Powers
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

She just walked up to me. She must have seen that I was a guy out of place. I sure felt that way, that afternoon. My girlfriend at the time dragged me along to that “convention” – I forget the name of it. It was about spiritual stuff, like meditation, incense, crystals, whatever. She was at some stall talking with some woman about some kind of nonsense.

A woman approached me - she was big, I mean tall and athletic looking, taller than me, shoulder length dark hair and a square face, big, dark, captivating eyes.

“I could feel your spirit from across the room,” she said.

Here we go. I braced myself for the bullshit, but hey, I wasn’t talking to anyone else. So, I said, with pretended interest: “Really?”

“You are special,” she said. “Do you feel it?”

“I guess everybody thinks of themself as special.”

“I know what you are thinking,” she said, in a good, humored way. “You think this is funny. That’s OK, but I am serious. You could have the same powers that I have.”

“So what powers are those?”

“I have the power to enter the minds of others,” she said. “I can prove it to you.”

It seemed that my day was looking up. This was an attractive sexy woman engaging me in an interesting conversation at what was otherwise a very boring event. I decided to run a test.

“So, what am I thinking about now?”

“You’re thinking about your underwear. The Batman boxer shorts. And now you are going to show them to me.”

How could she know that? I am not sure how many people really experience what I felt in that moment. Even if you have spent your life believing in logic, you don’t immediately think about a rational but far-fetched explanation, like she is stalking me and spied me getting dressed that morning. You just feel that there is something very strange going on. Then it very quickly got even stranger. My jeans were around my ankles. I was standing in a busy concourse outside the main auditorium, with stalls and displays and maybe 200 people, and I had just unbelted and dropped my pants.

She was smiling. I reached down and pulled up my pants. I was so embarrassed that spontaneous human combustion seemed the only way out. It would have been just as unlikely.

“Who are you?” I asked in disbelief. Some people around me were still staring and giggling as I buckled my belt.

“My name is Fianna”, she said. “I am a wiccan. Do you know what that is?”

“No,” I said. Now my mind was beginning to search for an explanation. But nothing seemed as simple as acknowledging that this woman had been able to read my mind then exert some kind of mind control to make me do something so clearly embarrassing.

“I come from a long family tradition of wiccans, and some of us have this gift. And some outside the blood and the traditions of our beliefs may have this gift too. I come to this convention every year looking for those people, because sometimes it is manifested in those who themselves are open to things beyond understanding.”

“I am not here for that stuff,” I said. “I am here with a friend.”

“I know,” she said. “But yet you could have the potential to do what I can do. And I can prove that to you as well.”

A part of me wanted to walk away right then. What had just happened was so weird that it was scary. But curiosity was stronger than fear.

“Ok,” I said. “Just leave my pants alone.”

“Fair enough”, she said. “What about that guy over there? Look over at him, and I will stand behind you. I said that you could have these powers, but there is an obstruction. These powers can only be exercised by a woman.”

“So how are you going to give me this power?”

Standing behind and in contact with me, she put her arms in front of me and touched my chest. She must have been on her tip toes because I could feel her chin on top of my head.

“For this moment, you are a woman,” she said. “I am holding your breasts.”

Remember that I had already had two of the weirdest experiences of my life in just the last minute or two, but this was a whole new level. I dared not look down, but I could feel breasts on my chest with her cupping them. And I felt so different. It is hard to describe exactly how, but it was a very pleasant feeling. “Pleasant” is the right word, or maybe “comfortable” – like not a high, but more just a sense that this was the way I should be.

“Oh,” I said. But the voice was not mine. It was a girl’s voice, and a girlish gasp.

“What is that man thinking?” she asked. “What would you like him to do?”

And I knew. It was not like a disembodied voice expressing his thoughts. He was looking at a small child and his thoughts were sexual. The man was a pervert. His thoughts were in my head. Not as if they were my thoughts, but real. Could I make him drop his pants? Fianna would expect that. And it wasn’t enough. I knew what he had to do. Right in front of both of us the man turned around, walked to a concrete column and bashed his head against with such force that he knocked himself unconscious with one blow.

