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“So, that’s an egg thing, right? That feels like an egg thing.” Canari taps away at her keyboard, which is supposed to help her carpal tunnel but is taking a lot to get used to. “It’s like, I’m fine with my grandpa being a grandma, that’s great! Take estrogen and enjoy life! But oh my gods, I am going to fucking throttle something.”
“Because she’s projecting all her ideas of femininity onto you?” Sol suggests. Her full handle is AbsolWings, and she’s a mod for Canari’s streams. And also, more relevantly, transfeminine, which is why Canari’s in voice chat with her right now.
“I mean, a little? I dunno, it just pisses me off to see— oh, what the fuck, you little shit! That hitbox was— shit. Not yelling at you, I just— you saw that, right? Total bullshit!” Canari throws up her hands in frustration at the you died screen. “Goddamn fucking bullshit, augh.”
“At least you got further than last time,” Sol offers consolingly.
“Yeah. Yeah, sure.” The anger still boils in her stomach, though, and radiates its tension through her whole body. Canari’s already disabled as shit, but all this unresolved anger is taking up valuable RAM and making her slow and achey. She pushes back from her desk, doing her stupid ass stretches that are supposed to help her wrists.
“You were saying, the egginess pisses you off,” Sol prompts.
“Yeah, ‘cause it’s like— yeah, sure, you got bad cosmic rng with your character rolls. You wanna reclass. What’s stopping you? Sure, you’ve already put stat points in some places that can’t be undone, but there’s no save scumming. So why are you still— why not change? Why not get up and move, if you can?”
Sol sighs. “Fear of change. It keeps a lot of people trapped, after all.”
“Well, that’s fucking stupid,” Canari declares, digging around for her wrist brace. Tarragon had it commissioned from a manufacturer as merch, and it’s really cute, even if the merch line hadn’t panned out. She has a dozen of them just lying around. “Gods, I hate that. Just— stop stealing my clothes and get your own girl wardrobe. I’m not a naive little kid, I can take it!”
“Hey, Canari,” Sol says, fabric rustling as she adjusts her mic. “Weird question, but are you afraid she’s holding back for your sake?”
“Oh, FUCK,” Canari realizes. “Oh, she totally is, isn’t she? It’s because— well, gramps is kind of all I’ve got, besides my girlfriend. And that’s like, a recent development. But just because I’m stuck in my room most of the time doesn’t mean I want everyone to stay trapped! It pisses me the fuck off, Sol. That other people can leave their rooms and walk around and shit, without constant fear of collapsing or getting sick, and they waste it. Makes me wanna punch someone.”
“You wanna try that boss again?” Sol offers. “Might be nice to punch this, if anything.”
“Eh, in a minute. Can you remind me of the strategy for it?” Canari asks. She feels a little bad, but Sol has a really nice voice, calming and melodic all at once. She wants to listen for a bit longer, try to clear her head.
“Sure! So, parry timings are crucial— when you start seeing a red haze form around her, you want to back off, because you can’t parry her AOE attack.” Sol types up something, then makes a noise of satisfaction. “Okay, found the forum post. Looks like this is more of a long term fight, so after the attack with the knife wings, you should take the chance to heal. The AOE attacks are tricky because I can’t draw aggro for you, but you should be able to get some damage in during the slash attack.”
“Right. Okay, head in the game. I’m ready when you are,” Canari says, tightening her hairties and letting out a breath. She grabs her controller and cracks her neck, then moves her character from the respawn point back to the boss arena.
The two of them take on the boss one more time, Canari taking a more cautious strategy and Sol dealing out a solid DPS for a tank build. The final healthbar vanishes, the Latin choir stops, and Canari throws her hands in the air as the screen declares her victory.
“Fuck yeah! Finally, she’s down!” Canari lets out a whoop of delight, spinning around in her chair. “Damn, that was a good fight. Thanks for the backup, Sol.”
