The door to our old room had been decorated since we’d left, the names of everyone painted onto it with different colours to create a rainbow. My name was there too, along with the words “Rest in peace, we miss you Eli.” I felt my heart clench at the sight, and suddenly tears were collecting at the corners of my eyes.

“Fuck,” I squeaked, coming to a halt as I stared at it, trying desperately to control myself.

“That’s… new,” Grace murmured, pulling me against her side.

I felt Adam’s hand come down on my shoulder and give it a squeeze, “Yeah. Wasn’t there when we left. We got your back though Ryn, it’ll be fine.”

“Thanks,” I sniffled, playing with the lapels of my coat as I took some deep breaths in an attempt to steady myself. I don’t know why that had hit me as hard as it did. Maybe it was the way they had obviously cared about me, despite thinking I was gone.

“We ready to go in?” Grace asked, giving me a gentle, loving look. Her eyes were so green, a vibrant grass green with flecks of brown and blue within. I loved her eyes.

Grabbing her by the back of the head, I pulled her down to my level and kissed her. It was a hard kiss, fierce and passionate as I attempted to drown out my roiling, anxiety filled gut.

Parting from her with a gasp, I gave her a grin I definitely didn’t feel and nodded, “Yeah.”

With that, Adam went first, opening the door and stepping through to hold it for us. Kit hovered behind us, the only one here who wasn’t part of our original group. She was going to get included whether she liked it or not though.

“Hello?” Adam called. “Anyone home?”

“Adam!” A flying bundle of dark emerald hair flew at the tall dude, wrapping shorter arms around him with a giddy laugh. Melody grinned up at him, her chin probably painfully sticking into his chest. She looked the same as ever, plus a few inches of brown at the roots of her hair. I guess dark green hair dye was in short supply now.

“I can’t believe you’re here, that you’re even alive!” she exclaimed, then growled. “And what the hell took you all so long, you were meant to be out for like, a few months, not half a year! We were so worried, I swear—” she blinked, her eyes finally landing on Kit and me. I guess we were the two shortest members of the group. She smiled and let Adam go, a blush filling out her cheeks. “New people, hey… I swear I’m normal.”

I laughed, the happiness at seeing her alive and happy outweighing my anxiety for a moment. “Hey Melody,” I said with a tentative smile.

“Wow… I mean, hello, nice to meet you…” she said her eyes roaming all over my face, then they dove bashfully to the floor before moving on to Kit. “You too. Nice to meet both of you.”

Grace and I exchanged a look, but didn’t otherwise comment. We could get to my identity later. For now, we moved into the room and found the other three. Kelsey sat on a worn couch, legs crossed and long blonde hair up in a bun on the top of her head. She gave Grace and Adam a huge smile, waving to both of them and offering greetings.

Duncan went to straight to Adam and pulled him into a bro hug that looked almost painful it was so intense. I did not miss that type of thing at all.

Then there was Bray. Short, stocky bray with his curly brown hair and big stupid grin. I felt a pang of heartache shoot through my chest. God I’d missed him. He’d just stood up from where he’d been sitting in a pile of my pillows, beaming happily at Grace and Adam. “You really are back! I was ready to uh… add your names to the door.”

“Morbid,” Adam said with an awkward smile, very obviously trying not to look at me.

Bray just shrugged, then his eyes narrowed. “Grace, did something happen? You look different?”

“Ah… yeah,” she nodded, her hand trailing awkwardly down her other arm. “Magic… literally.”

“No… I think it’s just the different coloured hair,” Kelsey said as all eyes turned to my girlfriend. “The red is gone, there’s green in there now.”

“Oh my god, did you find hair dye out there? Please tell me you got some green for me!” Melody chirped, flopping back down on the couch with her girlfriend, who immediately put an arm around her.

“Ah… no,” Grace shook her head again. “I’m not joking, it really was magic… look.”

Her skin went rigid and rough, shifting and changing as it became the bark of her plant form. I smiled as I saw the little cracks between the plates of bark, where she glowed gently from within, swirling green and blue light changing places from one moment to the next.

“Holy shit!” Duncan blurted, stepping quickly backwards, only for his foot to catch on a pillow, sending his huge frame crashing down to the floor.

