The bar was a fairly comfortable looking local establishment. I saw Sable seated at a corner booth; she waved and I sat down with her. She gave me a sly grin.
“How was your date with Lyris?”
I briefly looked startled before I remembered she could see through my eyes. She probably checked in on me at some point.
“Other than not telling me anything she thought was important, I thought it went fairly well.”
“Oh? So you actually went?”
Damnit.
“Ugh. So you weren’t watching me?”
“Nope, but thanks for confirming. I figured you would have. The Sympathy Potion has some influence on you if the person you’re linked to is injured or suffering emotionally in some way, it’ll nag at you.”
I sighed. I thought I’d done pretty well with bluffing Lyris, but Sable still had the advantage on me. “Alright, so she-”
A young waiter interrupted. “Hey there, can I get you ladies anything to drink?”
Sable answered immediately, “Hey Sam. Margarita, salt on the rim.”
The waiter didn’t card her, but it seemed like she was a regular. I was kind of glad that I was under 21 and not used to ordering alcohol. I could imagine myself doing it reflexively after a day like this and forgetting I’d need to show my ID. “Just a ginger beer please.” The man nodded and looked me up and down before Sable piped back up.
“Oh, order of nachos.”
The waiter left shortly thereafter, and Sable gave me a grin. “Did you notice that waiter checking you out?”
“Is that what he was doing!? I thought my human disguise was off.”
“Yeah, your disguise is fine, and as far as he was concerned, so are you.”
I grimaced. Being attractive to heterosexual men was going to take some getting used to. I switched to Elven and changed the subject.
“I healed Lyris and spooked her a bit to give us more time. She mentioned something about you having a death wish for giving me magic?”
Sable thought for a few seconds before responding. I couldn’t tell if she was having trouble parsing the sentence, deciding what to tell me, or formulating a coherent response. Her grammar could certainly use some work either way.
“Give person familiar magic unusual. Bound person not normal willing. Revenge want normal.”
I nodded after parsing that. So elves normally bound people as familiars against their will, and the thought of giving someone magic was dangerous since they might use it against you.
Sable continued. “Human mages same, but make person familiar not normal.”
Human mages had the same fear, but the practice of making familiars from people wasn’t common among humans?
Before I could inquire further, our drinks and nachos came out. Pump cheese. Classy.
“So you ladies ready to order?” asked Sam the Waiter.
Sable jumped in “I’ll have the cheeseburger as it comes, medium rare, with fries. She’ll have the same thing.”
I was a bit surprised that she’d ordered for me, but considering I’d been entirely focused on “work talk” I hadn’t bothered to look at the menu. Having no better order ready, I decided to just go with it. Sam the Waiter eyed me up again, probably checking if that order was actually okay with me. I smiled awkwardly and nodded. After confirming we didn’t want anything else, he left. I sipped my ginger beer and Sable started in on her marg.
“Morgan, I know you’ve got a lot of concerns about things of that nature, but it’s after hours, my brain’s fried, Elven is hard, and I’mma get sloshed. Let’s talk about normal stuff for now.”
“I suppose that’s fair. So does the great and powerful Sable Ward have normal stuff to talk about?”
She chuckled at this. “Of course. I might have a… colorful profession and area of study, but I’m not disconnected from the real world. Witches and wizards are only a very small segment of the population, we live and work like everyone else does. There’s no secret magic government. Not that I know of, anyway. I interact with the normal world like anyone else. I like classic rock from the 80s and my favorite TV franchise is Star Trek.”
“Star Trek? Really? Not like Lord of the Rings or something?”
“Morgan, you’re in Computer Science, right? How do you feel about most scenes involving computers in TV and movies?”
I thought about it. A stream of clips from shows like NCIS entered my mind.
“Oh god, is it really that bad?”
“Yeah. Sci-Fi is about all I can handle these days.”
“Whoa. Rough.”
“Hey, change of topic, but let’s talk about your wardrobe.”