“Course. Any time— well, that our time zones and sleep schedules line up,” Sol agrees. “So, are you going to tell your grandma-to-be that being a woman is an option for her?”
“...I don’t know,” Canari admits, leaning back and adjusting her wrist brace. “I’m not good with these conversations. It’s like, I’m totally gonna blow up and ruin everything because I get too pissed off, I can already see it happening.”
“Look, you’ve gotta crack that egg,” Sol says. “She’ll be way happier once you do, but she’s not going to put two and two together without some help. I’m more than willing to help, but she needs to know that being a trans woman is an option for her specifically.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll think of something.” Rather than moving on to the next area, Canari just quits out to the menu and sets her controller back on its eelektross-shaped stand. “Think I’m gonna tap out for today. Gotta go take my meds and get some shit to eat.”
“Get that gamer fuel! I’m gonna go farm some healing items,” Sol agrees, and vanishes from co-op. A minute later, her icon disappears from the voice chat.
“Fuck,” Canari whispers. “FUCK! How the fuck am I supposed to do this? Shit, I don’t know…”
It’s only recently that she’s been online enough, in queer spaces enough, to figure it out. But there were always, always signs.
Canari is eight years old, and she has been staying with her grandfather long enough to figure out that her mom and dad don’t want her back. Not now, not ever.
She tries to make herself small, playing games on his old laptop all day, but he keeps asking her if she wants things. New clothes, and games, and decorations for her room. But she doesn’t want to be a person, she wants to play video games until she forgets she exists.
She’ll probably get sick from shopping, anyways. People leave her feverish and vomiting, crowds make her break out in spots. A people allergy, she calls it. Immunocompromised with no hope of a cure, the doctor said. But people don’t like her, they don’t think she’s worth keeping around, and so she doesn’t need them either. She doesn’t want to need them, not like this.
She goes exploring instead, poking around the storage in the basement of her new home. She finds some scary looking construction equipment, a box full of evolution stones, and what looks like a fossil of some sort on a bed of velvet. Her tynamo, a weak little creature that would have died without her careful attention, flutters along through the air behind her, giving short little chirps.
“What do you think about this?” she asks, opening a dusty old box. It looks like the dress-up kit from her art classes at school, with tiaras and ruffled dresses and wigs. She pulls a random piece of fabric out, wondering if it might fit her, and is pleasantly surprised to find it looks like it might. It’s a big, puffy skirt that goes down to her ankles, and has to be tied off at the waist with a hairtie to keep it from falling down, but it’s cute. She does a little twirl, liking the way it spins, wishing she could play dress up more often. It’s one of the few games that doesn’t tire her out too bad— real life games and not computer games, that is. She can play computer games for much longer without getting tired. But sometimes, she wants to play dress up in real life.
“I’m going to be the prettiest princess ever,” she declares, rummaging around for more accessories. She finds a white ribbon for her tynamo, and a pretty cloth headband for herself. She looks like one of those old-fashioned furfrou skirt girls, and runs over to a dusty mirror to admire herself.
That’s when she realizes she’s not alone. Her grandpa is back from his errands, and he’s at the top of the stairs, and if he’s mad at her, she’s going to be homeless and unwanted on the streets. That can’t happen, it absolutely can’t.
“Canari? I—” Tarragon seems scared, and she freezes up.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I’ll put it back—”
“No, you’re fine, sweetheart,” he says, approaching cautiously with one hand on the railing and the other full of shopping bags. He’s lying in the way adults always do, hiding things from her, and she’s scared. “I’m not angry, I promise. Why don’t you put those away and then help me pick out some clothes for you? I just got some things at the store for you to try on, so anything you don’t like, I’ll just return.”
“Okay,” she says, still full of fear and shame. “Um. Whose are these?”
“Those belonged to your grandmother,” Tarragon says, the smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Meet me in your room when you’re finished, all right?” And Canari isn’t stupid; she knows that her grandfather is lying. But she’s too busy the next day to investigate further, and so the mystery fades away.
