** Ryn’s POV **

Kit was beyond adorable, and I was almost entirely convinced she was trans. I mean, if she wasn’t she’d be freaking out about her body a hell of a lot more than she was. Beyond that though, it was as though everything fit when you looked at her now. Her personality just matched her new body so utterly perfectly that it was impossible to argue that she didn’t belong in the new one.

Seeing her come out of that fruit had embarrassingly been a surprise. It shouldn’t have in hindsight, the signs of Kit’s egginess were there. Then she almost immediately decided she’d go with the whole girl thing.

Poor girl had a confidence problem though, and her new form had definitely shaken what little confidence she did have. I’d have to help with that, teach her some cool spells and help her out with any problems she might have. Shit… I had no idea what I was doing. It was still early days though, not even a full day.

We’d finished dinner in the tree and were preparing to sleep, which had led to a conundrum.

“I think it is probably best if you come up to the girl’s dorm with us, Kit,” Grace said gently, smiling at the tiny girl as we stood in the guy’s common room.

“Are you sure?” Kit asked, glancing worriedly between Grace, Mer and me. “I don’t think I really belong up there…”

I gave a sigh, I felt that one. The ol’ gender imposter syndrome. “Alright… Kit. Are you a girl?”

“I mean… um… maybe?” she said, swallowing hard as her eyes fell to the floor and her hands started tangling themselves in her shirt. “I guess I am. I mean… I am.”

“Then as a girl, you are welcome to sleep on the girl’s floor,” I said walking over to stand next to her. “Alright?”

“Um… yeah, okay,” she nodded, looking up at me with her big brown soulful eyes. “If you’re all okay with it, I mean.”

The other two voiced their wholehearted agreement, so I motioned to her old room. “Should we move your stuff then, Tiny?”

“Oh no, not the nickname again,” she groaned quietly.

I laughed and put my arm around her for a quick side hug. “Yes, the nickname. Come on, let’s get your stuff.”

The four of us helped move Kit’s few belongings up to the girl’s floor, where she proceeded to get indecisive about which room she wanted to choose. We all just decided to put her in the one next to Mer, who’d been staying in the tree off and on since the journey began. Mer, of course, did not mind this one bit.

Watching her handle Kit’s transformation had increased my already high standing of her to new heights. I hadn’t heard what was whispered between them over the top of Sprinkles, but Kit had seemed happy, so it must have been nice.

The next day saw Esra arriving in my tree to help with something I hadn’t even thought about yet. We were all getting ready to leave the grove and return to the ring so that we could begin our journey into the mountains.

“Esra! What are you doing here in the morning?” I asked, walking over to give her a hug. A hug she accepted grudgingly, but enjoyed nevertheless.

“I am not in a position to be babysitting a newly made mage as I make my way to your Avonside,” she told me plainly, without any sign of her usual grump. “Where you have been attacked a handful of times, myself and the few of my allies that still live have borne the brunt of it. If I were to bring Kit out through my mark, she would be in grave danger.”

“I thought that there wasn’t a choice?” I asked curiously, turning to look at the new mage in question as she stood near Mer. She wasn’t going to come out with us, given that we didn’t know what would happen if I took her out of the grove, considering she was a mage now.

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“There isn’t a choice, no. Her mark is where mine is,” she nodded, which had me tilting my head in confusion. “When a mage leaves the Nameless Garden, no matter by what process, they will invariably arrive in the mundane realm on their mage mark. If I were to take you out of here now, you would arrive at your own mark.”

“There’s got to be a but in there somewhere,” I mused, watching her with a growing smile. She wanted to impress us with her magical prowess and intelligence right now.

“Indeed,” she said with a smile that reached all the way up to crinkle her crow’s feet. “I have been researching mage marks and long distance teleportation for quite some time. It was a bit of an… obsession, during my time avoiding the mundane realm. Your appearance in my grove and the problems we faced with you appearing in the middle of hostile territory had me approaching the problem from a new angle.”

