If Your Gender Bends in the Forest...

By Sierraffinity

 

Most would claim that a nearly three-decade-old Toyota Tercel does not make a good vehicle for long-distance travel.

They would be correct.

Despite this, Sam’s rusty green specimen still held up, with the aid of scheduled (and frequently unscheduled) maintenance. It had survived his rough adolescence, sneaking out to various parks and acquaintances’ apartments (he hesitated to call them friends, even back then) just to get away from the stress of his home life, maybe get something to take the edge off or fall fully into a blissful stupor. It got him far, far away from that home one gloomy February morning after successfully squirreling away cash from his burger-flipping job for months (years? Time was hard when you were frequently floating through it), and packing everything he cared about into one ratty old backpack. Countless tapings and thwackings of its ancient internals got him from one city to another, to another, to another, until eventually he found himself drifting southward once again after having exhausted the distance he could travel northwest without a passport.

As he jammed to a well-loved tape of Tears for Fears’ seminal Songs from the Big Chair down the darkened US-101, having opted to take the scenic route along the coast instead of the boring interstate, he thought back to his time in Seattle and the surrounding area. There was much to love about the city, sure, but ultimately, it was far too tech-bro-y and anti-homeless for his liking, and don’t get him started about his ill-fated trip to the eastside; Bellevue police did not take kindly to rust-bucket Tercels parked along the impeccably clean streets of downtown within spitting distance of all the Teslas and Mercedes, particularly if they happened to notice a figure sleeping in the back seat. He’d decided then and there, then being approximately two in the morning, that he may as well float away once again.

Nobody would particularly care that he was suddenly gone. Chuck might blow a fuse when he didn’t show up for his shift, but it’s not like he would actually give a shit about him as a person. And he didn’t need a 7-Eleven manager’s reference to work at, say, a Shell in Portland. Or maybe he’d dream bigger this time around: Starbucks barista? He chuckled to himself; nope, too big of a dream, requiring a modicum of put-togetherness that he simply couldn’t muster each and every morning. Nobody would want to order their coffee from the lumbering six-foot-plus gorilla with the sunken eyes and unkempt beard, but nobody really cared who they got their preservative-packed sausages from, as long as they were nicely aged under the heat lamps for at least twelve hours (for flavor).

His stomach chose that moment to rumble; damn, why’d he have to go thinking about food? One of those same sausages (though picked at the peak of freshness, i.e. only been sitting out for an hour, tops) was all that he’d had in his stomach from ‘dinner’ a couple hours earlier. He grabbed a bottle of his favorite hunger-squashing concoction (free tap water poured into an old plastic bottle) and fiddled with the cap one-handed, making sure to keep his eyes on the road a whole 80% of the time (way more than anyone needed to, in his opinion).

During one of those lapses in concentration, his headlights had caught a blurry shape up ahead; had he been paying attention, he might just have been able to swerve around it while remaining on the road. Unfortunately, Sam was only able to let out a single, sustained expletive and instinctually slam the wheel all the way to the right in the last few moments before impact. As the rear end of the car spun out and the driver-side window centered itself on the poor antlered animal’s face in slow motion, he reckoned they must have been sharing similar facial expressions.

This was the last thought in his mind before the whole world exploded.

—

Fuckin' deer.

This was the first thought in Sam’s mind after his brain turned over once or twice and began firing on precious few cylinders.

His second thought was that everything hurt like a bitch. He tried to scream, but none of his muscles deigned to cooperate given their mistreatment at his hand, so all that came out was a low groan.

"Cilla! Cilla, he's waking!" a voice that was far too close for comfort called out. Something clattered, and footsteps hurried over. Not wanting a second person to be near without his being able to see them, he summoned the last of his reserves of strength to will his eyes open just a tad. Slowly, ever so slowly, a blurry figure began to resolve, joined by another a moment later.

"Sam! How many hands am I holding up?" a new voice (Cilla?) asked, and a third, smaller mass joined the two figures. One, then.

"Fingers, Cilla, cripes…" the first voice muttered, and one of the two larger blurs roughly shoved the other.

"Gah! Lea! No need for violence!" Cilla responded, indignant. "It was a simple error!"

"One…"

Both of them let out little eeps.

"What did he say?"

"'Fun'? 'Nun'?"

"One hand…" he rasped.

"Oh! Yes! Good job!" Cilla exclaimed, clapping. Not only could he hear this, but see it as well, as his eyelids slowly finished peeling themselves apart, to where he could finally make out the faces of the girls who had been standing over him.

At that point, he realized that he’d never actually woken up, because the two of them had certain protruding features that simply didn’t make any logical sense in the waking world.

Huh, he thought to himself. Guess that deer got into my head… Hopefully not literally, though.

He opened his mouth to speak, but fell into a coughing fit. One of the two darted out of his meager line of sight and came back with a cup of water. “Here, open your mouth,” Lea said, holding the glass over his head. He obliged, and soon he was thirstily drinking from the waterfall she was slowly dumping into him.

He felt the coolness of the liquid spread through his body, bringing relief to his burning pain receptors. Water had never tasted so good. Once the glass was fully emptied, he cleared his throat and politely asked for more. The girl scurried off again, leaving him alone with Cilla. Having both there didn't particularly matter, though, as the question he wanted to ask applied to either girl: "Why the antlers?"

Okay, so he could have phrased it better, but he was still pretty out of it, give him a break.

Thankfully, the blonde seemed more amused than annoyed. "Why not antlers?" she shrugged, as if choosing to have brown, branch-like masses sticking out of your scalp was as easy as picking a shirt to wear. He opened his mouth to ask another question, such as how or what the hell, but chose not to. It's a dream; why am I questioning the logic? Instead, he raised up a shaky hand to take the refilled glass from the brunette deer-girl that had just returned.

"Without so much as a thank you…" she grumbled, and was summarily shoved by Cilla.

"Hey, leave the poor guy alone. If you've forgotten, he just went through a major automobile accident a mere few hours ago; we're lucky he's even speaking as it is. Bless the Forest-mother…"

Shit, major? That would explain the everything he felt. And… damn.

"My car… How bad is it?" Maybe it was a waste of time to ask this question to the girls in his dream, but perhaps if his brain was aware enough to know he was in an accident, these dream constructs could provide a conduit for knowledge he didn't consciously have.

Lea looked at him oddly. "You were hurt in an accident and your first concern is for your vehicle?"

