Chapter 5 — Misapplication

Ness took the first watch, that night. Her body still felt like it was late afternoon, and after all of the strangeness, she didn’t feel like she’d be able to sleep anyway.

The light finally disappeared from the sky, and the forest became pitch black. It grew unexpectedly loud with the calls of night birds, the chirps and screeching of insects, and the occasional cracking twig and rustling foliage of something large moving past, uncomfortably close by.

As the last light was fading from the sky, Ness fiddled with her phone some more, trying to get it to turn on, but still with no luck. She eventually shoved it into one of the larger pockets on her pants, and settled in, seated between the sleeping forms of Mictlan and Mira, arms wrapped around her knees; but apart from them both.

She was hesitant to touch Mira again- the burst of energy she felt before had been intense; and many more of those and she wouldn’t be able to keep silent, and keep from drawing attention to their camp.

She wished there was a fire- for the warmth, and the comfort, and light; but Mira had explained that they couldn’t risk drawing attention, and the flickering light of a campfire would draw dangerous attention, indeed.

Ness still wasn’t convinced this was all… real. Mira had been hesitant to try and demonstrate the magic that night. She had expressed worries about her own exhaustion, and the amount of power that Ness seemed to be able to channel. So far, the only evidence was that she was in a strange place, and the earlier experience with the magic circle.

The circle had been strange but it seemed like a small thing to take as evidence for the existence of magic, of other worlds. Maybe it was hypnosis? All in her head?

She also worried, those first few hours. She worried a lot. If this wasn’t her world, they probably didn’t have HRT. Maybe there was magical HRT, she wondered. Maybe there were magical diseases. Maybe there were regular diseases she had no immunity to.

She was fitfully half-asleep by the time Mictlan stirred, nudging her and indicating, with slow and exaggerated hand motions, that it was his watch, and she should sleep.

It wasn’t a comfortable night’s sleep, but by that time she was mentally exhausted and it was hard not to disappear into the darkness.

The next morning, Mira allowed that they could risk a small cooking fire. Mictlan lured, caught, and cleaned a rabbit, and then kindled a small flame and cooked it; the smoke might give them away, but they would be on the move soon, so Mira judged the risk acceptable.

It was the first time Ness had eaten an animal that had been trapped, killed, cleaned, and cooked right in front of her. It was an unpleasant experience, but by the time she was smelling the roasted meat, her hunger was piqued enough that she didn’t care.

Mira finished chewing the meat off of one of the hind legs, and she dangled the bone toward Ness, smirking and holding the bone out to her as an offering.

“Don’t you dare,” Ness quipped back. She was in a better mood than she expected, that morning. She’d put the puppy ears back on her head, rather than needing to hand carry them or risk losing them.

She found herself somewhat excited by the prospect of a hike through the woods, as strange as the circumstances were; Mictlan took he lead, and she and Mira chatted as they worked their way through the woods.

“What does it mean,” Ness asked. “I’m your Familiar?”

Mira frowned in contemplation.

“I explained about the tunnelling..”

Ness nodded.

“Usually familiars are small animals, mindless little beasts. Part of the spell binds them to my will.”

Ness raised an eyebrow at this. “I’m not bound to your will…”

“No,” Mira shook her head. “Creatures with more powerful souls, dogs, cats, wolves … they’ll be made obedient, but I can’t control them directly like I could with something simpler.”

“I’m not obedient, either,” Ness glowered, and pushed down a little tickle of a thought. Mira looked to be around her own age, and had a kind of aura of competence and leadership that might have been crush-worthy, in normal circumstances.

“I’ve never heard of a thinking creature being a familiar.. But if a wolf is merely obedient while a squirrel is completely controlled, I guess the hold would be even less on something as complicated as a human?”

“Okay, so, uhm, what else?”

“Well..” Mira scuffed the trail with her boot as she walked. “Part of the spell is a promise to guard you. To take care of you. You know, normally it’s just like, a little critter, just means to feed them and keep them safe. Some of the magic goes into the promise… it’s very bad to willingly break it.”

“I just want to go home, I don’t need guarding..”

“Yeah. Uhm. We can try.. But, uh.”

“What?”

