59: One Step Forward…

We all agreed—Including Vesuvia’s gladiators—to take three days to build out the towers that Willow had started. They needed everything other than the walls, window holes, and doorways. Thankfully, two of mum's friends were woodworkers so they were able to help us make the most of Willow’s wonky towers and wonkier support beams.

Stairs also went up, connecting one floor to the next, of which there were three for the crafting hall, and five for the three extra towers. It amused me more than a little that Willow had carefully not built on our existing central structure.

Along with the stairs connecting the floors we—through the power of video games—got doors, windows, and shutters on all the correct holes.

As for the forge, I laid down my fire bricks and mortared them together with a special fire resistant mortar. A strange sort of chimney was also constructed to do… frankly, it was something to do with air and drafts. I don't know. I just shoved a blower enchantment in the air intake and called it good, at least for now. Air go in, smoke come out.

Other crafters were setting up in the crafting hall too. The woodworkers among mum's friends chose to appropriate the second floor of the crafting hall, while a some of the others started throwing whatever the hell they needed with me on the first floor.

At the end of that first day, I was busy moving my stuff into the first of the finished towers when Elena found me dumping my bed out of my inventory.

“Hey, Keiko,” she said with a smile, face resting against the doorway that opened into the stairwell. “I've ransacked the apartment for everything it's worth. The library door has been deposited down at the bottom of this tower. So far it's just me and you moving in, though. I think the others are going to take rooms in the other towers.”

“Okay, great,” I said, pushing the bed across the floor. It got caught on a wonky floorboard, so I had to lift it slightly to get it against one of the curved walls. There was a weird gap between the headboard and the stone, but that was to be expected when you tried to shove a straight object against a curved surface. What I wasn't so pleased about was the way the uneven floor made the bed wobble. I was going to need to find a way to extend the damned foot a bit.

Elena cleared her throat. “Uh, I've noticed you've been a bit quiet today…”

I paused, then looked up out of the window so I didn't have to turn around and meet her eyes. “Yeah?”

“Is this… about last night?” She asked, and the creak of the floorboards signalled her approach. “You didn't come home, and I… had someone over. I figured maybe you did come home, but then… uh, you know…”

Relieved that she only thought she was the problem, I turned and sat on the bed. Looking up at her, I gave her a tiny smile. “No, I was happy for you. Was the night good?”

Elena's cheeks gained an adorable blush, and she sat down heavily beside me. “Yeah. I uh, I didn't expect to… There was this lizardwoman, she's come all the way from her faction territory because of the rumours about the expansion.”

My smile broadened a little, and I motioned for her to keep talking. I was intrigued, I had to admit.

“She's really cute," Elena gushed with a laugh. “She's some sort of gecko subrace, got these big eyes—Anyway, we were talking about games and stuff, and we'd apparently both quit CORA because of the same reasons. As we talked, things got… she… well, she'd never been with a woman before, and had just had a bad break up with another guy, and I mentioned how I've never actually had a romantic relationship. So we talked about that…”

Elena was rambling and gesturing a little wildly now, so I caught one of her hands with mine.

“Anyway, it was just nice, she… didn't try and analyse me and try to figure out what was wrong or why I wasn't feeling any romantic feelings, she just listened and believed me,” Elena said with a helpless shrug. “That was pretty attractive, honestly, so my mouth ran away from me and I asked if she wanted to fuck, and she just downed her fruity vodka drink and said yeah, she'd try new things. It was really fun. Did you know that the women from the lizard races don't have tits?”

Stroking a thumb over the back of my friend's hand, I couldn't help but feel a little swelling of affection. “I did know that, actually. They're not mammals, after all.”

Elena snorted a little laugh. “Well, I found out last night, and she apparently discovered that she's not so averse to having sex with a woman. It was fun, and I got her contact.”

Honestly, the part that was most impressive to me about the story was how this lizard woman hadn't tried to poke and prod at Elena's emotions. I was definitely guilty of it—I’d tried to ask her, analyse her, all that. I just had to remind myself that I didn't need to understand, I just needed to be chill and be her friend.

