Chick Before the Egg / Dumbass Egg Ch 8 / 9

Chapter 8 -

Crows were great. People really didn’t give them enough credit or attention. On my way out of the store there were a whole bunch of them just hanging out, cawing and doing crow shit while I sped past them, clothes in hand. And honestly? The fact that more people didn't talk about how cool crows were was a crime. A crime, I tell you. They were all cool and black and foreboding, but also really smart. They could be taught to understand the concept of trading, had really great memories for faces, and even sometimes used rudimentary tools. Plus, they had all kinds of cool symbolic significance all over the world. Why wouldn’t I think about crows, especially when they were right there for me to look at and think about instead of all that other stuff?

I mean seriously, conflicted feelings about gender and bizarre misunderstandings? That was honestly not a big deal at all, it didn’t deserve nearly as much attention as crows did. Like yeah, sure, I felt better in this body than I did in my old one. And yeah, sure, I was pretty disappointed when I took my pill today and didn’t immediately start changing. But just because I wanted to look more like a girl and be seen as one, and didn’t mind any of the changes that were getting rid of the masculine features I was supposed to be proud of, and really liked how I looked in that dress, and really liked being called pretty didn’t mean I was actually a girl. If I were trans I’d have known at this point, so, obviously this was clearly just an extension of my fetish. And why would I ever choose to think about something as unimportant as a fetish when instead I could be thinking about crows?

I was pulled away from my crow related, definitely very important, and definitely not deliberately inconsequential so as to deflect from the actual issue, thoughts by the feeling of my phone suddenly buzzing in my pocket. By the way, this dress had pockets, which apparently was a big deal. Unfortunately, I was very engrossed in my important musings on corvids. And, upon feeling the buzz in my pocket, I yelped an utterly feminine yelp in surprise. After settling myself, I investigated the notification to find a new text from Olivia.

“Hey babe! Really excited for this evening, I can’t wait to see your pretty face!” I blushed a deep shade of red and shuddered happily at the sight of her calling me pretty. And, god dammit, no matter how much I thought about crows, I simply could not get over the fact that the girl I liked called me pretty. I felt like a giddy, blushing schoolgirl -- schoolboy, and that was a problem. It simply wasn’t possible for me to repress these feelings anymore, I had to confront them head on. My next move seemed obvious, in order to understand my feelings, I needed to talk to an actual trans person. I needed to talk to Dylan. Dylan would listen, I could explain how I was feeling, and then they would tell me about why I wasn’t actually trans. Then I could just move on, and not think about any of this ever again.

I kicked my little legs into overdrive, my skirt swishing from side to side very enticingly and interestingly and distractingly as I began to type out a message to Dylan, asking if we could meet somewhere private and talk. They replied asking if I was comfortable meeting in their room, I agreed, and sped off. I needed to get this shit sorted, and fast, otherwise it would be on my mind all night. As I power walked through campus I was getting more and more looks. This was the first time I’d been out and about on campus in broad daylight since the changes started to set in. That, combined with the fact that I’d been laser focused on my mission before meant I really hadn’t noticed just how different people seemed to react to me when they thought I was actually a cute girl instead of a guy. Men leered at me, and women smiled at me in ways that made my heart explode in my chest.

By the time I arrived at Dylan’s frat house, I had reached the point where, If one more pretty girl I’d never so much as spoken to in my life before flashed her pearly whites at me, I might have just up and gone  into cardiac arrest then and there. Luckily I would be home free soon, and get the chance to recover in Dylan’s dorm room while they explained to me why I couldn’t actually be trans. Hopefully by the time all that was said and done I’d be chill enough to go out into the world, though, I might need to stare at the ground a bit more to avoid such dangers again.

Honestly, there should be PSAs about that sort of things: girls, don’t smile at each other too much otherwise you might accidentally kill some poor unsuspecting lesbian one day. Not that I was a lesbian, of course, it’s just that they were smiling at me cause they thought I was a girl, and if I were a girl, I’d definitely be one such lesbian.

Dylan was waiting for me at the front entrance to the house, and, after a brief greeting, led me inside, ushering me past all the frat-brothers living there quickly, with an almost guilty look in their eyes. I couldn’t blame them for feeling awkward about it, cause well, if my hunch was correct and Dylan actually was trans, of course living in a house with only men would be a bit awkward and embarrassing. I could only imagine how I would react to living in that situation -- just hypothetically, like if I really were a girl. But also even without that it would still probably make me uncomfortable, l was well aware that the whole ‘guys being dudes’ lifestyle really wasn’t one I fit into well. At least, for the most part, Dylan had done a good job assimilating into it all, poor thing.