“Wow!” Melody blurted at the same time that Kelsey choked and began to sputter, smacking herself on the chest with a fist as she began to cough.

Bray froze, staring at her with utter shock, face going white. “You said that a tree person killed Eli… now you are one?”

“Uh, actually no… it was the fruit,” I said into the quiet that followed. Slowly, I raised my hand to show them the ring. “And… it didn’t kill me.”

The silence before I spoke morphed into something that was truly the absence of sound. It was like everyone had stopped breathing. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. All of them staring at either me, or the ring on my finger.

“No way,” Melody breathed, breaking the tense silence, eyes wide and staring. “Really?”

“Yes… I—“ I started, but I was interrupted, Bray hissing with rage. “What the fuck is this? Is this someone’s idea of a joke?”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

No no no, Bray had to believe me. Gulping to keep rising bile down, I shook my head emphatically, “No! The fruit was a… a teleportation device. It was magic though, and it teleported me to somewhere and then it changed me… into this. Into a woman.”

“No!” he shouted, taking a step towards me, tears filling his eyes. “No! You’re not Eli! You’re not my friend! You’re all… you’re all…”

I could feel it slipping, the moment. He was sliding into anger, fear and disbelief. He needed to believe me! I felt tears of my own threaten, my breathing quickening with dismay. His fists were clenched so tight, white at the knuckles and shaking. Was he really… was he really going to try and hit me? Would revealing my illusion of my old self even work here, or would it solidify the supposed trickery in his mind?

“You’re gay!” I yelled, blurted really, as my desperation addled mind clutched at straws. “You’re gay and your favourite type of porn is watching a short twink guy get spit roasted by two huge muscled dudes! You like it even more if they have tattoos and stuff!”

I was breathing heavily as I finished, my expression morphing into one of horror at the embarrassing secret I’d just blurted to everyone in the room. I watched my best friend go bone white, jaw dropping open as he stared at me. Really, properly stared. Wait, I think he was starting to believe me.

Before I could help myself, I said one more thing, something silly and completely irrelevant. “You have a big problem with farting when you’re running.”

“He does,” a feminine voice mumbled into the room, and I turned to see Kelsey nodding. “I try to stay upwind when we’re on our morning run, but I can still hear it sometimes.”

“It’s when he’s had beans the night before,” I said, feeling my face heating rapidly. Oh god what was happening? What the fuck was I saying?

I turned back to look at Bray, willing him to believe me. Please for the love of big throbbing cocks or whatever you’re into Bray, believe me. I watched him blink, once, twice, then he closed his eyes and let out a long, sharp whistling exhale.

“Dude…” Bray said in the gentlest of whispers. “You said you’d never tell anyone…”

“Yeah well, that’s what happens when you act like a fuckwit,” I pouted, struggling with a wave of hope that crashed into me like a bun that wasn’t watching where it was binkying.

“How?” he demanded, hitting me with an intense stare like he was trying to delve into my eyes to find my soul within.

“I’m trans…” I said gently, anxiously pulling at my hair for comfort. “I knew I was trans since forever, but I was too scared to do anything about it. I probably would have never done anything. Then the fruit happened. It pulled me into… another place, where it held me, changed me into something else, but also giving me the body I needed at the same time.”

“It’s true,” Grace said, stepping up beside me again like the absolutely fucking angelic girlfriend that she was. “When we found her, she cracked a joke at me that had only been between us. She’s proven who she was over and over again as we travelled the ring outside these mountains.”

Bray lunged for me, almost without warning. His arms went around me, tight even as I felt his body shaking with emotion. "I can't believe it," he said in a choked voice. "I mean, I can… but I can't. Oh god."

We were the same height now, but when I brought my arms up to desperately return the hug, I found him so much bigger anyway. He was stronger now, a lot stronger, I could feel it in the muscles of his back and arms.

Still, this was undeniably him, my friend Bray. We might both be a little different now, but I still felt that connection to him. The bond of a friendship that could be picked right back up as though nothing had happened.

We both had tears in our eyes when we parted, and holding me for a second at arm's length, he gave me a watery smile. "You were hotter before. Sorry."

"No… pretty sure this is an improvement," Grace chuckled from behind me.

