From the Point of View of Rynadria
I hopped back out of my grove and into the mundane realm to find the sky threatening to rain. The clouds above Avonside were dark and billowing, whipped up by the wind as it twisted its way through the mountains. It was going to make gathering stone a pain in the ass. My buns hated the cold.
The dark weather wasn’t doing anything for my poor, tired brain either. So many things to make sure of. I wasn’t good at keeping tasks ordered in my mind at the best of tis, but lately I felt like I was drowning.
Today I had to cut stone for construction, touch base with Professor Rivas on an insulin producing plant design, check on the obrec to see if they needed anything, and… shit, what was the last thing? Crap. Hopefully I rembered it by the ti I needed to do it.
Walking through the campus was still a surreal experience, considering that like, a year ago, I was doing the sa thing on a different planet and in a different body. The students going about their day were gone now, or at least they weren’t really students anymore.
A group of foragers, baskets on their backs, trudged along the sa path as , heading the other way. I wonder what they had all been studying before this. Before they were torn from their old lives and thrust into this dangerous new world. One of them had a thermos full of what slled like coffee, and deep inside my brain, a remnant of my past self awoke. It seed my coffee plants had been put to good use.
“Hey, excuse ,” I blurted, swerving slightly so they knew I was talking to them.
The group looked up as one, eyes widening as they realised I was. They slowed and exchanged looks, as though silently drawing straws to determine who would be unlucky enough to talk to .
“Yeah?” A thin, awkward looking dude asked cautiously.
“Where’d you get those coffees, if it’s okay to ask,” I said, feeling a little nervous as I gestured to their beverages. The way they were all looking at made my stomach squirm a little. Like I might vaporise them with an angry look.
“The Fogg building,” he said, politely but curtly. “Cafe at the bottom.”
“Not the Oak Cafe?”
He shrugged. “They do coffee again, too. The Fogg one was just closer for us.”
“Thanks,” I smiled, trying my best to appear unconcerned by the strange attitude of the group. Was I really that scary? Did I have resting murder-face when I was tired?
They moved on while I puzzled over their strange behaviour, but in the end all I could do was shrug and wander off in search of the cafe. It had been so long since I had proper coffee, and the sll just now had caused a craving.
The Fogg building wasn’t too far away, being in the southern half of the campus — or what used to be the southern half, before words like spinward and edgeward beca more appropriate. If I rembered correctly, it mainly housed student services and the cafe at the bottom. I think there might have been a few classrooms at the top too? I wasn’t sure. Either way, it was a small, colourful modern building shoved between two cold war era tower blocks that made it stick out like a sore thumb.
When I got there, a small line had ford that appeared to be growing by the mont. Yawning, I joined the queue and waited patiently.
It was a pretty cute little cafe, to be honest, and it seed to have survived its ti on the ring mostly unscathed. The decorative pot plants looked like they could use so watering, and the paint on the outside sign was slightly faded, but the windows were still there and they even had so tables and chairs laying around. Of course, they no longer accepted money. Instead, they had what were called Work Certificates, which were definitely not money. Nope, not at all.
Unfortunately, the people in the line were less than chill about just rolling up like a normal person. Everyone was staring at now, with a broad range of expressions and emotions, so more hidden than others.
Oops, guess I should work on a proper disguise. Sothing that was more physical than a simple illusion. Could help with research towards changing trans people’s bodies too. Not really a priority in the grand sche of things, but important to personally.
The stares were a lot to handle though, and I nervously checked my skin-tight magical shield. Was it still in place? Yeah? Okay, good.
I made my way up through the line, only for my gut to drop out when I saw who was serving the coffee. Rhea, the girl who’d been weirdly confrontational with the other day when I was mining stone.
Shit, well… that might explain why the people with the coffee were giving funny looks earlier. Maybe she was talking shit about ?
She hadn’t seen yet, and I debated just leaving, but… I really wanted that coffee. She also wasn’t the one actually preparing the coffee either, just taking the orders. Worst case she wrote down the wrong order on purpose or sothing. That was fine, all coffee had its place, and I wasn’t feeling all that picky.