He did his best to shrug through the pain. "Never did care much about my health. As long as I can drive my car, that's all that matters."

The two girls shared a glance Sam couldn't glean the meaning of. Then Cilla spoke up.

"Your car, unlike you, was… well, I don't know much about cars, but does this look drivable to you?" She pulled out a phone and showed him a photo of… yikes.

"H-how the fuck am I even alive?" he exclaimed. The picture displayed his poor Tercel wrapped around the trunk of a sturdy tree, its driver's side wheels nearly perpendicular to one another. A bloody trail led from the gap where the driver's door should have been off the bottom of the screen, almost like an animal's fresh carcass had been dragged across the pine-needle-covered ground. There was no way a person could survive an accident like that, much less not be fully paralyzed. He restrained a sudden urge to vomit.

"Cilla thinks the Forest-mother protected you from harm, but I personally believe it was dumb luck that you ended up where you did. I mean, she usually operates with more subtlety and grace than that…"

"The… huh?" He'd never been one for believing in gods or spirits or whatever, but his brain inventing a foresty hippie religion for these dream-deer-girls wasn't out of the question, he figured. Or maybe their antler costumes were religious clothing for their cult. He absentmindedly wondered if their IDs would have them wearing the things. What luck to have been discovered by and brought to a religious compound instead of to an actual hospital.

He blinked, realizing his thoughts had gotten ahead of a conscious realization. "Wait, where the hell am I?" He sat up as quickly as he could and scanned his surroundings; it was seemingly just a normal bedroom, decorated with some feminine stylistic flair, like pink drapes on the windows and some stuffed animals laying on a desk, seemingly thrown there in haste.

"You're at our home, Sam," Cilla said, gesturing around her. "We figured it best to bring you here rather than wait for help to arrive to the middle of the woods."

"God, I couldn't even begin to imagine the cost of that airlift…" He drank the last bit of water in his glass and Lea dutifully went to refill it once more. Then something struck him. “Hold up, how do you know my name exactly?”

Cilla silently gestured toward a bedside table, upon which laid a familiar worn brown wallet, now smothered in blood–his own, presumably. Next to it was his years-old Florida state ID with a horrifyingly smooth-faced grimace staring up at him, the sight of which made him wince. It was usually buried in one of the many pockets the wallet had instead of the transparent sleeve that was meant for ID cards because he hated seeing that face more than his present one in any mirror; the uncovered lower half revealed a jawline that he now kept buried deep beneath a thick, tangled carpet of brown.

"Makes sense,” he continued. Making an effort to push past the feelings that the old photo had brought to the surface, he changed the topic. “So how come I'm not in way more pain? What do y'all do for medical care around here?"

"The water in our taps is sourced from the river that flows through town, and that river originates at Lake Rimmarel, the waters of which are blessed by the Forest-mother herself." Lea chose that moment to return with Sam's third helping, and Cilla helpfully gestured at it. "So, er, there's your doctor! Dr. Mother, as I like to call it. The only doctor-themed drink to actually earn its MD!"

He blinked, staring into the alluringly clear liquid. "You can't be serious."

Lea rolled her eyes. "Unfortunately, she is; she's weirdly proud of that dumb name. But yeah, if you hadn't managed to roll into the little creek by the highway after your incident, I'm convinced you wouldn’t be here with us." She held the cup out to him and wiggled it a bit, a few shimmering droplets spilling over the edge. "C'mon now, surely this tastes better than any other medicine you've had."

He eyed the water suspiciously. "Magic water. You're telling me… that's magic water."

"You're sitting upright, talking and gesturing, when a couple minutes ago you were barely able to open your eyes. How do you think that happened, genius?" Lea scoffed.

"I… huh." Come to think of it, magic was the only logical cause for his rapid healing, at least in terms of dream-logic. Or maybe there were opiates mixed in with the water and he was so drugged up he simply couldn't feel the intense agony anymore, no healing necessary. Either way…

He shrugged and accepted the cup from Lea, then took one gulp and swished it around in his mouth, trying to see if he could taste the magic, or 'magic', in the water. It didn't taste different from normal clean water, which is to say it didn't taste like much of anything at all, but somehow it was just… better. Cleaner, maybe. More refreshing, like he'd been wandering through the desert for days without a drop to drink and this was his salvation.

Then the cogs of his subconscious clicked into place with another late realization, and he spat the liquid all over the bedsheets. Lea took back the glass of water, looking at him with concern.

"Wait, I was in pain!"

Now both girls were confused.

"Well, yeah?" Cilla questioned.

"No, but like… you can't feel pain in a dream!"

"Whoa, let’s step back a moment. Who said anything about dreaming?" Lea asked, chuckling a bit.

"Then you're joking about the magic water and everything, right? Are you going to get me actual medical attention? Or is this a cult and you seriously believe that shit? Is that why you wear the antlers?"

The girls looked at each other, seemingly exchanging a whole conversation in just a glance. Cilla spoke first. "You mean to say, you've never seen one of our kind before?"

"Your 'kind'? What, forest hippie cultists?” Sam snorted. “No, not exactly, but I've hung around similar groups before, and it's not great on my sanity."

Lea paled. "Cilla… We're not equipped for first contact. This is bad."

"If the Forest-mother brought us to him, then clearly she wants us to help." She looked at him tenderly, but then her mouth tightened into a smirk. "So long as he takes back the cult comments."

"If you'll take me to an actual doctor," he snarked. Lea began to speak, but Cilla shushed her before she could.

"Sure thing. We can take you to the nearest hospital now that you’re more stable. Neither of us has a personal vehicle, but Tess likely has something that runs at her garage. Why she has such an interest in those horrible pollution producers, I’ll never understand…” She extended a hand out to him, and he took it after some slight hesitation. Sitting up brought back some of the pain he had felt earlier, and without even thinking about it, he snatched the glass back from Lea and downed it all. Whatever issues he had with this strange cult and its purported ‘medicine’, he couldn’t deny that Dr. Mother was working (probably temporary) wonders on his pain receptors.

“Now then–” He coughed, not having expected the first word to come out with a vocal crack that reminded him of teenagers experiencing the horrors of puberty. Exerting a bit more conscious control, he began again. “Now then, where’s this Tess’s place?”

“Er… l-let’s get you cleaned up a bit first, yeah?” Cilla stuttered, blushing. Lea was trying to stifle a giggle. Sam didn’t know what they were going on about before realizing that the sheets had fallen away, leaving him bare-chested without so much as a modesty gown to cover up the grossness. Oh, and the dried blood. There was… a lot. It probably should have bothered him more than his unclothed chest, but what can you do.