“Yo, gramps! You home?” Canari calls, wandering into the living room. She spends most of the time in her little gamer cave, since the soundproofing is better there, but she knows his schedule.
Tarragon shuts the old photo album and turns to beam at her. “Hey there! How’s my little Canari-bird doing, huh?”
“Eh, getting by.” She settles herself onto the couch next to him, which is immensely comfortable. Well, the couch is comfy, physically, but everything else makes her want to rip off her skin and run away screaming. How the fuck is she supposed to do this? She slides her phone out of her pocket and types out a surreptitious cry for help in her DMs.
CanariOfficial: girl help what do i say
CanariOfficial: Sol?
CanariOfficial: ah shit sorry i forgot about timezones
Tarragon nudges her, smiling. “Come on, you look troubled. What’s on your mind?”
Fuck. Fuck this shit, fuck her stupid baka life. Canari grabs a pillow from the couch and pulls it into her lap, kneading the shit out of it with her hands. “Do you, like, ever think about what life would be like if you were born a different gender?”
“What’s this all about, sweetheart?”
“I mean, if things could have been averted. Could have been different, if you could have been happier.” Canari swallows. “Like, what if it wasn’t too late for that? What if it was going to be hard to transition, hard to make that choice, but it would make you feel more like a person and less like a shell walking around pretending to be one.”
“Are you… saying I have a grandson?” Tarragon looks one word away from breaking out a cake in transgender colors and getting her a binder, which is sweet but also so, so hypocritical.
“No, grandpa,” Canari says, voice cracking. “It’s not about me, it’s about you.”
Canari is twelve, and she’s got a group of girls she likes to Skype with. She attends school virtually anyways, and she’s doing better than before. The therapist her social worker picked out for her says she’s on her way to being more well adjusted, and she likes hanging out on the balcony of her grandfather’s construction company and watching the workers from afar sometimes.
She’s also starting to have some weird feelings. Things she’s seen in passing on the internet, under the blanket of “inappropriate for children” that she’s begun to prod at. Namely, well. There’s a woman who works here, Canari doesn’t know her name and is a little scared to ask, but she’s got a curvy figure and broad shoulders and well-muscled arms. And her shirt, Canari can see down her shirt from this height, and it makes her feel all sorts of things.
She doesn’t know how to process any of this, other than looking up “girls kissing” late at night in private browser tabs, so she decides that she wants to be the kind of girl that others want to kiss. (She’ll look back on it one day and laugh, at how badly she processed her budding sexuality, but it could have been worse.)
Tarragon is all too eager to help— maybe even experienced. She wakes up one day to find that she’s been gifted a beginner cosmetics kit, and they sit in the bathroom together as she tries over and over to get her eyeliner to match and her gramps gives her tips and advice.
“Ugh, it’s not working,” she complains, looking at all the tiny brushes and the narrow range of beige ‘nudes’ that all look the same to her. “Why is this so hard?”
“Ah, I wouldn’t know. Always seemed like magic when the womenfolk did it, but I suppose they’re just as human as anyone else.” Her grandpa laughs a little at that, but seems sad. Canari wonders if this is about grandma. “You seem like you’ve got the hang of lipstick, at least.”
“Yeah, ‘cause I don’t need my lips to see. But I have to close one eye to draw on it, and then it gets all screwy.” She turns, stricken with a brilliant idea. “I know! I’ll practice on you!”
“Ah, not on this ugly mug,” he says, looking aside. “Just wouldn’t be right.”
“But I need to practice, or I won’t get good! Just a little,” she pleads.
“Canari,” he says, in that oddly quiet voice, the same one he used to tell her that her father had vanished, “Let it go, little bird. Some things aren’t meant to be.”
