Arthur.

Not fair! No! My thing wasn’t manliness, what was he talking about? That was totally not fair!

You see, strength was important to me because I wanted to protect L– my friends… and relatives, a-and be good at my job! Nothing to do with man or woman or stuff, it was just, ugh, I needed to be good at something, anything!

Also, those were the rules we lived by. The men had to be strong to protect the weak, that was what knights were for. That was my job, my responsibility. Okay, I guess, in a way, that meant that my thing was ‘being a man’.

But...

And I hoped I was not thought-sinning by thought-saying this, but… 

Hearing that my love of dumbbells existed because of… gender or stuff felt so not true? Crap, I wanted to be recognised for the efforts I put into these triceps. Don’t put that just on me ‘being a man’, whatever that means. Not fair!

Not that I was thinking of myself as less of a man than any other dude, of course. That’d be… very… evil. No. I was average in that category, just enough of a man, not too much, just right there.

Plus, I liked women!

Mainly.

I don’t know. L-lots of people are ho–

Anyway, why was magic so hard and confusing? Couldn’t he just go gibberishing the spell away or something? He was my best shot for this. Unless we find some way to reason with Thnak. He was the castle's top mage (that said, he was the only one, that's cheating), so if he couldn't do anything, I'd be toast. I was starting to get seriously anxious about the prospect of getting stuck here forever.

Why did my body move at the worst time earlier? It betrayed me, and that threw Lucien on a wild goose chase about my masculinity or stuff. Why did it not move when Lucien called my name? I hated the way I felt. I couldn’t slash through the situation, I couldn’t even punch Thnak. All my training was useless, the knight’s teachings were useless, I felt so useless.

I couldn’t even cry.

Lucien was really deep in his thoughts. He hadn’t talked in like, two minutes? That was a new high. And that was kinda sad to see. I liked when he was talking a lot and saying funny things. He always knew what to say. I was pretty sure he knew almost everything, maybe even more than the knights.

Then he started pacing about in the shed, launching a few confused stares at me from time to time. He looked again at the calming storm through a window and whispered words to himself. Words like “Uh”, “Nooooooo…”, “Yes?”, “He’s mop a bird?!” and “Nat doesn’t male sense!”

Probably some magic stuff. Look, I have bad hearing.

Then finally, he sat down in front of me. He adjusted my head so I could see him properly and sighed. Then he carefully started sharing his thoughts: “Arthur. What I am about to say might sound weird, so I'll try to take it slow.” He looked outside again, checking the state of the storm. “Fuck. Okay, scratch that, I’ll have to be a bit brusque, but you can take it, you're a strong… friend. So! Even if you moved earlier, I am… not quite sure that masculinity is your thing,” Lucien carefully explained.

Thanks! Yes, exactly. I lifted the corner of my mouth.

I lifted the corner of my mouth! Victory!

Now we were getting somewhere. I gotta say, Lucien, you’re a genius. If I could’ve hugged him right now and then, I would’ve done so. In a very friendly… bro… way. Something like a… a-a pink duck. Pink duck. Pink duck. Why was this so hard?

My mouth smirked. “So you haven’t lifted the spell yet? Fascinating! Are you enjoying letting your friend trapped in their thoughts like that, little mage?”

Oh no, that’s where the lifted mouth corner came from… ‘Lucien! They're back!’

‘Indeed I am, little knight,’ they thought-answered me, “and I have two questions, little mage.” They stared at Lucien, shifting my body to a more comfortable position. That was better. Finally something Thnak did right.

“Go on.” Lucien glared at him. “You’re still handcuffed, so no shenanigans.”

Thnak looked at Lucien with a wolfish grin. “Right. First, and the reason why I came back to say hello again: I happen to have stumbled upon your room, little mage.” Terror immediately crumpled Lucien’s face. Not cool! He was very particular about keeping his office private!

But they picked up on Lucien’s discomfort. “Do not be afraid, I won’t reveal anything about your little secrets. I would like to… Erm. How can I put it? I know that rune.” They sighed.

What the heck was happening here? I had no clue what they were talking about. ‘I’m starving! Give me food!’

“It’s not what you think. I-I didn’t–” Lucien stammered.

“Don’t worry little mage,” Thnak cut him off. “I know how important it is. I know its purpose… because I used it too.” They used my voice in a very soft way. “My main body is in front of your incomplete rune as we speak. I can copy and complete it here on the ground, now.” He paused. “If you so choose to.”

Wow, this seemed very important. A shame I didn’t understand a thing.

“What? Why? Why would you do that?” Lucien asked. “A-and… Yes, do it, please,” he blurted, blushing. Cute.

“Okayyy,” they said, prolonging the last sound of the word, waiting for something.

Lucien looked at us, looking confused. He too was seemingly waiting for something.

“The handcuffs,” Thnak finally deadpanned.