Once he had proven to the two of them that he could stand on his own (and received permission to take the bedsheet as a shield to prevent any more accidental displays), he found himself in the bathroom, waiting for the water to warm up and looking at himself in the mirror, sheet dropped on the floor. Maybe it was an optical illusion created by the smears of red all over his body, but something about it seemed off, and not off in a ‘just survived a major wreck’ way. He couldn’t place what it was: his hair was still a shaggy brown mess, his face was still sallow, his ribs still clearly showed through his hairy chest, and his li’l buddy was still chilling down below. He decided he could figure it out later and hopped in the shower, enjoying the warmth as it flowed down his skin.

As he scrubbed the dark, rust-colored gunk from everywhere he could think to check, he realized what must have been the source of his off feeling: there were no gashes, no scars, no sutures, nothing besides the blood that was quickly washing away to evidence that he’d been so much as cut. The skin felt a bit raw and itchy in some places, but nothing like how he imagined a car accident victim should have felt. Hell, surely some bones must have broken, right? He thought back to the photo Cilla had shown him; there was no way he could possibly have been walking, let alone unmarked! Maybe this Dr. Mother thing was for real… or more likely, this was all a dr–

A sudden yelp broke his train of thought. It took him a second to realize it came from him, for he was not one to yelp. He looked down at where he had been scrubbing before yanking his hand away: his left nipple. Shit, he’d rubbed it so hard it was throbbing and swelling up. He hoped the electric zap of pain he’d felt originate there hadn’t meant the rupturing of anything too serious, but he rushed through the rest of his shower just in case. More for the hospital to check out, hooray!

Sam toweled off and gave a disapproving glance at the pile of clothes he’d left on the toilet lid. Lea was thankfully close enough to his size that he could probably squeeze into the pliable outfit she’d lent him, but the idea of wearing women’s clothing sent his stomach on a tilt-a-whirl. He very nearly strode out of the room in just the towel before realizing it would be far more mortifying to continue striding all the way through town and to the hospital like that, and it’s not like anyone really knew him anyway. Wasn’t that one of the points of all this travel? He resigned himself to wearing the leggings and low-cut top until he was able to get something more suitable, but no emergency could make him wear the pair of panties she’d left for him, even if they were still in their retail packaging. Never again would he make that mistake.

He furrowed his brow. Where had that sentiment come from? He shook his head and tossed the package aside, the thought going with it.

Not daring to look at his body stuffed into ill-fitting clothes like a Vienna sausage made of bones and sinew, he forewent the mirror and exited the room the moment he was done changing. If the two girls waiting for him had noticed his discomfort or how awful he must have looked, they didn’t say anything. Instead, they made idle chatter as they walked downstairs to the exit, which Sam soon realized made their home an apartment above a retail establishment. It looked to be a grocery store of some sort, called “Greens ‘N Things” if the sign above the big front window was anything to go by. More retail-residence combo buildings were glued to each side of the one they’d just come out of, none of them quite resembling the ones they abutted. On the other side of the street there was a steep incline down to the banks of a wide, twisting river, though ‘street’ may have been too strong a word for what appeared to be a somewhat narrow line of gravel packed into the ground, perhaps double the width of a sidewalk. Nothing about the area seemed designed for cars, which made Sam feel a bit out of place.

“Welcome to Riverhollow!” Cilla said with a flourish of her hands, the loose bracelets she wore jangling a bit. “That’s Termalla River down there, where you’ve been getting your dose of Dr. Mother from, and the place next door to us is Vera’s Vittles–her roasted sweet potato salads are to die for, by the by, and–”

“Cilla! This is no time for a grand tour!” Lea huffed. “The sooner we can get him to a hospital that’s far away from here, the better!”

“Despite your attitude, I’m with you on this one,” Sam nodded, making Cilla groan in frustration.

“Fine, fine, let’s get to the garage.” She quickly strode down the gravel path, making the other two lag behind her. As he scratched at some itchy spots on his head, he thought to the antler headbands that the girls were wearing. He wanted to ask Lea what the deal was with them, as he hadn’t gotten a satisfactory answer before, but erred on the side of not wanting to upset her more than his mere presence already did. As they jogged through the town, they passed a few others here and there: all women, all antlered, and all wary at his presence. He shuddered at their stares.

After a good few minutes of walking (after jogging for more than a minute at a time had proven to be too much for Sam’s recovering strength), they turned off the main road onto a path with more loosely-packed gravel that led past a freestanding barn painted pink and blue with white accents, its big doors open and letting out the loud sound of power tools from within. Scattered around the outside were the husks of old rusted-out buses and strange Frankensteined cars, none of which looked like they’d ran in eons. A metal sign with hand-welded 3D letters sticking out read “Tess the Tinker”. There were marks from what looked to be an extra ‘er’ removed from the end of the name; Sam could fully understand that indecision.

When they finally arrived in the doorway, they were greeted by a loud metal clatter and an expletive, presumably coming from the woman who had just dropped some part from the bottom of a suspended car she was working under. As she turned to locate the wayward component, she spotted the three at the door and gave a tired wave, wiping her brow with the same hand. Unlike everyone else he’d seen in the town, she wasn’t wearing her antlers; he looked around for them but didn’t see the headband laying anywhere conspicuous.

“Heya, ladies! What brings y’all over here?” she called, putting down the drill-looking device she held and walking over to them. The smile on her face faltered as she seemed to notice Sam properly for the first time. “And who’s this you brought with you?”

“So this is Sam; he crashed his vehicle out by the highway last night and we brought him to our home to rest. Despite Dr. Mother working wonders on him, he insists on being taken to the nearest hospital with ‘real medical care’.” Cilla punctuated the last part of her sentence with air quotes, which Sam scoffed at.

“Really… So he’s…?” Tess looked at him, a gleam of intrigue sparking out through an attempt at neutrality.

“An outsider, yes, which is why we need him out of here as soon as possible,” Lea completed. Cilla elbowed her.

“That’s–excuse me–that’s about the long and short of it, yeah.” Again with the voice cracking. Was he getting sick or something? Was it something in the water? Hope that doctor isn’t too far, he thought as he scratched idly at his throat.

Tess’s eyebrow raised. “You know outsiders can’t come here, right?” she asked Lea.

