Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 5 Chapter 6 Whispered Words and Worries By Amethyst

Rebecca and I spent several hours attempting to get used to our new forms and controlling the additional body parts that came with them. We also tried to get a good start on learning to shapeshift and fly. Our first attempts at the latter were less than spectacular unless of course, you have a taste for slapstick comedy.

Several times over the course of our impromptu training session, I caught Rebecca looking down at herself, or just touching her body in disbelief and then smiling as if she were still not sure that this was really happening. I guess that I couldn’t blame her since she had been wanting this for a long time and had paid her dues for it through the beatings, shaming, and everything else that she had gone through for daring to admit to the world who she was inside.

It made me realize how lucky I had been with Xuriel manipulating the wish the way that she did. I just got what Rebecca had been fighting so hard for served up to me on a silver platter without having to pay those dues, or even consciously realizing that I had a problem. Looking back now I could see it. I had always idolized my sister, I wanted to be just like her, and I hated my body. It felt wrong to me but I could never tell why because I didn’t know what it was like to feel right.

I had thought that puberty was going to solve that problem but it never really happened, I was a late bloomer and that had led to the bullying. Looking back, I had never really put up more than the token protests to being called a girl, but that made sense now. It wasn’t that part that bothered me and drove me to nights of crying alone in my bed while Sarah was gone for modeling gigs. What made me miserable was the bullying itself; being shoved in lockers, having my books shoved out of my hands, and being beaten up, pushed around, and humiliated at every opportunity.

After I had changed on my birthday I hadn’t really made more than the token protests either, maybe because it felt like I should hate it. Really though, I was just scared about how everything was changing so fast and how I was having to learn to be this new person. When Sarah had said that the wish had probably made me more comfortable with my body I had latched onto it, just let myself roll with things, and convinced myself that the happiness that I felt from being closer to Sarah and making friends was helping me to be happier about my situation.

I shook my head to clear it and attempted another lift-off by working my wings. I couldn’t afford to get caught up thinking about this right now, it wasn’t nearly as important as some of the other problems that we were facing at the moment. We had enough problems to worry about already, things that could affect us in the here and now.

First, we needed to find out how magick worked here. Sure, Rebecca and I could protect ourselves better than normal humans now but we might need magick to track down some of the others and we were certainly going to need it to get home. I was so used to there being ambient magick energy to draw on but I just couldn’t figure out why there wasn’t any here. Even if the rules were different on how magick could be used on various Planes, ambient magick energy had become a staple that we were used to from one Plane to the next even if the individual flavors of it had differed.

Then there was the strangeness of this place compared to other Planes, like the two moons and that strange sun. Okay, having two moons wasn’t all that shocking, Tír na nÓg has two moons but one is significantly smaller than the other and barely visible due to its small size, and the fact that it’s on the opposite side of the planet as the other and can only be seen during the day. Here though, the moons were nearly the same size and not that far apart at least from our perspective on the planet. While that, and the pink and violet shades of the two moons might be a little strange to get used to, I could at least think of scientific reasons for both their color and existence.

The sun was giving off light mostly in the infrared spectrum rather than the white light of our own sun. With that in mind and the possibility of different surface conditions reflecting that red light in different ways, the colors were explainable. As for the second moon’s existence, this was an alternate reality, and mass, elements, and various gasses were possibly distributed differently during the birth of our solar system.

Hell, the planets’ orbits might even be different here and we could be on Venus, Mars, or some planet that doesn’t even exist in our universe but happens to be in the same general location that the Celestials searched when first exploring various Planes nearly ten thousand years ago. We were using their spells and sigils when we used Gate magick and up until now, I hadn’t really cared about the details, other than that the planets we appeared on supported life. Call me crazy, but that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me when exploring other worlds via magick portals.

That red sun was a concern though. I just couldn’t think of any plausible reason for it that made sense if the laws of the universe were the same as in every other reality we had been to thus far. Those shadowy lines weirded me out too, what was up with that? I was half worried that the sun would explode or something before we could get off this Plane.

Ugh, I really needed to stop thinking about things I couldn’t do anything about and start focusing on what I could. With that in mind, I tried digging through Xuriel’s memories to see if I could ‘remember’ how to fly. We needed to learn so we could make better time searching for the others and avoid any other tuskreapers or other dangerous desert creatures.

