I could tease and hug and spoil with treats.
At least for now.
yeeeee
ace mc.
ace mc.
ace mc.
ace mc.