I imdiately wished that I had just left when she actually laid eyes on . Her expression soured in an instant as I stepped up to the counter, and I could tell she was calculating if she could get away with telling to leave.
She obviously couldn't, since it was my coffee beans she was handing out, and I think she must have realised that, because she plastered a smile on her face and asked, “Why hello, Ryn. What can I get you?”
“Um…” I began, unsure how to process her behaviour. “Just whatever is easiest, thanks.”
I placed a Work Cert onto the counter and waited for her reaction. If I didn’t let on what coffee I liked, she couldn’t purposefully give the wrong coffee. Now you’re thinking with portals, Ryn!
One of her eyes twitched in irritation, but she nodded and picked up a crude paper cup, scribbling sothing on it and placing it to the side. “It’ll be ready soon, they’ll call your na.”
I nodded my wary thanks and stepped to the side, wondering what she’d put on the cup. The cup looked like it had been made after Avonside arrived on the ring, funnily enough. I wonder how they had managed that so quickly. Was it even hard to make disposable paper cups?
So random dude from behind the counter plucked my cup off the waiting tray and began to make my coffee without so much as a glance in my direction. He looked exhausted, and I didn’t bla him. Making coffee for hundreds of people in the space of an hour or two could be tough work. Any service job was.
I wonder if there was so way I could make a coffee spell. Oh, or teach my buns to make coffee! Would they tolerate that?
“Elias?” the called na landed like a lump of ice falling into my heart, and my lungs failed to take in the next breath.
I looked up to see the dude who’d made my coffee looking around. Looking around at all the guys, not at all realising what Rhea had done. To his side, she stood, a look of cruel victory on her face.
Hurting as I was by the sudden intrusion of that months-dead na, I did the only thing I could. I walked up to the guy as calmly as I could, took the cup from his confused grip, and rushed out of the cafe.
Oh god. Why did it hurt so much? It was just a na. I’d heard it a few tis since I’d beco Ryn, but never… never in a way that was so vindictive, so nasty. She had used that na to send a ssage, to tell that I wasn’t a woman in her eyes, that I was still him. Then there was the na on the cup, written with obvious care onto the paper in permanent marker.
Using a sharpened telekinetic tentacle, I carefully sliced off the na, like a surgeon performing a life-saving operation. The flake of paper never reached the ground, because that sa tentacle eviscerated it with a wild savagery that was in stark contrast to the care I had just used. The cup was a little less structurally sound, but that didn’t really matter to . I could hold the cup together with my mind, after all.
Timidly, I took a sip from the coffee, then breathed a sigh of relief as I found it to be just the way I liked it. Strong enough to carry like a princess through the morning. At least I had won out there. Silly bitch thought I wouldn’t like it darker than her heart.
Well, ti to get to cutting stone, I guess.
Nobody was really around at the quarry when I arrived, which was more than fine by right then. I wanted to take out so of my stress on so inanimate objects without anyone seeing the tears that ca with it.
What the hell was Rhea’s problem anyway? I hadn’t done shit to her, and now she had so sort of petty vendetta out for ?
Ugh, whatever. I’d leave extra stone here for the university to use, more than we’d agreed when they let us use the stone. At least that way I was channeling my pain into sothing useful. Plus, I figured the easiest way to combat her evil whispers was to do even more good than before. The rest of Avonside couldn’t hate if I was responsible for the roof over their heads, right?
Doubted it, to be honest. Humans sucked, and they’d hate people, things, and ideologies for whatever damned reason they wanted, regardless of logic. Still, it made feel better, so I guess that was sothing.
A few hours later and I was just polishing off the last load of cut stone when an obrec ranger jogged up to , waving as she did so.
“Rynadria, greetings,” she said in the obrec tongue. “Otho requests your presence at our lodge. There is a human boy from the Anver states here, he claims to know you.”
“A… huh?” I blinked, trying to imagine who on the ring it could be. I didn’t know any boys from that clusterfuck of principalities, did I? I had passed through with the other mbers of the order and we hadn’t really made any friends. Confusing. I guess there was only one way to find out.
“Alright, let’s go then.”
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