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Vivier stared at the paper in her hand.
It was a perfectly normal looking flier, a low quality print job with bright colors and questionable font choices.
She was really doing this.
She couldn’t believe she was really doing this.
It wasn’t that it was only questionably legal. Ever since she stopped making an effort to pass, it was starting to feel like her very existence was illegal, and knowing that police could find a reason to arrest her for waiting for the bus was making it very hard to care about the possibility of getting caught doing something that actually merited such an action.
It wasn’t that she was afraid. In an abstract sense she realized she perhaps should be afraid - there were many things that could go wrong - but Ison was her best friend and she trusted them. She was also, admittedly, slightly burned out about worrying about her own well-being, which she also knew was probably a bad thing, but frankly she was so tired of being afraid and too angry to keep doing nothing.
There was nothing remotely ominous about the flyer. In large, badly justified letters it cheerfully advertised a planning session for a community outreach program.
She ignored the quiet thoughts that told her that the seeming innocence of the flyer was itself ominous. It wasn’t going to be some sort of strange trap; Ison had told her too much, and frankly if things were going to go wrong they probably would have done so years ago.
From what Ison had said it should be rather innocent. Not that she had expected to be told much, with how reserved Ison always was about their religion. At the time they gave her the flyer she had been ranting for the sake of ranting. There had been some bigoted graffiti that had somehow avoided being painted grey for over a month, and it was really starting to get to her. The rant transformed into her talking about how she really wanted to become more involved in the community. Find some activism work that suited her energy levels. She hadn’t really expected any utilitarian response. She really hadn’t been expecting to be handed a flyer for a cult meeting.
“We’re starting up a breakfast program,” Ison had said. “We’re currently still planning the whole thing, and would love input from the greater community. I think it’ll be a great way to get to know our neighbors better. And the whole thing is totally secular. I’m not trying to sneakily initiate you into the Circle; I know how you feel about it.”
It was interesting that they chose to end the conversation on that note, as Vivier herself wasn’t quite sure how she felt about the Circle.
She was aware of it, of course. Her best friend had been a part of it for years now, even if they didn’t talk about it much. And really, everyone knew about the local chapter of the Circle of the Dreamers’ Star. They weren’t exactly secretive about who they were, at least not on a day to day level. Officially, of course, no one had any idea what could possibly be going on in the former school, as not reporting a demonic cult was technically illegal. There was a general communal consensus that if anyone came asking, everyone had been absolutely terrified that the Circle would feed them to the demon the whole time, hence couldn’t possibly tell anyone about it.
Even if people actually trusted anyone of authority to get involved, it was hard to have anything against the Circle, really. They were surprisingly harmless, all things considered. They did a lot to support the community in small ways, especially with a focus on helping kids. Admittedly, this sounded incredibly suspicious at first, but many of the Circle members had children and they kept true to their official policy of not pushing their beliefs on anyone. They were very adamant about that actually, to the point that joining the Circle was an endeavor that could take months.
To even know the name of the entity they worshiped (although with some of the comments Ison had made, Everline wasn’t sure ‘worship’ was quite the right word) was illegal. Not that it was hard to understand why, considering what had just happened to California, but it did mean the Circle was very adamant on not allowing the initiation of anyone who didn’t fully understand the potential consequences of being one of its members.
They had an open door to anyone who needed it, and considering what they worshiped they were certainly in no position to judge those who came to them. Vivier had actually spent a few weeks under their roof when she first left her parents, back when she had decided she didn’t have the energy to constantly make herself look the right kind of feminine, to look like the right kind of human, to look human at all, to put all her energy into emulating people that would turn on her in an instant if they ever learned the truth. She was perfectly content to just look like a doppelganger. Her parents didn’t understand that. They didn’t understand a lot of what she did. The didn’t understand how she could ‘be too sad’ to hold a job down when she could still do freelance art. They didn’t understand why she spoke so lowly of their ‘friends’ who didn’t know they weren’t human, whom her parents were afraid would find out. They didn’t understand why she was considering HRT if she could just make herself look like ‘whatever she wanted’. They didn’t understand her gender at all, really, and they held her pronouns and name over her like they were a privilege to be won.
They didn’t kick her out. They didn’t even understand why she left.
