Daughter of the Lost Moon

A Rebirth LitRPG Romance Novel

Chapter 1 - The Thread Severed

By Gail Rose Landers

System Quest Series

Daughter of the Lost Moon Copyright © 2025 by Gail Rose Landers. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: The Thread Severed

The rain had finally stopped by the time Jamie pushed open the bar’s glass door, but the city still gleamed like it hadn’t decided whether to drown or shine.

Cold air hit her first, the lingering smell of fryer oil and spilled beer giving way to wet pavement and exhaust. Neon bled into puddles along the sidewalk—pink and electric blue rippling under her boots as she stepped out. Her reflection fractured there: a tall woman in a thrift‑store pea coat the color of storm clouds, cheap but carefully chosen; a knee‑length black skirt swaying around her legs; tights with a faint ladder near her left knee that she’d pretended not to notice in the restroom mirror.

The gold hoops in her ears—the ones Elaine had called “perfectly dramatic”—caught a streetlamp’s light. Jamie’s hand rose to touch one, fingertips lingering like she could still feel Elaine’s warm laughter across the table.

“Those are gorgeous, Jamie. They suit you.”

The memory sat on her shoulders like a borrowed shawl—light, fragile, shockingly warm.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the ends still damp from the drizzle. Six months on hormones had softened the edges of her face, blurred jaw into cheek. The bar’s bathroom mirror had been unkind under fluorescent light, but tonight, with the city smudged and glowing, she could almost believe the outline matched the girl she held inside.

Almost.

She adjusted her purse strap—fake leather, worn at the corners—and started down the block. The heels of her ankle boots made a small, determined sound on the wet concrete. Not quite a click, not quite a thud. Something in between.

The office tower she’d left behind rose like a dark monolith at her back, windows mostly dead except for a few rectangles of light on the upper floors. Someone was probably still arguing about quarterly projections up there. Tonight, she’d chosen elsewhere.

At the bar, they’d said her name without hesitation.

Jamie, over here!
Jamie, your turn at darts.
Jamie, you have to try these fries.

Her name. Not a stumble, not a correction, not a smirk disguised as a joke. Just… Jamie.

Her phone buzzed in her purse. She dug for it with cold fingers, pulling it free long enough to see the group chat’s latest messages.

Elaine: You get home safe, okay? Text me when you’re in.

Another coworker had added a string of rainbow hearts. She watched the messages blur slightly as her breath fogged in the chill, then typed with thumbs gone clumsy from the cold.

On my way. You’re all the best. :)

She hesitated over the emoji, then hit send anyway.

A bus roared past, spraying her calves with a fine mist. She flinched instinctively, then laughed under her breath at herself. City nights weren’t gentle; they never had been. But they were hers now in a way they hadn’t been before. The skirt against her thighs, the weight of her purse, the ghost of eyeliner smudged at the edges of her vision—small things, ridiculous things, but real.

At the corner, she passed the old stone church with its heavy wooden doors shut tight for the evening. A single stained‑glass window glowed faintly, an angel in cobalt and gold pouring out light onto the sidewalk. Water pooled below it, catching the colors and throwing them back in distorted ripples.

Jamie slowed without meaning to. The angel’s face was kind in that generic, beatific way sacred art tended to be. A plaque near the steps announced service times and a charity drive.

She’d once stood on these steps at sixteen, shoulders hunched in her father’s too‑big jacket, listening to a pastor talk about “order” and “design” and “living in truth.” Back then, she’d thought truth meant swallowing herself until she disappeared.

Now, she watched the window’s colors flicker in the water and thought, If there’s a god up there, she’s got terrible taste in allies.

A gust of wind cut down the street, tugging at her coat. She shivered, hugging it closer. Somewhere above the low clouds, the moon had to be watching. It always had.

If it cared, it didn’t say.

She crossed against a blinking red hand as traffic slept. A lone car idled at the light, bass thumping faintly. The driver didn’t look at her. That felt like a blessing.

By the time she turned onto her street—narrow, lined with brick row houses that wore their age like shrugging shoulders—her shoulders had loosened. The smell shifted to wet dirt and laundry venting from basement windows. Her building loomed three doors down, paint peeling, mailbox slots taped with names no one bothered to update.

Jamie’s boots slowed.

She wasn’t thinking about danger. Not yet. The worry in her chest was smaller, pettier: a landlord’s voicemail about rent due next week, an upcoming HR meeting about insurance coverage she’d spent days rehearsing replies for. Her hand slipped into her coat pocket, fingertips worrying the folded index card where she’d written questions about coverage, about name changes on forms that refused to update.