I was brought upstairs to Dylan’s room and ushered inside, I parked myself on the little couch which had been set up along the back wall, and waited for a bit as Dylan locked the door behind us and then settled themself in. There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence as Dylan took a moment to fully process what they were looking at. I couldn’t help but feel bad for them, they were probably incredibly jealous and uncomfortable just seeing me as I was. Still, once we got my problems out of the way, I’d be sure not to rest until I helped Dylan get to a place they were more comfortable in. Both in terms of living space, and in terms of their actual form. There were several moments of awkward silence, but, thankfully, Dylan managed to break it.

“You, um. You kept changing.” Those words carried a lot of confusion in them, as though something didn’t quite add up.

“Yeah, I did. What do you think?” I flashed a friendly little smile as I turned my head side to side.

“You look really nice. I’m not really sure how or why that’s happening though.” Scratching their chin, Dylan stood and crossed the room to the little spellbook we’d used only yesterday, they settled onto their bed and began flipping through the pages, presumably to find the spell from yesterday. “Yeah, huh, that’s odd. I mean, this is still all theory crafting, but you’ve got to understand, I’m great at theory crafting. And everything I’m seeing suggests that using this spell to impose an entirely new form on someone shouldn’t work as well as it has.”

“Should I be worried?” Suddenly the broader issue of my internal struggles seemed pretty insignificant when faced with the possibility of some sort of magical backfire. What if it started to hurt me? Or what if the feminization effects never stopped and every day I just got girlier and girlier until I was a caricatured version of my ideal view of femininity -- wait, wasn’t that a story I read somewhere? Nevermind, that wasn’t important. And what if, oh fuck, what if it just stopped working all together and turned me back into a guy? Well, a normal guy. That was possibly the worst outcome of all. I shuddered.

“Jesse, hey, Jesse!” Dylan was waving their hand and snapping their fingers in front of my face as I was suddenly pulled away from my thought spiral. They gave me a comforting look, “Hey, stop panicking. As far as I can tell you’re safe. It’s just perplexing is all.”

“Oh, well, that’s good. Perplexing how?”

“Well, like I said, this is a reworked healing spell. It’s purpose is to return someone to their default form, and should struggle to do anything else. What should have happened was, you’d take your first pill, that would cause a sudden burst of transformative magic, but from then on any further changes would be held back by the fact that you weren’t being restored to your typical shape. Instead the spell is functioning as though there’s nothing holding it back at all, like it would if you really were being restored to your typical shape.” They snapped the book shut and, in a most unhelpful manner, gave a big, confused shrug.

“What exactly is meant by ‘typical shape?’” I asked.

“Oh, well, that’s more of a translation thing. There’s probably a better word for it, but translating concepts from magical runes to people means sometimes the descriptions sound kind of awkward.” As interesting a tidbit as that was, I wasn’t really interested in Dylan continuing this lecture on magic. Lucky me, they went ahead and changed the subject for me. “So, this is good though, right? It’s what you want.” They sounded fairly concerned, and I could understand why. They were probably worried I was feeling dysphoria in my feminized body the same way they probably were.

“Yeah, yeah it is good. I’m sure Olivia will love the additional changes, though err, I guess I won’t be able to pass them off as anything but magic anymore. And I’m not feeling any dysphoria with the changes happening so, things are good. Thanks, by the way, you’ve probably single handedly saved our relationship.” I broke out into a wide, grateful smile.

“I’m glad to hear things are good with you. And, it’s nice to hear that all of this helped with Olivia too, as an added bonus.” That was a perplexing reply, I cocked my head in confusion.

“Uh, bonus? Nevermind. I’m just glad things with her are going well.” I really was. Our time together the night before had been wonderful, these changes were clearly having a positive effect on our closeness.

“Did you ever figure out what the deal with her was? Like, was she actually cheating on you?” Dylan asked.

“I didn’t really want to bring it up, you know? It was just kind of an awkward thing to talk about. I know I’ll have to talk to her about it eventually, but I’d rather wait until everything gets settled before that happens, you know?” My excuse was, admittedly, pretty lame. In truth, I was just comfortable as things were and really didn’t want to mess up a good thing, plus I was still struggling to blame Olivia for wanting to be with a girl instead of a guy. But Dylan probably wouldn’t be interested in hearing that excuse.

“Alright well, just make sure you figure that out before you get too comfortable. It’s best to work these things out before you get too comfortable. I mean, worst case scenario you can just find some other lesbian to date now that you have that body.” There Dylan went again with the strange advice. It was one thing to feminize myself in the hopes that it would make me more appealing to a queer woman I was already dating. But seeking out a completely new queer woman to date felt like crossing a line.

Regardless, while Dylan’s responses were pretty strange, it wasn’t particularly hard to figure out why they were this comfortable with giving that sort of advice. And, honestly it was probably time to just bite the bullet and  bring up the elephant in the room.

