I stopped by Alice’s house on my way home. Well, I say stopped by but really my chat with the elders and accidentally killing elder Sampson had only cost me my morning. When I arrived they were eating lunch. Cheese sandwiches on sourdough bread grilled over an open fire. “Oh Vanessa! Good to see ya. Please, help yourself” chuckled miss Cooper. “Thanks, you’re too kind” I responded.

  Alice was entertaining her younger brother while they ate. Right now she had shapeshifted her head and only her head to look like elder Nichos and in a voice that was neither hers nor his was squealing: “Give me your teeeeeeth!”.

  Given her little brother was at most ten, he was enjoying her performance greatly. She was basically boymoding otherwise until she saw me, at which point she lost 4 inches of height, gained 4 cup sizes and switched to her more comfortable girl appearance. “Nessie!” she squealed and ran over to grab me in a hug. Too tight, TOO TIGHT! “LEGGO!”. She completely ignored my mental command and I was just wondering what they’d do with/make of my pystation when I was finally dropped.

  I sat down to catch my breath. “Hey Alice. Good news. The elders said I could take you out of town tomorrow!” I gasped. Her mother dropped a pte. Thankfully it was wooden. “They’re letting you take her out of town? Did you mind control them into agreeing?” she asked, sounding concerned.

  I shook my head. “Nah, nothing like that. I just showed them I could use my power to protect myself and they agreed that I should be free to come and go as I please. Then I asked if I could take some friends with me and they said that was fine as long as I also brought Victoria to teleport us to safety in case something went wrong.” I said. “Who’s Victoria” she asked. “I… don’t know. I kinda thought you would? The elders talked about her as if she was someone important.” I responded.

  “Ha, the elders know everyone deary. Every single soul in town knows at least two of them and most of us know all five. They’re awful for the ol’ gossip. Need to be to do their jobs. But if the elders trust her she must be alright” she said. “Right… so do you mind if I take Alice out of town tomorrow. I need to get stuff not avaible in town and I’d be thankful for the company” I said. “Hmm… well if the elders say its okay then I trust their judgement. Sure, she can come” she said with a smile. “Thanks. I’ll bring her back safe, I promise” I said.

  “Can I come too?” asked Alice’s little brother. “Sorry kid, the car only has 5 seats. One for me, once for Victoria, one for Alice, one for Rose and one for Leah. No room. Perhaps some other time…” I said. “Why did you invite Rose and Leah” said Alice. “They literally tried to kill you”.

  “Eh. In all fairness I did attack them with a knife and actually kill Leah. I think we’re even at this point” I said. “Okay, but why do you like them?” huffed Alice. “I’m not completely sure. I feel this sort of kinship with them I can’t expin” I mused. She sighed. “Leah’s probably just gonna lose control and bite someone’s head off. You know what beastshifters are like. You should really uninvite her so she doesn’t expose us as witches or something” she huffed.

  “ALICE!” snapped her mother. “That’s not nice. You know damn well beastshifters are no more driven by their emotions than the rest of us!” she lectured. “Is that a stereotype?” I asked. Miss Cooper sighed. “Well here’s the thing. Beastshifters are real strong and if they don’t keep it under control they could hurt someone. That’s why they usually get put up someone who won’t get killed by a tantrum after their powers grow in. Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, they can still see their parents under supervision. But you know how kids can be. Special children need special rearing. But that doesn’t mean they won’t grow up to be normal like the rest of us. And if she’s in your css there’s no reason to think she’s any less in control of herself than you are”

  I sighed. “I think I get the picture. I’m not uninviting her. I know what its like to be afraid of my powers and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone” I said. “Tch!” said Alice. “What about the fact her and Rose are always being assholes to me for being transwatsit?” she asked. I knitted my eyebrows together. “That’s a different issue, and if they give you shit for it tomorrow I’ll have Victoria teleport them straight home. But I’d like to give them a chance to learn. People can’t get better if we don’t let them grow” I said. “You don’t know them like I know them” muttered Alice. “Do you know them? Its easy to think you know somebody just because you spend a lot of time with them and none of it good. But people never that simple. Trust me. The elders do and they’re great judges of character, right Miss Cooper!” I said cheerily. “Its Esme I told ya” she chuckled.

  “Um…” said Alice’s little brother. “Oh hi, what’s up kid” I asked. “Are you a boy or a girl?” he asked. “Jared!” chided Esme. “Sorry, you know how kids are…” she said. “What do you think I am Jared?” I asked with a slightly forced smile. “I can’t tell! Your hair is short for a girl but long for a boy and you sound like a girl but you don’t have…” he trailed off and then simply pointed at his sister’s chest.

  “Jared! That’s not… wait what?” said his mother, his pointing out of my actual physical features having cut through the miasma obscuring them. “No way!” gasped Alice. “So you’re…” she trailed off. I ughed sadly. “That I am. Why do you think I have so much LGBT stuff?” I chuckled. “But how come I never noticed?” Alice excimed. “Because I didn’t want you to. My question is how this little guy saw through me”.

  “Oh, Jared is immune to magic bein directly used on him. Healers can’t fix him, elder Ange’s shield can’t stop him, he can lie to Elder Maggie…” said his mother. I nodded. “Thought so” I said. “So wait, you’re using your mind control powers to make everyone see you as a girl?” said Alice. “You got your tricks for passing, I got mine” I chuckled. “I think I want to swap” she grunted. “Growing my hair out at will? Sign me up!” I said brightly. “Wait, is that something we can do? Is there like, a witch who can transfer powers?” I asked.