“That's awesome, Elena, and no I'm not at all upset about that,” I said, stroking the back of her hand with my whole palm now. “I'm not upset at you, like at all. I'm just… there's some shit in my head and I'm… you know…”

She laughed. “Oath, that's a mood.”

The conversation had infused me with a tiny dose of happiness, so I tentatively began. “Last night, Paisley and I walked in and heard you. So we ran away to her place. When we were in her room, the conversation got onto being confident and dominant in sexual situations and I challenged the idea that Paisley could be like that. She tried to show me by pushing me down on her bed, and… uh… it felt like she was this close to kissing me, but then she freaked out and apologised and… all that.”

“And, given how you two have been looking at each other, you really wanted her to?” Elena asked gently.

Oh dear. People had noticed.

I nodded, throat constricting. “Yeah. Then she didn't and I just… I got angry and I left, and I've been trying to process it all day. Like, she's my best friend, and I'm… ugh, I don't even know how to describe everything in my head.”

The newly installed shutters on the windows gently rattled in the wind, and I glanced up. We had pretty diamond pane leaded windows. I think we weren't actually using lead, thankfully, so there'd be no poisoning.

“Huh,” Elena grunted, thinking. “I'm glad I don't feel that kind of thing.”

I laughed despite myself. Trust Elena not to have any other opinions or suggestions. “It's kinda rough… but there's also a tiny element of sweetness to the pain. Similar to when you dig your nails into me and it feels—” I shivered at the memory. “—Really good.”

There was something about blunt-sharp pressure pain that made my brain very happy. Fingernails or an extremely blunt knife were examples.

“Little masochist,” she accused me affectionately. When I gave her a vaguely hungry follow-up stare, she chuckled, “No, not tonight! I'm still recovering. Normal geckos are so small you can't see the teeth, but trust me, they're there. I need a bit to recover.”

“Fair,” I said with a sigh. “I was mostly joking anyway, I don't think I have it in me to even be properly horny right now. Which, I've discovered, is way more of a necessity for coming as a woman.”

“That it is,” she said. “You know, I think my favourite part about our… arrangement, has to be helping you navigate your new feminine existence. It’s been fun.”

“It has,” I agreed, while carefully avoiding the past tense leaning her words took. Was she done with me now?

Paisley caught up with me the next morning as I was laying the bricks for my forge. The room had a few of mum's friends setting up their own crafting areas, but nobody was close enough to listen in on a hushed conversation.

I also didn't actually see or hear her until she was right beside me, causing me to twitch and swear as I slopped some mortar on the ground. “Paisley!”

“Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to—” she said, reaching down to try and pick the mortar up with her hands. I stopped her with my trowel.

“What do you need?” I asked, without looking up to meet her eyes.

She shifted her feet slightly then sat down heavily on the stone floor. “I… um… I wanted to talk, you know, about the— about that night.”

I placed a brick down. “Okay. What did you want to say?”

“I'm sorry…?” She said, her tone strained and questioning.

Swallowing a lump in my throat, I carefully applied some mortar to the side of the brick, then nestled the next brick in against it.

With a deep sigh, I paused and just… considered her. I could turn this into a big thing and lay my heart bare, or I could let my unfair anger go and just forgive her.

“It's okay, Paisley,” I said gently. “I shouldn't have gotten angry at you. I was just… ah, it doesn't matter.”

“Was it Elena? Was it how she was with someone else?” Paisley asked tentatively.

Giggling softly, I moved closer to my friend. “Paisley, it's because you're my best friend and for some reason I've been noticing how absurdly pretty you are recently. Then, it's like ‘oh shit, she might actually kiss me,’ and that was very scary and very exciting.”

“You think I'm pretty?” She asked, a smile beginning to bunch her rounded gnomish cheeks up. Gnomes in this game were so cute, like smaller elves with rounder, more approachably beautiful faces. It was like the difference between the cute barista at the local coffee shop, and the shaped corporate woman you saw sometimes as she got out of her aircar.

“Of course I think you're pretty,” I said, shaking my head in consternation. “You made your character, you have to know she's pretty.”

