NOVEL NEXT Book 3 Chapter 9
Talia had volunteered her bed to Cat, on grounds that she didn't sleep in it anyways- she was always either sleeping with me or with Faith, or with both of us at once.
Over the next few days, with some help from both Emily and The Father, I managed to use enough Divine magic to fully cure my brain damage, and I was, save for a conspicuous scar in the center of my chest, fully healed from our time in the Black Desert at long last. I got better in time to take my Placement Exams, and I was fairly confident in my performance there. I definitely wouldn't have to take the first year of beginner courses, that much was certain.
"Alright, here's what you do," Cat said. "You know the G chord and the C chord. I've got this one minute timer. You're gonna strum a clear, clean G chord, no buzz, and then you're gonna strum a clear, clean C chord, same way, and you're gonna do as many chord changes as you can manage in one minute. I'm gonna write it down, you're gonna take a little break, and then we're gonna do it again four more times."
She'd been teaching me how to play the guitar, and while, conveniently, we did have the right kind of guitar, we were then confronted with the fact that we only had one guitar, and so couldn't play at the same time.
At the same time, however, she knew of a sort of guitar that we didn't have, and knew how to construct it, too. Or, rather, how it was constructed.
The solution to both of these problems was simple, for the sort of lunatic I was: once I was well enough to safely use power tools, I made a pair of these so-called "electric guitars" in my workshop, and an amplifier that we used only once to confirm that they did, in fact, work; as it stood, these guitars being quiet when used without an amplifier was a blessing, as I was not very good at guitar yet.
"Alright, that's twenty chord changes," Cat said, as the timer dinged. She wrote down the number, and nodded. "Good work, seriously- that's better than my first time doing this."
"Ow, my fingers," I said, shaking my left hand.
There were things I could say about how, as an elf, dexterity-based skills came to me easier than they would for a human, and that I had an unfair advantage over Cat. However, I wasn't doing unbelievably better than she was, so there was no point in saying that. Unless... Oh, I know.
"Y'know," I said, as my fingertips continued to sting, "as an elf, I've got a bit of an advantage over humans when it comes to learning dexterity-based skills. But, well... I gotta say: the fact that these strings hurt so fucking much is proving to be one hell of an equalizer, huh?"
"Yeah, you gotta build up the calluses," Cat said, nodding. "Takes a while, but once they're there... Just gotta play for a few minutes a day to keep 'em there. Simple as."
I nodded back, the pain slowly fading. "Ugh. This sucks."
"Mhm. But hey, once you can play a guitar, that's a good way to get laid."
"I want you to look at my girlfriend and tell me I need help with that."
Cat burst out laughing.
---
In the evenings, I started including Cat in the hypnosis sessions I was doing with Emily; Cat wanted to learn Arcane magic too, apparently, so that she wasn't completely reliant on whatever her "system" gave her. After a few days, in which Cat absorbed things even more readily than Emily had, I moved on from just hypnosis to a very basic spellcasting exercise, that would make their fingertips glow. Neither of them had much in the way of magicka reserves just yet, but already, I could tell that Emily had a natural advantage over Cat.
In the daytime, Faith and Talia had been teaching Cat what they knew of martial arts, including a few basic sword forms; Cat didn't yet have a real sword, and I didn't have a spare one to give her, but I'm sure getting one for her at Mount Fate of all places should be pretty straightforward.
Slowly but surely, she was being given the absolute bare minimum basics she'd need to not immediately die in the first fight she gets into.
"Hey," Cat said, late one evening, after her magic lesson had concluded. "Listen, I, uh... Fuck, I know this is weird, but..." She inhaled deeply, and then sighed. "...Can I have sex with you? Or your girlfriends? Just... someone? It's how my Class works, and I feel like I'm gonna learn a lot faster if I start doing this."
"Aren't you a lesbian?" I said, quirking my eyebrow.
Cat cupped her chin and tilted her head to the side, considering me carefully.
"...Eh. Bastante bonita por un chico," she said.
"Bastante brusca por una chica," I retorted. "Look, you wanna fuck anyone else, fine, I don't care. Talk to them about it, it's their decision. But I'm not entertaining your delusion that I'm secretly a transgender woman."
"Wait, you know what those are?" Cat asked.
"Well, yes," I said, blinking. "Elves have understood the concept for rather a long time, y'know. Humans like to pretend they don't, of course, but it's getting harder for them to pretend, these days."
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"...Huh," Cat said. "Usually the hard part of cracking an egg is getting them to realize they can just choose to be a woman if they want to."
"I am well aware of the option," I said. "I have chosen otherwise. I am a heterosexual man on purpose."