“Look it up in the benefits portal,” HR had said last time, eyes already sliding past her.

She’d looked. The portal didn’t know what to do with someone like her either.

Her breath steamed in the air as she reached her building’s stoop. Yellow light from the vestibule spilled through frosted glass, painting a blurry rectangle on the sidewalk.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

Three sets, out of rhythm with the city’s background noise. Heavy, unhurried.

Her spine went rigid before she turned. Months of walking with keys between her fingers, of mapping streetlights automatically, of checking reflections in windows—all of it coalesced into a single, primal tightening.

“Hey, pretty boy.”

The voice came from the mouth of the alley beside her building. Casual, amused. Wrong.

Jamie turned slowly. Three shapes detached from the shadow: hoodies, denim, the glint of a chain around one neck. Their faces were ordinary. That made it worse.

“Where d’you think you’re going dressed like that?” the speaker asked. His eyes skimmed down her body and back up, snagging on her earrings.

Her purse strap creaked under her tightening grip. “Home,” Jamie said. Her voice didn’t shake. She was absurdly proud of that. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Should’ve thought of that before you decided to pretend,” another one said. There was no smirk, no joke. Just a flat certainty, like reading off a weather report. “This is our block. We don’t have to look at that.”

That.

Her heart pounded against her ribs. Somewhere distant, near the church, a siren wailed and faded. The vestibule light hummed behind her, a barrier made of thin glass and a lock that stuck half the time.

Jamie shifted her weight, just enough to angle toward the door. “I’m not hurting anyone.”

“You’re hurting the whole world,” the first man said. His hand flexed open and closed at his side. A silver crucifix glinted at his throat, catching the spill of light from the vestibule. “You people poison everything.”

Her mouth tasted like metal already, though no blow had landed. She could have argued. Could have said something about statistics, about actual harm, about who poisoned what. Instead, words caught on the image of that crucifix, on the memory of sermons about sin, about “loving correction.”

Behind the men, the alley’s darkness seemed to pool. For a heartbeat, the shadows on the brick wall twisted, forming something that wasn’t quite a shape. A suggestion of eyes without light. A prickle of cold skittered down Jamie’s spine, deeper than the November air.

Her skin crawled. She blinked. The bricks were just bricks again.

“Please,” she said. “Just let me go inside.”

They moved without speaking, the practiced efficiency of people who had done this before. One blocked the sidewalk to her left, another stepped between her and the street, the third drifting closer to the vestibule door like a careless coincidence.

Her pulse roared in her ears. Her hand, still in her coat pocket, tightened around the index card until it crumpled. HR questions seemed like props from a different play.

The first blow landed in her stomach.

Air left her in a sound she didn’t recognize. The concrete met her knees hard enough to send sparks up her thighs. Her purse slipped from her shoulder, skidding across the sidewalk; a lipstick clattered free and rolled to the curb, leaving a diagonal trail of deep red on the wet concrete.

“Look at me,” someone ordered.

She didn’t. She couldn’t. The second hit caught her at the temple, bright white exploding behind her eyes. The world tilted.

In the vestibule window, her reflection blurred—coat twisted, skirt askew, hair falling out of its careful clip. The gold hoop in her left ear flashed as her head snapped sideways.

Boots and fists became the weather: relentless, unavoidable. Pain arrived in bursts, then in waves, then in something that wasn’t quite either. Her body curled in on itself instinctively, arms wrapping around her ribs.

At the edge of her vision, the crucifix swung on its chain, pendulum‑steady.

She tried to crawl toward the steps. A foot caught her ribs and rolled her onto her back.

“Don’t,” she rasped. “Please. I just want to go home.”

One of them—she couldn’t see which anymore—leaned over her. His breath smelled like cheap beer and mint gum. “You don’t have a home. Not like this.”

The words didn’t even need the blows attached to them. They were familiar on their own.

Another kick. Somewhere in the flurry, her glasses cracked, spiderwebbing the world. Streetlights smeared into halos. The men’s faces became featureless smudges, except for their eyes and that cross.

Above them, the sky was just a dark ceiling. No stars. No moon.

The pain blurred. Distance opened. The concrete against her back became not‑quite‑solid. Each hit landed further away.

Her thoughts slipped sideways.

Not to anger. Not at first.

