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”And what’s this old-ass thing? Look, Charlie, like… what, did they lose this one for a hundred years?” Lee laughed, pulling an envelope so old – or so old-looking – that it was yellowed and crumbling from Charlie’s mailbox. “What’s it even say, Christ, I can’t read this.”

He handed it to Charlie, who immediately recognized that the letter didn’t belong in his mailbox. The stamps didn’t look real at all, with designs of dragons and what looked like a faerie queen or something. What else could you call a regal female figure in a long, flowing dress and a pair of decorated butterfly wings on her back?

The handwriting on the front was archaic, swirling strokes of black ink on aged parchment. Charlie couldn’t read it either, but he felt a strangle tingle in the back of his mind as he tried to. Something told him that if he just focused and relaxed his eyes at once, like with one of those magic eye pictures, the text would come into focus.

He followed that instinct, and suddenly the text moved, slithering like a snake across the paper. He gave a surprised yelp, dropping the letter, but thankfully his friend had long since lost interest and wandered back inside the house to play more games, and so wasn’t there to see his embarrassment. But nobody ever expected squirrels to have much of an attention span.

Wolves did, though. Charlie squatted down to pick the letter back up. For a moment, the ink had looked like a living snake, which was beyond stupid, but he knew he could generally trust his eyes, and now, when he looked at the text on the front, it spelled out his name clearly. Charlie Lastname. He had inherited his father’s last name and then his father had abandoned him and his mother when he was five years old, and as such, he usually didn’t use it anymore. He was just Charlie Lastname to anyone who asked. It was as good as any name, while serving as a middle finger to his absent father.

It was spelled out on the letter, of course, as it always was on official communications, but what part of the government would send out a letter this old and ornate? Maybe it was from a hundred years ago to an ancestor with the same name, and they had only recently managed to find it stuck at the bottom of some crate? No, that was stupid. It’d have been addressed to his father’s or mother’s last name, if that was the case. This was purely for him.

Charlie ventured back inside, quickly digging through his drawers to find his letter knife. It’d been ages since he last used one of those – only once, really, with his old-fashioned mother – and just the feeling of it in his hand brought with it a wave of nostalgia. He remembered opening letters with his mother- ah, it wasn’t the right time to reminisce, and he was too young for that anyway. Charlie cut the envelope open, and deftly plucked out a letter just as ornate as the envelope itself, a folded piece of paper with a literal, honest-to-God wax seal on it, with another symbol that he couldn’t recognize outlined in the red wax.

And again, the text was gibberish. Charlie felt the tingle again, and this time, the wolf sat down. He focused on the letter, relaxing his eyes, and sure enough; the ink moved again. It crawled into the right position to reveal its meaning to his eyes, and his eyes only. Charlie was left breathless. He had never once in his life seen something like this. With a digital display, maybe, but on paper it wasn’t possible. Period. What he was seeing wasn’t possible, and yet, he was incredibly curious rather than afraid.

Welcome to St. Celaena’s All-Girls Academy of Magic, it read.

Ah, so it wasn’t for him. And there was no university with a name like that anywhere nearby. He had been right about it being for some ancestor who might’ve lived here centuries ago. Somehow.

But wait. “Magical” academy? That suggested more that this was some sort of Alternate Reality Game – an ARG – or something truly goddamn ancient, from the times when they actually believed in magic, which would make the letter older than the witch trials, much older, and Charlie wasn’t sure if they even had a postal service back then. Maybe couriers… but that didn’t explain how it had arrived in his mailbox. Horseback couriers didn’t use mailboxes.

He continued reading.

You are hereby cordially invited to St. Celaena’s All-Girls Academy of Magic, hereafter referred to only as The Academy…

Blah de blah de blah, it read like any other admission letter. Charlie was amused by how some things never changed.

…if you accept, please allow a single drop of your blood to fall upon the signature line. If you own no sufficiently formal and feminine attire, such will be provided for you when you first arrive. Any physical disabilities are, similarly, not a problem…

The letter was very insistent about “feminine attire” but that was to be expected, perhaps, at an “All-Girls Academy”.

But blood?

The wolf felt a chill run down his back. Something told him that the letter was the real deal, even if it couldn’t be. So, in other words, he was dreaming. But it wasn’t as if it this was a nightmare, Charlie mused, so he – now quite reassured that nothing bad would happen, because a dream couldn’t hurt him – plucked a needle from the same drawer the letter opener had come from. He definitely wanted to see where it was going, because suddenly, knowing that none of it was real, he could imagine all kinds of scenarios where this setup might lead.

The big one he was thinking about was getting to fuck witches, and frankly, he refused to feel guilty for that. The dream was clearly building up to exactly that, with him being the only man in the whole academy. It’d be like those books about the magic boy with the shitty parental figures, only not written by an incompetent hack. Or so he hoped.

Charlie cleaned off the needle with a little bit of antiseptic, so that his dream-self wouldn’t catch any sort of nasty infection, and then pricked the tip of his finger. It didn’t hurt at all, which proved that it was, in fact, all just a dream.

He held his hand above the invitation, watching a single drop of blood slowly pearl at the very tip of his finger, to then fall and splash over the signature line on the letter.

And in that single dreamlike instant, the entirety of the world lurched in a way that made Charlie double over and dry heave, an immense wave of nausea overcoming him seconds before he found himself in a completely different place. A grand hall of marble, lit by the luminescence of the moon and the stars, flowing in through enormous crystalline windows larger than anything he had ever seen before. It took no time for the wolf to figure out that he was no longer on earth, either. In the night sky outside, two moons hung in the firmament.

