So Eliza started looking around online for a community of trans Christians, and found a forum where she asked a few questions about people’s experiences coming out to their families and asked for advice about how to explain in a way that would at least somewhat make sense to older conservative people like her parents. What she heard back wasn’t super encouraging, and she immersed herself in work and magic practice to drive away the worry about how her parents would take it.
She unlocked chapter nine on Wednesday of that week. After going over the chapter, she excitedly knocked on the door of Cassie’s office.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“New spells! I got one that lets me reshape bone.”
“Oh, wow, that’s huge. That’s… is that the first flesh magic spell you’ve gotten that isn’t just normal transition, but faster?”
“Well, there was the night vision spell, and the immune system booster…”
“Yeah, okay. Still! You could use it on your skull for FFS, and on your hips –”
“FFS?”
“Facial feminization surgery. I mean, we’re halfway there with your spell that rearranges fat, but a slight adjustment of the bone structure would be helpful too.”
“Yeah, I guess so. And I was wondering if I could use it along with the spell to grow body parts to make my legs a little longer and my torso a little shorter? Or maybe make myself shorter overall, with proportionally longer legs.”
Cassie mused silently for a moment. “I’d be careful about that. I mean, this sounds like a dangerous spell to use at all if you’re not super careful and don’t know exactly what you’re doing, but once you start doing things that can’t be explained away by mundane transition, you risk exposing magic. And we don’t know what would happen if you did that, but obviously somebody or something is working to prevent that from happening or everybody would know about it already.”
“Yeah… or more likely, people would doubt I’m really who I say I am. I guess making myself shorter is out. But maybe a slight adjustment of my legs and torso would be okay?”
“Would shortening your torso mean casting the spell once for every single vertebra? – And would that mess up your spinal cord? I don’t want you to paralyze yourself trying to get a perfect body.”
“Oh, good point.” Eliza’s face fell. “But I can work on my face and hips, anyway, and yours too, if you want?”
“I’ll wait and see what it looks like on you. What other spells did you get?”
“There’s an information magic spell to help you craft a search string to find what you want. I think it should work on general search engines as well as a particular database?”
“Oh, wow. I think that might be even better than the bone shaping spell. Less chance you’ll mess yourself up with that one.”
“Yeah, it’ll probably be the first one I try out. And I guess I should cast the knowledge-absorbing spell on a couple of anatomy books before I try using the bone-shaping spell… Let’s see. Oh, and there’s an energy spell that helps keep you warm or cool, whichever the weather calls for. I guess if I were living alone that might save a lot on heating and air conditioning.”
“You’d need a certain amount of climate control to keep your books safe, but you could set the thermostat to a more economical temperature and use that spell to make yourself comfortable, I guess. – Huh, and I guess it would let you wear more flattering clothes in winter without getting cold?”
“I don’t know if I would want to, but I guess the option’s there. Anyway, I’m going to go practice the search string spell. Any suggestions?”
“There’s an essay blog I read several posts from a few years ago and I’ve been wanting to re-read one of them, but I can’t remember the URL or the author’s name or anything. I think one of the posts was on history of the Silk Road, that underground Bitcoin market? And the one I’m looking for was about an open source flashcard program, but I can’t remember the name of that, either.”
“That’s not much to go on; I guess it’ll really give the spell a workout.”
Eliza returned to her office and started trying to cast the optimal search string spell, finally succeeding and finding the blog Cassie wanted a few minutes before supper.
Eliza was getting close to finishing the cataloguing job. She only had Cassie’s bedroom and one shelf in the living room left to do. It was looking like she would, in fact, be able to finish the job well before the end of the summer; there were times when she’d doubted that, especially during the days when she was spending most of her time figuring out gender stuff and helping Cassie transition rather than cataloguing and reshelving.
Of course, Cassie’s bedroom was the largest, and contained a bunch of boxes of books in addition to those on the shelves, so it would probably take longer than the other bedrooms had taken. After finishing up the living room a couple of days after she unlocked chapter nine, she talked with Cassie about ground rules for working on the books in her bedroom.
“Sure, any time when I’m awake should be fine, unless I tell you otherwise. Maybe we can haul some of the books out of the room now and put them in your office so you can catalogue them in the mornings before I wake up?”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” So they did that before supper.
Friday evening, after a couple of days of practicing with the search string spell and the personal air conditioning field spell, Eliza cast the knowledge-absorbing spell on the anatomy book and then started thinking about how exactly she wanted to reshape her skull and pelvis. The pelvis was relatively easy; she just needed to make it a little wider, and the knowledge she’d engulfed from the anatomy book gave her a good idea of exactly how much wider. The skull was trickier, since she’d need to adjust her jaw slightly to match the desired changes to her chin, and that would require knock-on effects on her teeth to match. Teeth would be harder than other bones to adjust, like vertebra, because they had nerves running inside them that might cause pain if pinched or dislodged. If teeth even counted as bones for the purposes of the spell? They weren’t considered bones anatomically, but…
After casting several times and getting her pelvis to widen on the fifth try – which was incredibly painful until she hastily cast the body part growing spell to make the fat, muscles and skin around her hips grow to match – she decided for now it would be safer just to adjust the shape of her chin a little, and not try to affect the overall width of her jaw or the how much space her teeth took up.