Chapter 9

We were both quiet for a while as it became more and more obvious that we were both ignoring the more important issue. Part of me kind of didn’t want to bring it up at all. I mean, it was awkward asking someone who had a better handle on themselves to explain to me why I wasn’t like them. But, we would probably both come out better for it.

“Hey, so, I had a bit of a weird experience at the store today when I was buying girl clothes. I was wondering if I could talk to you about some kinda serious stuff.” As I spoke Dylan seemed to simultaneously become more tense and more relieved. It was an odd sight, but I could understand why they were both longing and dreading to have this talk.

“Go ahead.” Their voice was even, but unnaturally so, like they were forcing it.

“I just, I’ve been having some weird feelings about this body, and its relationship to my gender and well. Listen, I didn’t mean to snoop but I saw that book you had in your bag last night, the one about trans people. I figured, you probably know a lot about this sort of thing, so I’d come to you for advice.” By the time I was done talking, all of Dylan’s tension seemed to have dissolved, maybe just hearing that I was clearly open minded and accepting was enough.

“I’m really glad to hear you’re finally ready to talk about this Jesse.” It was hard to explain, but the more I spoke to Dylan the more I noticed their whole tone had shifted away from what I was used to. They spoke softer, gentler to me. Like they were talking to a girl instead of talking to their best bro. It didn’t really bother me that much, to be honest, but still, it was odd. “I mean, to be honest I’m no expert. I only just checked that book out yesterday. I’ve only barely had the chance to skim through it, but I did take some notes to help me understand.” Typical Dylan, even when exploring their gender they took such a clinical approach.

“Oh, well, that’s okay. I don’t really need you to tell me what the psychologists and doctors say. I just wanted to know what it’s like for you, how it feels?” I winced a little, hoping that wasn’t too much for Dylan, I didn’t want to trigger their dysphoria.

“How what feels?” They asked, which was odd, they’d seemed relieved at first, but now they were dancing around the issue so coyly.

“Y’know, your dysphoria.” I squeaked out.

“My what?” The sound which came from Dylan’s mouth could be described as somewhere between a shout and a gasp.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. If thinking too much about it is hard I understand. I mean, it’s already hard enough for me to imagine going back to being a normal guy, it must be even worse for you.  Having to feel dysphoria while seeing me like this in front of you. Being confronted by what could be if things were different.” I got all that out as quickly as I could looking at the floor in shame, wishing I could just unsay what I’d said.

When I finally looked back up to return Dylan’s gaze, I could see the gears turning in their head. “Wait, Jesse, do you think I’m a trans man?”

“What? No, of course not. If you’d already transitioned you wouldn't need a book on being trans. You’re a girl, right? It’s okay, you can tell me, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” A long silence followed, in which Dylan stared at me, slack jawed, at a loss for words. I could understand why they would feel that way, I’d clearly had them pegged on something they’d thought they were doing a really great job at hiding. I decided to give them time, let them think, let them process. Eventually, Dylan’s brain seemed to do a hard reboot, and they closed their mouth, only to open it again to respond.

“Jesse, I’m not trans. Being a girl sounds really unpleasant, and kinda scary. I like who I am, I like being big and tall and muscular.” What? Okay, obviously this was just a -- s e r i o u s -- case of denial. But I would help coax Dylan out of their shell.

“Look, it’s okay, you don’t have to pretend anymore to like that stuff. I mean come on, if you want to convince me you’re not trans at least come up with a more convincing story. Nobody likes being big and tall and masculine.” My speech seemed to be getting to them, because Dylan was staring at me mouth agape once again, seemingly at a loss for words.

“Uh, Jesse? Ah shit, uhh --”

“Don’t worry, I get it. I mean come on, body hair is so gross and rough. Who wouldn’t want smooth silky skin like girls have? Plus, you have to constantly take up so much space and also do that weird posturing around other guys while secretly feeling inferior to everyone around you. It’s a chore. It’s okay to admit you’d be more comfortable giving that up to be small and cute instead. You can even still lift weights, I plan on keeping that up.” I smiled, and flexed my much smaller, but still respectable for a girl, arm muscles. Dylan looked like they were about to short circuit.

“Listen I don’t think you understand wha --”

“I do, though. That’s why I know you’re not telling the truth when you say you’re a guy because you like being big and tall and masculine. No guys like being big and tall and masculine. I can confirm that for you, because I’m a guy, and I much prefer this girly body to my old one. I mean come on, if even actual, real guys like me prefer being feminine, you can’t honestly try to tell me your excuses make any sense. Come on, it’s okay to just admit it, you’re a girl. I promise I’ll accept you for who you are.” I flashed Dylan a big, supportive smile. In that moment, Dylan began looking around the room in confusion, seemingly searching for something on the walls or ceiling or in their bookshelf. “Hey, what’s wrong, did you lose something?”