This dream was the best ever. Charlie couldn’t believe how immersive it felt. He could even feel the cool breeze of the wind outside, making the orchards outside sway and finding its way into the marbled hall through cracks that an ancient building would surely have.

“Ah, fantastic! You decided to accept, then? I know it’s unusual, but…”

A woman addressed him. Charlie turned around to face a stunningly beautiful white mink clad in a dress so ostentatious that it could only ever exist in a dream, with fabric flowing like water, and encrusted in diamonds and sapphires.

“…every now and then, we choose someone based on who they are on the inside.”

“W-what do you mean, exactly?” the wolf asked. “Who are you?”

The woman frowned. “Well, I’m not exactly St. Celaena, am I? What did the letter say?”

“Um, it said that if I wanted to attend this academy, I should…” Charlie replied, before being interrupted.

“And the other side of it?” she asked, with a hint of a smile tugging at her mouth.

Charlie had to look away for a moment. For being a dream, the embarrassment certainly felt real anyway. He couldn’t wait to get to the part where everyone wanted his cock.

“I didn’t read the other side,” the admitted, somewhat sheepishly.

“Of course you didn’t, a lot of you new girls rush into things head-first,” the mink sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to give you the basics. I’m Vanya, the headmistress-”

“-girls?” Charlie asked.

“Yes. Yes, I’m aware that you might think of yourself as a man right now,” the mink rolled her eyes. “But only women can channel magic, meaning that if you were invited here, and made your way here that’s what you are.”

She took a breath, looking at Charlie’s wide-eyed expression.

“It might take a little while to figure yourself out,” Vanya explained. “But we’re not really ever wrong, what with the whole magic thing and all.”

Another pause, while Charlie looked at her, enraptured and a little dazed by everything he was hearing. The whole premise of the dream was preposterous, but at the same time, maybe it’d lead to some interesting sex from a female point of view. Or something. At this point, he was frankly engaged enough that he wanted to see where the story went, even if there was no sex.

“Well, I suppose that’s not the whole truth. Femininity is magic. So, you could dress a man up nicely, and he might be able to light a candle. But anything beyond that requires a woman’s mind and touch.”

“So, you’re saying that I’m a girl, a woman,” Charlie asked.

“Yep. Trans, naturally. You’ve never thought about it?” the mink asked. “I guess not everyone does.”

“No, I’ve… really not,” the wolf replied. “At all. Ever.”

“Well, that’ll make it a little more awkward to get in uniform, I think,” the mink snorted. She visibly had to stifle a fit of giggles. “Or to use the locker rooms. You know, we do still have those, even in a magic school!”

“Can’t you just use m- no, I want to- what should-“ Charlie stammered. He couldn’t get a single coherent sentence out, for how confused he was.

“Shh, deep breaths. We’ll start with the uniform. You know how they dress in those old-timey British boarding schools? It’s kind of like that, since that was the style at the time, when our founder came here. Well, he was more Irish than British, just look at the name, but, you know, who’s really counting?” Vanya told him. “You even get a skirt.”

She waved her hand in a diffuse but very deliberate gesture, and the air seemed to shiver before a neatly folded set of clothes appeared in the mink’s free hand, blinking into existence as if it’d always been there.

“I don’t really feel comfortable with skirts,” Charlie tried to protest. He was starting to suspect that this whole thing wasn’t a dream, but if it wasn’t, then he was delusional, or maybe dead.

“Too bad, that’s what you’ll be wearing. And the more you get in touch with your femininity, the more you’ll be able to channel magic,” the mink smiled. “You really should’ve read the entire letter. I know it’s small print, but it gets bigger when you look at it long enough.”

“Well uh, can I not-” Charlie said, only to be interrupted, accepting the folded uniform from the headmistress. “-like, wake up? This is getting a bit uncomfortable.”

“Oooh, so you’re one of those ‘it’s just a dream’ girls? Yeah, we get lots of those. No, I’m afraid it’s not a dream, and you signed an agreement to stay with us for a full term,” Vanya sighed. “But hey, you’ll learn magic. And yes, that magic works in your physical reality too.”

Charlie forced himself to really think about the offer. If he pretended to be a girl for a term, six months or so, he’d learn magic. And if this wasn’t a dream, then magic was absolutely real. Yes, wearing a skirt would be awkward, but maybe the actual girls would find it hot.

But him, a trans girl… a woman? That he had a rather hard time believing, given that he’d never really thought of himself as such. Sure, he wasn’t terribly manly, per se, but that didn’t mean anything. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to get in touch with his feminine side either way, he wasn’t the kind of man who thought anything girly was gay.

Especially if the reward was magic.

“Okay. So uh, where do I change?” he asked. “And what else do I have to do?”

“Oh, nothing in particular. Just study. Present as a girl, to whatever extent you can. When you’re comfortable enough, we have magic to help you with that,” Vanya smiled. “Follow me, for the changing part.”

She led Charlie through the halls. In one of them, which looked almost like a cafeteria, if it had been designed by a fantasy author who enjoyed curved architecture a little too much, he passed by several groups of students. Sure enough, they were all girls, all dressed in the uniform he’d soon be wearing, and equally as expected, they all stared at him, and most went silent but for a low murmur. Something about new girls, something about boys, was all that Charlie could make out.

“Don’t worry about that, after a few weeks here everyone understands that gender identity has nothing to do with what body you were born with,” Vanya laughed. “But naturally some of them might be more attracted to… masculine physical expressions, so to speak. You’ll just have to bear with that until you get yourself looking more like who you are on the inside.”

