LIGHTNOVELONLINE 21. Catching Up (Tess)
"I'm heading out now Bev," I told my boss as I stood in her office doorway. "Have a good weekend!"
She smiled, "You too Theresa, have fun."
It was two o'clock Friday afternoon, and was looking forward to this weekend at least as much as I'd been looking forward to the full moon last Friday when I left work. My smile grew wider as I stepped out the door of the small clinic where I worked.
Amy's car was parked just outside, she was waiting to drive me home. We hadn't seen each other for the past three days, but we'd texted several times.
After the minor catastrophe with her parents on Tuesday she spent the night at my place, but I didn't have to miss work on Wednesday after all. She and I were both up early, and we grabbed breakfast at a fast-food place before she dropped me off at work then drove herself home.
Now we were planning to spend the whole weekend together. Part of it would be working to solve the mysteries and answer the remaining questions we had about the magic and the Goddess and how Amy got involved. But part of it would be fun. We already agreed tomorrow we'd be going on another walk or hike, and I had a spot picked out that I knew would be nice.
"Hey Amy," I greeted her as I slipped into the passenger seat. "Thanks for the lift!"
"My pleasure," she smiled back as she started the car. "Do we need to make any stops, or just straight over to your place?"
I shook my head, "Unless you want to pick up some snacks or anything specific? I don't need anything."
She didn't either, and less than ten minutes later her car was in the visitor parking and we were in my apartment. She had an overnight bag with changes of clothes and things, which she left on the foot of my bed for now. I got myself a can of cola and Amy grabbed a bottle of water, then the two of us settled on the sofa.
As I had a sip of cola I took a moment to admire her. She wasn't wearing anything special, the black sneakers she had last weekend, grey leggings, and a loose black tunic top. But I could tell she'd been experimenting with make-up and she was getting better at it. Tuesday she just had some deep red lipstick. Today she was wearing some subtle eyeshadow and mascara in addition to the lipstick. In all, it sort of shifted her look from 'innocent cute' to 'alluring cute'.
I was dressed for work, in low heels, dark slacks, and a tasteful blouse, and my typical make-up style.
"So what's new?" I asked her. "Did you hear from your parents at all?"
Amy had a gulp of water then shook her head, "No, nothing yet. I mentioned last night that I saw Hailey again? So yesterday afternoon I was over at her place, I was with her till dinner time actually. Anyways, she went back to see mom and dad Wednesday night, the three of them had dinner and sort of did the birthday thing together since Tuesday was a bust."
"So of course the three of them talked about me and Hailey relayed all that to me yesterday. She's optimistic that things will be ok, but she admits it might take a while. She said dad's being stubborn about the whole thing, but sometimes he's stubborn just for the sake of it? So it's hard to say for sure. And apparently Mom's still grumpy about the pictures. Hailey said mom doesn't even understand why I'd be bothered by them. Like mom claims she doesn't understand why I don't want photos of my old self up, she can't grasp why that'd upset me."
Amy sighed and rolled her eyes, she sounded irritated by the time she was finished sharing that.
"It's hard for some people to understand," I explained. "Most cis folks have no frame of reference, you know? They've never experienced gender dysphoria, most of them don't even understand what gender is, since they've never had to think about it. For now I think your sister's right when she says they might just need some time to get used to it."
"I guess," she shrugged. "I'm not planning on visiting them again any time soon. I don't even know if I'm going to try and call or email for a while. I might just wait and see if they'll reach out to me first. I guess the only positive thing is at least they both seem to believe that I'm really me? Like we've moved past arguing who I am, now the argument is about what I am. Unless they decide it's easier to believe their cis son is missing, rather than accept their trans daughter is real."
After another gulp of cola I commented, "I'm sure they won't do that Amy. But you're probably doing the right thing by giving them some space and letting them deal with it at their own pace."
She agreed, then asked "How about you? Anything interesting happen with you in the last few days?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "I called my mom last night and had an interesting, frustrating conversation with her."
Amy grimaced, "Uh-oh. What happened? Do you want to talk about it?"
I took a deep breath then dove in, "I told her I wanted to know who Amy Sullivan was and why I'd never heard of her before. I told her about granny's scrapbook, that from what I could see my grandmother was gay and in a long-term relationship with another woman, who practically helped raise my mom. And I wanted to know how come my mother never once thought to mention any of that to me."
She was cringing slightly as she asked, "I take it that didn't go well?"
I rolled my eyes and had another gulp of cola. I could feel the stress and tension across my shoulders and neck again just thinking about the conversation.
"She tried to deflect, she tried to avoid talking about it, claimed it wasn't a good time to talk. This is after I confirmed she had time for a chat and everything? When I finally put her on the spot she claimed that she doesn't know if her mother was gay or not so she can't confirm that. She did admit, eventually, that yes Ms. Sullivan did 'sort of help' raise her, but mom maintains that Ms. Sullivan was just a close family friend. About the only useful thing I got out of her was she confirmed Amy Sullivan was originally from Ireland like granny, and that they met over there before they both decided to move to Canada together."