My friend’s eyes widened. “Right, yes. Erm. No. No, I can’t just do that. How…” My friend got lost in his thoughts for a second. “Hehe, I know. Let’s put you two in a collar!” he proposed, and then proceeded to have the audacity to smile. I started wondering who was the most evil of us three now.

While Lucien carefully proceeded to morph the handcuffs into a collar and attach it to a solid beam of wood in the corner of the shed, I felt my hands playing with some kind of spark, growing warm.

Oooo magic!

Thunder rolled far away. Looked like we didn’t have a lot of time left. So when everything was in place, my body lowered to the wooden floor, and with haste, we started drawing.

It was mostly gibberish and pretty symbols. At some point I thought I recognised a dog, but later it kinda started to look like a very pretty flower. Then, the fiend had to draw straight lines over it, ruining the design!

“Can I talk to him?” I heard Lucien say. We lifted our eyes to see him.

Thnak’s voice started going all weird again. “No, I’m sorry. The storm is– … –ing stronger again, and it’s messing with the link. I have barely access to the body, to say nothing of the mind… –ough think I heard him screaming he was hungry.” They paused. “I’m sorry.”

“Ah. Ok,” Lucien mumbled. “I’ll try to feed him something later. I should check what food we got in the escape,” he said half-heartedly, staring intensely at the drawing.

‘Oi! I’m here. I want one of those fancy frangipanes, please!’ I mentally implored.

As we neared completion, Thnak started to talk again. “... –tle mage, as I said, I have a second question for you.” We placed what I assumed was the final line and looked back at Lucien.

He was still sitting on the other side of the rune, lost in his thoughts. “Y-yes… sorry. What was it?” he asked.

“Why hav– … –not lifted the spell yet? Now that I’m back, I understand it is a bit more tricky given that I act as a wall between you and them. But you could’ve taken– …–vantage of the stronger storm earlier?”

“It didn’t work,” Lucien said, a drop of sadness tinting his words.

Thnak seemed genuinely surprised. “What? How so?”

“I don’t know, all the things about naming did absolutely nothing. I made some alternative attempts and got… mixed results.” Lucien’s eyes dropped towards the floor at his feet, taking great interest in the plants making their way through the planks.

“Naming should’ve worked,” Thnak said bluntly. “If it didn’t work, that just means you didn’t use a suitable na–...” Thunder rolled again, and my stomach growled.

 

 

 

Lucia.

Urgh. Goddess, you’re an evil lord you can’t even beat a storm? I was now suddenly very pissed about the lack of connectivity. They had just granted me the means to trans my body! And poof, they just left, I couldn’t ask them who they were? What were they thinking? What game were they playing? 

A-and I couldn’t just use the rune in front of Arthur like that, could I? That was a recipe for disaster. He couldn’t even talk! And he was hungry too...

Arhg! So many things to sort through.

Think Lucia, think, what should you do? How should you do it?

1. Arthur
   1. He was hungry. I’d have to rummage through my satchel to see if I got a good prize from when I breezed into the kitchen during our getaway. Preferably one of those fancy pastries he was so fond of.
       

      You know, one day he begged me to teach him to teleport them directly into his room. I tried teaching him the ways to do that by himself, but he kind of gave up when I said it involved maths. So instead, I became his personal frangipane dealer.

      If I'd found nothing in the satchel, I’d have to go outside searching for fruits or something. I doubted the abandoned shed had any food in store.

   2. The Spell. I still had to lift it. Thnak seemed to suggest ‘Arthur’ wasn’t his proper name. Maybe I could use his rank? Or maybe a nickname, something he liked more?
       

      Of course, there was one more hypothesis, but it will be mentioned in the gender category of this train of thought.

2. Thnak
   1. Not that evil? They just gave me something the king would have me killed for. I’d thought they would just be as shitty as the king, wanting to take the throne or something. Power does things to your mind even magic can’t dream of achieving. True corruption. But they seemed to be a good soul? And they were trying to help with Arthur’s situation. They seemed pissed when the storm came back, sad when they couldn’t talk to Arthur, and all around appeared to genuinely want to help us.

   2. They had applied that same rune to them? That meant, on that front at least, I had more in common with them than the bigoted king.
       

      Honestly, their attack against the castle wouldn’t have bothered me that much if it weren’t for the fact that they interrupted my rune-making. And that they bewitched my friend. So maybe now that they kinda fixed one issue and helped deal with the other, they could be a potential ally? Could they help me get out of here? What would Arthur think about all of that?

3. Gender
   1. Goddess, one touch and I. Am. Free. I could finally have the right body. I hadn’t really thought deeply about the next step, but it was on the line of “asking Arthur if he would come with me, then fleeing outside the kingdom.”

      No more hiding. A body worth caring about. I would finally be able to wear proper dresses, not exclusively mage stuff. I would finally be able to kiss girls in the intended way. And I won’t need my lousy office anymore, I would finally be able to get out of here.

      I couldn’t wait to touch the rune!

   2. But how would Arthur react to my change? He was very sweet, but he tended to be very impressionable, given you provided him with food. And the king had more food than me.
       

