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“Right, walk me through it from the start.”
The Codmother sits on a crushed-velvet couch in the southern tower of Rivendell Castle and starts another row of knitting. She’s not upset that her quiet afternoon in has been interrupted - from what Scott told her, it sounded like an emergency - but she didn’t exactly want to leave her project unfinished, either. If she wants to survive next time she visits, when the darkness of winter truly sets into an already frozen empire, she’ll need as much insulation as she can get. At least the free wool supply is plentiful when you’re close allies with the king of the country which exports it.
Said king is currently standing in the centre of the room, having pushed the table aside for pacing purposes.
“Okay,” Scott begins, “you know Shrub.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I was - I spoke to them, after last week’s meeting. Normal stuff, you know? I like Shrub, I’m friends with Shrub.”
“You are,” the Codmother nods, “what’d he say?”
“It was - it was nothing, really. It was such a normal - it was just - I -”
“Hey, hey, come on, breathe,” she says, “you’re panicking.”
“Yes, I’m panicking, Jaylah, I’m -” Scott takes a deep breath and starts again. “I was speaking to Shrub, about a week ago. And I was telling her about Xornoth, because - you know, they’re my brother, things happen sometimes, they showed me a book they’d found in the archives that I thought Shrub might like, so I passed it on to her. And Katherine was there, obviously, because it’s her castle, she’s not gonna leave us alone in there. And apparently she didn’t understand why Xornoth’s my brother if they’re not a man, so I had to explain that, and that went into a whole conversation about gender customs in elven culture and fae culture and gnomish culture, and…”
“Mhm?”
“Well, eventually Katherine asked me why I was a man?”
Jaylah pauses, needles mid-purl. Very suddenly, she knows exactly what this is about.
“And I - I mean, I don’t even know what I told her, really, something about stags and kings and - but I’ve been thinking about it, this whole time. It turns out there’s nothing quite like the restrictions of raising yourself to be in line with what everyone expects of the King to make you repress questions about your own identity for your entire life. And that once you stop and think about it for a few seconds you can find out a lot about yourself you weren’t expecting to find out. And I’m not sure what to… do with it.”
“Have you talked to Xornoth about it?”
“Yes! I did that yesterday!”
“Well, what did they say?”
“They… you can do whatever you want forever, basically?” Scott and Xornoth’s sibling bond went through a brief rocky patch a few months ago, after Scott had had a bad dream about a curse turning them into a demon and having to commit suicide to stop them. It seems to have smoothed out by now, though; they talk, if not quite as much as they did when Jaylah first met the princes before the death of their parents. Xornoth’s teenage jealousy of Scott’s right to the throne as older brother, at least, has long since mellowed out, and they definitely stopped being quite so crabby when they transed their gender roughly three days after Scott’s coronation. “It wasn’t… it was helpful, but it wasn’t how I would approach it?”
“Alright,” says Jaylah, and she pats the sofa next to her. “Come on, then. You’re not the choppy haircut and black eyeliner type, I know that. What do you want to do with it?”
“I don’t know,” says Scott, sitting. “I want to do it properly, whatever that is. I know there’s nothing in the rulebook about how to transition right, there’s no code of etiquette, I just… I would like to do it… I don’t know, honourably?”
“Scott, mate. I don’t think your mum and dad would find any honour in that. You know how Xornoth talks about it.”
“Not them. Aeor.”
“Oh.” She’s not allowed to come to church with Scott; she doesn’t know the rites and she certainly never witnessed any direct communion with Aeor, which Scott apparently used to do, but has been cut off from in recent years. “Okay. Well… tell me. What do you think Aeor would want you to do?”
“I’m not… Okay, I’m sure of a couple of things. I would need to be recoronated as Queen and Empress, I would have to renounce and then reclaim the antlers… I’m really not sure about a name, though. It needs to be something respectful. Maybe a family name.”
“Would you take your mum’s name?” Scott and Xornoth had both been named for their grandfathers, which is why Scott’s name was so out of place among the like of Rivendell’s citizens; their mother was the daughter of a former Mythland noble who had married into the ruling class of Rivendell, and brought with her just enough of a colourful history that it crept into the names of the next generation.
“No, I don’t - I think - it has to be more connected than that. It has to come from our dad’s side.”
“Alright - do you want to pick now, or do you wanna sit on it?”
“It doesn’t have to be now. I just want - I want to make it right.”
“Okay, well, you’re not exactly getting it wrong, are you? You’re taking it at your own pace, that’s good.”
“I guess.” Scott - well, she shouldn’t really be using that name any more, should she, not if it’s an old one now - the elf slumps back into the couch and huffs a sigh. “Maybe I should try praying again. Maybe I’ll hear back this time.”
Jaylah hesitates. “I don’t think you will, mate. Don’t put yourself through that again.”
“I just… How do I know that what I’m doing is what I’m meant to do? How do I know that I’m actually doing what’s best for me, and not just making a fool of myself?”
She takes her friend’s hands. “You don’t. That’s how pretty much everybody else does it. We don’t hear back from the gods, and we have to figure out what we’re doing anyway. And - and really, I don’t think it matters what some old stag thinks, not if you’re gonna be happier like this.”
Tears form in the elf’s eyes.
“Whoa, hey, what, did I say something wrong -? Oh, I did, didn’t I, I shouldn’t have - I’m sorry, your god’s not some old -”
“No, Jaylah, no, it’s - you’re right. I’m not… There are no answers here, there’s no divine response. I just have to… figure it out.”
“And you will. You’ll be great at it. I promise you, I have never seen anyone be so good at everything as you are, I bet you’ll smash womanhood too.”
“That’s such a stupid thing to say,” the future Queen of Rivendell giggles through tears.
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it!”
“I think,” she says, instead of acquiescing, “I know who I should honour.”
“Yeah?”
“I have this ancestor, Alinar. He was… he was kind of like me in a lot of ways. He saved the people of Rivendell from a great evil, long ago, and he’s the reason that I - that I’m here today.” She pauses to wipe a tear, and even that’s graceful. “So maybe I could become Alina, in respect for his great sacrifice, and in memory of… my family line.”
“Alina,” muses the Codmother, “that’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“It suits you,” she decides, “it’s very regal.”
“And I think Queen Alina sounds a little nicer than King Scott, don’t you? Rolls off the tongue a little better.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“Okay, thank you,” Alina hums, and pulls on those held-hands to bring Jaylah yelping into an embrace, her knitting needles clacking to the floor. “Sorry I got so worked up about it.”
“It’s fine! It’s - it’s gender, innit? That’s, like, one of the hardest things. One panic attack and a few days of questioning’s not exactly out of place.”
“Mmm, I guess. Still.”
They sit in silence and in warmth for a few more seconds, before Jaylah speaks up. “You know how we went on that one date when we were teenagers?”
“Oh?”
“Where you wanted to help strengthen the alliance between our kingdoms, and we went on that picnic, and we kissed, and then we worked out that you were gay and I was gay and it just wasn’t gonna go anywhere so we might as well stay friends?”
“... Yes.”
“Well,” she leans into Alina’s side, “if you’re a girl now…”
“I’ll think about it,” Alina smiles, and, really, that’s all she could have asked for.