“I’m not-” Charlie tried to protest, but then dropped it. The headmistress wasn’t listening to him anyway, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try all the girls’ things with the girls. When else would he get the chance to see their dressing rooms and dorms from the inside, especially in a world with literal magic?

He still couldn’t get over the magic part.

Or the dressing like a girl part.

Or the part where everyone assumed he was actually a trans woman just because he’d been kidnapped by a magical document.

He was quickly led to the dorms. There was, of course, only one dorm being that “men were generally entirely unable to cast spells,” which sounded terribly misandrist to Charlie, but then again, if that was just the biological reality of this world, maybe it was like how men were stronger than women where he was from. The school also didn’t have any apparent “houses” given that even among women, the ability to channel was rare. There weren’t enough students to justify more than one dorm.

He hoped it was a different world, at least, because if women could cast magic spells, he’d never have a chance at getting a job.

“Here,” Vanya announced, as they arrived at a nondescript door. Well, it was nondescript at first, but as Charlie focused his eyes on it, there was that strange floor-falling-out sensation of gravity, and then a glowing glyph formed. “Your dorm, and if you don’t read fluent arcane yet, that’s your true name, marking it.”

“My uh… true name?” Charlie asked.

Vanya squinted at him, and then the glyph. Her long eyelashes fluttered.

“Well, it’s impossible to translate directly to mortal words, but it’s roughly along the lines of the scent of hyacinths at night under a full moon in a clear sky above all humankind,” Vanya translated, or attempted to. “They’re all like that, don’t worry about it.”

“All of that in a single… glyph?” Charlie asked. “Who gave me that name?”

Vanya rolled her eyes at the newcomer’s total lack of knowledge. Ah, well. They were an academy for a reason, and that reason was to teach the ignorant, wasn’t it? “Yes, and the universe did. If you really hate romanticism, think of it like a unique serial number to make sure that you remain you instead of, for example, a sparrow.”

“Okay,” was all Charlie could muster.

“You can use it to come up with a more suitable common name. Cassandra, as in shining over men, or Cynthia, as in hyacinths would be my suggestions,” Vanya noted.

“Right. So, my room?” he asked. He’d think about the name later. Much later, ideally.

“Yes, the previous student left some stuff in there, you can simply leave what you don’t want outside, and we’ll take care of it. You’ll also find your schedule and a general list of things to do. Remember to wear the uniform tomorrow,” the mink told Charlie. “Really, without the uniform you won’t even be able to blow out a candle. Not yet,” she added, emphasizing the ‘yet’ much the same way that a supervillain might, though with more excitement.

“So, when’s the first class?” Charlie asked, only for Vanya to point towards the door. He’d just have to check his schedule, it seemed.

“And I’ll be seeing you around. Enjoy your time at St. Celaena’s, girl,” the headmistress smiled, and with a wag of a singular finger, she blinked out of existence, perhaps back to her office.

Charlie pinched the bridge of his muzzle with one hand, trying to figure out what he had gotten himself into, assuming that this really wasn’t a dream. The dorms were empty, though, and before long he had no real choice but try the door to “his” room. It swung open and revealed a small, candle-lit one-room residence. There was no bathroom, of course, only a space for living and studying.

But why were the candles lit? Hadn’t Vanya just said that the room was vacant? Was it a magic thing?

Of course it’s a magic thing, “girl”, Charlie scolded himself. The room had a few bookshelves, a desk, a closet, really quite normal things for a dorm at a university or college. The strangest thing were the candles – especially when Charlie, placing his hand over one, realized that they burned with heatless flame – and what looked like a fortune teller’s crystal ball next to the desk.

All of it had this undeniable but hard-to-pin-down feminine vibe, too. Of course it did. The air smelled faintly of the former occupant’s floral perfume, and Charlie really did feel as if he was invading someone’s personal space. Someone who was distinctly not him. Maybe, though, he mused, he’d get used to it. He just needed some more manly details, like maybe posters of cool cars or pinups of half-naked ladies, and he’d feel right at home.

If the academy allowed those things, anyway.

He glanced at the uniform again. There was absolutely no way that it’d fit, and he’d look ridiculous wearing it, but even then, the wolf felt a kind of gnawing urge to put it on. Was this some kind of mind control spell that the headmistress had cast to make it easier for him? He had no frame of reference for what was possible at all. For all he knew, any of the other students could teleport him into the core of the sun if he acted wrong, so he was at least determined to not offend anyone.

He unfolded the uniform, let out a demonstrative sigh that nobody could hear, and then took off his old clothes. They looked far too casual for a place like this, but wearing a girls’ uniform made him feel ten flavors of weird. To his surprise, though, the top fit him perfectly, as if tailormade. Is that magic too? Is anything here not magic?

Thankfully, the uniform didn’t include panties, but it did include a skirt, and sliding into that felt just as alien as he had been expecting. The sensation of air against his boxers and legs was odd after a lifetime of not feeling it. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, though.

Once fully dressed, Charlie sat down on the bed to think.

He could probably disregard the idea that this was a dream. It was more like a different dimension entirely, and he was like the protagonist of one of those animes. He’d have to ask someone how time passed in the real world while he was here, though, because if each day here was a day there, he’d be assumed dead when he got back.

Okay, let’s try out this magic thing.

The wolf turned his attention to one of the candles. He didn’t really have any notion of what he was doing, so he raised his hand and snapped his fingers while imagining an unlit candle.

And the flame disappeared without as much as a wisp of smoke. There was a sensation like his mind was being swept along by a river.

