Matthew had just finished loading up the truck for the second time this month. A month ago, he moved down to middle of nowhere Florida to take care of his ailing younger brother, Art. He was worried that he’d be required to go to a nursing home if no one could care for him in-house, and when he first arrived that seemed like the inevitable case. His brother looked like a ghost; white as a sheet, and clearly not eating properly. Matthew was worried he had one foot in the grave already.

Thankfully, it seems like he just didn’t have anyone left to talk to in town, and he sort of shutdown. Turns out that despite his brother's youngish age of sixty-five, he had already outlived all his closest friends. After a month of care and catching up, his brother looked like an entirely different person. He got back to a healthy weight and was even able to move back to using a cane to walk with instead of relying completely on his wheelchair. Matthew guessed his brother just sort of gave up with no-one around to interact with, and that made him all the more grateful to his past self for deciding to retire to care for his brother. Sure, they had drifted apart in their adult years, but they kept in touch at least once a month. Matthew figured they talked together more in this past month than they had in five years, and a pang of guilt swept over him.

Which made it even harder to finish loading up his aging truck with the last of his things. Most of his stuff was left to storage back where he used to live, and he figured he’d just give the key to someone and tell them to sell it or keep it, and Matthew realized he would have to unload everything back into the house. He’d also have to call the realtor he’d been working with to let her know that he wasn’t going to be able to sell anymore. He hated going back on a big thing like this when other parties had already gotten involved, but thankfully they were only in the beginning stages of talks, and nothing had been signed yet. Matthew figured he’d apologize with a good wine or something.

Matthew closed the gate of his dull red pickup and fit the slab of wood he’d been using as a ramp against the tailgate to add a little more height to the tailgate in case anything came loose. He didn’t feel like going back into the house just yet, so he stood there looking at all his stuff and sighed again. He was thinking about the issue at the school. Matthew was so worried about his brother he didn’t have time to work out what to do about that trophy case and figured that since nothing happened in his entire tenure at the school that things would stay fine for forever, but he was clearly wrong. He debated calling Cathy again and asking if anything strange had happened at school yet, when a duffle bag flew past his right ear and clipped his shoulder. The bag tumbled over the back of the pickup truck and landed awkwardly into place.

“What the hell?” he half exclaimed and held his shoulder.

“Figured you could use some company on the road.” His brother said, as he turned around back to his house and limped back inside, apparently having left his cane inside. Matthew was about to protest, but when his little brother decided something, he wasn’t going to be told no. He used to be able to talk him out of stuff, but old age turned his brother's will into iron. He watched Art go back in the house until the screen door closed behind him and a small smile found its way onto his face.

◊◊◊

Pacing back and forth in his bedroom, Tyler was well and truly freaking out now. His breath came in quick, and he couldn’t quite take the time to exhale. His tried to run his hands through his hair like he always did but found it quite different now that it was longer, which left him with some other complicated feelings that he wasn’t quite ready to think about just yet.

“Hey, you okay?” came the voice from the bed. Eris had been sitting there this whole time, and he realized he went mute since his mother called for him. He stopped his frantic pacing and looked at Eris.

“No, I’m not okay!” he whisper-yelled, realizing now that his voice was a bit higher than he remembered, and a blush came to his face. “My mom is downstairs, and I look completely different! How is she going to recognize me? She’ll think I’m an intruder, and then she’ll kick me out. I’ll never see my friends again.” A vision of Orlando went through his mind, and his blush deepened. Was he more susceptible to blushing now too? “What will I do about school?” Tears were coming in, and he realized he was speaking way too quickly.

“Woah, slow down, okay. I think I managed to catch maybe one-tenth of that. What do you mean when you say you look completely different?” Eris replied.

“Just that! Up to today I was a boy! What did you do to me?” He realized now that he was fully crying now, and his words came out in that half-hiccup you get when you can’t control your breathing anymore.

Eris, for her part, just looked at Tyler and tilted her head slightly like she was looking at him for the first time. Her eyes were curious, but they also held empathy. “I just healed you, that’s all I did. Last night was actually the first time I ever got to see you in person and yeah, you look a teeny tiny bit different now than you did then, but I didn’t really notice until you pointed it out.”

“What—” he was about to ask when his bedroom door opened, and his mom stepped in, which spiked Tyler’s heart rate to a level he wasn’t aware hearts could beat at.

“Tyler, I thought you were coming down to help. The foods all put away now.” Came his mother’s voice as she fully stepped into the room. “Who are you talking to?”

She looked at Tyler and her eyes widened by a lot. “Tyler, what—” she was about to ask something, but it got cut off when she looked at the bed and changed her question. “Who are you?”

What should he say here? Should he lie or just tell the truth? He then realized he didn’t even know the answer to that question in the first place.

For her part, Eris just smiled at his mother and said, “I’m Eris!”

