We arrived at the counter protest pretty early. Me and Morty came together, me picking him up on the way here. It makes sense, since everyone else is family. He walks up to me, holding a folded up sign under his arm. “Dude, you sure I look alright?” I give him a little side eye and a smirk. “Ugh, sorry, sorry, working on it.” 

“Yeah man, you look great.” He’s in a sharp little tank top, showing off the cut of his jib pretty well. Dude’s got some muscles he’s been hiding! I know what he’s worried about though, a little black-brown-rainbow pin placed onto one of the straps of his shirt, and the painted heart on his cheek. Their rally is not technically supposed to be anti-gay or anything else, but we know how these types work. They don’t care about just one thing. I’m still proud of him for figuring himself out. There’s two ways you can go after liquifying your don’t-think-about-it-crush, and I’m happy he chose not to repress it anymore. Wish he didn’t have to go through hell week to get there, though.

I’m not particularly decked out in anything myself. I’ve got my hair brushed back pretty androgynously, wearing pretty nondescript clothes. It’s not like I haven’t jumped into being myself feet first. Born from fire and all that. When I came home that night, I got into my house and just absolutely collapsed into Ma’s arms. Told her everything that happened. It’s not like I was going to be able to hide all the bruises and breaks he gave me anyways. My arm was in a sling for weeks. She wanted to go straight to the building and give the professor a piece of her mind, and then go to the authorities and get him shut down. I begged her not to though, in order to protect my new friends. But at the end of the day, she accepted everything. It’s not like I’m hiding anymore. No, I’m dressed down because I’m here for something else than to protest.

“There you both are. Get over here. Took you knucklehead long enough” Frank shouts out, waves us over to his car in the parking lot. They were probably sitting around for a bit, just waiting for us to get here, by the look of exhaustion on all their faces. Frank looked ridiculous in a big cartoon wizard get up, a big blue robe and pointy hat. Bianca was waving over too, in a much cuter witch uniform, big black hat and the like. In place of a cape, though, she had a trans flag tied off around her neck.

“Hey there Gabrella, Mortimer.” Sabrina got up from leaning against the back of the car. She was also trying to be as low key as possible. That means wearing her disguise again, decked out in that human illusion. She even dressed up like a little tradwife; conservative floral dress and hair in an updo and everything.

It turns out Morty didn’t have the heart to actually break her, thank god. He had already been wavering on his support for the cause long before then. The most he could do was drain her out and then leave her in the storage space, instead of gutting her components entirely. Who knows if she could have come back from that.

We ran over, me grabbing Bebe in a big hug. It's been a while since we saw each other in person! I’ve been really busy trying to get myself back into the mindset for school (surprisingly hard after you’ve been through an event like that!), and her with  having started prepping for the first semester at the magi-college. The professor tried to pressure her into staying for another term, threatening all kinds of things if she didn’t. Turns out having a magictech specialist with no boundaries made his field of work jump by leaps and bounds. But she reversed it on him; turns out Sabrina was still set up to log the information she saw and had just converted that into her own data banks instead of being corporate spyware. And she knew how to integrate it with the building’s security feeds too. Pretty soon they had full video evidence of every creepy, nasty, borderline illegal, actually illegal thing he did in that lab. Enough that it could easily destroy his entire life, even if just in the court of public opinion. Needless to say she got a quick release from her apprenticeship with high marks for ‘exceptional field work’ just as he took an early retirement from the school itself to focus more on his personal scientific research. 

Sabrina walks over to me, dinging me on the forehead. “Are you ready to go in?” I nod softly, moving over to her side as we march around the protesters, around to the side of the rally propper. She laughs, putting on a high pitched dandy accent. “Awyyy shucks, I sure do hope no one tries to start anything with lil’ ol’ me! Oh, who would ever protect me?” She throws a hand up to her forehead, leaning back.

I cackle at her, pushing her softly. “They’re from up north, not the antebellum period. You’re not walking into gone with the wind.” She sticks her tongue out at me, pushing back considerably harder (despite the lighter movement.)

We’re close enough that we can start hearing men speaking over the loudspeakers set up. “Abominations” this and “ungodly” that. As I walk by a speaker, I hear a small clip. “First they tried to convince you that the godly answer was to end just one form of magic. Then they told you that, actually, the godly answer was to accept all kinds. That witchcraft was fine. That it was good that our family units have been corrupted! That they want our kids in the schools learning about this satanic critical magic theory bullshit when they’re toddlers! Well we will not yield! We will not accept your false church doctrine! We will not eat the bugs! We will mar–” I tune them out. I’ve heard enough bull like this in one lifetime. I’m not here for their bluster, for any of this. I’m here for the buses. 

Sure enough, they’re lined up at the outskirts of the lot, starting to arrive. These kinds of things always bus in every crazy cell they can in order to inflate their numbers. Don’t want to look like no one actually supports their crazy ideology, right? I remember basically being forced to go to these things pretty regularly, and if it’s anything like it used to be… There. From one of the buses walks out one of the goons I remember following around. He’s older, thicker, and has a nasty scar on the side of his face now. But it’s him. “This is the group. Follow me.”

We slip behind them, waiting out for everyone to get out of the bus. For them to all start mobbing into the crowd. Me and Seb tail them, following just long enough for them to become part of the crowd proper, where strangers mobbing in and participants mobbing out wouldn’t be out of place. As soon as we’re in the safety of the crowd, I send Sabrina over to grab our mark. She walks over, whispers something in his ear, nods out towards the edge of the crowd. I’d already started walking down past the makeshift stage, around a building, away from the designated meeting place for the crowd, or the plotted march route. I was confident she could follow me.

It was only a few minutes of waiting where I had stopped before they approached. Sabrina walked forward, pushing him out of the shadows of the alley and into better view. Raimi. Clearly the years weren’t good to him. He was more gaunt, more sunken eyed. It’s clear that he had lost weight. His clothes looked scuffed, probably from kids on the bus ride up. His smile was as wide and as beautiful as I remembered it though.

“Found you.”

CassieSandwich

We are not a proud race; it's not a race at all. We're only trying, I'm only trying to get home.

Thank you so much for reading through this, my first full novella! I really hope you enjoyed it. If you still want to have this for your digital collection, or just throw me a few bucks in support, the full ebook upload is still right here for you!

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