Charlie nearly jumped backwards as he a saw it happen, against all expectations.

“That’s fucking amazing,” he exclaimed out loud, in his excitement. Wanting to make sure it wasn’t a mere coincidence, he snapped his fingers again, this time imagining a burning candle, and indeed, the heatless flame returned. It felt like the universe correcting itself, like things snapping into place just like his fingers snapped.

He wasn’t completely willing to believe it was actual magic and not some sort of advanced sound detector, so he repeated the experiment with a little twirl of his fingers instead. The result was the same. Charlie stared at the candle, wide-eyed in amazement like a toddler at how he was able to make the flame come and go as he pleased. All because… he was wearing a girls’ uniform?

That didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Femininity wasn’t anything objective, he knew that for absolutely certain. The moon wasn’t really a feminine entity, and pink wasn’t objectively a feminine color. It was all just a collection of agreed-upon social meanings, and the idea that his presentation could affect some kind of mystical force was preposterous.

Charlie quickly stripped down and tried the experiment again. This time, the candle didn’t react, no matter how he strained his mind. There was none of that sensation of flow or things snapping into place that he had felt doing it while wearing the uniform.

It was completely silly, and it went against all the known sciences, both material and social. But then, this was apparently a world where magic existed and defying physical reality was just a matter of course.

Charlie sighed. But as he moved to put on the uniform again, something felt distinctly different. He wasn’t sure what, at first. Maybe his fur was just a touch softer, or maybe it was the skin beneath? Did his arms look just a tiny bit slenderer? The wolf wasn’t totally sure, but an idea dawned on him; if femininity was what enabled magic, would using magic make him more feminine, in turn?

He felt a tingle race all the way from the tip of his tail to the tips of his ears.

By now he was starting to figure out the illogic that powered this strange new world, and if he was right, using magic would absolutely turn him into a full-blown woman over time. The strangest thing was that he didn’t even mind the idea all that much. He was a man, but having a female body might be fun as a temporary thing, anyway. How many men got to experience lesbian sex?

Charlie laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all, but the more he poked and prodded at the fabric of this new reality, the more he felt the urge to explore it further.

His first thought had been that it’d be awkward to meet his new classmates, given that he looked exactly like a man in a women’s uniform, which as far as the wolf was concerned, he was, but given everything else he had already seen, would anyone even notice? If a solid physical reality didn’t exist, what did your body matter? It felt oddly liberating.

He flopped onto the bed, resting and staring at the ceiling, which seemed to open up into the endless starfield of space with distant nebulae and shootings stars passing now and then. At that point, Charlie wasn’t even surprised. It was like the magical version of those glow-in-the-dark stars every kid had on their bedroom ceiling, and there was no denying how immensely relaxing it was to stare into the infinite, to dream of which of the glowing dots in the blackness might have life, which of them…

…which of them…

Charlie dozed off, exhausted by the day’s events.

Chapter Two

Charlie woke up more well rested than he could ever remember being. He stretched, yawned, and realized that he was just about bristling with energy, eager to get the day started. The academy didn’t seem to have any kind of clocks, but the enchanted ceiling of his room showed a sun rising over a field of daffodils. That probably meant it was morning, but the wolf had no idea when his classes started.

His? He looked down at his body. He looked pretty much as he always had. There was that distinct vibe of being in the wrong place – he felt sort of like an intruder, sleeping in a little room so unquestionably feminine, in a space entirely meant for women – but at the same time, his bed felt so silken-soft and comfortable that right then, he couldn’t have imagined a place where he’d rather be. He’d stick with male pronouns for now, though. If the headmistress was right, it was only a matter of time anyway.

Ah, he had to get started with his day anyway. Charlie struggled his way out of bed, waited for his morning wood to wilt away, and then pulled on the uniform. It fit like a glove, as before, even the short skirt that left him feeling as if he was naked from the waist down. It’d take some time to get used to, that was for sure.

He stood up, willing the candles to go dark, and they did. It was still such a bizarre feeling, as if his thoughts pressed against the fabric of reality, and reality obliged. It was followed by a floating sensation that lasted only maybe a second or two. Evidently there’d be no harm in leaving the heatless candles lit, but he just couldn’t get used to that idea yet, not after a childhood of being constantly reminded to always put out candles before leaving home.

Charlie stepped outside and instantly found himself in a crowd. He hadn’t heard anything from inside his room, but out here in the dorms the day was already in full swing. Students were rushing past him, all headed to their classes, and Charlie still had no idea where he was expected to go.

Then someone tapped him on his shoulder, and the wolf spun around, finding himself face to face with a slender but tall vixen, almost the same height as he was despite having a body half as wide.

“Rough morning?” she giggled. “Or rough puberty?”

Charlie rolled his eyes. “Rough morning, sure.”

“Yeah, it’s like that for all you trans girls,” the vixen grinned. She certainly had an attitude. “Well, for the ones who don’t think they are, especially.”

“Not totally sure about that, but like, I do want to learn magic,” Charlie sighed. “God, just saying that out loud sounds insane.”

“Well, you better hope you’re trans because men can’t learn magic,” the vixen pointed out. “Where are you headed?”

“I have no idea,” the wolf admitted. “To class, except I don’t know where class is.”

“Oh, yeah. The school kinda operates assuming everyone already knows a clairvoyance spell,” she replied. “Let me help.”

She twirled her fingers in a rough but jagged figure eight in the air and closed her eyes while holding her hand up like an antenna. Her eyelids fluttered, and then she opened them again.

