CW:

Rahdian POV. Misgendering self-harming thoughts. Talk of suicide. Talk and memories of Sexual Assault and being used for breeding purposes.

Broken, gross, horrid, lying, male, wrong wrong wrongwrongwrongwrongwro–

I feel the Dream roil around me. Old Nightmares perking up at the edges to regard this bubbling up of pain.

I… I think Ina’s been trying to keep our little conversation… well not private. Any of the other three could come over at any time if they wanted. But… like… talking quietly as to not disturb them? I think?

But… Well, at my nod something cracks.

“Rahdian hey, It’s–” Ina starts to say, but… then the Storm is about and around me. Pushing her away. Curling tight as Nightmares begin to stir.

Back. The Storm thrums in demand to them while wrapping me into protective embrace and murmuring. What have you done, love?

I look up to Ina’s Dreamer, Aceso, curling about her shoulders. Eyes wide in surprise as her tendrils flail out to steady her Sun Spoken. Then Ina rights herself and… and… Is grinning? From her such a delight exudes that sets both me and the Storm into confusion.

“It’s okay.” She states calmly, and the Dream can’t help but reflect that. A few Nightmares still stir but… even they pause at her words. “I… Rahdian I…”

“Like my Ina?” Aceso whispers.

That makes us all freeze.

What? The Storm roils in careful protectiveness.

“I… I don’t want to use an old name, since I know how much it will hurt.” Ina says. “But… One of my fellow Temple Children went missing almost two years ago, and we never found out what happened to them or… or why.”

F– fellow temple children? Like…

My eyes go wide as everything seems to tilt a bit. “You… you were… But… which one?”

The first signs of pain roll across her face, as she nods. “The youngest, my room was the farthest…” She looks up to regard the Dune Wall, then raises a thumb and points behind her. “That way? I think? Dreams are weird and it feels like a lifetime ago. But I remember playing with you on the beach when I was really little. You taught me all about Sun Spoken and we played pretend through that summer. But after I started understanding who I really was I… I kinda became a lobster. Hiding in my shell. Hurting and scared and… and then they had me start… um…”

She swallows, and I see pain like only I thought I could feel enveloping her.

“You don’t need to say it, love.” Aceso leans in to hold Ina so close. “You’re free, and none will force that life back upon you.”

Ina huffs and just… slumps to sitting again. Dream tears dribbling down her cheeks as she looks back up to me. “But you’re… you’re like me? Transgender? A woman who was born and trapped in a body you didn’t feel was right? I’m not just revealing all my secrets out of misunderstanding, right?”

I try to talk, but… can only nod more as my own tears fall. And our Dream is consumed in such a strange mix of sadness and joy and delight and pain and–

And then we’re both awake.

Ina was willing to sleep on the little comfy armchair in this room but… I insisted she get settled on the other side of my little friend. The bed is honestly huge enough for another with space still to spare. So well passed into slumber laying across the bed facing each other.

Our eyes meet, and I… I can’t move. Am frozen by her now dulled violet eyes and the tears I can see have already bubbled out. Quickly turning blurry as my own continue to rise.

“Hi.” She whispers. Voice both nothing like before and… exactly the same. Like a single instrument alone at song’s end. A sign that I’m only speaking to Ina.

“Was that all real? Are… are you really like me?” I dumbly murmur back.

She bites her lip and nods. “Mhm. Yeah.”

“I don’t… You… but…” I swallow as I try to communicate the things I want to say. NEED to say. No matter how much it could hurt. “How… How did you do that? It’s taken my spinning years to… to change even this much! You look amazing.”

“Thank you.” She giggles and whispers through a warming of her cheeks that sets my heart thundering. “I know we did spend a lot of time together as I got older but… I still don’t recognize you. Even right now knowing and trying really hard. Like… It’s not because you weren’t pretty before. But I only remember you being REALLY tall… um… and that’s kinda something I ADORE in Tasii and find so enthralling.”

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And then I’m blushing alongside her. Wanting to shake my head and contradict her but… memories of the stranger in the mirror flare up and smother my denials.

“I… I’ve only just recently gotten to get a good look at my reflection. Am still… trying to process that she’s me.”