“Oh, yeah. I can pick up my luggage from my dorm room… soon.”
“Sure, but I bet most of your clothes won’t quite fit anymore. Your height hasn’t really changed but I bet your guy clothes don’t quite fit, right?”
“That’s true… I guess I probably need new clothes.” I started calculating how much I’d need to spend.
“I’m not gonna make you buy a whole new wardrobe, I’ll handle it. We’ll call it a work-related expense. You’ll need appropriate undergarments regardless, but as for the other things, we should discuss that. I can teach you a spell that’ll make clothing fit, if you want to keep wearing your boy clothes. As much as I’d like to see you in a dress, I’d prefer you be comfortable with what you wear. Your clothes are probably more practical for going out in the backyard anyway.”
I tried not to imagine myself in a dress and nodded, thankful for the opportunity to keep wearing my existing clothes. “Good, thanks. When can you teach me that spell?”
“Based on your progress, maybe in a few days. I’ve got some more hand-me-downs for you to try in the meantime.”
Our burgers came out shortly thereafter. For the rest of dinner, Sable gave me a crash course in the basics of women’s garments, showing me things on her phone between bites of burger. It was a bit overwhelming, but I suppose even if I was mostly going to be wearing my old clothes, knowing about this stuff was better than not.
We chatted about my own background a little more over dinner, and she had a few more drinks. After dinner (Sable paid), I drove us both back to the manor house. She’d taken a rideshare here, knowing she was going to drink, so I was the designated driver. When we got home, she led me to a large, comfortable living room that looked like it was used to having a lot of guests. She suggested putting on a Star Trek episode from a season I hadn’t watched yet, but I had something else I wanted to talk about....
“Sable, I’d like to talk about my body a bit. Not the cat part, but the girl part.”
“Ah, yeah, I guess you’d want some more info on that, huh? How’s it been, being a girl for a day now?”
“Aside from the surprise factor and some annoyances about clothing and having to pee sitting down, it’s been weirdly… normal. I haven’t had any gender dysphoria or whatever. When I look in the mirror, it’s just me. A different me, but still me. Does that mean I’m trans? Have I always been?”
“Ah… that’s a… complex topic for this hour and level of alcohol, Morgan, but there’s magic at play. Short answer, it doesn’t mean you’re trans, though you could be. When someone is transformed by magic, the transformation generally affects your brain and mind as well as your body. You don’t have gender dysphoria because you currently have a female mind in a female brain in a female body. I didn’t touch your memories, and I made sure to keep the mental changes at a minimum, so you don’t have to worry about anything like suddenly having different preferences, sexual or otherwise.”
“You rewrote my mind?”
She shrugged. “I know that probably feels like a violation, but I really kept it to a minimum. Adjusting to a new body shape and a different set of hormones would be a rollercoaster otherwise. On top of that, you needed a different set of instincts to use your new superhuman capabilities and senses properly. Rest assured you are still fundamentally you in every way that matters.”
“Okay… that’s… hard to swallow, but I’ll take that under consideration for now. How can I be sure?”
Sable nodded and looked thoughtful for a bit. “Once you’ve got some magic skill under your belt, I’ll teach you a spell that’ll let you take a ‘magic holiday’. It’ll suppress all magic on you temporarily, returning you to your previous form and mind. I’d planned on making that available if you needed to make an appearance where your original identity was important, but having you know the spell and the principles behind it will give you confidence that I’m not tricking you.”
“Is that how you intend for me to attend my classes in the fall while working part time?”
“Oh, no. The spell is complex and resource intensive to cast so it’s not something you’ll want to be doing on a daily basis. You also won’t be able to use magic in that state, so you might find yourself reluctant to use it unless necessary.”
I considered this. She was prepared to give me the knowledge to reverse my own transformation and all other magic affecting me. If I really had been magically manipulated, it would likely come out then. Our conversation from dinner came to mind. Human mages had the same fear. Other wizards and witches likely wouldn’t be willing to give me any magic, and probably would manipulate my mind to their convenience. Whether she was desperate or just actually a good person, she wasn’t like them. She trusted me with the same power she wields.