Not fair, she thought vaguely, like a child refusing to accept bedtime. I was just… starting.

Images rose unbidden, clear and sharp in a way the men’s features were not:
A white dress bookmarked on her phone she’d never had a reason to buy.
A nameless child’s warm weight in her arms, head tucked into her shoulder.
Elaine’s hand brushing hers in the bar when she’d laughed too hard at a joke.

She saw herself older, hair threaded with gray, sitting at a kitchen table in soft light, someone’s thumb smoothing a wrinkle from her forehead. It was a dream she’d visited often, fragile as spun sugar. Now it cracked.

A fist slammed into her jaw. Her teeth clicked together hard enough to taste blood and enamel. Her head snapped sideways; the world rotated ninety degrees.

She caught a final, skewed glimpse of one attacker’s face. Ordinary nose, pale stubble, a line of worry between his brows like he was working overtime. His expression wasn’t drunken rage. It was certainty. He might have been taking out the trash.

Behind him, for just a flicker, the alley’s shadows rearranged into something vast and patient. A silhouette loomed where no body stood, and dozens of thin, dark threads ran from it into the backs of the men’s necks like marionette strings.

Her breath hitched. Her fading mind struggled to make sense of it. The shadows smelled wrong for an instant—like burned paper and old resentment.

Then a boot connected with the side of her head, and everything else dropped away.

As consciousness slipped, the pain narrowed into a single, piercing ache that had nothing to do with broken ribs or swelling flesh.

I just wanted to be loved for who I am.

The thought didn’t feel like a protest. It felt like a confession.

The world went dark.

At first, she thought she’d closed her eyes and forgotten how to open them.

Then she realized she didn’t have eyes.

Jamie—whatever “Jamie” meant in this new context—floated in weightless silver mist. It curled around her in slow, luminous eddies, cool as moonlight and warm as breath. There was no up or down, no air in her lungs, yet she felt no need to gasp.

The city’s sounds were gone. No sirens, no distant traffic. Only a soft, omnipresent chime, like crystal glasses singing on the edge of hearing.

She waited for pain to catch up. It didn’t.

Am I dead?

The thought arrived without panic. She turned it over, curious, as if examining a stone in her palm.

“Yes and no,” answered a voice.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It slid through the mist, through her, gentle as water over skin.

“The thread of your first life has been severed,” the voice continued. “But threads can be rewoven.”

The mist parted.

She became aware of having a shape again—arms, hands, the outline of a self—and of facing someone.

The woman before her stood on nothing and everything. Her skin held the color of moonlight on water, not white, not silver, but something in between that shifted with the mist. Her hair fell in a cascade of starlight, each strand carrying faint constellations that moved as she did.

Her gown flowed around her like liquid night, studded with points of light that weren’t sewn on but embedded, as if she’d wrapped herself in a sleeve of the sky. When she moved, the stars moved with her, rearranging into unfamiliar patterns.

Jamie felt small and transparent under that gaze, but not in the way she had in HR meetings or under strangers’ scrutiny. This felt like standing near the ocean. Immense. Indifferent in scale, but not unkind.

“Who are you?” Jamie asked. Her voice sounded like herself, but clearer, as if no fear stuck to it.

“I am known by many names,” the woman said, smiling with her eyes as much as her mouth. “On your world, once, as Aphrodite. In other tongues, Venus, Ishtar. In the realm where I would take you, I am called Daya, Goddess of Love.”

Goddess of Love.

Jamie might have laughed if the word “goddess” hadn’t landed with the weight of absolute reality. The mist itself seemed to nod along.

“How did I come to your attention?” she asked instead. The practical question felt safer to hold than awe.

Daya’s gaze softened further. “As Aphrodite, I hold a small domain on your Earth,” she said. “A sanctuary called Agape Duro. You would know one of its guardians—Penelope Megalos, who once walked as Alex.”

Penelope’s face rose in memory: a TED talk Jamie had watched in secret, a story about transition told with a steadiness Jamie had envied.

“She saw your danger,” Daya continued. “She begged me to help you. But the rules there bind my hands. I am forbidden to intervene in deaths the tapestry marks as mundane.”

Jamie’s chest tightened. “So you… didn’t.”

“Not there.” No defensiveness, no apology. Just fact. “By the time she cried out, your thread had already been cut on Earth’s loom. But here—” She opened her hand.

The mist around them shimmered and resolved into images: a crystalline city under an eternal night sky, towers like facets of a gemstone catching pale luminescence; gardens of silver flowers that glowed without heat; people walking along marble paths, their bodies trailing fine gossamer strands of light behind them like comet tails.