“You leave the dorms area, then turn right, pick the corridor closest to you when you enter the hall, and it’s the third door to the left,” she told him. “See, easy.”

“Uh, thanks… that’s pretty helpful,” Charlie thanked her.

“No problem at all, it’s like, baby’s first proper spell. You’re probably going to learn it today,” she laughed. “And I’ll see you around, gotta be off for my own thing.”

She waved her hand and disappeared as if she was never there at all. This was starting to become a pattern, and frankly, Charlie could’ve done without it. He hadn’t even introduced himself, and that fox was smoking hot!

But he was sure of one thing; she was definitely able to find him if she wanted to get better acquainted. Charlie shrugged. What was it she had said? Leave the dorms, closest corridor, third door on the left? Easy enough.

He walked past throngs of girls of all ages, from teenagers to adults, but all of them seemed to be, for lack of a better characterization, cisgender. At least that’s the feeling Charlie got; nobody looked as if they’d been born in a male body.

But then again, magic is real, so should you really be surprised?

It was incredibly difficult for Charlie to wrap his head around the fact that everything, it seemed, was possible. For all he knew, the vixen he met earlier could be a frog tomorrow, or a bookshelf. Time could probably go backwards. People could walk through solid objects and disappear into thin air.

And the implications that magic had for sex were particularly amazing.

Either way, he quickly found the classroom he was looking for. The door opened into a wide space, that looked like it was – but couldn’t really be – outdoors, with tree stumps arranged in a circle in the grass of a forest meadow. When Charlie stepped through and looked backwards, he saw the door he had just entered through standing free on the ground, with nothing visibly behind it.

The teacher was already there – this one was a goat – as were a few students, who all looked at him, their eyes practically glimmering with curiosity and burning questions that they wanted to ask but couldn’t bring themselves to, at the risk of offending the wolf.

Instead of being forced to answer questions, he sat down on one of the stumps. For being what it was, it was surprisingly comfortable, the wood worn smooth by dozens of years of student rumps on it. Either that, or it had been smoothed by magic. Nothing made sense anymore, anyway.

“Is that all we’re getting?” the goat sighed. “Seems like it was slim pickings this year…”

Sure enough, there were maybe twelve girls in the meadow, plus Charlie, who was still very far from considering himself one of them, but their interest in him seemed very real.

“Ah well, I suppose it is a low magic year,” she continued, glancing at her student audience. “Meaning the moons and stars are aligned so that few women are born with the gift.”

She paused, stood up, and walked to the middle of the ring of stumps.

“So, welcome to St. Celaena’s,” she began, raising her arms in a welcoming gesture. “This will be your introductory class to all this stuff, but I have a little bit of a hangover, so I’ll try to make it as quick as possible. We’re talking theory…”

One of the girls next to Charlie raised her hand. He didn’t dare to turn to look. The goat seemed strict, or at least that was his first impression.

What am I even doing here? People back home are going to miss me.

“Please think less loudly, Charlie, you’re giving every mind reader around a headache worse than mine. Don’t worry, the people at home aren’t going anywhere. They’re not even noticing that time is passing. And now, you, lizard girl.”

“Um, my name is Tai, and… why don’t you just use magic to cure your hangover?” she asked. She seemed a little bothered or distracted by something, despite trying her best to pay attention to the class.

“Mm, see, I could do that. But our headmistress is very insistent that everyone here own their mistakes. That means, if you cause yourself suffering, you are to suffer,” the goat explained, and then pinched the bridge of her snout. “I could just do it anyway, there’s no strict punishment, but taking shortcuts turns her off and I really want to eat her pussy.”

Tai stared at her wide-eyed. Charlie wasn’t even surprised at this point. What else would a whole magic academy of girls do if not have lesbian sex? Hopefully at least one of them had some interest left in him, too, despite the whole “being a man” thing. Or at least, probably being a man.

“Speaking of eating pussy, I do actually have a name too,” she remarked. The class looked confused, not seeing any connection between those thoughts. “Circe. Like the sorceress of legend. Don’t get drunk with me or you’ll all turn into pigs, just in a more metaphorical sense. Not that I’m any better. Gods, I have no idea what I even ate last night…”

Circe was a far cry from the elegant femininity of the rest of the academy, and yet the rough-hewn goat was also feminine in a way uniquely her own. Charlie couldn’t quite say why exactly, but the universe clearly agreed, despite her plain dress, bloodshot eyes and slightly tangled hair, because otherwise she wouldn’t be able to cast any spells. Wasn’t that how it worked?

“As you people have probably noticed, by now, magic flows through femininity. And before any of you ask about Charlie there, please look at yourself in the mirror first and start getting insecure about how much of a girl you are, so we can get your tedious character arcs out of the way. We’re all as feminine as we want to be, some things just make the magic flow more easily.”

She paused, muttered a few words, and a glass of red wine – or so it looked – appeared in her hand. “Hair of the dog, sorry. I’m going to throw up if I don’t. Less booze next time, promise.”

Circe downed the wine in an instant and immediately looked much better. Alcoholism was a disease for sure, but at the same time, if Charlie understood how anything worked here, she could just use magic to prevent all the ill effects… except the hangover, apparently. He couldn’t feel too sorry for her. Maybe it was some kind of self-flagellation over her crush on the headmistress.

That, Charlie couldn’t really blame her for. The mink was stunning, but probably a little too old for him. Probably centuries too old, given the whole magical-realm-without-regular-earth-time thing.