“Being a familiar is usually permanent, you know, until, uh, one of us dies. I’ve never heard of it ending any other way.”

“Okay, but, like, what does that mean for me?”

“I… don’t know. We’re connected, somehow, you know? But for me it means that if you go back to your world, I can’t ever do sorcery again.”

It was late afternoon; Mictlan had shared some trail rations with Mira and Ness, who found them tough and bland. She would’ve given anything for a bottle of sriracha.

They had been walking all day; moving as quickly as they could, but it was still slow going. They didn’t encounter any patrols that day, but Mira made them take a long detour around an area that she claimed had clear signs of something she called miasmic taint.

They were working their way through a massive thorn shrub, Mictlan ahead carving a path for them with his sword. Mira rubbed the back of her neck in thought.

“Why don’t you have real ears? A real tail?” Mira glanced back, and gestured at Ness’s ears, and the tail, which she had removed so that it wouldn’t catch on the thorns.

Ness seemed confused by the question.

“What do you mean? Humans don’t have ears and tails. It’s not like there’s a surgery for it.”

“What’s… surr-jury?”

“Uhm, you know.. doctors, and scalpels. Knives.” She gestured at her face, which seemed to confuse Mira even more. “Like plastic surgery.”

“Doctors, you mean like healers?”

“Uhm, yeah, I guess so. Sometimes.”

“Why do they need knives?”

Ness tried to figure out how to explain.

“Sometimes, you know, inside the body, things are wrong? Or, if someone gets hurt or something, and like, the bone needs to be put back together?”

“Is it for blood? Blood magic?” Some of the stories told of people that could use another creature’s lifeblood to power their spells. Those people were always villains.

“No- I told you, we don’t have magic. Uhm… Okay. Okay. Bones, right? You know what bones are?”

“Of course I know what bones are.” She had just been teasing Ness with a rabbit bone that morning. What kind of idiot didn’t know what bones are?

“Yeah. Duh. Okay. So, if you break a bone, sometimes, like, they have to cut you open and screw the bone back together.”

“What the fuck?!” Mira looked aghast.

“What?” Ness couldn’t understand the reaction.

“That’s.. barbaric. That’s a nightmare. That’s why we have healers. But..” She pieced it together, and shuddered. It sounded like hell. “But you don’t have magic…”

They fell silent, walking along. Mira imagined the deprivation and harshness of a world without magic. Ness imagined a world where a broken bone was a simple matter of call the healer. Her prospects for HRT as she knew them seemed dim.

“Do.. do people here get tails?”

“Sure, sometimes, if they want. A good healer can do it. Or there are elixirs, but those are, you know, temporary.”

Ness didn’t know, in fact. She chewed quietly on the idea that she could get a tail, and tried to figure out how to ask the more important question.

“In this world.. your world.. are there..” Ness seemed nervous, and Mira picked up on it.

“Are there what, Ness?”

“In my world, sometimes, uhm, like, boys.. or men.. realize they.. aren’t? Or don’t want to be? Aren’t boys. And they become women. Girls. Or, uhm, the other way around, too.”

Mira seemed more confused by Ness’s unease than by the question itself. She smiled, and shrugged. She tapped Mictlan on the shoulder, so he wouldn’t get too far ahead, and paused, turning to face Ness.

“Sure, we have people like that. They have their own temple, even. Well, the women do- Priestesses of the Goddess Fox.”

Ness seemed relieved by the answer, if not entirely satisfied. Mira tilted her head as she regarded the girl.

“How do they, you know…” She gestured at her own body, breasts, lower body.

“If a healer can give someone a tail, Ness, I would think they can give them tits, or a pussy.” She rolled her eyes, and turned back around. “Come on, we’re making good progress today, let’s not ruin it. I want to get out of the thorns before nightfall.”

She got them moving again.

Another fifteen or twenty minutes later, Ness cleared her throat. “Mira, I.. uhm.. I’m like that. Like the fox priestesses.”

Mira shrugged, not even turning to look.

“Okay.” She had the same indifference as if Ness had told Mira she preferred chicken to beef.

It was Mira’s turn, a moment later, to stop in her tracks. She spun to look at Ness, her eyes wide with shock.

“Wait a minute- how?? KNIVES?!”