“In my own realm, my jurisdiction is broader,” Daya said. “I am permitted to intercept threads severed by divine malice. Your death was no accident, Jamie.”

The name held in her mouth, familiar and strange in this place.

Daya’s expression darkened, a shadow passing over her features like an eclipse. “Alus, the God of Hate, has taken an interest in your world. He seeded those men’s hearts with fear and righteous anger, then pulled their threads at just the right moment.”

The alley’s shadows, twisting into something with too many eyes, replayed at the edge of Jamie’s awareness. The cold that had skated along her spine. The marionette glimmer of dark lines in their necks.

“A god wanted me dead?” she asked. “Why?”

“Because you represent what he most fears.” Daya stepped closer. The stars in her hair shifted color, taking on a faint rose hue. “You chose yourself. You carved a path of identity and love through a world that insisted you were wrong to exist. That kind of thread strengthens the tapestry far beyond its apparent weight.”

Jamie’s hands—her spectral, mist‑shaped hands—itched to check her hair, her earrings, anything grounding. They passed through the silver fog instead.

“I didn’t… succeed,” she said. “I was just getting started.”

“You were succeeding,” Daya corrected gently. “Every step you took toward yourself was an act of creation. That is the power Alus despises, because he cannot unmake it without breaking laws older than either of us.”

Jamie glanced at the images hovering in the mist. People in Daya’s realm moved through them, their threads bright, tangling and untangling as they met, argued, embraced. Some threads glowed more dimly. Some had dark spots like bruises.

“Why me?” she whispered. “Surely there are stronger people. Braver ones.”

Daya’s eyes seemed to hold galaxies, distant but glittering. “Strength is not measured only in victories,” she said. “You continued to reach toward love even while being denied it. You held onto a vision of yourself in the face of ridicule, bureaucracy, and danger. That tenacity is rare.”

Jamie thought of the index card in her coat pocket, now probably soaked in blood. The HR questions. The earrings. The way her coworkers had simply said her name.

“What happens now?” she asked.

“The thread of your first life remains on Earth’s tapestry,” Daya said. “It cannot be rewoven there. I cannot resurrect you back into that world; the boundaries between domains are strict.” A brief, wry smile touched her lips. “Even for a Goddess of Love.”

“But… you said threads can be rewoven.”

“In my realm.” Daya lifted her hand again.

The mist condensed into a mirror, its surface brighter than any glass Jamie had ever seen. In it, a girl of sixteen looked back: copper hair falling in soft waves to her shoulders, eyes the color of twilight between day and night, cheeks still full with youth. The bones of the face were unfamiliar and yet so precisely right that Jamie’s breath caught.

“I have a daughter,” Daya said quietly. “Born of moonlight and my own essence. She waits in my realm, incomplete, her body prepared but her thread… empty. She needs a soul whose pattern matches the fate she must weave.”

“You’d put me in her?” Jamie stepped closer to the mirror. The girl’s eyes met hers, steady and curious. Not a copy. Not an idealization. A version.

“You would be Lyria,” Daya said. “My daughter in truth, not just in name. Your soul would inhabit her from the beginning, without the misalignment you faced on Earth. Your body would match your self from your first breath. There would be no transition. No dysphoria.”

The words struck with such clarity that Jamie almost couldn’t grasp them. Her mind ran ahead to details: waking up with the right curves, the right voice, the right pronouns woven into every introduction. Clothes chosen because she liked them, not because they hid.

“What’s the cost?” she asked, the question automatic.

Daya’s smile deepened. “You keep your capacity to love. Your memories of your first life would remain, though blurred with time, like a story once read. You lose the possibility of returning to Earth, of ever seeing those you left behind in that realm while they live. And you take on a burden.”

“Burden.” Jamie tasted the word. “What sort of burden?”

“In my realm, the tapestry is fraying,” Daya said. “Alus has found ways to inject his poison even here—threads twisted by fear, by hate of the other, by resentment. I need someone who understands both rejection and self‑creation. A Thread of Fate who can, in time, see where to mend bonds without violating will.”

Jamie nodded slowly. “You want me to fight him.”

“I want you to live,” Daya said first. “To love. To build a life as Lyria, as my daughter, as yourself. From that life, I will ask much. But I will not demand your hatred. Your power will not function if you direct it from vengeance. Only unconditional love can fuel the deeper weaving.”