Eventually, I was able to access Xuriel’s memories on how to fly and use my wings and tail in general. From there, I was able to give Rebecca pointers so that she could learn as well. It took a couple of hours but finally, we both had the hang of it sometime in the mid-afternoon, judging by the position of the sun. With that achievement completed, I decided that we should return to the porta-bunker and get some sleep.

Since it was too damn hot outside during the day with the heat of that oppressive sun being absorbed by the black sands of the desert, I thought that it would be best if we traveled by night and slept during the day. I managed to get to sleep fairly easily, I fact, I drifted off almost as soon as I had returned to my human form and put my head on my pillow. That wasn’t too terribly surprising though since I had had a pretty eventful day, what with everything that had happened since we had arrived in Nhekar.

I awoke to the sound of crying. Rebecca was trying to be quiet about it and I barely heard the sniffles and heart-rending sobs as she attempted to muffle the sounds with her pillow. Her shoulders shook as the sobs ripped through her and I wasn’t sure if it was the faint sounds or the slight jostling of the camping mattress that had woken me.

Rebecca had more than enough reasons to cry. Her mother had been brutally murdered by a Demon practically right in front of her, she was in a strange world and it looked like getting home wasn’t going to be easy, and frankly, this world was a bit terrifying. I really should have tried to make sure she didn’t see the remains of the tuskreaper.

She had been trying to keep up appearances with her tough, snarky, and distant exterior all day but it hadn’t been difficult to see the cracks forming in her emotional armor. I couldn’t blame her for trying to hide her feelings to protect herself and attempting to keep me at a distance with her little verbal barbs, it was what she knew after all. It might not be emotionally healthy but it was what she was familiar with and, in our current situation, grabbing on to what was familiar and holding on for dear life was completely understandable.

I propped myself up into a sitting position and asked as gently as I could, “Bad dream?” Rebecca just buried herself further into the pillow as her sniffling and crying seemed to intensify, her staggered breathing reaching my ears as muffled hiccoughs. A sigh slipped out from between my lips as I considered how to handle this.

“Rebecca, you’re allowed to show your emotions, that’s one of the best things about being a girl. It’s not frowned upon, it’s expected,” I offered after a moment. “We may not be friends yet, we may never be, but right now we’re all that each other has. We need to be able to work together, count on one another, and know that we have each other’s backs. That includes being there for one another when we need it.”

My companion remained silent except for the sound of her emotional upheaval so I decided to just keep talking since she was a relatively captive audience and hadn’t actually objected yet. “I know that I’m not your favorite person and that we both have to build up some trust but I’m here, and I’m willing to listen or be a shoulder to cry on if you need it. It’s okay to be upset, it has been a really overwhelming day for me and I’m sorta used to this kind of stuff. It’s got to be like a hundred times worse for you. I… I know what it’s like to have your whole life turn upside down. It happened to me the day my parents died, on my birthday, and again today.”

Rebecca lifted her head ever so slightly from the pillow and while she still wasn’t facing me she said, “I thought *sniffle* that you said you were used to this stuff.” Her voice was tremulous and a little hoarse from crying so hard but I had gotten her to talk at least.

“Well, I have been getting a lot of experience over the past few months but this is a harder situation than normal. I’m separated from everyone I care about and worried sick about them, I can’t use magick to get us out of this situation, this whole place is just scary and weird so far, and Xuriel’s dramatic reveal… well, it’s been a lot to take in and I’ve been barely keeping myself from totally freaking out about things,” I admitted. “I can’t magick this kind of stuff away.”

“You seem fine to me… I mean, you’re not crying into your pillow,” Rebecca said uncertainly with another sniffle as she got into a sitting position. She didn’t relinquish her hold on the pillow though, keeping it held tightly against her newly feminine chest.

I gave her a long thoughtful look and then let out another sigh as I confessed, “I’m keeping it together because we both need me to but I’ve been worrying about shit pretty much since we got here. As long as I keep it together then we have a chance of finding the others and a way out of this mess. If I break down, then I can’t help either of us and we’re both screwed. It’s funny, I’ve fought Sorcerers, Demons, monsters, and shit without thinking twice about it but I don’t think I’m as brave as you are.”

“W…what do you mean?” she asked before burying her face back into the pillow with a sniffle.