When Ison got her to the Circle, they welcomed her without any questions. After spending so long under the scrutiny and constant questioning of her parents ‘trying to understand’, such unconditional acceptance was almost more welcomed than the promised shelter. She didn’t have any idea who the people of the Circle were at that point - she had come in from the suburbs and Ison wasn’t yet willing to explain too much about the nature of the organization they were trying to join.
She might have freaked out a little when she did find out. It was probably why Ison thought she had some sort of problem with the Circle.
She hadn’t been back to it since, but that wasn’t out of any malice or sense of betrayal. She of all people understood that there are things you don’t tell a person until you have an idea about how they will react.
The temple was only a block away now. It was an old building, made of ivy-covered crumbling red bricks and slanting tile floors. It had two stories normally open to the public and a basement that wasn’t. According to Ison the basement was mostly utility rooms and other building maintenance things, and the Circle normally performed rituals in the better lit second floor conference room. She managed to keep to herself how silly she found the mental image of a bunch of cultists summoning a demon while sitting in large plush chairs. They probably rearranged the room when they did this. Or maybe they didn’t - Ison’s ‘cultist’ outfit was just an old-fashioned suit. Maybe they worshipped the patron demon of benevolent capitalism - totally fitting for Ison’s extremely leftist political stance.
The exterior of the building had changed little from when it was a school. The old playground - currently containing a handful of excited children - was contained in a large garden in full bloom. Most of the plants were either edible or had some other use. A dense thicket of raspberry bushes lined the fence, with less prickly plants closer to the walking path. A chicken coop had been added to the far end of the property. It was now disused, a change for the last time she was here and it was full of weirdly friendly hens. She guessed some of the neighbors had complained, and she couldn’t really blame them. She didn’t even know how many times they woke her up during her stay.
The pollen filled late spring air pressed down on her lungs and throat as she walked past the garden. Any desire to linger outside quickly passed with her ability to breath easily.
Her grip on the flyer tightened.
She was doing this.
She walked inside.
The interior was largely the same as it had been before. A sign requesting that she disable or turn off all recording devices for everyone’s comfort and safety immediately grabbed her attention, along with the signs flanking it reminding her to avoid having fragrance, holy symbols, or other common allergens on her. There was new information on the two large bulletin boards that lined the entry hallway, but they were still the same old pinboards, lightly disintegrating for years of use as she remembered.
A sandwich board was sitting in the hallway, helpfully directing everyone here for the breakfast program to the open doors of prayer room - the largest room in the building. Inside it, five rows of benches were arranged in a circle around the center of the room, where there was a slightly elevated speaking platform. This particular sect of the circle was non-hierarchical, and arrangement was supposed to foster a feeling of equality among those present, as well as encourage group discussion.
Hanging from the ceiling were numerous banners decorated with a one-eyed star. They had always made Vivier slightly uncomfortable, like they were watching her. Not that it was at all unlikely that something was.
The room was nowhere near full, which wasn’t surprising considering its size. A large wedding might be able to fill it, but even a well-attended community meeting didn’t have much of a chance. Still, there were a fair number of people milling about, only a few wearing the star laden suits (or, in one case, the oversized fuzzy sweater) that the Circle members were garbed in.
Vivier sat towards the back of the populated area. She wished she could be with Ison, but they were busying themself with official duties. They also needed to situate themself towards the front in things like this so they could actually hear anything that was being said, and there was absolutely nothing on this Earth that could drive Vivier to sit in the front right now, years of friendship be damned. Not after how many spoons it had taken to come at all.
Someone cleared their throat on the speaking platform. A spell on it magnified their voice across the room as they introduced themself as the moderator of the discussion and went over the itinerary.
The meeting went surprisingly quickly. Vivier had nothing to contribute to the discussion - there were plenty of people there who had experience planning programs like this and knew exactly what they were talking about and she was not one of them - but by the end of it she did find herself with a biweekly volunteer position doing inventory management and, possibly more significantly, a few people’s contact information.
It was good to talk to other people who felt the same way she did. People who had actual ideas about how to fight back against everything that the world was throwing at them. She felt like she might be able to find an outlet for her anger. She felt more energized than she had in recent memory. She felt very strange, and for the first time since high school found herself thinking about the future with a feeling that could possibly be described as ‘hopeful’.