I added, "Mom doesn't know how they met, but she seemed pretty sure the two weren't childhood friends or anything like that. So it basically fits with what we saw in the scrapbook? Granny and Amy seemed to have met some time just before they emigrated together. She suggested Ms. Sullivan might have left Ireland to escape some sort of bad history, just like my granny did. She got all huffy and uptight when I suggested maybe they both left a repressive Catholic country because they were lesbians in love with each other. And that was about the end of the conversation."
Amy had a thoughtful look on her face by the time I finished. She was quiet for a few more moments, then finally nodded "It doesn't really give us much in the way of new information, but that does at least corroborate what we already guessed."
I agreed with that assessment. Unfortunately that was the only progress I had, such as it was. I explained that I'd tried further web searches but there simply didn't seem to be anything out there about Amethyst the Goddess.
"It feels like we're running out of options," she frowned. "I mean, we've pretty much learned all we could from your granny's stuff. You got what you could from your mom. And there's nothing available online. That just leaves one thing left to try."
"What's that?" I asked. I couldn't think of anything else, as far as I could see everything led to a dead end.
Amy shrugged, "I could try tapping into the magic to ask for answers. Like we discussed last weekend right? I could wish that the goddess would either reveal herself and explain things in person, or I could wish for all the knowledge and answers."
That left a cold feeling in my stomach again, and I shook my head. "I still think it's way too risky, Amy. It was too risky last weekend, it's still too risky today."
"I know," she sighed. "I haven't forgotten what you said, and I'm not saying I want to do it? I'm just saying, if there aren't any other options left, if we've run out of alternatives, maybe that's something to consider. If it's the last resort, I guess."
I dug my phone out of my purse and opened up the lunar app. "Next full moon is August twenty-second. Oh, it's in the morning, so we'd do it the night before. So Saturday August twenty-first, midnight, we could try and do the summoning ritual again. That's just over three weeks. Twenty-two days from now."
Amy drained the last of her water, then shrugged "Three weeks is still three weeks. It's a long time to wait for answers to something this important."
I set my phone on the coffee table and reached over to pick up my notebook, where I had her questions written out. After taking a second to review them, I responded "I know you want to solve this stuff Amy but I think we're making pretty good progress as it is? Honestly I think we've kind of addressed and answered more than half of them."
She looked uncertain, so I went down the list with her. "One, how or why did Amy get involved, why was she dragged into this? That's the big unknown, the one we haven't really made any progress on."
I continued, "Two, how and why are other things changing around her? I think we've answered that right? When you wish for something, the Goddess grants your wish? Two-A, what happened with Mike? You wished to put off the difficult conversation, and maybe you inadvertently wished that conversation would go easy when it happened? Or maybe as a side-effect of delaying it, Mike just came to terms with things on his own? Two-B, will that sort of thing keep happening? We already confirmed, it happens when you wish for stuff."
Amy didn't have anything to say yet, so I kept going.
"Three, how will Amy deal with her family? That's a work in progress but you've already tackled it and it sounds like your folks at least believe who you are even if they're having trouble with the trans stuff, while Hailey's already accepted you. Three-A, how will Amy deal with her roommate? Same thing, that's already a done deal. Three-B, how will Amy deal with work? You quit, so that solved that problem."
The last two points wrapped it up, "Four, how will Amy handle everything in general, regarding her magical transition? I think that's an ongoing thing but from what I can see you're handling it pretty well? And five, Amy needs to learn about women's health and wants some 'girl lessons'. You're already doing pretty good there, and I'll help you with it too."
She had a thoughtful look on her face for a few more moments, then just nodded "Ok. You're right, it sounds like just about everything's taken care of, except the first one. And the first one is the biggest, I think. I'd even expand on it a little? How and why was I dragged into this, but I also need to know why the goddess is still hanging around and helping out with her magic. Like, do I really have unlimited wishes? Will they run out? Will she demand payment at some point for all this?"
"I get it," I replied. "I know there's still a lot of questions. I just don't think it's worth the risk, trying to tap into divine knowledge or trying to get the Goddess to appear outside of a proper summoning ritual. There's too many unknowns."
Amy shrugged, "We'll see. For me, it's a question of what unknowns are worse? Like, are we in more danger playing with magic without knowing the rules, or is it more dangerous to ask and find out what the rules are."
"Well, so long as we don't play around with the magic, that shouldn't be a problem right?" I asked her.
She gave me a bit of a look, "We've already done it a bunch, right? All the demonstrations? And I'm still worried about stuff happening that I'm not aware of, like accidentally asking for stuff. It's tiring trying to police my thoughts all the time to make sure I don't inadvertently say or think something in the form of a wish. You know, like I did with the pictures at my parents house."
"I know," I sighed. I was pretty sure we'd be revisiting this conversation more than once over the next few days, but for now I wanted to change the subject. "So I know we planned on a walk or hike tomorrow, but we haven't really agreed on what to do for tonight. Was there anything you had in mind? Did you want to go out or something?"
Amy shook her head, "I don't mind going out or doing something special if you want? If you're asking me to pick though, I'm going with the lazy option. Let's just stay here, chill out, and order something in for dinner."
"It's a date," I said with a smile.