Ina nods, and shifts to stretch out an arm to lay above my little friend and across the bed. “I… yeah. That happens to me all the time. And like… then the girl the mirror is also really fucking cute? Fuck. I didn’t know how to handle that. Still fall apart sometimes. Can only guess at how fuzzy your mind must have gotten when… when you see who you’ve become! You’re so pretty Rahdian!”

Can’t help but reach out and take up her offered hand while barely able to whisper softly. “Thank you.”

And her smile grows. “Fuck. I… Never thought I’d meet anyone like me. Was sure I was just… the only messed up and very unlucky girl in this way!”

Ina’s words stir such matching patterns in me. Of similar despair at struggling to find those that might accept me. And never ever even thinking it possible to find another girl like me. Much less free and Sun Spoken and filled to bursting with the same magic that’s let me shift. Could only hope that maybe I’d stumble into kinder souls in this cold land.

“Y– yeah. I… yeah.” I murmur. “Expected you to hate me or worse. Only at best barely tolerate my differences.”

She winces, squeezes my hand tighter. “Never. And… The people here who know about me accepted this without hesitation. Never even once thought of me as anything but the girl I told them I am. I can promise you that they’ll do the same for you.”

I take a deep breath, trying to… to consider that, and end up looking down guiltily at our little slumbering cutie. “We were supposed to meet this one before the Dream ended. I… I’m sorry.”

“This was way more important. Don’t apologize.” Ina responds immediately. “They knew we might get distracted and not draw them into our Dreams tonight. If anything they were really happy we could weave them a song to help them rest. Apparently our Waking World is… hard. Somehow, For them.”

I nod. “They always seemed to want to just… sleep a lot. I never really knew why.”

A long pause passes as we both watch the strange little creature snooze happily. Only little glimmers and sparkles punctuated by muffled ‘helps’ show any sign of distress or motion.

“Wh– what are they?” I whisper. “And… What can we possibly do to help them? Why can it seem to understand me and you but… doesn’t know how to say anything else?”

Ina purses her lips in thought. “To be honest I’m not sure. Aceso seems to… well she doesn’t know for sure, but she thinks that they used to be like… all one being. Kinda like her. But… then something happened. What bound them and kept them as one broke and… and then they fell into Arudia. Were hurting and scared and lashing out. So old Sun Spoken used magic to bind them to the Obelisks. Which… worked. But in a horrible way.”

“So you broke that?” I ask. “The binding things.”

She nods. “Mhm. It wasn’t really… like we didn’t get how bad it all was until it kinda slapped us in the face! We learned that certain groups aren’t really people here, not just… not just people like we were, but… girls like Jevita and Thodep. And if Arudia really tried to treat them like people the gemstones would get upset and cause problems. And all the while the gemstones cried out this really sad song that made it obvious they hated this too!”

I pause. “Why did they do that?”

She kinda… freezes. “Do what?”

I huff. “Like… make it so the Obelisks would do that? Why not just like… bind them and use them as Arudia wanted? If… I mean… if you're going to enslave a group, why let them hurt you back?”

Ina considers that. “If I had to guess it sounds like this was less originally a big horrid binding and… more a compromise. I think the Zeridii agreed to it because they didn't have other options. Fuck, am I glad to have smarter people around to ask better questions than I did.”

My blush deepens. “I’m… but… I’m not smart. Just… a mess of a girl who managed to stumble into the only other… um…”

“Transgirls.” Ina giggles, then quiets to consider me with a serious look. “And you are smarter than you give yourself credit for, Rahdian. You don’t need to talk about this if you don’t want to but… You said your changes took years?”

I nod and look away. “I… Yeah. Spinning every morning and night to change… something. Inside me. Really small parts that shifted everything else over time.”

Her eyes go wide. “Really? That’s… like I hate that it took so long but that’s really amazing!”

I sigh and shake my head. “Not really. Your song magic seems to work a whole lot quicker. Like… How long has it been since you started changing?”

Ina bites her lip and looks off guiltily. “Oh um… well… like not even a year? But–”

I very nearly sputter in surprise and, if I'm being honest, jealousy. “What? You… ” I push to sit up, still holding her hand. “Please show me or… or help ask the Storm to learn it and then teach me.”