“I, uh, no. I didn’t, I just thought maybe, well --. You’ll have to forgive me, but, is this a fucking prank? Like, am I being recorded right now?” Of all the reactions I’d suspect Dylan to have, this was not one of them.

“Um, no?” At my reply, Dylan took another few seconds to unfreeze their brain, shook their head about as though to clear it, then gave me a serious, focused look.

“Okay, listen. I’m serious about enjoying being a guy. If you want we can go around and ask every frat boy in this house if he would prefer being a guy or a girl and listen to their answers. I mean come on, everyone in this frat is a wizard. If we wanted to be girls we would just be girls. So I need you to understand and believe me when I say this: I do not want to be a girl. Not even a little bit. I like girls, but only in the sexual or romantic sense. I have no interest in being one, or being anything like one, okay?” I took a moment to think everything he’d said over. And like, realistically it made sense, surely some guys had to enjoy being guys, otherwise there would be way more trans girls. But, wait, what did that say about me? Before I had a chance to interrogate that thought further, Dylan continued.

“Now, about the book. I got that because, given the way you responded to your changes, and now, especially considering everything you just told me, I’m pretty sure it is, in fact, you who is the trans girl. And, let me be clear, everything you said about acceptance goes for me too.” At first I tried to laugh, then I tried to shake my head, then I tried to stop shaking in general. That couldn’t be true, Dylan had to be wrong.

“B-but if I were trans I would have figured it out by now, I wasn’t like putting on my mom’s dresses as a little kid or anything,” I stammered. Why was I sweating so much? Dylan pulled out his phone, and tapped a few times before glancing back at me.

“Okay, I took some notes, so, sorry if this feels kind of stilted but this is what I learned from the book,” he began to speak, in a fairly awkward, monotone voice that conveyed just how not used to doing this sort of thing he was. “Uhh, okay. Here’s what I wrote down, I’m paraphrasing but this is more or less what that book says. Gender dysphoria can vary in the way it manifests itself, how it feels, and what age it begins to become prominent. A person can realize they are trans at any age, from their early childhood and through into old age.” Dylan gave me a pointed, but encouraging look.

“That still doesn’t prove anything.” I muttered quietly, trying and failing miserably to think about crows again.

“Okay, well this one is more or less verbatim from the book, so forgive me if it’s a bit long and clinical sounding. ‘Generally speaking, a cisgender person’ -- which means not trans -- ‘will experience no strong desire to experience life as another gender. A cisgender man, for example, would think about what his life would be like if he were born a woman in the same way he might think about what his life would be like if he had been born twenty years in the future. Which is to say, as an interesting thought experiment, but no more, no less. Furthermore, even if a trans person experiences no dysphoria whatsoever, they may still feel a strong desire, or sense of euphoria, when imagining or experiencing themselves as the gender they truly are.” He looked up from his phone once more, and raised an expectant eyebrow.

“B-but, just cause I like being girly doesn’t mean I’m a girl. There are feminine guys,” I protested.

“Okay, well, if I could right here, right now accelerate all the changes you’re going through to make it so you were indistinguishable from someone born female, would you want that.” I barely let him finish before blurting out a reply.

“W-wait, can you do that for me?” I asked excitedly, wait, why did I really, really want that? Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuck.

“Sadly no, that kind of magic is beyond me. But I’m sure someone could,” he said comfortingly. “Would you want that?”

“I, um, I think I would,” I sniffled, was I crying? God dammit what was happening to me?

“Okay, and I’m sorry in advance, but. Let’s just say, hypothetically I turned you back to how you were be--”

“No! Please, please don’t,” I drew my arms inward, holding my own body for comfort, as though to remind myself that it was there, that it was good and right and better. Why was it better like this? Why weren’t those fucking crows sticking in my head?

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t, I promise I won’t. So one last question. And this one is admittedly kind of a more, I dunno, metaphysical? I’m not sure if that’s right I’m no philosopher, but you get the point.” He paused to find the right words, “Jesse, do you want to be a girl? And I’m not just talking about your body, I’m talking about you, Jess, the person, the consciousness. Do you want to be a girl instead of a guy? Even a feminine guy?” I could tell from the look on Dylan’s face that he was at his wits end.

“I um, yes?” I squeaked.

“Well, you’ve got a girl’s mind. Most people would say that’s enough, but on top of that your body is already pretty in line with what most people would consider to be a girl’s body. So, what’s stopping you?” He asked, looking at me expectantly. What followed was a long, protracted silence as over and over I tried and failed to poke a hole in his logic. Before finally, I breathed out a tiny, stunned breath that carried with it one word.

“Oh.”