“Yes, exactly!”

“Sorry about that, didn’t exactly want to crash my car…” Sam snipped.

“No, I mean… if he’s here, then…” Tess looked at Lea expectantly.

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Cilla glared at Lea.

“What are you saying?” Sam was getting pretty sick of this dancing around the key information he was missing.

Tess sighed. “If they haven’t told you, and you haven’t found out by now, I guess I’ll have to be the one to break it to you.”

“Theresa! I don’t think–” Lea began, exclaiming sharply, but was summarily overruled by Tess’s next action: she ran her hand through her short red hair and out sprouted… antlers. They grew faster than anything should rightly be able to, going from nubs to fully formed branches in a second flat. Part of Sam’s mind idly wondered what would happen if they didn’t have room to grow out, but most of it was on red alert: klaxon alarms blaring, logic centers on fire, thinking gears getting suspiciously antler-like sticks jammed into their works.

“Sam, if you’re here, you belong here,” Tess said, smiling warmly, but the words got stuck on their way into his head. His mouth was opening and closing on its own, without so much as an attempt to create words. His eyes darted back and forth between Tess and the other two, his brain suddenly noticing but not comprehending the lack of a visible hair band to attach their rather tall antlers to. Lea was sighing and shaking her head, while Cilla looked at him with a wary smile.

“It’s okay to be a little freaked out, Sam. I was too, at first. When I was running to escape the draft–” Tess began.

Running. That was the only word that made it through to Sam. With adrenaline coursing through his body granting speed he’d never felt before, he bolted out of the garage, beelining for the trees directly across the gravel road. Voices called out behind him, but his fight or flight response was set firmly into ‘flight’, and no brain power was left to process anything else. Not even the sudden lack of ground he found under his feet as his path took him over a ledge directly into the water below. By the time he hit the surface, his brain had finally come together enough to form a single coherent thought:

Shit.

He plunged into the icy river, which was deep enough that he didn’t hit the bottom. The panic already overwhelming his body caused him to thrash around more than he would have liked, even aspirating a bit of water. As he swirled around, head over feet, his shin glanced off a rock or smooth root or something, and through the pain, he managed to get enough purchase with his foot that he could push off and up to what was hopefully the surface.

Before he could break through, however, he was suddenly grabbed and yanked out of the water, flopping onto a rocky riverbank like a freshly caught fish. He retched and coughed up the liquid in his lungs, wanting to roll onto his hands and knees but only able to lay on his side while a hand roughly patted him on the back.

“Sam!” a voice called out; Lea’s, he thought. “Thank the Forest-mother you’re alright! We’ll be across in a minute!”

“You could thank me too, y’know…” a woman’s deep voice grumbled as Sam tried to finish clearing everything out of his system that shouldn’t be there. His lungs burned, but he was grateful it wasn’t salt water. He shifted onto his back, body still shaking from both adrenaline and the freezing cold.

“Oh, you poor thing!” the same voice cooed. “C’mere, let’s get you warmed up.” Suddenly, he was grabbed into a tight bear hug by some of the thickest arms he’d ever felt and mashed up against some huge, soft… oh my. Even in his freezing, recovering-from-almost-drowning state, his face still managed to burn.

The hug worked in concert with his own body’s response to help warm him up a bit, and he got his teeth to stop chattering for just long enough to say two words.

“T-thank you…”

Well, he thought he had, but that definitely wasn’t him. He tried again.

“Than–”

His voice was cracking again, then. How embarrassing. He forced it back down into its natural range.

“Thanks–”

No, that still wasn’t right. Now he sounded like a little boy doing an impression of his father! Something was fishy, and he hoped it wasn’t the fish he’d probably swallowed into his vocal cords.

“Oh, you don’t need to thank me, honey! I’m just glad today was a fishing day, or who knows what could have happened?” She released him from the tight hug but still held onto his shoulders. “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you a new inductee? Name’s Josie.” As he finally got a good look at her, his receding blush came back tenfold. Not only was she pretty, tall, and buff, she was also in the buff. She saw him looking at her exposed lady pecs and chuckled. “Don’t be embarrassed, baby girl. I’m the one that chose to be naked.”

“W-why though?” Jeez, again with the voice– “Wait, what did you call me?”

Josie blanched. “Goodness, I’m sorry. Must be forgettin’ my manners. What are your pronouns, er, Sam?”

“My huh?” Shouldn’t that be obvious? As he was going to respond to that effect, though, he heard the pounding of footsteps on loose rocks from behind him.

“Josie, cripes, thank you so much for rescuing Sa–” Lea began, but stopped in her tracks when he turned to look at the approaching trio. Tess and Cilla pulled up alongside her, Cilla’s expression mirroring Lea’s own shock, but Tess was smiling widely.

“Knew it. Called it. In my own head, sure, but I totally did,” Tess boasted.

“Was this why… this was, wasn’t it?” Cilla mumbled to herself.

“Wha–” His throat seized, making him cough. “What the fuck is going on here?! Can someone just tell me straight up what magical fucking furry-ass cult I happened to get rescued by? Or what the hell that Dr. Mother shit was laced with?” The world was getting blurry, and he sniffled. Wait, was he crying? The fuck? That hadn’t happened since he was a kid.

“It’s simply blessed by the Forest-mother, nothing more, I assure you,” Cilla spoke softly, slowly approaching the shaking man. “It heals all bodily ailments, and given enough time and faith, many spiritual ones as well. But there’s no chemical additives or anything like that.” She placed a hand on his shoulder, brushing aside his hair to do so.

Hold on.

A trembling hand reached up to touch his hair. It extended a couple inches past his shoulder, still sopping wet and cold. But that wasn’t right, was it? His hair was long, sure, but only as far as his earlobes. He grabbed at it and pulled; no, it was his hair, same color and just as curly as ever, and it was still attached. It was just… longer, somehow. He ran his hands through the strands, again and again, until he noticed something about his fingers as well. No longer did they look like sausage links someone had drained the juice out of; they were now appreciably thin and might even merit the adjective ‘slender’.

“Wh-wh–” He began hyperventilating. “What the fuck is happening to me?” His eyes traced downwards, from his hands to his similarly-slimmed arms–which had lost their coarse hair, he dimly noted–and as he pulled further away from Josie’s embrace to examine the rest of himself, he came to realize that not all the softness he had felt could be attributed to her.

Sam screamed.