“I just shoved my own face onto a gnome body,” she whispered. “Okay, and I got rid of some parts I hated about my real face, and I'm a little chubbier than this because we get a lot of exercise, but…”

Rather than keep reassuring her, I just fixed her with a look and raised an eyebrow.

She squirmed under my gaze, until finally she blurted, “But you never cared before? I always thought you were cute, even if your old character was kinda generic.”

Biting my lip, I shrugged. I had no idea why I'd started seeing her this way. I just had. Then I realised the implications of what she'd said, and I stared at her.

Her cheeks began to flame up further. “What? Yes, I thought you were cute. Now you're so fucking pretty and it's actually really distracting and then I remember that the tiny, hot as hell fairy is also my best friend since almost game launch and oh my god but that is so confusing.”

Now it was my turn to blush, and I ducked my head. Butterflies erupted into existence in the pit of my stomach as I said, “We could… see what happens when we kiss, you know?”

I heard Paisley suck in a shuddering breath, and I thought for sure that she was about to agree.

“No… I don't think that's a good idea, I'm sorry,” she said, very very quietly.

My heart juddered to a stop, then hiccuped back into gear. Looking up, I saw conflict warring over her features.

“Keiko… I hope it's okay if I use this label, I know you haven't been comfortable enough to use it yet but—” She frowned away the rambling explanation and visibly forced herself back on track. “Ever since early middle school, I've been in queer spaces. I'm also a couple of years older than you, I think.”

I nodded, vaguely remembering that she was correct.

“Anyway, one thing I've noticed is when transgender people first start to understand who they really are… gah, how do I explain this… They'll jump into a relationship at the first opportunity, but they're still figuring themselves out. I don't want to be the person on the other end of that… again. I had a relationship with a trans man, who at the start was cool, excited, nervous, goofy, that kind of thing. Then he got his hormone implants, and it was exciting as hell. His body was changing and every day he discovered something new about his body that he actually liked. As it went on, though, he also changed as a person… no, maybe it was that he was finally getting to be himself—”

She shrugged, expression distant as she remembered that earlier time in her life. Meanwhile, I was having a small, extremely confused, existential crisis. Transgender? Me? But they were always… I mean…

I cringed at myself. Always what Keiko? Going to say some slurs to yourself now, too? Going to dig into that vile well of bigotry you like to keep stashed away for just the right time? Literally read that label, and see if it doesn't apply to you. Trans— as in, transitioning from one thing to another, gender, the crazy tangle of social and physical traits that makes you man, woman, or like Aite, something else. That literally describes what you are, Keiko. That is literally you.

Which, let's be real, is what you wanted. The moment you saw that your fancy new sword was gender locked, a fundamental part of you jumped for joy because now you had an excuse. An excuse to follow that tiny insistent part of you that'd always wanted to cross over to something different.

A hand touched my cheek, and I twitched, startled.

Paisley was looking at me with concern. “Keiko… You okay?”

Swallowing a lump of confused, uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, I nodded. “Uh, yeah. Sorry. You were saying your old boyfriend was changing?”

The look Paisley gave me was way too knowing. I shuffled uncomfortably, and she didn't push it. “He changed, at least to me, and he began to turn into… it wasn't a bad change, but he also wasn't the guy I'd liked either. He was confident and loud, and he was going to the gym a lot and… I mean, he was still great, and I clung to his goofy humour for way too long, because that didn't change at all. He just ended up being someone I liked more as a friend than romantically. It really hurt, though, because I really really missed that earlier guy—Which is shit, because that earlier guy was the product of some really toxic trauma and gender issues… and like, I know that some people do the same thing and their relationship ends up being amazing, so like…”

“It's okay,” I murmured, patting her knee awkwardly. “I understand, you don't have to keep explaining and adding all those caveats. You weren't attracted to the end result of his transition.”

She nodded, giving me an apologetic look. “I still feel really guilty. I know it's stupid, and I know that we were just kids, but… yeah. I also know that it's different for you. You just click went from one to the other. I can already see so many differences.”

“So, no kissing then,” I said, getting us back on track while I rubbed her knee in what I hoped was a comforting way.

“Sorry. No kissing… Yet.”