Tyler’s mom looked at her for a long second, then moved her attention back to Tyler. “Tyler, hun. You need to tell me when you have friends over. But more importantly, are you wearing makeup? It looks really nice on you.”

Suddenly all the anxieties and fear flushed from Tyler’s system and the relief made him cry openly this time. He ran to his mom and hugged her tight.

“Woah! Honey, are you okay? What’s going—? Tyler. Do you have breast pads on?”

Tyler wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do here but couldn’t help but tell his mother the truth, but also couldn’t manage to speak through the tears, so he just loosed the hug on his mother and shook his head.

Tyler’s mother had a look of confusion on her face, then her eyebrows shot up. “Tyler... Are you a girl?”

Tyler couldn’t answer anymore and just cried in his mother’s arms. He realized somewhere in the middle of his crying that he hadn’t done this since he was very little, and that he missed his mother comforting him when he cried so much.

◊◊◊

Tyler took a sip of his chamomile tea and sighed. He finally managed to calm down, and his mother helped him downstairs to the kitchen table. He wasn’t even aware she made him tea at all, but he was feeling better with every sip, and a little tired as well.

“Tyler.” His mother said, as she sat down across the small table from him, so she could look at his face. He realized his mother looked worried. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Why are you a girl, and who is Eris? Did she do this to you somehow?” Her tone went from worry to slightly angry by the time she finished asking the last question.

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Tyler just shook his head, “No mom, she said she didn’t. I... I’m not sure what happened or why, but I think she’s telling the truth. I don’t know why I’m a girl right now.”

Tyler’s mom just sat there and let that soak in for a minute, while Tyler sipped his tea.

After a while had passed, she managed another question. “You said she didn’t do this to you... but then does that mean she could? Could she change you back?”

Tyler froze. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t even think to ask that question in the first place. “I don’t know, mom”. He replied. He couldn’t meet her eyes, so instead he just looked at the tea in front of him.

His mom was silent for another short while as she just watched her son. Though it occurred to her that he might not be her son at all. “Tyler.” She said, very softly this time, causing Tyler to be able to look up at his mom. “Do you want to go back?”

“I don’t think I can go back, mom. I don’t even know how I got here.” Came his quick reply.

“That’s not what I mean.” She had a small smile on her face now. “I mean, if Eris came down here right now and said she could do it, would you want to?”

“I—” Tyler was about to respond with something, but he wasn’t sure what it was anymore. “I don’t know.” They replied, honestly.

“Do you mind if I call Eris down here?”

Tyler just shook their head.

“Eris!” their mother called up the stairs. “Can you come down here please?”

Soon there was the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs and a relaxed-looking Eris poked her head around the corner. “Yes, ma’am?” she responded.

“Can you sit over here? And would you like anything to drink?” Eris’s eyes lit up at that. “Oh! I haven’t had a good drink in ages.”

Tyler’s mom seemed to pick up on something they didn’t, but they understood what that was when she replied, “no honey, not alcohol. We have tea and a few sodas.”

Eris tilted her head slightly in thought before she replied, “I’ll have a soda”. She pronounced soda slowly. Tyler’s mom moved to the fridge, got out a blue can and handed it to Eris before sitting down again.

“Eris. I don’t know who you are, or how any of this happened, but do you know if there’s a way to undo this?”

“The answer to how is magic, and the only thing I did was heal Tyler’s wounds. Do you want me to un-heal them?”

Tyler looked at their mom with a questioning glance, which she noticed and seemed to know what they were thinking, “I’d just like to know what’s possible.” Turning back to Eris, she clarified. “I mean change Tyler back into a boy.” A pang of anxiety shot through Tyler.

“What is possible, ma’am, is anything. I’ve never used magic to change someone’s sex before, but I can’t imagine it’d be much more difficult than a complex healing spell.”

That seemed to send Tyler’s mother into a confused headspace for a bit as she sat there looking like she was about to say something but always closing her mouth shortly after starting. She looked to Tyler, as if for the first time, then back to Eris. “W-well I guess I can’t say there’s no such thing as magic, as there’s no other explanation for Tyler’s current condition, but it’s nice to know that if needed you can.”

Silence loomed around the table for a minute before Tyler found their voice again. “Eris?” he started, “How do you know magic? I thought magic wasn’t real until today.”

“Simple!” she said, puffing out her chest and putting her hands on her hips. But instead of looking like a superhero, her short size just made the motion look adorable. “I’m the one who brought magic to this world in the first place.” Her voice had an air of pride around it. “Though, I’m a little concerned that you don’t know how to use magic. Maybe after I was locked away in that cup, something happened to the knowledge? Though you seem to be employing magic already.”

“Already?” Tyler questioned.

“Yeah. You’ve got a cold box over there, and your communication device looks incredible! I wouldn’t have been able to come up with something so sophisticated. It’s got so many features.” She said excitedly, and decided then to try some soda. She must not have liked it though because her face turned scared as she tried to swallow. “What is this stuff?” she asked.