“Okay. So, yes. Femininity allows magic to flow. And purely masculine men are incapable of it. Then again, they’re kind of amazing physically, so it evens out, basically. And they don’t get pregnant. And most women don’t learn magic no matter how feminine, because you also need a spark. Men can have the spark, but their natural masculinity mutes it while also making them strong and enduring. So really, it evens out, and we’ll allow no sexism here.”

Tai raised her scaly hand again. “What’s ‘the spark’?” she asked.

“It’s hard to describe. The ability to move or think across reality rather than along it might be a way to describe it. Somewhere between a vivid imagination and a desire to always take an impossible road,” the goat mused, a little more socially graceful now that she’d had her drink. “If you’ve ever felt like you should naturally be able to be anywhere and everywhere at once, that you shouldn’t be hindered by walls or the length of your sorry bones, that’s the spark.”

Charlie thought about it for a moment. Had he felt like that? Maybe. In a dream, though, certainly not in real life.

“And then, femininity is what allows you to channel that spark. That’s why men can’t do magic, but Charlie there can.”

All of the dozen or so girls turned to look at him, and Charlie wanted to disappear, die, or maybe move diagonally through space into an alternative dimension.

“And remember what I said earlier. If you start judging her, you’ll be judging each other, and then yourself. Don’t do it,” the goat cautioned. “She has a feminine spirit, regardless of any exterior, and ultimately that’s what matters. The external accoutrements are just additional lube, basically.”

She seemed to be increasingly drunk, and her metaphors seemed to get increasingly horny the more drunk she got. But that was just how Circe did things, it seemed.

Someone else spoke up. “So, the more girly we dress, the stronger our magic?”

“Not exactly,” the goat replied. “There are limits. And you have to express your own femininity. Gods know if I tried putting on a frilly dress, I’d not be able to get my magic wand up at all. But a sleek, black piece? Now we’re talking.”

She was, coincidentally, wearing a sleek black dress that hugged her modest curves tightly. It shimmered like silk, or maybe even more so. Some sort of magical fabric, no doubt, but still quite… flattering, Charlie thought.

Then again, he was dressed in a rather feminine and flattering school uniform, too. He tried not to think about it, nor the fact that he could feel the breeze against his decided un-feminine boxers.

“Got it?” Circe asked. “I’m not going to quiz you on that. If you don’t remember those two basic facts, you fail. Now, let’s do some practice. Each of you; cast a spell.”

“What spell?” asked a… Charlie squinted. A peacock, though with distinctly male plumage. Was she transgendered, then, or had she used magic to wear the more colorful plumage of male peacocks? And if so, wasn’t that more masculine?

“Any. Go,” the goat commanded. “Target me if you’d like.”

With a somewhat confused look, the peacock raised her arms and spoke a few words that sounded like an echo in a cave. A small spark appeared at her fingertips. And then it flashed out of existence like a miniature supernova. The peacock gave a pained yelp as the dying spark singed her hand.

“And here’s our lesson for those of you that, like Ms. Cock here, apparently didn’t hear it the first time. Masculinity impedes magic. So, I don’t care how fancy your plumage is, you chose to wear male feathers. And now you’ll need someone else to magic them off you because you’re completely useless. Go see the school nurse,” Circe growled.

Well, that was unfortunate. But at least, that had demonstrated the effect of masculinity on magic for Charlie. Not that he had any idea what clothing was sufficiently feminine. The only thing he knew was that apparently, male peacock feathers didn’t count, no matter how pretty they were. He raised a hand, himself.

“Yes, wolf?” Circe asked while the peacock shuffled out of the room, embarrassed for several reasons. Charlie briefly considered that he didn’t even know what a female peacock looked like, but he guessed they’d be brown rather than the brilliant green and blue.

“What determines what clothing… or like, style in general, is feminine?” he asked.

“We do, as a collective subconscious mind,” Circe chuckled. She took another sip of the wine, presumably working on her most unprofessional day at work ever. “We all have our inner thoughts on what exactly it means to be feminine. Some can see through them, mages mostly, but most people cannot.”

She paused, looking over the eleven remaining girls. “This is actually a rather interesting topic. Look at my dress, for example. You would all agree that it’s feminine, yes?”

The class nodded as one, Charlie included.

“Why?” she asked.

“Um, because it hugs your… tits?” the lizard, Tai, suggested.

“No, men can and wear tight clothes, and often do. Have you ever seen professional wrestling? They wear the tightest shit, and I’d really like to be sandwiched between two…” she explained, and then trailed off again, clearly fantasizing about the possibility. “Anyone else?”

“Because it’s a dress?” a leopard spoke up.

“Have you ever read a fantasy novel? The male wizards wear dresses all the time, they just call them robes,” Circe sighed. “Is anybody here even listening to what I’m saying?”

Finally, Charlie raised his hand again. Circe nodded, and he spoke. “Well, didn’t you just say that it’s basically just social consensus? So, if enough people think something is feminine, it is?”

“Correct! Thank the gods, at least we have someone with her ears open. And see, girls, this is why you don’t judge a book by its cover. How about you cast a spell for us, Charlie?” the goat suggested.

Oh, fuck. This part.

“Um, let me try…”

He visualized something nice. An ice cream cone. That’d do. He’d dreamt of it once as a kid, that he held out of his hand and an ice cream cone manifested in it. The memory had never really left his mind, so it came to him easily, girl or not. At first, he had to squeeze his eyes shut and force the image, but then, suddenly, it felt like a dam breaking, and he was totally awash in sensations, like a river was flowing through him, and he could see the ice cream in his hand.