“You’ve fought tooth and nail to be seen and treated as the girl that you felt that you were inside. Sure, you may be a snarky bitch half the time and withdrawn the rest, but from what I’ve seen at the meetings you’ve never given up. Being that way is understandable with the way you’ve been treated. You’ve had assholes terrorize, humiliate, and beat you but you’ve never given in or stopped pushing forward with your transition. You fought the everyday monsters and never backed down. Me, I couldn’t even admit to myself who I was inside until the voice in my head pointed it out today,” I said with a despondent shake of my head.

Rebecca lifted her head from the pillow as she listened to me, her eyes seeming to widen further with each word. Then her expression turned incredulous just before she rolled her eyes. “That’s bullshit, and you’re a fucking idiot.”

I frantically went over my words, looking for what I might have said that could have offended her. “I’m… it’s not… that’s what I really think of you,” I said, bumbling over the words.

“I was talking about what you said about yourself, Stupid,” she snapped. “I’ve seen that cover of Teen Queen; you brazenly announced your sexuality on the cover of a major magazine even though it could have hurt your career. You’ve been confident about who you are since the day we met at that first meeting. I was angry and jealous of you because I saw a genetic girl who was confident, comfortable in her own skin, and happy with who she was, and it fucking hurt because I knew that could never be me.”

“I thought that it was the wish that was making me that way but Xuriel said that it was who I was, that neither she nor the magick of the wish could make me comfortable with being a girl, only make it easier. Xuriel lived a long time and she never felt truly comfortable with it. I’ve been thinking a lot about it today and the signs were there, I just never saw them, or maybe I just never had the courage to face it like you before I got changed,” I pointed out sadly.

“So what if you didn’t realize that part about yourself until now? It’s in the past and doesn’t change fuck all about who you are now. All that fucking matters is that you’re happy with who you are now. And except for this little pity party that you’re throwing right now, I think that you’re the most sickeningly sweet and happy person that I’ve ever met,” Rebecca grumped. “Seriously, you and your girlfriend are fucking cavity-inducing.”

She could have slapped me with a fish I was so stunned. It wasn’t her aggressive and acerbic way of speaking; I was starting to get used to that. No, it was the fact that she was actually right. Why was I letting myself freak out about something that was in the past, I couldn’t change, and wasn’t really a problem anyway? I had more than enough to freak out about right now without adding things like that.

“You’re right,’ I admitted with a blush after a moment of letting that roll around in my thoughts. “Well, about that stuff not really mattering. Sorry, I was trying to make you feel better and things kinda got turned around. Is there anything that you need to talk about?”

“I… just had a nightmare, about Mom,” she reluctantly admitted, clenching her pillow tightly. “We’re gonna kill that thing that killed her right?”

“Yeah, you’re not the only one who wants to take her down. Lisa probably wants to kill her as much as you do and she’s been trying to kill me or make me suffer for a while now. You… were right. Khinara came after me and your mom paid the price, just like Lisa did,” I told her morosely, my breath catching in my throat and my heart tightening as I looked away.

Rebecca wiped away the last of her tears, her fists clenched and her voice steely with determination and tightly controlled rage as she insisted, “You didn’t kill her, that Demon did. I saw it. I saw her do it and I was too frozen with fear to do anything about it. I… that was what I was dreaming about. Just promise me that we’re going to get out of here and kill her. I don’t give a shit what happens after that, I just want to make that hideous bitch watch while I disembowel her and rip her heart out with my own hands, just like she did to my mom. You made my dream come true and gave me the power to avenge my mom, so… uhh… thanks for that.”

“I promise, I’ll find the others and a way out of this place, and then we’ll take down Khinara and the other generals,” I vowed, carefully placing a tentative hand on her shoulder. “Just, don’t do anything reckless. I think that your mom probably wanted you to be able to live as the girl you are inside and you’ve got that now, don’t throw it away for revenge. We’ll take her down together and when we’re done, I’ll see that you get the life that she’d want for you.”

Rebecca shrugged my hand off, turned away, and wiped her sleeve across her cheek before standing up. “Yeah, well, thanks for the offer or whatever. We’ve got shit to do before we walk off into the sunset or some shit like that, so we should probably get to that now that it’s dark outside.”

I nodded and let her think that she had gotten the last word as I got up and began to put a meal together with some of the few perishable supplies that I had and the camp stove. We would need our energy if we were going to be flying. Once I had the stew going I started gathering things that we might need to have with us outside of the bunker for our journey to find the others.