“Alright Sable. I’ll trust you for now.”
“Good. As to the question of whether you’re trans or somewhere else interesting on the gender continuum, that’s something you should keep in mind for when you do go on magic holiday, when your old mind reasserts itself. But whatever you find when you look inside the real you, remember that it’s okay. This is just magic, it isn’t who you really are. But if it helps you understand who you really are, that’s good too.”
Right. That’s a question for the old me. For later. For now, the question of what my real gender identity was couldn’t be answered to my liking and didn’t matter. For now, I was just a magical catgirl with a job to focus on.
Following our discussion on gender and magic, we watched our show as planned for a while, pausing only to get drinks or to comment on the plot. Honestly, I was glad for the distraction and a temporary return to what was almost normalcy. Until, that is, I had let my guard down and Sable started petting my tail. My tail had been sitting in the space between us on the couch, I suppose, but that hadn’t been an invitation, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about this scenario. I glanced over at her, still watching the show for a bit before she spoke.
“Sorry, I had a cat familiar before. A normal one. She’d sit here with me and watch TV like this, and I’d pet her. Is this… okay?”
The mention of her old familiar evoked emotion in me I didn’t know I had. I told myself it must be the girl brain, but I honestly couldn’t say. Sable had mentioned she had familiars before, but they’d all been “wiped out” by the dragon last month. After a moment, I blurted out something potentially insensitive.
“Did she die last month?”
She smiled weakly. “Sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
She paused the TV. “It’s simple, really. Familiars don’t really die, at least not in a permanent sense. All my familiar spirits are still here, waiting for me to remake their bodies. Except for the cat.”
I supposed the answer was largely reassuring. Except the last part, and I had an idea why. But I needed confirmation. “Why not the cat?”
Sable continued gently petting my tail. She spoke in a tone that would have been neutral and even, if I didn’t have enhanced hearing. “Her spirit is bound to you now. I needed to use an existing familiar spirit to create the new you. So I wanted it to be her. It’ll be a while before I can rebuild any of my other familiars.”
“What was her name?”
“Luna”
“For a black cat… is that-”
“A Sailor Moon reference, yes. I’ve had her since I was young. I liked the Magical Girl aesthetic at the time and hoped I could be one when I grew up. A witch is a little different, I guess, but close enough.”
“So is she… gone?”
“Not entirely. I see her in the way you move your ears and tail, subtle things about your new body language, the way you run and jump and wiggle your butt when you pounce — yes I did see that.”
I ignored that quip. “Can you get her back? If I quit?”
“I think so. I’ve never had a person as a familiar, though. It’s pretty rare, and people who become familiars don’t usually have the luxury of stopping. So I don’t really know for sure.”
Sable hadn’t made me her familiar out of convenience. She must have truly felt like she was up against a wall to have risked her childhood cat on this. Maybe there was more going on here than I truly understood. I watched her hand as she continued to gently stroke my tail. Luna’s tail.
“It’s fine. You can pet me.”
She grinned at me before glomming against my side, one of her hands sneaking up to pet my ears. “Well aren’t you the sentimental kitty, don’t mind if I do.”
That’s not what I meant, but… oh… that was good. A euphoric look spread across my face as Sable put her fingers to good use, scratching my scalp and ears and running her hand through my hair. A part of me wanted to protest, but that didn’t seem to be happening. I drooled just a little, my mouth hanging open at her insistent petting. She knew exactly what she was doing, as expected of a long-time cat owner. After the initial shock I regained a bit of my composure, wiping the drool away and looking slightly indignant as she continued on anyway. However, I noticed I was purring, and she did too.
“Oh, there’s my loud girl. You like pets, huh?”
Blushing furiously, I turned to face away from her, trying not to think anything incriminating. She chuckled sinisterly and started petting my tail with the other hand. She unpaused the TV, and we kept watching Star Trek just like that.