Candy had been to the Paddlewick Prime bathhouse before. Nestled over natural hot springs that smelled of lavender and vanilla, it was one of the few places in the city that felt almost kind. The waters were rumored to have mild curative properties, something about mineral enhancement or ancestral blessings, but Candy mostly liked it for the simple reason of NO MEN ALLOWED.
She typically came on Veriday, hump day as some called it, but after the paddling correction she’d received she needed a break. She usually kept to herself, head low, voice quiet. Just another submissive wife enjoying her soak. But lately, she’d started using these visits for more than just relaxation. Lying back beneath a cucumber mask or behind the guise of a nap, she listened.
Women talked more freely when they thought they weren’t being watched. And in Paddlewick, where power came in subtle doses and punishments came swiftly, that freedom mattered.
The incident in the bathroom hadn’t taught her anything philosophical. It had just scared the hell out of her. One moment, she was peeing standing up because she still could, technically, and the next, there was a shriek from the next stall. She fled before faces turned, heart pounding, skin cold. She’d spent the rest of that visit avoiding mirrors, avoiding voices, trying to look like nothing at all.
Keep your head down. Sit when you pee. Don’t be the weird one.
But the other lesson, the more subtle one, came slowly, through steam and silence and half-heard whispers. It was how the women did verbal battle.
“The form it typically takes is indirect aggression,” she remembered reading somewhere, “because it has a low cost. The attacker doesn’t get hurt. The motives aren’t obvious. But the damage is still real.”
Paddlewick women seemed to have mastered that art. She’d also stumbled across a hypothesis that said women here were less prone to this kind of social sabotage than in other kingdoms. That the shared weight of a strict patriarchy created solidarity. A quiet sisterhood of shared suffering. However, she'd also read that the opposite was true - that it was worse in Paddlewick because when a society gave you no real power, you made it wherever you could. In gossip. In seating arrangements. In compliments that weren’t quite compliments at all.
Who was to say which was right? Not her. All Candy knew was that, as a man turned “woman,” she had a lot to learn about navigating female social spaces.
Today, she wasn’t just bathing; she was also learning.
Watching which women whispered and which ones led the laughter. Noticing who offered advice, who asked for it, and who simply listened with well-trained stillness. She was mapping the web of silent authority.
And... alright, yes. Maybe she also stole a glance or two because holy shit, how was this real?
The lounging. The way they leaned into each other like cats in a sunbeam. The casual breast adjusting. The lazy, intimate way they sprawled in laps or splashed one another like something out of a fever dream. She’d once assumed the whole “women’s bathhouse” idea was just some absurd male fantasy.
Now she knew better. Apparently, women really were like this. Not all, but enough to be noticed. And some of them had just realized it, too.
Near the far end of the pool, a woman, blonde, curvaceous, blinking down at herself like she had just encountered her own body for the first time, let out a strangled noise.
“Oh my god,” she muttered, her voice somewhere between horror and revelation. “These things are, ugh, these things are kind of in the way aren’t they?”
Her friend, lounging on the steps like she belonged to the water, didn’t even glance up.
“Yeah,” she said simply, wringing out her hair. “Welcome to having tits.”
Candy wasn’t staring.
But also, she was absolutely staring.
Apparently, the woman had been given a breast augmentation spell as a present from her husband. It sounded to Candy like it was more of a present FOR the husband, but she said nothing. She empathized, though. She still wasn’t used to hers four months into womanhood, so yeah, she knew a thing or two about adjusting to suddenly having giant fleshy melons bouncing on your chest. Then of course, right out of a 12-year-old boy's wet dream, the second woman asked, "do they feel natural?" This led to an invitation to touch them. Candy nearly lost it. A part of her wanted to try something like, oh, excuse me, did I hear you had an augmentation? I’ve always wondered, can I feel them too? Or some such line.
But she thought better of it. She wasn’t ready to get involved, much less something as daring as that, so she shut her eyes, inhaled deeply, and reminded herself that she was here for strategy. Not… whatever this was.
She exhaled. Focus, Candy. Go unnoticed for now. That thought lingered as she reached for a fresh towel. Which, naturally, was the exact moment fate chose to intervene, and the way Alyssa and Vivian entered her life.
The towel rack was empty.
Candy paused, dripping, her last towel wrapped precariously around her chest, the kind of wrap other women did in one swift motion, but she still hadn't quite mastered. Water ran down her back in lazy rivulets, her hand still outstretched, reaching for a nonexistent towel as she stared at the vacant shelf like it had deeply betrayed her..
Just then, another woman reached for the same empty space. Candy looked over.
She was tall. Slender, with dark hair piled into an elegantly messy knot at the top of her head, her skin still flushed from the heat of the water. She had the kind of face that made you think she had never been wrong about anything in her life.
And she was frowning at the empty towel rack like it had personally insulted her lineage.
“Well,” the woman said dryly. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Extremely,” Candy agreed.
A second voice, light and sweet as honey, chimed in from behind them.
“Gods, what kind of place runs out of towels?”
Candy turned.
The new arrival was a stark contrast to the first, soft and curvy, wrapped in a towel she had actually secured properly. She was dabbing at her hair with a smaller cloth, her brows raised in amusement.