Josie, startled, released him completely, but he caught himself before he could tumble to the rocky ground below. With barely any thought, he dashed over to the edge of the water, his arms windmilling against the force of a changed center of balance. Kneeling by a stiller portion of the river, his reflection popped into view.

Well, he couldn’t quite call it his reflection, as the girl that looked up at him bore little resemblance to what his reflection should have looked like. Long, curly hair framed a round face, and wide, expressive eyes stared in shock at a set of soft, plump lips that were parted in a look of pure bewilderment.

Oh, and there was a pair of deer’s antlers sitting proudly atop the girl’s head, threatening to tip her into the water if her neck muscles gave up the ghost.

Sam screamed again, foreign vocal cords yielding a piercingly shrill, feminine sound. The only reason he hadn’t recognized it as such before then was because pubertal voice changes were something with which he was familiar, not so much… whatever this was.

“Sam! Sam, please calm down, it’s okay!” Another pair of arms, skinnier than Josie’s, wrapped around him from behind. “I know it’s sudden, but–”

“The fuck did you do to me?!” he yelled, throwing the arms off him and stumbling to his feet, making sure to not touch that… that cursed river. Things jiggled that he was not used to jiggling, and the jeans chafed in a way that shattered his mental model of his body. All of the clothes fit much more snugly now, he realized, and it felt weird that that didn’t feel weird.

“I know the antlers are a bit much, but you can always hide them,” Tess said, jogging up behind Cilla. “You just gotta–”

“Antlers? Antlers?!” he interrupted, still in a rage. “What about these–” He grabbed his freshly engorged chest for emphasis and squealed, the unfamiliar sensation sending shock waves through his body.

“Well, I think they’re lovely! Did you want them bigger? Smaller?” The question Josie was asking made no earthly sense to Sam, though.

“Why the flying fuck would you think I wanted them at all? I’m a man, god damn it! I–I can’t be like this! This isn’t my body!” He was crying again, snot cascading down his smooth chin, a voice inside yelling at him to man up and dry those tears. “Is this some kind of sick joke?!”

“No… it’s impossible…” Cilla took a step back, hand reaching up to her mouth in horror. “The Forest-mother has never made a mistake before…”

“She can fix it, though! Don’t you worry your pretty little–er, your manly little–” Josie rubbed the back of her head awkwardly. “Sorry, I guess I’m not good at this when it comes to men…” Something made him flinch involuntarily when she said that, probably the implication of being pretty and little. Come to think of it, he did seem to be a bit shorter than Lea now, although by just how much, he couldn’t guess. It all made him sick to his stomach, which felt oddly familiar in some way, though he couldn’t imagine why; it wasn’t like this had ever happened before.

“The Forest-mother wouldn’t make a mistake. She must be challenging you in some way, perhaps to cure some sort of prejudice you may have against our commune.” Lea was lost in thought, muttering and staring at him intensely like he was a puzzle she simply had to figure out.

“I’m sorry for the cult comments, okay? I was wrong; there’s obviously actual fucking magic here…” He sniffled.

“Wait, wait, wait… Y’all, there’s clearly something else going on here.” Tess stepped right up to the pathetic-looking girl that Sam currently had the appearance of. “What did you mean when you said that this was a ‘sick joke’?”

He stiffened. “I… like, being turned into a girl is kind of a massive blow to a guy’s masculinity, y’know?”

“No, no, there was something else behind that. Something more… personal.” She jabbed her finger into his sternum, and he was thankful she didn’t go for his more… fleshy bits. “Why can’t you be like this, hm? Is it because you’re not allowed to be?”

“No shit, I’m not allowed! I’m a man! Lost the coin flip, gotta grin and bear it!” It felt a bit silly saying that while literally standing there in the body of a woman, arms crossed under some quite unmanly lumps of fat, but it needed to be said. Suddenly, everyone’s expressions shifted toward relief, though Tess’s was mixed with an undercurrent of smugness.

“Oh, honey, no! You don’t have to be anything!” Josie rushed in for another bear hug, the warmth of which Sam greatly appreciated, but the sentiment he dismissed with a snort.

“Sam… have you heard the term ‘transgender’?” Cilla asked.

He had to tap on Josie’s shoulder to get enough air to speak. “I mean yeah, I’ve met a few of ‘em on the streets. They got it tough out there. Real shit deal they have.”

“Have you ever considered that you might be like them, though?” Tess queried, which made Sam snort derisively again.

“Nah, they’re women on the inside. Not like me; I have to be a man.” Then he paled, coming to a sudden realization. “Shit, hold on…”

Cilla’s eyes sparkled. “Yeah? Have you figured something out?”

“Does this make me a transgender man now? God damn it!” He stamped on the ground in frustration at his patently absurd situation, too-big shoes sloshing around on his feet.

Tess facepalmed. Cilla opened her mouth, but Lea stopped her, looking at Sam with an odd sort of determination. Josie just seemed confused.

“Do you still want to be taken to the hospital, Sam?” Lea asked.

Sam sighed. “Guess it doesn’t make sense anymore. Y’all have actual magic, clearly–” he gestured to himself “--and I gotta fix this, so…” He trailed off, frowning. “Well, usually I’d be staying in my car, but…”

Tess lit up at this. “You can stay with me! We can get your car brought to my garage, fix it up, and figure your gender shit out! Got plenty of space!”

Sam groaned. “Yeah, that’s cool with me, but about the car…” Cilla whipped out her phone and showed Tess, who whistled.

“Never mind that part, then. But… roomies?”

“As long as you’re cool sharing your place with some scruffy homeless guy.”

Tess looked him up and down. “...Yeah, I think we can make that work.”

—

Waking up in a bed was unusual for Sam.

So was waking up with boobs, if he was being honest.

As he sat up and looked down at himself, long hair hanging over a t-shirt which draped loosely over his decidedly immodest bosom, he felt his stomach churn. He felt nauseous… maybe. If he really focused on how it felt, he could tell there was something different about it, something that he instinctively knew felt bad, but not in the same way that nausea did.

Then his stomach rumbled. Of course, he was just hungry! That made sense.

Breakfast was served by a chipper Tess who, he had to admit, made some bangin’ eggs benedict. Apparently, most of the food in the town was farmed locally in the community, in a co-op fashion. The whole town was run that way, where labor was traded for goods directly, and everyone did their part so the town would be self-sufficient. Money was only used when trading with the outside world, the money for which a few residents made by driving to other towns or having online businesses. Sam was startled when he learned that the town had internet access, but Tess shrugged it off as she stuffed her mouth with more English muffin.

