Ryn of Avonside

Everyone very quickly scrambled for the various well-worn sofas and chairs in the club house, while I flopped to the ground and sat cross-legged. It felt better for everyone to be looking down at me right now — maybe they'd see me as just me, again, but with a little more respect for my capabilities. Did that sort of undermine my previous complaints about not being taken seriously? Time would tell, I guess.

“So… I've been working on this thing, and to be honest, it's real boring,” I said with a world weary sigh.

Pulling up the alien code stuff on my phone, I dropped the latest pdf of my work into the group chat. “I've been working with the xenology department to try and crack the alien computers — specifically, we want to be able to interface with them.”

“Can't you just, like, set them up and use them normally?” asked Amara, who was still looking at me warily.

To my surprise, Lily jumped in before I could. “Nah, because they'd still be locked, right? Can't get in without the password, and you can't hack your way in even with physical access, because you have no idea how their tech works.”

Yes! Someone got it! I felt a proper smile tug at my lips and with a sudden tumbling whirl of limbs and telekinesis, I dropped into the sofa beside Lily. Opening the pdf, I began to scroll through it until I got to an example of a translation that I thought was probably correct. “See, this here is what I'm doing. As an NG mage, I'm able to pick up on language scary fast. So, the xenology guys asked if I could just look at the strings of raw bits they were able to pull, see if my language skills would notice patterns.”

“Right, except these aren’t bits, they’re trits,” she said absently, scrolling through the document on her own phone. “They're doing some crazy stuff at a hardware level. Like, how did they even manufacture this? I know just enough about this subject to know that— well, there's a reason we do binary in computing, and it's—”

She suddenly went quiet and flushed. It took me a second to figure out why — she suddenly got all self conscious.

Bursting with an immediate wave of empathy, I said, “Hey, keep going. Knowing stuff and talking about it isn't a bad thing.”

“But I was babbling — infodumping,” she mumbled, looking very intently at the chipped nail polish on her fingernails.

“No. You were giving me context for why all my mind-numbing language work is so tough, actually,” I corrected her, with what I hoped was an encouraging tone. It was always hard to tell how people would interpret what I said. Maybe she'd get frustrated that I was contradicting her.

“Thanks,” she said softly, then, with a visible collecting of will, she looked up and asked, “So, what did you want to show us about the alien code?”

Oh, oops. We got a bit sidetracked there. “Right. The xenology people have found hints that there might be other research labs or bunkers all across the Ring. The one we went to was dedicated to studying magic. Maybe, if we can crack the computers, there'll be something that will help us come up with a solution for the wrong-body problem. These people were extremely advanced, they had to have had tech to do something similar… right?”

Aiden, from his position on a large, worn armchair, made a sceptical noise. “That sounds cool, but how do we help with that? I'm sure Lily would be useful, but you already have the xenology professionals working on it. The rest of us…”

I shrugged. “More eyes couldn't hurt, and even when we get through, we still need to actually gain access to, then sift through the data. If I send you updates and stuff, will you all put your heads together on it? Even just asking Lily to explain things can jog memories or spark ideas.”

Already, I was feeling bad for asking. I was probably just wasting their time. At least it would give them something to do besides asking me about it. Still, there was a chance that maybe they'd see something the xenology people didn't.

Oh, wait, I still needed to address the whole mage-fruit offer I just made. Ugh, if only I could queue up tasks in my brain and it would actually remember them in order.

“Anyway, uh, back magic…” I said, and for effect, I twirled some growth magic between thumb and forefinger. “One of you should become a mage. I'm not around here enough to be the club's resident mage, and I want you all to be safe when powers like these, you know… proliferate.”

A round of tense, thoughtful looks bounced from one person to another, until Amara crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at me. “So… only one, huh?”

Again, I shrugged, but this time I attempted to hold my ground and not react. Amara was always so combative and… I don't know, ready to be annoyed. Defensive? That was probably a good description. It reminded me of a lot of marginalised people, unfortunately. You get hit enough times and you start to expect punches where there are none.

“You can hand fruit out after that, I can't stop you,” I said gently, and perhaps a little timidly.

She huffed and threw her eyes, and her hands, up towards the ceiling. “So what was the point of all of this — all the scare tactics?”

“To help you understand a little of the strings attached to this particular solution to the wrong-body problem,” I shot back immediately. I could feel that uncomfortable, boiling frustration rising again. Taking a deep breath, I settled my emotions and smiled at my chosen candidate. “Aiden. I think it should be you. You stepped forward when I was being scary. I think that's a good quality to have as… you know… a person with power.”