I gasped as I understood what she was saying. “It might not be possible to move an established mage mark, but maybe a new mage’s mark is more open to change?”

“Exactly, my dear girl!” she exclaimed happily. “Well done! I believe that I can bind her mark to yours instead! At least until she leaves and it becomes sealed by her leaving the Garden for the first time.”

Yes! Mage mum was happy with me! Long ranged teleportation would be a game changer if she figured it out too. I’d have to hit her up about that later, maybe my propensity to break magic might help her.

Turning to Kit, I raised an eyebrow. “How’s that sound? Want to come ride in a cart again?”

She nodded quickly, her curly hair bouncing wildly. “Definitely. I want to stay with you all, especially if going with Esra is as dangerous as she says.”

“You would be dead the moment the next attack against me were to occur,” Esra said, rather unhelpfully.

“Right...” Kit nodded, giving our mage mother the side eye before she turned to me with wide eyes.

“Yeah, don’t worry… we’ll get you back over with us,” I agreed.

The solution turned out to be remarkably simple, at least from our perspective. Esra simply cast a spell and the job was done, I could take Kit out with us into the mundane realm. I assumed that the spell itself was incredibly complex, judging by the way Esra wobbled slightly as her reserves of energy were drained.

With Kit racing up the tree to grab travel stuff, I helped Esra up into one of the big armchairs in the glass balcony so she could chill while she recovered. Woman was trying to hide it, but she was getting a bit long in the tooth.

When Kit was ready, I took her hand and asked, “On three?”

“Yeah, okay,” she smiled hesitantly.

“One, two, three.“ I pulled us all over onto the ring, earning a squeal of fear from Kit who was doing her tiny best to crush my hand. “Hey, hey… ow… Tiny, please,” I complained, prying myself from her grip. Girl still had some of her grip strength at least.

“Sorry,” she breathed sheepishly. “I was worried it would go wrong.”

Mer approached before I could speak, the tall obrec woman coming to stand next to Kit.

“But it didn’t,” Mer smiled, then motioned towards the waiting wagon train. “Want to go find a wagon to sit in for the journey?”

Kit nodded, a blush forming on her cheeks as she looked up at Mer. Their height difference was pretty intense. Kit was on the shorter end of what was the normal range for a woman, and Mer was very much at the other end of that.

With those two off, Grace grabbed me and we all went to hop into our own wagons. The journey into the mountains would involve us all having to get out and push apparently, so we were going to be doing things this time instead of just slowly dying of boredom. The scenery was lovely too, mountains were always so beautiful.

They were the type of behemoth mountains that you only really saw in a few places back on Earth. Slow to build at first, it almost seemed like you might not be going upwards at all, until all of a sudden you found yourself in a valley with titans on either side of you.

The vegetation was familiar at least, the same stuff that Grace and I had found all the way back in the first week we arrived. Back when I’d been Eli. Thank fuck that was behind me.

I was so happy when we found a raspberry patch that I made the whole wagon train stop so we could pick them all. I took some back to my grove and grew them. My buns would love them, buns loved raspberries.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only time the wagon train had to stop. They’d get stuck on the terrain fairly regularly and would need to be pushed out. A few times they became so bogged down that I would have to lift them out with my telekinesis, aided by a much weaker Kit. It wasn’t all bad though, because the same spikes that the obrec usually used to stop their wagons from rolling down hill could be used to give their wheels some impressive traction.

I was the busiest of those of us from the Order, because in addition to my towtruck duties, I was also the only person who could point us towards Avonside with any degree of reliability. Troy would often remember the paths they had taken to get out of the mountains once I had found the direction we needed to go, which helped us find routes we could take the wagons through.

More often than not though, we’d just have to stop and wait while scouts were sent out into the area so they could find us a path.

Then one of them went missing.

At first we thought the woman might have gotten lost, she was an experienced obrec ranger for the Thistlescar clan, but this was harsh and unfamiliar terrain. Then her body was found a day later, mangled by animals but with the unmistakable wounds caused by arrows.

Someone else was out there in the mountains with us, and they were not friendly.