Jamie stared at the mirror. The girl—Lyria—raised a hand in perfect sync with her, then hesitated just off by a fraction, as if waiting for Jamie to decide.

“What about… memory?” Jamie asked. “Would I remember… dying?”

“You will remember enough to know who you were,” Daya said. “The pain will soften with time, but it will never vanish entirely. It will inform your empathy. It will also be a weight you must learn to carry without letting it drag you into hatred. That will be your trial.”

A flicker of bitterness rose. “You’re asking a lot of someone who couldn’t even survive her own city block.”

“You survived twenty‑nine years in a hostile world,” Daya said. “You faced down family, institutions, and strangers to reach the point of that alley. Surviving longer is not always the same as being stronger.”

Jamie’s gaze dropped to her not‑quite hands. Silver light traced the outlines of fingers she couldn’t fully feel.

“What happens if I say no?” she asked.

“Then you drift beyond my reach,” Daya said simply. “To whatever awaits souls of your world when they pass beyond all domains. I do not rule that place. I would grieve, but I would not follow. Your choice must be free, or the weave will not hold.”

The mist around them pulsed gently, like a held breath.

Jamie imagined letting go. Drifting into something quiet, without echoes of slurs, without HR portals or bathroom mirrors or the ache when a stranger’s pronoun sliced sideways. No more reaching. No more wanting.

The thought sat in her chest like a stone.

Then another image rose to meet it: Amorphous, not yet tied to reality. A child’s laugh that hadn’t happened. A hand reaching back for hers—the small weight of a palm trusting her. A voice saying “Mom” like it was the most natural thing in the world.

On Earth, that had always been a hypothetical, blocked by legal forms, by hostile judges, by the fragility of her own safety. Here…

Her eyes lifted to the mirror. Lyria’s eyes. Her eyes.

“Would she—would I—be able to have a family?” Jamie asked. “Love, the kind that builds… home?”

Daya’s expression warmed in a way that made the mist brighten. “If you choose that path,” she said, “yes. My realm has its own dangers, its own politics, its own cruelties. But there will be space for that. For partners. For children. For chosen family. For the kind of love that was denied you.”

The ache in Jamie’s chest changed shape. It no longer pressed down; it pulled.

She thought of Penelope on that glowing stage, talking about building a life you deserved even when the world insisted you did not. Of Elaine’s fingers brushing her earrings. Of the bar’s noise, her name tossed back and forth so easily.

“I don’t know how to be what you need,” Jamie said, honesty stripping the words bare. “I don’t know how to be a goddess’s daughter, or a Thread of Fate, or… anything but trying.”

Daya stepped closer until they were almost touching. The mist around them settled into a hush.

“That is all I ask,” she said. “That you try. That you love. That you learn when to mend and when to leave a thread alone. You will fail sometimes. You will hurt. You will also heal. I can guide you. I cannot live it for you.”

Jamie reached for the mirror. Her hand met cool resistance at first, then sank through the surface like dipping into still water. On the other side, warm fingers—Lyria’s—curled around hers.

The contact jolted something deep in her soul. A sense of rightness she had never felt in her own skin. Not even on the best hormone days. Not even in the most flattering selfie.

Her throat—or whatever passed for it here—tightened.

“I accept,” she said, the words steady. “I choose to become Lyria.”

Daya’s smile unfurled like a sunrise. “Then the thread begins anew.”

The silver mist surged.

Warmth wrapped around Jamie, bright and encompassing. Her awareness stretched—not dissolving into nothing but expanding, threads radiating from her like spokes. Threads of memory (a cracked subway seat, a company lanyard, a rented room with thin walls). Threads of potential (moonlit towers, unfamiliar faces, a child’s hand in hers).

Somewhere beyond, she sensed other weavers: Daya, vast and steady, fingers already in motion; a distant darkness coiling, watching, its tendrils tangling with unsuspecting lives.

As her consciousness poured toward the waiting vessel that was Lyria, Daya’s voice followed, weaving words into the very fibers of her being.

“Know this, my daughter: only you and I can see the threads as they are. Only we can sense where they twist by choice and where they have been violated. Alus has begun to commit crimes against the tapestry even here. I cannot be everywhere. You will learn to read what others are blind to.”

Light intensified. The outline of a new body formed around her—a smaller frame, a different center of gravity, a heartbeat syncing to an unfamiliar rhythm.