She got her chin to match the shape she wanted after another three tries, and then was at a loss for how else to practice the spell. She worked out an other-directed version of the spell, and offered to cast it on Cassie, but Cassie said she was busy hunting down an elusive bug and said “Maybe tomorrow?” So Eliza left off magic practice for that night and read The Runaway by Kathleen Norris until she got sleepy.
On Saturday, after Cassie got up and ate, Eliza cast the bone reshaping spell on her pelvis and chin. This time she cast the body part growing spell first, so the skin and muscle around Cassie’s hips hung slightly loose for a minute or two until Eliza successfully cast the bone reshaping spell. “Oh, this is weird, I don’t like this,” Cassie mumbled as Eliza tried and failed to cast the bone spell. But Eliza got it right on the next try, and after going to check herself out in the mirror, Cassie was all smiles.
Once Eliza had the books in Cassie’s boxes catalogued, and had reshelved the ones that belonged somewhere other than Cassie’s bedroom, she shifted her work schedule to start after Cassie had gotten up, had breakfast and showered, and continue into the evening after supper. She shelved the books from the boxes, as well as books originally found in other rooms that belonged in Cassie’s bedroom, and reshelved the books on the shelves there wherever in the house they belonged. At last, just two days before their road trip was to begin, she heaved a sigh of relief and sat down to rest a few minutes before walking into Cassie’s office and announcing, “It’s done.”
“Really? Completely? Awesome!” Cassie said. “Congratulations!”
“I hope I can stay here until I can move back into the dorm,” Eliza said, plopping down in the other chair. “That won’t be for another couple of weeks.”
“Of course,” Cassie said. “You can stay as long as you want, and probably come back for visits whenever you want, unless I’ve got other guests. I hope I might be able to host the family Thanksgiving here like Uncle Eugene used to do.” She had a wistful look in her eye as she said that, and Eliza reached over and squeezed her hand. “Assuming they want to have Thanksgiving here… assuming they’re still okay with me.”
“They’ve got to be,” Eliza said. “They’re a lot more liberal than my parents, right?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be cool with their son suddenly announcing she’s their daughter. A lot of people are fine with something in theory until it happens in their back yard.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Cassie blurted out, “Oh! You still haven’t finished showing me how to use the catalog software.”
“Oh, right. Do you have time now?”
Cassie glanced at her monitor. “Yeah, now’s an okay time. I’m kind of stuck on this bug and need to take a break. But you just finished the biggest part of the job; you can teach me to use the catalog tomorrow and we can celebrate this afternoon!”
Eliza giggled at her enthusiasm. “All right. Any ideas?”
“We could drive to Hickory or Asheville and see a movie? Maybe do some shopping while we’re there?”
“Sure, let’s see what’s playing.”
After reviewing the movies showing at the multiplex in Hickory, they decided against going that far, and wound up watching a couple of comedies on the TV in Cassie’s bedroom. They popped a couple of bags of popcorn and ensconced themselves among the numerous pillows on Cassie’s bed, giggling at the silly moments and laughing with their mouths full, splattering bits of popcorn across the bedspread. It occurred to Eliza that she still had to write up her final report on what she’d learned from her internship for Professor Darnell, and she needed to remind Cassie to write a final report for him too, but she put that out of her mind and focused on the movie and the good company. She’d really miss this when she moved back to the dorm, although she’d probably see Sarah more often.
There’s an essay blog I read several posts from a few years ago and I’ve been wanting to re-read one of them, but I can’t remember the URL or the author’s name or anything. I think one of the posts was on history of the Silk Road, that underground Bitcoin market? And the one I’m looking for was about an open source flashcard program, but I can’t remember the name of that, either
It's gwern, isn't it? and Anki.
Yes -- I thought I had an author's note about it, but maybe it's on a later chapter for some reason?
You can stay as long as you want, and probably come back for visits whenever you want, unless I’ve got other guests.
Will you two just kiss already?!
Silly girls.
I love how your book recommendations and story recommendations are both within the story via what Eliza is reading or whoever etc... and also in the post script stuff
Also I'm so close to being done and that makes me kinda sad I hope there is a sequel but if not I'ma check your other trans stories out
It occurred to Eliza that she still had to write up her final report on what she’d learned from her internship for Professor Darnell
Learnt she was a girl, how to do magic, endocrinology, Finnish, anatomy, and the joys of being yourself,