She winces and rises with me. “I… Can’t. My song it… it only makes this shape. And… I, um… Kinda have to actively stop it from–”

Then she hisses and grips at her leg. “Fuck.”

“Sorry.” I flinch and almost pull back but… she grips my hand tight.

“Not your fault.” She sighs. “Just… It always hurts in the morning. Give me a second to sing it better?”

I nod, and she sings.

Ina and her Dreamer helped us both drift into an easy synchronized sleep last night, and that song was… honestly hard to remember. A thing of warm comfort and pulling softness.

But this…

I get to watch unimpeded as the Ocean around this girl titters and thrums in delight at her song. It has words but… I don’t understand them. Not really. Each syllable seems to hold bottomless depths of meaning and life and… and desires. Things that set my eyes to watering in hope at the future it pleads for and the past that it hints at losing.

“There.” She sighs at the song’s end. “Fuck. Thanks for letting me weave that.”

I nod wordlessly.

She glances over and her smile turns… shy. Almost. Then she giggles and falls back over into the pillows. “Sorry. What were you asking?”

“Um… I was stupidly thinking I could learn how you weave magic.”

She snorts and eyes me. “I’ll share what I can but… honestly your spinning sounds better than what I went through.”

That kinda jolts me a bit. “Why? You… You look amazing! And it only took a year!?!”

She considers something before murmuring softly. “Less. But… it hurt. A lot.”

I pause. “How long?”

Ina shrugs. “I dunno. Maybe… an hour?” She smirks then. “They found me where they thought someone else should be. I almost got arrested. Had to run.”

My eyes go wide. “An… an hour? Just…”

She nods.

“Fuck.” I huff and fall to settle into my own pillows. “That… must have taken so much Amwella. Mine had enough to… um… well keep me alive while I swam back to the shoreline. Showed me some spinning to prove the Dream was real and the next night… Well, we talked. Got to know each other.”

Ina rests elbow on pillow and chin on palm while turning to listen. “Did they know you were a girl right away?”

I nod. “It um… well, they told me it was obvious.”

Ina tilts her head. “From your memories?”

I look down and away in shame. “Sort of.”

“I won’t lie to you, Rahdian.” Ina murmurs. “Aceso almost killed me, that first day. Only stopped when she saw that I ‘wanted’ to be a girl.” She snorts as she air quotes. “So stupid of me, I’ve always been a girl. She taught me that right quick. Our bodies don’t make us who we are. We decide that.”

I nod and take a deep breath, deciding to just, trust her. If anyone can understand this she can. Could see the same pain and hurt in her eyes when she mentioned the temple. “I was drowning myself when I found their shard on the ocean’s floor.”

The room goes deathly quiet as I refuse to look up and meet this perfect girl’s eyes. Can’t… can’t stand the idea of seeing her disgust or–

Her other hand slides out to grip at mine. “I am so sorry, Rahdian.”

I shake my head, trying to keep back more tears tonight. “Don’t be. I was being stupid and selfish and–”

“Hey hey hey.” Ina shushes me. “No. You… Rahdian what they did, it…” But her words fall apart too, and I look up to see her glaring off at a wall as tears fall. “We didn’t have many ways out. It wasn’t like we could… could say no. Or leave. And… and…” Then her voice goes so quiet. “I think I was close to trying something like that too.”

Oh fuck she… she felt the same way? Was… was…

I swallow, hard. “I’m glad you didn’t. Glad Aceso found you and… and helped you get away.”

She jerks to look back to me. Eyes wide at those words as she whispers. “Can… would… Could a hug be okay?”

I nod, hard, manage to whisper. “Please.”

And in the same motion we’re closing the distance to nearly crash into an embrace. Only a few seconds pass before I feel her trembling in my arms as I shake in hers. Old pains that… that no one else in these lands could possibly understand seeming to rock between us...

Two girls wrapped in wrong flesh, used and kept as simple breeding stock. Allowed nothing else as they waited for their next chance at a real life after this first one was done.

It hurts. Oh fuck it hurts more than anything else to just… let these things all boil over. Feels like something inside is breaking as we fall into wheezing, throat-tearing sobs. But… also like my spinning spells.

Healing. Filling spaces that were empty and aching before. That needed this warmth and swelling storm to wash away some of the nasty driftwood that’s come to pile up.