Poor Aiden’s eyes went wide, and he stepped back with an erratic shake of his head. “Nuh uh, no. It should go to someone else, Cat. I'm pretty happy with my transition.”

With a melancholy smile, I placed myself into the role of the movie mentor once again. “It needs to go to the person who would most respect the power it brings. I think that's you.”

With my eyes, I begged the others to step in and back me up. It was so obvious that he was the best person for the job.

Lily, who hadn't actually stopped scrolling through the alien code, looked up at me. “If we say no to an eventual fruit, will you keep trying to find something else — a different way?”

I nodded. “Of course, I won't let this problem beat me, even if it's just the principle of the—”

Right at that moment, I saw it. A small, furry face sniffing around near the door — beady black eyes questing for mischief.

“You!” I gasped, and with my mind, I wrapped the little cretin up and pulled it over to me.

Dangling in front of my face, completely unrepentant, was one of my ferret grove tenders. In fact, his nose was still sniffing at the air, weighing the options.

“Wait, is that one of your critters?” Cris asked. “He hitched a ride?”

“He was on my shoulder when we transported so… I guess?” I grumbled, giving the ferret another stern look. Just like with all the other disapproving stares I'd inflicted on them, this one didn't faze it at all.

“Can I hold him?” Asked Zack, who was gazing at my tender like he was a little angel instead of the eldritch trickster creature that he was.

Still, I offered the noodle to the reserved trans guy, who took hold of him gently and lifted him to face height. “Hey, friend. What's your name?”

“I haven't given them names,” I explained tentatively. “So, I guess, you can name him?”

Zack shot me a huge smile. “Gregory. His name is Gregory. No, Sir Gregory, Knight of Anarchy.”

“Oh, he has an appropriate title now too,” I deadpanned. “That will definitely help his already chaotic disposition.”

“Don't listen to her,” Zack murmured to the curious little black eyes of the ferret. “You're perfect, and I'll help you be your best self.”

Well, I guess the subject of magical gifts had been thoroughly derailed. I'd get around to discussing things with Aiden in more detail later. I didn't know about anyone else, but I could definitely use a break from intense conversation right then.

That night, when I returned to Stormpine, I discovered that Bray had been hard at work installing the elevators in the tree, finally. Even with magic to help, climbing those stairs was such a pain in the butt. A bunch of us celebrated the occasion by riding it up and down several times, which was made fun mostly because of everyone's goofy antics. At one point, Troy was thoroughly baffled when eight or so people came pouring out of the elevator and into the foyer, right as he was stepping through the gates. Then, we all turned around and squeezed back in, laughing. It was nutty. You'd think we were seeing an elevator for the first time.

The next day, I took a break from working on code to pursue various other projects of importance. One that was actually fast becoming an issue was insulin. The university had thankfully arrived on the Ring with a large store of the life saving liquid — the result of a recent diabetes initiative by the student council — but the expiration date on the stored material was fast approaching.

Thankfully, when I got to the meeting with the science folks, I found out that most of the work was done already! A few researchers at the university had been part of a wider global effort to create alternative production methods for the stuff. In our case, they had genetically engineered a safflower plant to produce insulin in its seeds. All I needed to do was stabilise the plant further and create a bunch more of them — enough to kick start production.

Besides insulin, I was working my way down a list of medical conditions we had in Avonside that needed alternative medicine choices. Some only had one or two people with the issue, so I'd usually research what I could, then arrive with a plant that they would have to test and care for. That last part proved to be hilariously difficult for some people, so I was asked to provide spares for the horticulture department to take care of. God damn, human memory was alarmingly messy sometimes.

I was walking back from a meeting about one of those little medication jobs, heading for the Avonside mages ingress-egress room — crossing the Branner Quad, when I spotted someone who I'd been looking out for. Rhea was walking with some of her newer friends. Mercifully, she was oblivious to my creepy staring and I had time to duck my head and pull up my hood.

Relief flooded me half a second later, when I realised that if she was here, then it wasn't her who was in the fruit in my grove. Dr Richards, if my hunch was correct, would be someone else's problem.

Keeping my Post-Ring cloak wrapped around me and my hood up, I scurried away, headed for home. I had work to do and, thank fuck, a little less anxiety weighing on me.