  “Afraid not” said Esme. “You get the gift you get and you like it. And you be thankful you got a good one and not ‘yellin extra loud’” she said. “Your power is yelling loud. Yeesh, how are Alice and Jared not deaf?” I asked. “Ya think you’re the only one who’s gotta be careful with yer gift? Only time I get to use mine is in combat drills. I hadda be adopted by a shifter and I don’t even get to py in the shifter sports” she grumped. “Okay, you win, that sounds awful” I said. “Eh, its not all bad. If the town gets invaded they drop me off at a choke point and I get to become a legendary hero basically for free” she said wistfully. “Well I hope that never happens” I said. “I rather like living in peace”.

  After we were finished eating Alice agreed to come stay the night at my pce so she wouldn’t wake her mother in the morning and wouldn’t have to stand out in the cold and wait to be picked up. “You kids remember to eat something” Esme ughed as she waved us off.

  “Hey, when Jared saw through your power back there, why didn’t you use it to make us forget after we changed the subject?” asked Alice. I sighed. “That’s incredibly dangerous Alice” I said. “More dangerous than killing someone then bringing them back?” she asked. “Yes. WAY more dangerous, and I don’t exactly do the raising the dead thing as a party trick. There was like a 10% chance the bringing her back part just didn’t work” I said. “So there was a chance of actually just properly killing her?” asked Alice. “Yes, always. In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have done it. But I was REALLY mad about the whole trying to kill me and hurting you thing” I said.

  “Aw, thanks Nessie” said Alice with a smile. “So what might happen if you mess with memories?” she asked. “Well… you know the way I keep saying my mother’s in a funny farm? Okay, so here’s the thing: my powers came in when I was like five. And by that point I had already realised I really didn’t like being a boy. So I used my mysterious gift on my parents. And everyone in my life really. My elementary school teacher, the rest of my css, the bus driver, the dentist… And mostly it worked and everyone forgot I was ever a boy. Except my father, who’s completely immune to it, just like Jared.”

  I took a breath. Alice was absolutely enraptured. “So you have to understand it from my father’s perspective. One day everyone around him starts referring to his son as his daughter. Even his wife. So he does the rational thing and corrects them. And the thing about rewriting memories is its not a gentle thing. Imagine it like bending metal. Do it once and you’re probably fine. But if the metal was to be bent back and then bent again and so on and so forth for an uncountable number of times… well eventually the metal is going to snap. And my Mom was caught in the middle between my desire she believe I’m a girl, and my father’s correct memory that this hadn’t always been the case”

  I pushed open the door of my cabin and allowed Alice to enter before closing it behind us and continuing my story. “If they hadn’t been devout Christians it might not have been such a big deal. If their brains hadn’t been poisoned by Fox News it mightn’t have been such a big deal. They might have asked ‘are you a girl’ and I might have said yes and they might have accepted this as an acceptable state of affairs. But they believed me being a boy was God’s will. So they moved town to somewhere deeper in the bible belt. And for a while that was enough. At its weakest, my power can’t change your fundamental beliefs, and it took me a long time to learn to use it more effectively.”

  “Shit hit the fan again when I was 12. We got the talk about what was about to happen our bodies and I was NOT okay with it. Suddenly being a girl went from a happy little affirmation to a desperate war cry. And my mother of course had been exposed to little doses of it for years but suddenly she went from the tiny amount of cosmic radiation you get from a suntan to ground zero at Chernobyl. My Dad would have to spend an hour reminding her of all the boy activities I did and how I was on the baseball team and then she’d get it and then she’d have a quick chat with me and she was right back to square one.”

  “And at this point all the brainwashing and unbrainwashing had broken something in her brain. She could no longer distinguish fact from reality. She started believing the government were putting chemicals in the water to turn the frogs gay and the devil was hiding in her husbands butt and she was in a polycule with a europop boyband”

  “Hold up, what’s gay?” asked Alice. “Girls dating girls and boys dating boys, not relevant right now” I said. “Can humans be gay?” she asked. “Yes, we can. I’m gay for Gods sake now can we get back to my mother?” I said crossly. “Oh, sure”

  “Anyway my father noticed that she had completely lost touch with reality. He mistook it for early onset dementia and put her in a home. Which might have actually helped if the pce wasn’t run by a hack faith healer who thinks aniseed oil diluted to to a millionth of a millionth of a part per million in water could cure cancer”

  “After she was gone, well you have to understand that this whole time my father was slowly convincing himself that this was all a big government conspiracy. That a shadowy cabal of rich perverts was going around brainwashing everybody to think his kid was a girl. And she was a voice of reason against his more drastic solutions to that particur fear. With her gone, there was nobody to stop him pulling me out of school, divorcing me from every friend I’ve ever had and then moving us to a cabin in the mountains where the government could never possibly find us and raising me away from anyone who could possibly believe I wasn’t a boy. It was the most miserable 2 years of my life and it culminated in me throwing myself off a bridge presumably to my death”

  “So no Alice, I don’t mess with memories on a whim, doubly so considering that there’s someone who could remember in py. I don’t want what happened to my mother to happen to anyone else ever again. That’s a terrible fate and nobody deserves it. Not even my bible thumping parents and certainly not your lovely mother.” I said.

  “Um… okay, fair enough. Okay, I see why you don’t mess with memories then. Hey, could the same thing happen with principal Bck’s memory manipution do you think?” she asked. “I’m sure he’s aware of the risks and applies his gift with a restrained hand” I responded.

  After that we watched the first season of owl house. I thought it might interest her after her question about the gay frogs. She groused about how we should skip to the part where they’re gay and I refused and elegantly expressed the importance of buildup.

  We went to bed early. We had an early morning ahead of us. I let her take the couch while I slept on my usual mattress on the floor. (There’s nothing as permanent as a temporary solution)