Gary and Leah get persuaded to join in when their friends decide it's time to make a dramatic New Year's Resolution - one that involves the transformation booths that have become common where they live...

(First time here, encouraged by magicshoppe to join the contest.)

When I’d taken a shower on Friday morning, I found out the hard way that moss is even harder to dry than fur. It took me a long time to blow-dry the moss enough that I could put on my work clothes without getting them damp, and I was nearly late to work.

Dad and I went for a short walk around the halls near his room with the nurse’s aide. He was tired out after going one lap around the nurses’ station. After we got back to the room and the nurse hooked his heart monitor leads back up to the larger machine, he told me, “I’d like to talk more about the transgender thing, if you don’t mind.”

“So Joe was upset, and wanted my advice about what to do. I didn’t know any more about LGBT people than he did, at the time, and I didn’t give him the same advice I would now, but I hope I did sort of okay given what I knew then.

“Oh, good. This feels weird. Not as bad as I feared, though. I know you said I wouldn’t feel paralyzed or claustrophobic, but hearing it is one thing and experiencing it is another. It just feels... sort of normal to not have any arms or legs?”

One day in mid-December, a few days after Meredith came home from UNC Chapel Hill for Christmas, I was taking a break at work and hanging out with Genevieve and Terri for a few minutes. Genevieve was a kind of beetle-bee hybrid, with a bee’s striped fuzzy underbelly and a beetle’s elytra over her wings, and a slightly human-ish face. Terri was a big mushroom with a face and arms and four small feet, apparently based on a fantasy creature from a story she liked, “though the ones in the book are a lot smaller,” she said. I was in one of my more outre dragon-like bodies, slender with silver scales and four smaller wings more like a butterfly or moth than a bat.

“I’m not against letting formerly disabled kids compete,” Eric said, “but I’m not sure exactly where you’d draw the line between someone venned into a healthy body and someone venned into a more athletic body.”

“So... Lauren, would you mind venning me into a plushie? And then you could change me back before you go home?”

 

“Sure,” I said, a little surprised but not entirely. “What kind of plushie? I’m not as good at venning people into living dolls as my friend Sophia, but I’ve gotten some practice at it lately.”

“There are days I feel more robotic and days I feel more human. People tip more when my body is shaped like a female human, but they also expect me to act in a feminine way. Some days I can do that and some days I cannot.”

When they returned, Jada was a cyclopean llama-taur and Steph was an octopus-taur. She was riding on Jada’s back, having apparently gotten tuckered out on the way back — she was surprisingly fast on her tentacles, but they’d tired after walking a third of the way across campus.

Britt and I went on a couple of dates that month, taking Desiree with us and snuggling with her. On one of those dates, we went to the mall in Catesville, venned into little girls, and played on the playground until closing time. We didn’t run into Melinda and Melanie that time, but we played tag with a couple of little girls and then chatted with them after we got tired of chasing each other around the playground, up the stairs and through the tunnels and down the slides.

Before she unpacked any more of her stuff, she looked over Jada’s things, including me, but didn’t touch anything — except me. She petted me gently before going back to her side of the room and finishing unpacking.

I finally had my first therapy appointment the Wednesday after graduation. I debated over whether to venn into my human girl body for the appointment — I’d been wearing my dragon-girl body ever since graduation — but decided it would be more honest to meet my therapist in my most preferred body. If she couldn’t handle my being a scaly, it would be good to know that up front so I could start looking for another therapist.

We venned each other into two bodies each, normal-size and small, but this time the smaller ones were tiny — about an inch or two high.

The envelope was hand-addressed in my dad’s handwriting, which got my hopes up even though he deadnamed me, but inside there was no handwritten or even printed letter.

“Yes!” I said, and babbled on before I could lose the momentary burst of confidence, “I’m interested in —”

“So what’s your story?” Poppy asked. “Trans, lesbian, or both?”

 

I gaped at her. “How did you know?”

“I know Dad doesn’t want you at home unless you’re willing to change back, but when I have a place of my own, you’ll be welcome to join me there. I don’t know when I’ll have anything to offer that’s better than the sofa bed you’re sleeping on now, though.”

Then she asked me what high school I’d gone to before I dropped out, and apologetically asked me for my deadname so she could ask them for my records, and made an appointment for me to come back the next day for placement tests. I was in!

“I still miss them, though, even though I’m worried about how they’ll react. Does that make sense?”

“I have a feeling I might see more of... let’s say the Hooters side of that place, if I drop in as a single guy.”

 

“Or if we’re a couple of single guys.” I could hear a smile in her voice.

“I said they should venn into amphibious forms and swim out to see the Outer Banks, but Mom just smiled and said maybe.”

On and off that day, I thought about that Missing Child poster I’d seen and what Mom and Dad were feeling and thinking about all this. Did they know I was trans by now? They almost certainly knew I’d venned into a girl body at least once; they’d have heard from Tim’s parents by now, even if the police hadn’t told them about the details of their investigation and what they’d learned from Meredith and Sophia.

One of the trans guys at the meeting announced that he’d finally figured out his permanent name (he’d been trying out different ones, like me). That reminded me again that I needed to think more about my name. Amanda was nice, but it wasn’t quite right, any more than Natalie, Amber, Isabella or any of the others I’d tried on for a few hours.