Her hands lifted from my chest and the breasts were gone. I felt deflated. Not just because I felt the power, whatever that was, drain out of me in a single second, but because I was returning to myself, a man without purpose, as I now realized.

“You have a lot to think about,” she said. “You can call me or email me.” She gave me a business card. It had a 5 pointed star in the background, an email address and a cellphone number on the bottom, and across the middle her name: “Fianna X”.

“What does the X stand for?” I asked.

“Anonymity,” she said.

“How could I have these powers if only women can use them? I am a guy.”

As she walked away, she said: “So was I, once.”

Seeing her walk with those long shapely legs and those broad shoulders, it only dawned on me for the first time that Fianna was, or used to be, a man.

And I was left standing there. Wondering whether it had been real.

Some wise guy walked past me and said: “Love those boxer shorts, Man.” So, he had confirmed that had happened, because I was beginning to wonder if the whole last half hour had been a weird dream. Was the guy who had knocked himself out an actor? Part of a complicated trick? Was there a hidden camera to film my response? I walked towards him as the paramedics arrived. This was real. I know the smell of real blood.

And in my hand, I was holding her card. Holding on to it tightly, as if I needed to in order to stay sane.

What was I supposed to do?

Somebody who knew my girlfriend told her about the awkward incident and she hurried over, with a scowl if not the words - “What are you doing embarrassing me like that?” But she was looking at the man, the pervert, slowly regaining consciousness.

In profile she looked distinctly unattractive. Had I ever looked at her in profile? Perhaps we should do that before we give our heart away to a prospective partner. It made me wonder what I was doing with her. She had been talking about the day I would propose. She had a life mapped out for me and we had only been together for six months. What kind of a dull life would that be?

Compare that existence to a life that could be spent exercising these powers that I might have inside me. Perhaps I could use them to do good things – to rid the people of perverts, to detect crimes before they happened and hold back the hands that might kill. What would it be like to have a superpower? Doesn’t everybody wonder?

It was the only thing I could think of – the rest of that day and the day after.

How can you even do anything knowing that you could have a power like that, if only you chose to seize it? What would somebody else sacrifice to have powers like that?

Despite the fact that these thoughts kept me awake at nights and distracted me from my work during the day, I left it four days before I called her – Fianna X.

“You will have to tell me,” she said. “I cannot know your mind down a phone line. It requires physical proximity. We are talking about forces of nature that exist in many species, that govern a flock of birds in flight, or a school of fish, that allow a creature to know that somebody is beside them or behind them, and how they will move, without using the senses. We all share a consciousness, but only special women can use it.”

“And women include men who appear to be women?”

“People who have put aside their maleness forever and taken on lives as women, are women,” she said. “My sister Ariana and I both did that. We both have powers.”

Was she talking about surgery? Did she have female genitals created through modern medicine? Did she mean that castration was needed to let these powers loose?

“So, what do you do with these powers?” I was asking the question without reservations even though I felt that I valued my male body, such as it was.

“We do good in the world,” she said. “We cannot solve all problems, but we learn what is good and we do what we can to make it so. It can be the greatest joy, when you look back after doing things right. You need to accept that you cannot do everything, and sometimes the actions that you take will not work as you intended, but what you can do, can make a difference.”

“I want to do good things,” I said. I meant it. I was a good person. People like that see all that is wrong and regret that there is nothing that they can do about it.

“It would mean leaving this life behind and becoming somebody else,” she said.

“Leaving what I have behind is not the problem, but becoming a woman, if that is what you are talking about, is impossible. I am not gay, or a crossdresser or anything like that.”

“You would not have this gift if you did not have a female spirit. You just need to free it. A few years ago, I was about as masculine as you could get, strong and even playing college football. But when I accepted the spirit, I discovered that I was not pretending to be a woman – I was one.”

“It’s too big a step,” I complained. “What if it doesn’t work? I would be a dickless dude with nobody to be with, and nothing to do with my life.”

“That would never happen,” she said. “But I understand your reticence. Men put a high value on their genitals. If you decide that it is too great a price to pay, then you can choose to walk away from your destiny. There will be regret, but many sad people live lives of regret. You would simply be one of many.”

We exchanged a few more words before the call ended, but what she had said about regret stuck in my mind. If I did not take this opportunity, would I rue it for the rest of my life?