"Well, I was planning on breaking this news in the process of explaining the concept to you, but, uh..." Cat coughed awkwardly. "Well, I've got a dick. Didn't have one before I came here, I'm cis, but whatever that artifact did to me, it gave me a cock, too, and... Honestly? It's dope as hell. It doesn't make me feel like less of a woman, it's more... Honestly, I feel like more of a woman now, just in a very specific way- y'know, I'm pretty butch, not super femme-y and girly, I like to be on top, and this just... It's nice, y'know?"
"...Good for you?" I said. "I mean, to be honest, there are a lot of reasons I'm not having sex with you, one of which is that I'm an Elven Mage-Knight, and if I ever want to ride a Unicorn, I'm not allowed to have penis-in-vagina sex. But, uh... God, this sounds stupid, but, I want you to know that the part where you have a dick is not what I'm taking exception to, and if I thought you were bisexual like Talia is, then I'd be far more okay with us fooling around."
"I mean, thanks, but... not what I meant?" Cat said.
"Hm?"
"I'm saying that you could be a domineering butch woman with a dick too, if you wanted to," Cat said. "I get the feeling you like being in charge, and that you're kinda surrounded by subby chicks- which, incidentally, fucking jackpot- so I just wanna make sure you know: you can totally be a woman and still act exactly the same way you do now. Ain't gotta do makeup and wear dresses, just keep walkin' around in cowboy boots, jeans, and a black leather duster, and you will have femmes- and some other butches- fallin' all over 'emselves to hang on your arm."
I digested this carefully, and... Some part of it was appealing, I had to admit- the sort of person she was describing was a perfect match for my favorite sort of protagonist in all that lesbian pulp fiction I kept reading, and I couldn't help but identify with them to some extent.
(Briefly, I wondered about my monthly subscriptions, back at Antiope's shop. I couldn't teleport myself at all, let alone a thousand miles back to Redwater and then again to get back here, but... Hell, we had trains, and Antiope could very much mail me my subscriptions every month. It'd take a few days to get here, sure, but that just meant New Comic Day was a different day of the month. I'd have to write to her and ask about it.)
But, as I returned to the matter at hand, once I stopped being distracted by the logistics of my funny papers, I had settled on an answer that Cat probably wouldn't like, but which she would hopefully understand.
"Look," I said quietly. "I'm... I'm an elf, Cat. Elves aren't exactly well-liked or respected in Imperial society- we're considered inherently effeminate and unmanly. Our men aren't real men, and our women are exotic beauties who should be trophies for the real men, the manly human men. I... I've never been the target of it myself, but Talia has, and it is a miserable experience, for every other human man you meet to look at you like a piece of meat, to treat you like an object that he somehow has to win away from whoever the current unworthy owner is. It sucks, Cat. And as someone who already has to deal with racist human bullshit for everything else elven about me..." I sighed, closing my eyes. "...I can't deal with it, Cat. I'm not strong enough. I'm not Talia, I can't grit my teeth and shrug it off like she can, I just- I can't, Cat, even if I wanted to."
Cat stared at me, a sorrowful sympathy in her eyes.
She pulled me into a tight hug, and I returned it vigorously. As nice as hugs were, as much as they usually made me feel better... the hollow ache in my chest, that always flared up when I thought for too long about the miserably unfair condition of being an elf under Hikaano rule, still wouldn't go away.
"I'm sorry," Cat whispered. "It's not right. It's awful. But... You're going to outlive all those shit-ass motherfuckers, you hear me? You're going to help build a better world over their dead bodies, day by day. Because the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends inevitably towards justice."
I nodded wordlessly.
"...I'd have to change my name," I said. "Who ever heard of a woman named Joseph? But... names are hard. And all the feminine names I can think of are just the names of people I know, who might feel weird about me stealing their name."
"Hey, I've changed my name already," Cat said, patting my back. "I can do it again, if you think Catherine sounds like a good name."
"You don't have to-"
"Honestly, I'm not feelin' 'Cat,' myself," Cat continued, bulling past me. "I'm not sure what to use next- I mean, I used to be Emily, but... Iunno, just feels too girly and demure for me. No shade to the other Emily, she's great, love that bitch, but it ain't right for me."
I chuckled quietly. "Well, good luck with that."
"What, not gonna help me?"
"Names are hard, and I'm bad at 'em. Ask someone else."
"I will," Cat said, nodding. "Tomorrow, though. It's late, and we need to sleep."
"Right. Goodnight, Kitten." I patted her on the back once more, and let go of her, stepping back to end the hug.
"...Oh fuck you, that should not work on me as well as it did," Cat muttered, before huffing, theatrically sticking her hands in her pockets, and heading off to her (Talia's) room.
I smirked a little, but... it faded, as I thought some more about what she'd said.
Why was I considering it so much? I've already thought about this before- I know I could be a woman if I wanted to, but I didn't want to.
I sighed deeply, and headed to my own room. Hopefully the feeling would pass before morning.