“It’s soda. Bubbly flavored water, essentially. But those things you mentioned aren’t magic. The fridge just makes things cold, and my smartphone is just a small computer.”

“Small computer?”

“Yeah. Though I’m not quite sure how computers work in the first place, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have anything to do with magic.”

“Interesting... I’ll have to investigate.”

“Wait. Just how old are you?” Tyler’s mother asked.

Eris looked puzzled at that and thought for a moment. “I’m not sure what year, but I came into existence somewhere around the month of Iunius. Or at least that’s what people started calling it around the time I was put into the cup.”

Tyler’s mom just looked puzzled, but Tyler’s eyes turned to saucers as he looked at Eris. While they didn’t pay too much attention to classes, history was one of their favorites. “You’ve been around since before the Julian calendar?”

“Oh, long before that. Like I said, I’m not sure what year. People didn’t really start counting them until I’d been around for a while.” Came her reply, as if it was the most boring question in the world.

“I’m going to get some alcohol after all.” Tyler’s mom said as she stood up and got a half-finished bottle of wine down from the top of their fridge along with two glasses.

Meanwhile, Tyler had a million more questions, but there was one they wanted an answer to more than anything. “You said the other day that you were ‘bound’ to me. What does that mean?”

“Exactly what you think it does. The magic that put me into the cup was powerful magic indeed, and took the combined efforts of an entire town’s worth of people. The magic meant that I now require to be bound to something to exist in the world, and the ritual you did moved the binding from the cup to you.”

“I... I don’t understand anything at all.” Tyler said, “I never performed a ritual. And the cup was a trophy some class won in the early 1900s or something. How can you be bound to a thing that didn’t exist when the magic was cast? And why are you just moving around and talking to us if you’re bound to me?”

Tyler’s mom had finished pouring the wine by this point and sat back down. She offered a cup to Eris, who gratefully took it and handed her back the soda. It looked like she wanted to never touch the stuff again. Tyler’s mom took a big drink of her wine, as Eris continued after her own gulp.

“This is heavenly! Anyway, I don’t know what happened before the ritual, I wasn’t there for that, so if you didn’t do it someone else did. As to how I got into that cup instead of the one I was originally put into is also something I don’t know since I wasn’t aware when it happened. Someone must have moved me to it a long while ago.” She seemed to mull over something as she took another drink of her wine. “The ritual itself is pretty straightforward, but the fact that I was moved to another cup and then to you proves that at the very least some magic stayed around after I got sealed away. Anyway, I’m not actually ‘here’ in the strictest sense of the word. I’m sort of projecting my body out of you, and I can do that now that I’m bound to a living, thinking vessel.”

Tyler quickly felt a headache coming on and felt more tired now than ever. “How are you even speaking English right now? Wouldn’t you only know Latin or something equally old?”

Eris just shrugged and said, “I’m able to access your memories and experiences now that I’m bound to you, though it’s limited to strong emotions or thoughts and intrinsic knowledge like speech. By the way, you should become an author! Your dreams are remarkable, better than a lot of the plays I’ve seen.”

For the first time since the conversation started, Tyler’s mom got a huge smile on her face. She was positively beaming with pride when she said, “Tyler has a gift for telling stories. Did you know that she would tell me bedtime stories instead when she was little?”

Eris laughed hard at that, and Tyler felt something close to butterflies in their stomach when they realized that their mom was talking about them. They blushed and looked down at the table as another realization hit them. They might not want to go back at all.

Looking back up at their mother excitedly talk about the kinds of stories they’d tell when they were younger; Tyler couldn’t help but feel a little better about everything.

Maybe things will be okay. She thought.

◊◊◊

“You never told me why we’re headed back to where you live”, Art said, his usual gruff voice coming through. He tended to come off as angry or upset most of the time, but Art was a surprisingly calm and patient person.

“Something happened at the place I used to work, and I need to go check to make sure everything’s okay.”

“What does that have to do with you? Didn’t you retire?”

Matthew frowned, “I don’t actually know if anything bad happened, but if something did happen, it was probably my fault and I think I’m the only one who can fix it.”

“Fix what? You’re bein’ awfully vague.” Art put his arms across his chest and huffed.

Matthew remained silent for a long while, debating on exactly what he should tell Art. His little brother perfected the art of getting information out of people when they were little, and the road trip was going to be a long one. They were barely through Atlanta and at the pace they were going it’d be a day or so before the trip was done.

Matthew grimaced and prepared himself for a long drive. “Do you believe in magic?”

◊◊◊

Outside the Underwood’s home an old sedan sat at the corner of the road parked in-between mailboxes several houses down. The car was off, and the driver sat in the front seat with a pair of binoculars trained on the kitchen window as she watched the conversation the two Underwoods were having with the young woman. She smiled to herself as she dropped her binoculars, letting the strap around her neck catch them before they hit her lap, and started her car. The sedan made a U-turn and drove off.