“It’s the year of our Forest-mother Current Year, who doesn’t have internet?” she spoke through a mouthful of food, gesticulating with her fork. Sam had no rebuttal to this and simply laughed at how goofy she looked.

Walking through Riverhollow was a lot less anxiety-inducing than it had been the day prior. He’d been properly introduced to a few other residents after agreeing to stay with Tess, and even with his weird situation, they accepted him with open arms. It turned out that the reason they’d been staring was twofold: they weren’t used to strangers in their village, let alone male strangers. Even so, some did continue to give him odd looks, like there was something about him they were trying to puzzle out in their minds, but he ignored this as best he could.

All of the residents he’d been introduced to, or seen around town, were deer women (and non-binary deer people) who had sought the place out from rumors of a safe haven for people like them, where they could live in peace and freedom from whatever they were running from, or stumbled into it at a time when they needed it the most. Something that surprised him when getting a proper tour the day prior was the realization that most of the citizens were far older than they appeared. For instance, Lea and Cilla, though they seemed to be in their early 20s, had been born in the 1920s. Josie was from the ‘80s, and Tess had stumbled into the town while dodging the Vietnam war draft.

“Wait, I thought the draft was only for men?” he had asked as she told him the story over a surprisingly delicious vegan dinner the five shared at Vera’s Vittles.

She stared at him pointedly. “Or people the government thought were men.”

It took him a second to get what she was hinting at. “Shit, huh. I had no idea, my bad.”

Vera, who had come by to refill their waters, couldn’t help but jump in. “I can’t blame you; it’s not like she makes it obvious by painting her shop in pride colors or anything.” For this, she received a mild shove from Tess, which thankfully came in between pours.

It was here where Sam also learned that Tess and Vera had dated at one point, but simply hadn’t worked out, and were now something called ‘metamours’ to each other, due to both of them having relationships with Lea. And Cilla. And many others in the town. In fact, the entire population was enveloped in a massive polyamorous relationship, making it seem like more of a sex commune. When he brought this up, however, he was quickly rebuffed and informed that sex was only part of the deal, and that many relationships were purely romantic, sometimes because one or both partners were asexual, but other times simply because that’s all that was desired from a connection. Regardless, as Sam walked down the street towards where Tess had said the path to the Forest-mother’s shrine was, smiling nervously at the women who waved, he couldn’t help but feel something stir within him. Jealousy? No, he didn’t want to stop any of them from being in their relationships… Envy, then.

Sam was envious of the women in the town getting to live the way they did, always surrounded by love, knowing that the work they put in in the fields or stores or computers was helping to keep the town, and thus those they loved, alive and thriving. Everyone had love and purpose, both of which he’d been missing for a good, long time. He hadn’t had a desire to stay in one place for nearly as long, but…

He sighed. This wasn’t a place for him, and he felt it acutely. He shouldn’t have even been allowed past the strange fold in space-time that prevented outsiders from wandering in on accident. And yet here he was, the only man in a town full of deer women and enbies (or ‘cervidians’, as he was told their species was called), inching down a path between businesses called “Sew You Wanna Do It?” and “The Butch-er” towards a heavily wooded forest and the shrine within, hoping to pray and beg for this misunderstanding to be resolved.

Soon, he came upon a small building in the middle of a clearing. It wasn’t much of anything, containing a small wooden pedestal upon which sat a carving of a deer sitting on the ground, tall antlers to the sky, little deerlets (Calf? Fawn? Kid? Whatever, deerlet worked) feeding from her body. Sam had been told to bring nothing but himself and simply pray at the base of the pedestal for the Forest-mother to fix her mistake and change him back, which he proceeded to do. Awkwardly, he wasn’t sure how to end his prayer and ended up saying “Amen… wait, awomen? Is amen just a Christian thing?” Unfortunately, bungled or not, nothing seemed to come of his prayer. This wasn’t unexpected, and he resolved to keep coming back each day before work. Maybe her will could only be achieved after he took a couple of showers, who knew?

Sam strode out of the woods, feeling slightly more upbeat now that some progress had been made, and headed to Greens ‘N Things for his first day helping the commune. When he’d been asked what he was skilled in, he shrugged and said he wasn’t, so they’d decided that he was to try out different jobs around town and see what fit him best. Tess had wanted him to try working in her shop first, but the two grocer girls had won out in the end, saying it might be better for him not to be around cars for a bit.

As he entered the store, the bell dinging at the door caused the girls making out at the counter to quickly separate, antlers clacking awkwardly. Lea blushed and shied away, while Cilla waved him over.

“Sam, hi! Welcome to Greens ‘N Things, where you can get all the greens you want, and many of the things too!” She tossed an appropriately green apron at him, which he deftly caught and put on over his casual black t-shirt and jeans combo (on loan from Tess this time). “You’ll be organizing the stockroom today and getting some training on the register for tomorrow.”

“I don’t need register training, trust me. I’ve been poking at buttons on registers for years now… and wait, why have a register when you don’t need to pay here?”

“Keeping track of stock, mostly,” Lea responded. “We need to know what we have and need to buy more of, and what trends when so we can stock up.”

“And you use a cash register for this…?” An old one at that, as it looked like it had come from the ‘20s along with them.

“We don’t have to, but…” Cilla pressed a few very clicky buttons, then turned a crank at the side of the machine; it made a series of satisfying clunks then spat out the cash drawer with a ding. “Would you ever want to give that up, really?” Sam couldn’t argue with that.

The day was spent doing menial but satisfying work in the back room, organizing all the dry goods and ‘things’ they had brought in from the outside world in preparation for surges that hadn’t yet come or had been overestimated in the past. He’d taken in a few purchases from delivery girls on bicycles, who were towing carts behind them from wherever the actual delivery trucks were parked. Whenever he’d needed to ask a question for where to stock something and popped out to the front, though, he’d caught the pair mashin’ lips nearly every time, and slowly but surely, that familiar feeling of envy was building within. It didn’t help that his new frontal protrusions kept getting in the way, and hitting them brought a combination of pain and that weird tingly not-nausea.

When he arrived back at Tess’s place behind her garage, he was noticeably frustrated, and Tess quickly picked up on this. “Hey, man, what’s up?” She popped out from behind her desk, where she had been doing something to her desktop PC. “Something getting you down? This feels like a new thing.”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.” He wanted to keep his emotions packed tightly inside him like always, but for whatever reason the rope he used to tie their container shut just wasn’t holding together like it used to.