And then as he opened his eyes, it was there, except it wasn’t a cone, but a popsicle, and instead of ice cream, it was ice. And the wooden part was just a twig, like one picked up off the ground. He was holding a stick with some clear ice on it.

“That’s an interesting creation,” Circe smirked with some bemusement. “It takes time to align the will and the spark, but still, you managed to create something. Like a popsicle for a very poor child, I suppose. Not too unlike the ice cream that you imagined, at least in principle. Now, for the rest of you…”

To Charlie’s great surprise, most of the other girls faltered, unable to create anything solid. One managed to create electric sparks that seemed to hurt her. Another, a splash of water. Tai was the exception, and her scales seemed to shine a proud and vibrant green as a honeycomb appeared in her hand.

The small swarm of bees that came with it was another issue, but Circe was quick to banish them before anyone got stung,

“And here’s another thing. Be precise. If you imagine honeycomb, fucking banish the bees from your mind or they’ll come with it. If you imagine a candle, focus on not imagining something else catching fire, or god forbid, a birthday cake. You’ll be cleaning up these messes yourself very soon,” the goat explained. “The next class is going to be transfiguration, so you’ll get to experience the consequences of wandering thoughts in a very personal away, ladies. And maybe you can try to attain a more feminine form, Charlie.”

“Do I have to?” he asked before thinking, and immediately regretted opening his mouth.

“No. But I recommend giving it a try. If we’re right about you – and we are – you might just find yourself enjoying it. Class dismissed.”

Circle raised the bottle of wine that she had originally poured from to her lips and drank from it directly, while the students slowly made their way outside again, back into the elaborate castle. Or whatever it was. Charlie really wasn’t sure if the castle even existed given that it apparently had indoor-outdoor forest clearings.

But just as he left the forest, someone tapped him on the shoulders. Tai, the lizard from earlier, looked at him expectantly, with her multicolored scales a rather curious mixture of gold and red, whatever that meant. Perhaps she had some chameleon in her, though she looked more like a cross between an iguana and some kind of predatory dinosaur.

“Hey,” she said, with the same fluency as someone reading out loud from paper, only to immediately break into nervous rambling. “I was wondering if you… well, um, I’m really into guys, right, and you have the body of one for right now, and I wonder if…”

“Hi. Um, sure. But I’m not sure if I actually am a man, given what everyone’s saying,” Charlie replied. “You know, with the whole…”

“Yeah, I know, but it’s just that… you look enough like one – please don’t be offended – and it’s mating season for my species right now, so if you could – please, I can’t focus – maybe just fuck me? Real rough-like?”

She turned almost pink as she said that. But that was the first time since arriving here that Charlie had snapped out of that ethereal, cerebral trance that seeing every impossible sight had put him in, instead defaulting to a far more average emotion. Something that he was very familiar with, and that he had almost given up expecting to experience.

“Sure, if you’re sure want me to,” he smiled.

“Oh, thank god. Let’s use that beautiful cock while you still got it. Not that you can’t keep it as a girl but – you know what I mean – it’s like… part of the… let’s go,” Tai stuttered and stumbled over her few last attempts at phrasing something, and then took Charlie’s hand.

She was so warm to the touch that the wolf wondered if she was actually a rare warm-blooded lizard, or if it was because she was in their equivalent of a heat. But he wasn’t going to think about that too closely with his sheath already excitedly swelling under his skirt. It didn’t seem like the school had any kind of rules against students having sex, and he quickly realized that frankly, he could use the relief himself. He was feeling very pent up, actually, and had simply ignored or suppressed that feeling to not creep out everyone else.

But maybe that wasn’t a thing for wizards. Wizardesses? Witches? Witch didn’t sound right. Charlie settled for mages.

Tai led him down the winding corridors, somehow knowing exactly where to go. It’d take Charlie a little longer, but maybe lizards were simply more visual creatures. To him, the corridors looked rather identical, and it felt like they only led him where he wanted to go rather than where they really went. Either that, or it was the opposite. He wasn’t quite sure yet.

Finally, she tapped a solid stone wall, and a door appeared in a blur of realities blending. Charlie didn’t even blink.

“They were out of rooms, so they repurposed this storage unit that, um, had once contained something secret and forbidden,” she explained, with a somewhat awkward tilt to her voice. “I was the last to arrive this year. And the room is pretty cozy and not haunted at all.”

Charlie wasn’t going to question that either. Those age-old and rather familiar instincts of lust – he wasn’t sure if they were masculine or not – were growing and growing in anticipation, so once he stepped through the concealed door and into Tai’s little closet-room, he was more than ready to get started. The desire came over him like a warm, rushing wave.

And then Tai turned around and squeezed his cock the moment the door disappeared. “Thank fuck, I need this so badly. Everyone being a girl is great and all but… fuck,” she repeated, feeling the wolf’s firm shaft pulse in her hand and reacting with a delighted shiver.

She tore off the thin top she was wearing, revealing a pair of scaled but beautiful breasts, and she pulled Charlie’s hands onto them. He took the offer and squeezed gently, kneading Tai’s breasts while she moaned happily.

With the both of them wearing skirts, the rest was easy. They were quickly pulled up, and underwear similarly pulled down or aside. Charlie’s thick lupine shaft sprung free, and Tai gasped, her hand instinctively diving down to grasp it, and the other to tug Charlie’s hand down, in turn, to her soaking wet slit.

She really was drenched, and feeling her like that gave Charlie another rush of confident desire. The lizard caught him in a passionate kiss and the two stumbled towards her bed. From that moment on, it was all raw, very mundane and very carnal lust. No magic, just the beautiful wonder of biology. He ended up atop her, and she wrapped her legs around his haunches with breathless, passionate abandon. Charlie barely had time to angle himself before Tai squeezed and forced his cock into that hot, wet furnace between her legs.