“You look like a magical girl with that hair,” Melody offered, eyeing it up with an odd kind of hunger.

“Yeah, my eyes are magenta too, if you didn’t notice,” I said with a little smile in her direction.

She snorted. “Oh I noticed. You’re as hot as one too.” Kelsey pinched her, earning a squeal and teeth sinking into her shoulder. They glared at each other for a few moments before Kelsey cracked a grin, saying in a stage whisper, “Isn’t she though? Holy fuck! Do you think we can get her name?”

“Her name is Ryn,” Grace frowned, stepping up to put a protective arm around me. “Back off you two…”

“Foursome?” Melody asked innocently.

“Oh my god,” a tiny voice coughed from behind us all, and we turned to see Kit staring at the lot of us like we were a few terrifying giggles away from being thrown in an asylum.

“Sorry, sorry,” Melody laughed, a huge grin taking over her face. “Sorry… just kinda giddy. High on happiness. That’s really you in there uh… deadname?” she asked, actually saying the word deadname.

I nodded, returning her smile. “New and improved. I can even do magic now.”

“Real?” Kelsey asked, excitement exploding out of her. “You gotta show us!”

“Stand up then,” I told them both with an overly casual wave of my hand.

The two girls squinted at me suspiciously, but otherwise did as I’d asked. Bray was busy staring between Grace and I, his expression unreadable. I hoped that I could distract him from my relationship with her by wowing him with magic instead. Best to tackle that issue later. Plus the buns, I had a feeling that he’d love the buns.

Carefully, I twisted my magic around everyone in the room, and with a burst of magical might, took us over into my grove. There was another pause, silence whispering through the eight of us like my telekinesis had just done, before Melody screamed, “Coooooool! Oh my god, this is so fucking cool!”

She knelt on the ground with a wide smile, raising her hands to the happy little tree like she was praising god. “That… is so cool,” she said finally, regaining a tiny mote of her composure. Not that she really had any to begin with. If she were a car, her pedal would be welded to the floor, and if she ever slowed down it would be as loud and fiery as a movie car crash.

The other three had much different reactions, from profuse swearing on Bray's part to a sort of strangled squeak-groan from Duncan. Kelsey stood frozen, eyes blown wide as they tracked slowly across the scene.

"What is this place?" she finally asked, turning to me somewhat fearfully.

"This is my grove, my sort of… pocket dimension and seat of power. Many of the plants around us are actually the instructions for spells I can cast. That tree over there, with the crazy twisted trunk, that one and all the others like it let me summon a shield of energy," I explained, trying to be as calm and gentle as possible.

"And the big fuck-off tree?" Bray asked, staring up into its canopy with awe.

"That's our home," I grinned. "It's like my wizard's tower or whatever."

“It has baths, and showers,” Grace offered helpfully. "And private rooms for everyone with big comfy beds."

“Wait, really?” Bray asked, a slight smile touching his lips. “Oh man, I— what is that? Is that a giant bunny?”

I followed his gaze, finding Cream and a bun I didn't recognize. They watched us curiously, standing up on their hind legs and their little noses twitching. Goodness, they were cute.

“Uh, yeah… they’re kinda like my familiars,” I smiled, feeling my soul relax as everyone finally seemed to properly believe me. Well, Duncan hadn’t said anything, but he only had eyes for his bromantic partner in crime.

“Let’s go have a bath,” Grace suggested, making shooing motions towards the tree. “And a tour, but I really need a wash after all that walking and debriefing.”

"I'd like to de-brief you," I muttered, just loud enough for only her to hear. Her blush was adorable.

There was round of agreement on the bath thing, and then we were moving, the four newcomers to my grove openly gawking around at the beauty that I had created with magic, a whole lot of study and a boat load of hard work.

“Oh by the way,” I said casually, sidling up to Bray. “We brought you like, literal tons of metal.”

“Why the hell didn’t you lead with that?” he exclaimed in mock outrage. “If there’s anything more Eli-like than forgetting about the importance of beautiful, shiny metal, then I haven’t seen it.”

“It’s Ryn now, actually,” I said with a grin. “Rynadria Belrose.”

“Oh, sorry… Ryn-like,” he said, giving me a hesitant, apologetic smile.

“I got some alien pillows too.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake.”