“Sam, you’re allowed to be openly emotional, you know?” She sat down on the couch and patted the seat next to her. He sighed and plopped in place.

“No, I’m really not. I’m still a guy, y’know, even with all this… going on.” He sniffled. “We have to hold it in, shove it down, bury it inside.”

“God, that’s such a fucking toxic mentality, dude! You’re a human being, and human beings have feelings. You are allowed to cry, no matter who you are or what you look like.”

“I… I can’t! I just can’t, okay?” Memories flashed through his mind: stern words from a bearded face, a child’s cry, a hand raised to strike, a night without dinner. Laughter on a playground, fingers pointed at a child lying face-down in the dirt. Opening sister’s drawers, her screams, the whip-crack of a belt.

The last one brought that tingly nausea back in full force and Sam hunched over, clenching his stomach, trying not to cry out in pain.

“Christ! Sam, I’m so sorry!” Arms wrapped around him, holding him closely to a warm body. “Somebody hurt you real bad, didn’t they?” All he could do was nod a little. “Well, they’re not here. They can never find you here. Riverhollow is a safe place. You’re safe. You’re allowed to be yourself, fully and completely.”

He wasn’t sure if it was her words or her proximity, but suddenly all the feelings he’d shoved down for years started flowing out of their box, out of his head, down his face, collecting in a pool of trauma on the floor.

Hours passed. Maybe minutes. Maybe days. It was hard to accurately tell time when years worth of pain was pouring out of a person. The whole time, he was held closely by the firm, calloused hands of a girl he’d only met the day prior. Part of him felt ashamed that he was being so weak in front of her, but it was quiet compared to the roaring tsunami of emotion pouring straight out of his eyeballs. It ached to feel so much, but it also brought a sensation of deep catharsis, and he felt warm, comfortable, and safe being so vulnerable in her arms.

When the sobs finally subsided, and silence had filled the living room, Tess still hadn’t moved from her seat. He wasn’t sure if she was still awake, but when he opened his crusty eyes, he saw her looking down at him with an expression of serenity and love that wormed its way into his heart when he was at his most defenseless. As she slid out from under him and brought over a blanket and pillow so he could just pass out then and there, he came to the realization that he might have just fallen hard for this girl… for this lesbian girl…

His brain had run out of space to process any more emotions, however, and he passed out right then and there, with only the single word sentence “Fuck” as the last thought he’d think that evening.

—

Life in Riverhollow was easy to settle into. For the next few weeks, it was a simple process of waking up, eating breakfast with Tess, praying at the shrine, going to work somewhere new every few days, maybe staying out with some of the girls, coming home, having dinner (sometimes without Tess as she may have gotten stuck in a project of hers), and going to bed. As much as he kept reminding himself it was all temporary, that once the Forest-mother figured out her mistake and he changed back to normal they’d kick him out for being a man, it was so easy to believe that he would be allowed to stay there, to keep living like he was. People smiled and greeted him by name when he saw them in the streets or at work, he got to know the regulars at the pub as he became one himself, and he started to feel… lighter.

It might have helped that he was seeing a therapist via telehealth twice a week as mandated by his roommate (well, less mandated and more pleaded for). What was strange was that the first time he’d had a session with her, she’d mistakenly called him ‘Samantha’ and… he didn’t bother to correct her. At the time he’d rationalized that it was just easier than trying to explain the situation or pretend he was a trans man who had grown up in the body of and being treated as a woman, but… was it? He’d started taking care of himself more, trying out little changes in his appearance here and there, especially with hairstyles. It was satisfying in a way he’d never felt from messing with his appearance before, and looking in the mirror was no longer a punch to the gut.

One night, after a productive day working with Josie, who it turned out was the town’s butcher, he was feeling particularly energetic and decided that, for the first time in years, he was going to try to cook something. He grabbed Tess’s recipe book from the shelf and, coupled with veggies and spices he’d bought from Greens and meat he’d brought home from work, he got ready to cook, popping some tunes on his new phone he’d recently gotten in a nearby town.

When Tess arrived home, it was to a bombastic scene of Sam rocking out in the kitchen, sizzling some ground beef and onions in a pan and loudly belting the chorus to Somebody Told Me by The Killers. “God, you are such a fucking dork,” Tess laughed as she walked into the kitchen. Sam yelped, nearly hitting the pan’s handle and sending all his effort crashing to the ground.

“Tess, shit, I didn’t hear the front door!” He was trying frantically to untie the pink apron he wore, which sported the words “FUCK THE CHEF (pretty please?)” in sparkly purple letters on the front.

“It’s okay, chill, you don’t have to hide that from me! It’s literally mine, and I think it looks good on you. I’m more just surprised that such a manly man like yourself is wearing it and shaking your ass while singing The Killers at the top of your very manly lungs.”

“I… I just…” His mood had plummeted into the soles of his feet. “P-promise you won’t tell anyone else?”

“Cross my heart, hope to die, stab Don Cheadle in the eye.”

“...What? The fuck did he do?”

“Nothing, it’s just a saying. Go ahead.”

Sam cleared his throat. “So… well… I dunno, I was feeling good today after work so I wanted to cook something for dinner so you could relax, and t-this was the only apron I could find, and I…” He clenched his jaw. “I’ve always liked singing, but my voice never sounded right to me, and now for some reason it does and now I wanna sing all the time?” He ended the sentence with an upward inflection, as if to make it a question, but it was more of a fear that what he was saying just sounded weird and she would laugh.

Instead, she strode across the room and gave him a big hug. “You don’t have to justify yourself, Sam. You like what you like, and it’s okay.” She gave him a playful punch on the chin. “Even if you’re still a manly man and everything.”

“B-but… but what if I’m not though?”

Tess froze. “This sounds like a couch conversation. Should we move?”

“I… I’d like to, but…” Sam looked at the meat-filled pan, the little crumbles beginning to blacken and burn. “Yeah, okay, I think this thing’s probably more than done.”

Once they’d sat down, Tess gestured to Sam. “Okay, now then. What if you’re not?”

“Y-yeah. What if I’m not… not a manly man at all?”

Tess shrugged. “So what?”

“What if I’m… a… a femboy?”

Tess blinked. “A… okay, what makes you think so?”