      He had that reaction earlier when talking about masculinity. Was that a good sign? Maybe he is like me?

      Was Arthur not... Arthur? He liked proteins, but that doesn’t mean shit, strong women were a thing. A good thing. A very good thing. Was that why I couldn’t lift the spell?

I’d run around in circles so much my head was spinning. The shed wasn’t big enough for my crisis to be properly walked through.

I took a look inside the satchel, and sure enough, here were three frangipanes. I pulled them out and put them in front of Arthur. Of course, he couldn’t move, but I saw his nose twitch and his mouth drooling in an all too endearing way.

Okay, time to feed the big baby. I took one frangipane and attentively delivered chunks of it into his mouth. He swallowed each time like a good… person!

While we slowly got through each frangipane, I tentatively tried to elicit some reaction out of him again. “Sooo. You heard the lord, they think your name isn’t Arthur.”

His eyes moved very subtly to look at me. Good, on the right track.

I noticed he had trouble chewing so I took his jaw with my free hand and swayed it up and down. "We also established you weren't too keen about masculine stuff,” I continued. He tried to slurp some bits of apricot jam making their way down his chin. “I would like to propose exploring other avenues. Maybe femininity is something that you’d like more?” I really hoped I wasn’t jumping the gun with this one.

He tilted his head subtly. But he didn’t wince!

Okay. We kind of bypassed naming, the first step in lifting a control spell. But now I wanted to try the second step.

See, voice is something tricky, it’s hard to use, and people under a control spell usually recover that part of their body last. But we need to establish communication one way or another to facilitate the recovery. And the manner he was already twitching, slurping, and burping made me think we could go on to do the second step: use a pen and paper.

And as the good girl I am, I always carry my notebook with me. I pulled it out of my pocket. “Alright, now I will put this in your hand, liiike this,” I explained, while diligently sliding a pen between his fingers. “And now you can write here on the page,” I added, lifting his hand on top of the notebook.

He started moving the pen very very slowly across the page and made... a line of about a millimetre.

Wow, thanks for the line! I always wanted one!

“Okay, let’s start easy, just… try not to move? That should be in the realm of your possibilities.” I giggled, and he obliged. “Good, now, if you want to say yes, trace a horizontal line. If you want to say no, a vertical one. If you gain more control back, you can switch to writing. Understood?”

Horizontal line! 

Yes, oh yes yes yes! This was working, I was actually talking with him. Finally, some positive news today. “Good! Well done. Okay so, feminine stuff?”

He traced an oblique line that slowly broke apart in a squiggly mess. No, no, too early, crap.

I don’t know the particulars, but I heard he was essentially raised by the castle staff. And that included the other knights. They said he used to be very weird when he was little. By weird, they surely meant curious… So they had to give him special lessons in order to stay calm and ‘be respectable’. I guess he had to learn the rules of the kingdom the hard way, kind of like me.

“Sorry, sorry. That was a bit much. I know the knights and the king don't like us thinking this way about… gender.” I looked at him gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But please, we’re just the two of us here – occasionally three when the weather is nice – I really want you to be honest with me. I think this will help lift the spell.” I took his other hand. “I pinky fucking promise I won’t tell anything to anyone.”

I heard him hiccup lightly, and a tear was forming in the corner of his eye.

“So, are you confused with this gender stuff?”

Horizontal line.

“Is this something you often get confused about?”

Horizontal. They were beginning to breathe more evenly.

“Wow. Okay. First of all, that’s fine. That is perfectly fine. And you’re not alone.” I patted their shoulder. “I... I have struggled with that too,” I added without really thinking. “I-I mean, can I talk a bit about that?” I said haphazardly.

Yes line.

I wasn’t really sure I was ready to talk about it but if it could help them, that’s what counts. “You promise you won’t be weird?” My mouth went dry.

Big yes line.

“I don’t…” 

My voice gave up.

Goddess, I was struggling.

They were so important to me, probably the only person I cared for. I was afraid to throw all of that away by telling who I was. What if they were disgusted by me? What if I was mistaken about them, what if they go full-on bigot and shoved me out in the void?

Nobody even really knew what their values were. Everyone treated them like a strong pile of testosterone, just good at punching. Sure, I knew better than that, when you gave them pastries, they opened and talked a bit more. But maybe I’ve read them all wrong, maybe all those times I thought I saw sparkles of curiosity in their eyes, was that just my imagination? The rest of the time, they weren't really around, just exercising and staying in their room. How could you tell which side of them was the true one? There was like a barrier between us.

So I just didn’t know how to address the subject with them. With anyone, really. I’d always kept this to myself. I didn’t want anyone to know. Sure, I had planned to talk about it with them one day. But like, with the rune applied, not like this.

I took their hands in mine, squeezing them gently. I watched them for a while, still pondering how to go about this. Then I flashed them a smile and stood up.

And I did the only thing I could think of.