I decided to look into the transgender experience. I wanted to understand whether a man could live happily as a woman, and there were more stories to reassure than to dissuade me. But these were people who were mentally female, and I was not like that. Or was I? I started to think about those few moments, maybe only 30 seconds with Fianna cupping my breasts, when I was female, or seemed to be. And how did I feel in that brief snatch of time? I felt comfortable.

It was not a thrill, or a delight, I just felt at home in that existence.

My girlfriend found what I was looking into online, and grilled me.

“I am just exploring,” I explained. “Do you think that there is anything feminine about me? Could I be female deep down inside?”

She was always talking about “Finding oneself” or “being in touch with our internal spirit” and all that stuff, but the suggestion that her boyfriend might be having transgender thoughts sent her right off the deep end. She said: “After all this time are you trying to tell me that you are a fag?”

I walked out. Not for good. I just needed some time and space.

But I called Fianna again: “I may have just broken up with my girlfriend,” I said. “I may be ready to move to the next phase. But for now, I have nowhere to go.”

“I am staying locally,” she said. “We can make room for you too.”

So, I moved in with Fianna and her sister Ariana. It was not that I was ready to go as far as they had gone. I had resolved within myself that before I did anything drastic, I would seek professional advice – I was guessing that would be medical or psychiatric advice. It was just that what had happened to me at that convention had shaken my understanding of the world, and I needed to understand a new reality. It seemed that Fianna and Ariana might have the answers.

It was not that I needed to hand over my testicles at the door on entry, but I was told that there were rules that needed to be followed in their home, and it meant that certain distinctly masculine behavioral traits were forbidden. Male clothes were to be avoided, toileting while standing was not allowed, body and facial hair should be plucked rather than shaved, displays of aggression should not be permitted without justification. These were all things that I could comply with.

I still went to work as a man in the first few months I lived with them. It was simply a question of slipping off my feminine garments and putting on masculine clothes just before I stepped outside. But Fianna said that in order to win the powers I would need to change things. She suggested that I might advise my employer of an intention to present as female from some date, or I could leave that job and find a feminine occupation.

I found a job working in a florist shop, where I could dress as a woman, start taking the drugs that would block male chemistry and start on the hormones that would open my innate femininity. At the same time flowers would help me to understand my new connection with the natural world, which was explained to me, was the key to my growing powers.

The important thing to know was that I was surrendering myself, body and soul, to the sacred feminine. Some might call it a religion, replacing the patriarchy of the Christian God with a matriarchy arising from a goddess – a goddess who has been known by many names, such as Isis, Astarte, Athena and Demeter. But the sacred feminine is not a divine being but a spiritual idea based on birth and sustenance, both of which lie with women. In all cultures the mother is the earth and the father is the sky; the woman is the natural world and the man is whatever is above the natural world. I was beginning to understand that the female sex was where I truly belonged.

I relished the changes in my body. As my body softened and my breasts grew I felt joyous, even as I realized that only months before such things would have horrified me. All that I knew was that I was becoming somebody very different from who I was – somebody with a deeper understanding of everything, somebody linked directly to nature itself, somebody who could present to the world as a beautiful creature, and somebody with developing powers that could do great things.

Fianna and Ariana were good teachers. I learned from them how to dress and style my growing hair, how to wear makeup and how to appear to anybody as if I was a woman and had always been one. It came to the point that the only stopping me from truly becoming a woman, was what was between my legs. It simply had to go.

I kept my promise to myself and I went to see a psychologist specializing in gender issues. I wanted to be honest with her, but I thought that the whole supernatural thing might see her make the wrong assessment. So, I told her that my sense of being of the feminine gender in my soul and being in the wrong body had not existed when I was young – it was a relatively recently acquired conviction.

“Gender dysphoria has been known to be acquired through brain trauma, but generally we search for it having always been present, and perhaps suppressed,” she said.

“I have no recollection of feeling this way as a child,” I said, truthfully.

“But now you feel the only answer is surgical intervention?” she asked. “It is drastic and irreversible. You need to be very sure.”