He gasped at the sheer intensity of it. He wasn’t totally new to the feeling of a welcoming pussy squeezing his cock, but he was new enough that it felt like heaven. If it ever stopped feeling like heaven. He didn’t care, not when every inch of him was being squeezed at once by her wetness and heat.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” Tai squealed, already rocking herself against Charlie’s cock eagerly. She was deep in whatever heat had struck her, and in that state, the wolf couldn’t even dream of denying her. Without thinking about any risks or consequences, he began to fuck her properly, letting instinct guide his hips as he pushed deep into her clenching sex. It was almost like a convulsion, urging him to thrust deeper and deeper, and to stay there in that warm bliss, only reluctantly allowing him to pull out so that he could thrust again.

He worked up a steady rhythm. Beyond that rhythm, their mating was wild and uncontrolled, as they both eagerly fucked out all the frustrations that had been building up during their two days at the academy. The uncertain and mysterious could fuck right off for now_,_ all that mattered right now was their wet and messy union, and the pleasure that was roiling in both of their loins as they raced, aggressively, towards an even messier – and unprotected – climax. Neither cared about that. All they cared about was release and relief, and in just a few minutes, Charlie’s rough thrusts had brought them to that point.

“I’m- f-fuck, I’m not gonna last,” the wolf grunted, all of that temporary pretense of politeness and arcane thoughtfulness burned away by the fires of lust.

“Don’t… don’t you dare stop,” Tai whimpered. Her hand was on her clit, rubbing it feverishly as Charlie thrust into her.

Well, he wasn’t going to. There was just the little matter of his impending orgasm. It didn’t really occur to him that they weren’t using any kind of protection, though it still felt polite to ask.

“C-can I cum inside- mmh!” Charlie tried to ask, only to be silenced by another kiss from the lizard. This time, her long tongue snuck into his mouth to coil around his own. She, like any reptile in mating season, wasn’t about to let her mate even consider pulling out.

Well, not consciously. Not in the heat of the moment.

Charlie placed his hands on her shoulders and pinned her against the bed as he sped up, rutting her faster and faster, both of them equally taking out their frustrations and insecurities on each other in the most pleasant of ways. But that squeezing, wet, tugging sensation of her fertile pussy around him was impossible to resist for long, the sheer ecstasy of the situation ironically cutting it short.

Her legs were like iron around his hips, holding him inside her and never letting him fully slip out, not even when his thrusts grew more erratic and clumsier as his orgasm neared. Yet, he was very much caught in the heat of the moment, too, and as such, it was nature itself that decided how their frenzied union would end.

Between one rough, sharp thrust and the next, his knot was suddenly swollen enough that it wouldn’t leave her body. Tai wailed in bliss as she felt it tug at her entrance, and Charlie gave a choked cry of pleasure feeling her squeeze around it. The sensation was incredible, as it was to any canine, regardless of any notions of gender. It was, after all, designed to push them over the edge, and it did just that.

He howled – thankfully, the howl was silenced by the secret room’s enchanted walls – and came. Just as that first euphoric pulse went through his cock, feeling like relief and bliss, there was a brief consideration of the more mundane matters: fertility, protection, consequences. Yet, the very next throb silenced all doubt that he was doing the right thing, the flood of chemical rewards washing over his brain ensuring that he nudged his cock as deep as it’d go as he filled the lizard to the very brim.

She received his seed with equal joy and just as little – or even less – thought of the consequences. It was the only way a rough, animalistic mating could end, wasn’t it? She was meant to receive it. That’s why mating season existed. Any kind of protection would’ve only spoiled it, and the bliss that she in turn felt was indescribable. Each heavy pulse of rich, virile sperm inside her immediately soothed her heat while also prolonging her orgasm, ensuring that she kept milking the wonderful cock inside her, and that her cervix kept dipping into the risky mess of his cum pooling inside her.

And then it was over, as if the moment had never existed at all. Tied to Tai as Charlie was, they had little choice but to cuddle up in bed, both newly minted lovers dazed and half asleep in the intense afterglow. Despite being in a chilly, enclosed room, it felt like basking in the warmth of the sun itself.

“You are on the pill, right?” Charlie finally asked. “Or like, some kinda spell.”

Tai’s eyes remained closed while she, in her dizzy state, tried and failed to process what the wolf had actually asked. It didn’t really mean anything to her right then and there; only the feeling of his knot and that sticky warmth inside her did. Charlie took that as an affirmative and relaxed on top of and inside her, letting that errant worry drift away.

If there were any consequences, then surely, they could just fix them with magic anyway. That was what they were learning, wasn’t it?

But he did notice something else. He felt a little lighter, a little softer yet again. As if he had… Charlie closed his eyes, too. As if he had somehow lost some of his masculinity while fucking the lizard. Yes, it was unmistakable. He had lost some muscle, and his fur was softer. His chest felt tender, though it remained flat.

Oddly, he didn’t feel too worried about that. It almost felt like everything he did he gradually feminized him, but magic could fix it, wouldn’t it? Besides, maybe being a girl wouldn’t be that bad anyway. Tai certainly seemed to enjoy it. And he felt too tired to care, right now. Yeah, he had only woken up a few hours ago, but somehow the sex had utterly drained him.

He thought no more of the matter before falling fast asleep in Tai’s arms for a warm afternoon nap, with his cock and still-warm seed safely trapped inside her.