The dark-haired woman huffed. “This is absurd.”
“Oh, completely.” The curvier one smirked. “You’d think in a place where women regularly faint from corsets constrictions and dehydration, they’d keep up with basic liquid and towel needs.”
Candy snorted before she could stop herself. Both women turned to look at her.
“Sorry,” she said, suppressing a grin. “That was… accurate.”
The dark-haired woman’s lips curled at the edges, just slightly.
The blonde, Vivian, as Candy would later learn, grinned outright.
“You new?” she asked.
Candy hesitated. Was she new?
Technically, she had been a woman for four months.
Technically, she had been in Paddlewick for years.
Technically, she was a new person physically and legally, and maybe, philosophically?
“…In many ways,” Candy admitted.
Vivian nodded knowingly with a hint of a smirk. “Figured. You’ve got that freshly married, still figuring out how to walk after maintenance spankings look.”
Candy huffed a quiet laugh. “You’re not wrong.”
The dark-haired woman studied her a moment longer. Then, without preamble, she untied her damp towel from her hair and tossed it at Candy’s face.
Candy yelped, catching it midair.
“…What?”
“Temporary solution,” the woman said, “Let’s go steal some fresh ones from the supply closet.”
Vivian sighed. “Alyssa, you can’t just—”
Alyssa was already walking away.
Vivian shook her head with a fond exasperation. “Come on, new girl. You’ll get used to her.”
Candy hesitated, then she followed.
They crept through the back corridor in damp silence, the scent of mineral soap and steamed eucalyptus still clinging to their skin. Alyssa led the way, towel knotted confidently around her chest. Vivian followed with the amused gait of someone who had definitely done this before. Candy brought up the rear, unsure if she was about to make new friends or get permanently banned from the only safe place she’d found in Paddlewick.
The supply closet was at the end of a narrow hallway, marked with a discreet sigil and a very unsubtle glowing crystal lock. Six stones pulsed softly in a row, the outermost flickering in alternating shades of rose and amber.
Candy blinked. “Oh. So much for that idea.”
Vivian just grinned, stepping aside with an encouraging tilt of her head.
Alyssa stepped up to the door, eyeing the crystals with the kind of interest other people reserved for lovers or rare cheese. “Oh... cute,” she said, tapping her bottom lip. “It’s using Gray code.”
Candy glanced at her. “Gray what?”
“Gray code,” Alyssa murmured, already prodding the first crystal with her fingertip. “It’s a kind of state sequence system. Think of it like... magical binary, but smarter. Each press only changes one thing at a time. No sudden shifts. Whoever designed this didn’t want the enchantment getting spooked.”
“You can’t just guess the right ones?” Candy asked.
“You could,” Alyssa said, “if you had about nine hours and a willingness to write down hundreds of attempts.”
Vivian leaned against the wall, arms crossed, looking proud. “She keeps it low-key for us dumb-dumbs, but Alyssa’s way smarter than she lets on.”
“I just like puzzles,” Alyssa muttered. “This one’s not bad. The correct state probably lights exactly three crystals, but only if you reach it step-by-step. If I press the wrong one and light two at once, it'll lock out... or worse.”
As Alyssa worked, Candy heard footsteps echoing from the far corridor. Her blood turned to ice. Someone was coming.Without hesitating, she darted away from the door and down the hall toward the sound, nearly colliding with a bathhouse employee in a lavender wrap.
“Oh, ma’am!” Candy gasped. “Sorry, I think I got turned around! Could you show me where the restrooms are? I thought they were this way, but then I saw the towel warmers, and then I panicked...”
The woman blinked, then offered a professional smile. “They’re that way, past the juniper scrub wall.”
“Oh... sorry, I’m not sure how you mean,” Candy added quickly. “Would you mind taking me there?”
The woman sighed, not unkindly, and gestured for Candy to follow. “Alright, come on. Just a moment out of my way.” Candy nodded gratefully and trailed behind her, heart hammering.
Candy waited a moment in the restroom, long enough for the employee to leave, then she returned to the pool she’d met Alyssa and Vivian at originally. They were already there, waiting for her with an armful of fresh towels.
“You,” Alyssa said without looking up, “are quick on your feet.”
Vivian handed her a folded towel like a laurel crown. “Fast thinking, new girl. You’re alright in my book.”
The towel heist eventually turned into sharing a bottle of wine in the bathhouse lounge, which then turned into a standing appointment. It turned out Vivian and Alysa came every Moonday. They invited her to join them. Same time. Same place. And as always, No Men. But most importantly, no Paddlewick grombolonk-shite.
Alyssa Halberdine had a cutting wit, a cynicism honed like a blade, more intelligence than she let on, but once in a while, she let something softer slip.
Vivian Corkhollow was sweet, more lighthearted than Alyssa, but dangerous in her own way; the kind of woman who could tear a man apart with a well-placed smile and a carefully chosen word.
And Candy?
Candy, for the first time in months, was part of something that wasn’t just about survival. It wasn’t an organized club or a state-mandated defense class (although she did enjoy those). This was different. This was just true socialization, with people who understood. This was… promising!