“I’m finding out more and more about all these feminine things that I like doing. I’m trying shit out with my hair, thinking about accessories for my antlers… Hell, I get called Samantha sometimes and I just… let them!” He let out a long sigh. “A-and… there’s a part of me that… sees all these groups of women around town, kissing a-and holding hands and just… being, and I…” He gulped. “I want that.”

“A relationship? A poly relationship?”

“W-uh, maybe? But… like, a lesbian relationship.” In a softer voice, he added, “Maybe with you.”

Now it was Tess’s turn to stammer. “I-you, uh, with me? Really?”

Oh god, he’d fucked up. “Shit, I’m sorry, that’s… that was uncool…”

“N-no, I mean…” Tess blushed furiously. “I am a lesbian…”

Sam slumped into the couch, feeling all his energy collapse inwards. “Fuck. A girl with a femboy wouldn’t be lesbian, right?”

Tess paused. “...True, that wouldn’t be.”

“Well, that sucks. Just another thing I’m not allowed to have. I can’t be in a lesbian relationship, because that’s not how it works.” He could feel tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

“But Sam… what if it did work?”

He looked up at her, eyes wide and glistening. “What?”

“What if you could be in a lesbian relationship… because you were a girl?”

“That… that would be cool, yeah. But–”

Tess swiftly rose a finger to his lips. “Sssh, lemme say my piece before you go dumping on it. What if I told you that you could just… be a girl?”

Sam screwed his eyes shut. “But that’s not how it works though? You can’t change your gender. Just because I look like a girl doesn’t mean I am one.”

“Again, technically the truth. But… what if your gender was female this entire time and you didn’t realize it?”

A second passed. Then two. At five seconds, Tess was getting ready to snap her fingers in front of his face when he began to speak again.

“B-because of the Forest-mother? Did she magically change my gender when she changed my body?”

“Or, and hear me out, you dense fuck–” she flicked him on the forehead “–or she healed your body to match the internal gender you always had?”

He opened his mouth to argue, but…

No, that was it, wasn’t it?

That was the conclusion he’d been running from all this time.

All those memories he’d been slowly chipping away the mental blocks on suddenly swam to the surface of his mind, and he understood.

The fear, the intense envy, the pain, the absolute apathy towards self and future…

And the simple joy experienced through feminine indulgences…

Sam’s eyes opened. Looked up at Tess.

“I… I think I’m a femgirl.”

Both of them stared at each other.

Sam started to blush furiously.

“No, wait, shit, I meant–”

“Eh, close enough.”

Then Tess took Sam’s trembling lips for herself, and the two girls forgot completely about anything but each other.

—

The whole town had been waiting for the other shoe to drop, it seemed. Cilla had apparently been carrying around a small party popper everywhere she went for the better part of the last month, and when Sam broke the news at a get-together she and Tess had organized at their place, she whipped it out and set it off before Sam could even finish her sentence.

“Congratulations on your gender!” she cheered. The sentiment was odd, but she definitely had the spirit, so Sam thanked her with a big, toothy grin.

“The Forest-mother truly makes no mistakes,” Lea said, tension visibly releasing from her body.

“Aww, honey! I’m so happy for you!” Josie gave Sam an even stronger version of one of her usual hugs, making Sam need to tap out when she felt that a rib may have been about to pop. Others from around town joined in on the congratulations, with some giving her looks that heavily implied a kind of desire she’d never felt before. She could do nothing but blush heavily in response.

“So, what’s your new name?” Vera asked. “Please don’t be another Luna…”

“Hey!” three girls in separate parts of the room cried out indignantly as one.

“I’m just sayin’, you have a chance to have a name almost as cool as Vera, so–”

“It’s still Sam. Just, uh, Samantha now.” She rubbed the back of her head nervously. “I hope that’s fine?”

Vera rolled her eyes, but smiled. “I don’t get how you can stand having just a small change to your deadname, but more power to ya.”

“It’s her name, she can do what she wants!” Tess exclaimed, coming to the drunken defense of someone who didn’t really need it, wrapping her arm around her shoulders.

Maybe it should have been obvious, but it really clicked in that moment that it was truly her life, Samantha’s life, and nobody else had any right to tell her that she had to live it any certain way. They weren’t the ones that had to live it, after all. Looking around at all the smiling faces at the party… seeing Lea bashfully kiss Cilla like they were still teenagers on their first few dates, seeing Josie seemingly being propositioned by the tiniest, cutest Luna, seeing Vera playfully argue with the girl she was girlfriends with (wow!), she had to admit that the life she was living had become pretty damn great.

And it was all thanks to the Forest-mother saving her after the car accident she’d had with the… deer.

Huh.

Had the Forest-mother orchestrated all of this, from the very beginning, because she knew Sam had needed saving from herself, from a life on the run from something she could never truly escape? She smiled, looked up towards where she thought the Forest-mother might be watching, and gave a short, silent prayer:

Thank you for everything. I feel truly blessed right now.

Awomen.

—

Somewhere, in a forest above the clouds, at the base of a tree so massive it almost rivaled Yggdrasil itself, a woman sat and observed a prayer arriving to her from the terrestrial plane. Without any point of reference, it was impossible to know how tall she was, but let it be known that she was tall.

Rimma scratched at an antler in thought. How the fuck does this keep happening?

All she wanted was to make a little community of deer girls to combat her rival’s catgirl coven she had forged near Chicago, and yet somehow–SOMEHOW–it kept attracting trans girls and enbies specifically. Sure, there were a few cisgender women in the mix, but how does it end up with a ratio like that without specifically intending it to? She hadn’t intended to be on the highway that night for Samantha to crash into. She hadn’t dragged her body into that small creek fed by the water from her lake, or brought Cilla and Lea to the scene.

For that matter, she didn’t cause Tess’s bus to break down, or Josie to get lost on that hike, or any other seemingly random methods by which these girls kept stumbling into her little folded-up pocket of Oregon. Were trans people in this world instinctively drawn to sources of transformative magic? Maybe one of the entities above her own plane was playing games with her… and her rival too, come to think of it.

She shrugged. It didn’t matter, not really, as long as she had a bunch of adorable deer girls to play with. It certainly seemed to make them happy and reverent, which was a bonus. With a snap of her fingers, she manifested her terrestrial cervidian form (with antlers because who cares about gender, antlers are cool) and dropped herself outside the front door of Tess and Samantha’s home. She was going to make out with every damn person in there, and nobody would stop her! She hoped, anyway, because dang they were all just the cutest.