She approved me for the surgery and Fianna and Ariana already had a surgeon lined up. They said that he had operated on both of them and they had working vaginas with full feeling. All traces of male organs had been removed and they now function on all levels, as women. I was excited to be joining them at last.

I happily paid the money, accepted the anesthetic and woke up female. I was in some discomfort for a while but with the support of my two sisters in womanhood, I quickly recovered. I was fascinated with my new anatomy and I could not wait to put it to use, but there was healing to be allowed for, and the initial use of the dilation tools was painful.

Ariana helped me to come to my first female orgasm. She said that this was the event that truly marked me as a woman. My powers would be present, although like all other abilities, they would improve through use. It was time for me to leave the florist shop and join Fianna and Ariana in their business helping women to achieve better spiritual lives and dealing with undesirables – mainly men.

I suppose that is how I expected that my life would be after that point. I was a part of a community of women helping women. Men were largely (but not exclusively) the enemy, sexual pleasure was generated by myself or by other women, and presentation as attractive women was always about bringing beauty to the world rather than attracting men. Why would I want to do that? I had always been attracted to women and now that I was one, why would that change?

Then Roderick Lane came into my life.

I was drawn to Rod in a way that I didn’t really understand. I thought that it was a personality thing, where you find somebody interesting, so you seek out their company. When I suddenly realized that it wasn’t – when I started thinking about him naked, it suddenly seemed very wrong … almost like betrayal of my principles.

I decided that I should tell Roderick that I had been born a man – that would put an end to things. It certainly stopped the conversation over our quiet dinner for two. In his obvious confusion I decided that it was a good time to leave him. I apologized for wasting his time and I left.

The crazy thing was that the moment I had done that I was overcome with grief and regret. I found myself sobbing like a schoolgirl. I tried to tell myself that I could not be in love with a man – that would be impossible. But if not that, what were my feelings? Whatever they were, they should end because it was done, and he was gone – or so I thought.

Rod called me that following day. He asked me whether I would go out with him again “by way of a fresh start”. In that moment, there was no way that I was going to refuse that.

I remember that I made an extra effort that night to look really good. Fianna noticed and asked me directly who I was meeting up with that night, assuming that I was meeting with a female client. I had to admit that it was a man.

“We have invested a huge amount of time in your development,” she said. “I would not wish to see it go to waste. Masculine presence will not help you with your powers. Be careful that this does not become something serious.”

I think that even then I knew that it had become serious. That evening confirmed it. Rod explained that he already had a family so “infertility” did not matter to him. He just wanted confirmation that I was truly a woman “down there”.

I knew that this was not a question that any transwoman likes to be asked. It is a deeply personal inquiry and it sounds demeaning even if it is not intended to be. If it had been anybody other than Rod asked it, I might well have been furious. But it seemed to me that he was entitled to be personal – he was entitled to ask.

“Why don’t you ask me around to your place and you can find out?” I found myself saying those words in a tone that was outrageously flirtatious. But he smiled and I smiled back. He could not wait to get the check and whisk me out of there.

We made love that night and I knew then that my life was to lurch off in another new direction. It was not that I did not believe in what I was doing in developing as a woman with the power to change things and make the world a better place, it was just that I suddenly realized that it was more important to me that I make this man happy.

I had to explain my living arrangements and without hesitation Rod said that I should move in with him the very next day.

Fianna and Ariana were very disappointed with me. They said that I had real potential and that I was throwing it all away.

“What about your powers?” Fianna said. “What about the sacred feminine? You shouldn’t surrender to the patriarchy.”

Maybe they are right. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe my powers just aren’t developed enough. Or maybe the power of love is just stronger.

The End

© Maryanne Peters 2026

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Author’s Note: Some time ago there was a thread on Fictionmania’s message board discussing why a non-TG person might choose to change sex. I had already covered in a story or two already written, but not the suggestion that the acquiring amazing super powers meant that he had to turn into a woman. So this takes up that challenge but refers back to the characters in my story “Witches” (follow the link: Witches) which was not quite the same because it was more about family and faith. I have to say that I had real fun with that story because it involved inventing a belief system that is a bit wiccan and a bit “The White Goddess” / “The Golden Bough” / the sacred feminine. This is more about the adjustment to a new gender.
Maryanne