She still doesn’t know, not at twelve years old, but she knows enough to be scared and sad and confused about it. That something is bringing the most precious person in her life unfathomable sorrow, and she can’t solve it.
“About me?” Tarragon gives a strained laugh, slapping his knees and standing up. “That boat has come and gone, little bird. Come on, don’t be so glum about it!”
“How the fuck can I not be glum, you basically admitted it! Fuck’s sake, is it really that difficult?” She tosses the pillow aside, but doesn’t stand. Doesn’t think she can, not without fainting. “If you’d be happier as a woman, then do it.”
“It’s not that simple, sweetheart. Besides, I’d rather focus on you, my darling Canari!” Tarragon says, as if that isn’t the most heartbreaking thing she’s heard all day.
“Look, I don’t want you making any more sacrifices for me,” Canari mutters, and that’s the heart of it, isn’t it? Because everything that’s been done for her, the poor sickly Victorian child, the bedbound cripple, just makes her feel worse about the fact that Tarragon has given up so much for her. Her parents didn’t want to raise her once it became clear that her condition was getting progressively worse, and being unwanted leaves pretty deep scars on a seven year old girl. Sometimes she thinks she hasn’t changed at all since then.
“Aw, c’mon, little bird, I—” Tarragon begins, but she just grabs him and pulls him into a hug. This will be a lot easier if she can’t see his face.
“I know,” she says in a small voice, blood rushing to her head from the strain of moving so quickly, “I know you didn’t ask for a kid to raise. But you’ve done so, so much for me. And I don’t want to be responsible for you missing your chance.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start with bein’ a woman. Better that I just stick to what I know, sweetheart,” Tarragon says, patting her back. “Besides, I wouldn’t have this whole HoloTubing gig without my talented granddaughter to figure it out for me! And now, I get to express that side of myself whenever I want.”
“I don’t want you to have to settle for just HoloTubing,” she mutters. “Look, I— I’ll get you in touch with Sol, she transitioned just a couple years ago. And she’s been so much happier since then— she doesn’t need her antidepressants anymore, she’s bisexual and has two boyfriends, she went back to school too.”
“Two boyfriends? In this economy? Goodness, young folk today are really ambitious,” Tarragon chuckles.
“Just… please, please consider it. Not for me, but for you. There’s still time.”
“All right, I’ll right. I’ll talk to this Sol girl, see what my options are. Now come on, let’s get you some food, huh?” He ruffles Canari’s hair, even though he has to reach up to do it now, and pulls her into the kitchen while she tries to hide the stupid blotchy blush from ugly crying. “Let’s see if I can’t rustle up something to make you smile, huh?”
Yeah. Yeah. Fuck, she hates having her emotions spiraling out of control like this. She’s going to have a flare up tomorrow for sure. Canari pulls up a chair, grips her keystone, and tries not to completely fucking lose it.
“You know,” she says, acutely aware of the movement of her lungs, “Sol was worried about the same thing. That it was too late for her to transition.”
“Isn’t she around your age?” Tarragon, all wrinkled skin and grey hair, gives a huff of amusement. “Honestly, you young folks have no sense of scale.”
“She’s 25, yeah. Already went through the wrong puberty, with all the stuff that’s hard to undo. But now, she’s way less mentally ill and repressed, and she can just… live.” Is it her shitty body, or her stupid emotions making it so hard to breathe? “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I really do. But I’m an adult now. I can handle it, if you want… if you need to change. So don’t hold back on my behalf.”
“Well, you make a convincing point. Suppose I’m running out of reasons not to try.” Tarragon begins moving around the stove, collecting ingredients from the pantry and waiting for the burner to heat up properly. “You know, your grandmother was aware. Not about all of it. Didn’t know it was even an option. But she knew I wasn’t entirely the man I pretended to be.”
“Was she, you know, chill about it?”
Tarragon turns to her, eyes misty and expression conflicted. “Sweetheart, who do you think helped me figure it out the first time?”