“You will not be able to mend your own thread,” Daya’s voice continued, a steady loom‑beat beneath the brightness. “You will always risk yourself when you mend others. There will be those who resent you for what you can do and those who would use you for it. Remember: love freely given, not demanded, is your only true power.”

The warmth turned almost too much to bear, like stepping from winter into a blazing noon. Jamie—Lyria—felt a chest rise for the first time, lungs drawing breath into actual air.

The mist fell away.

Her last impression in that between‑space was of threads stretching out in all directions, some bright, some frayed, some blackened where Alus had sunk his teeth.

Somewhere along those strands, something waited. Not a quiet destiny, but a tangle of love, danger, and choice.

“The thread begins anew,” Daya whispered, her voice now echoing from somewhere above and within.

Darkness blinked.

Lyria’s eyelids fluttered.

And the new world rushed in.

Daughter of the Lost Moon

A Rebirth LitRPG Romance Novel

Chapter 2: Awakening

By Gail Rose Landers

System Quest Series

Daughter of the Lost Moon Copyright © 2025 by Gail Rose Landers. All rights reserved.

Chapter 2: Awakening

Light touched her before sound did.

It seeped through the dark behind her eyes, not the harsh, buzzing white of office fluorescents, but a soft, shifting silver—like moonlight passing through water. Something cool and fragrant brushed her cheek, and fabric whispered when she moved.

She opened her eyes.

A canopy arched above her, not the plain plaster ceiling of her old apartment but a dome of pale stone ribbed with veins of light. Threads of silver and pearl chased one another across it in slow, spiraling patterns, like constellations caught mid‑dance. The canopy itself seemed to breathe, dimming and brightening in time with some distant, steady pulse.

Her first thought was that someone had left a projector on. Her second was that her chest rose and fell in a way that felt… right.

She lay in a bed big enough to lose herself in, sheets of something softer than cotton and smoother than silk pooling around her waist. The duvet was a deep dusk blue, embroidered with tiny, beaded moons that caught the shifting light. When she pushed herself up on her elbows, the beads slid and shimmered, sending scattered moons rolling over the walls.

Her hands—small, pale, with slender fingers that ended in neatly shaped nails—pressed into the mattress. Her arms trembled, not from weakness, but from the unfamiliar weight distribution of a body that was not the one she’d known for twenty‑nine years.

The scent that had brushed her cheek came from nearby: a cluster of flowers in a carved crystal vase on a nightstand. Their petals were long and narrow, glowing from within like captured starlight, each bloom cupping a tiny drop of liquid radiance in its center. Moonflowers, some part of her supplied. Of course.

She sat up, and the world rearranged itself around that movement.

Her hair slid over her shoulders in a copper curtain, the silky weight of it startling. It brushed the tops of her arms—bare, smooth. A nightgown shifted against her skin: soft white fabric with a faint silver sheen, sleeveless, the bodice smocked in small, delicate gathers that suggested curves she had never needed to pad. The hem brushed just below her knees, edged in lace so fine it might have been woven from spiderwebs and fog.

Jamie’s old T‑shirts and thrift‑store skirts felt like clothes someone else had worn in a school play.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet met a rug, but not the rough, shedding rectangle from her studio. This one was thick and plush, woven in overlapping circles of gray and white. Threads of light ran through it in spirals, tickling her skin through the nightgown’s thin fabric.

When she stood, she didn’t tower.

Her center of gravity had dropped, as if someone had gently pressed on her shoulders and hips until she compacted into a smaller, balanced frame. Her knees looked… right. Her hands vanished when she rested them on her hips, instead of hovering awkwardly above them. The nightgown fell from a chest that rose in a way that made every breath feel like stepping into warm water.

A sound like a held breath being released left her lips.

On the far wall, opposite the bed, hung a mirror framed in pearlescent stone. The frame curved like crescent moons entwined, their tips almost meeting at the top. Tiny flecks of light drifted inside the stone, like fireflies trapped in marble.

She walked toward it on bare feet, the rug’s threads glowing faintly around her toes with each step. The air was cool against her arms, but the room itself seemed to hold a gentle warmth, as if the stone remembered the heat of many suns.

The girl in the mirror stopped her halfway across the room.

Copper hair spilled over narrow shoulders, falling in a loose wave down to the middle of her back. It caught the silver light and threw it back with a rose‑gold glint. Her face, framed by that hair, had the soft lines of youth—cheeks that still held the last traces of childhood roundness, a jaw that tapered into a delicate chin, a nose that was neither too sharp nor too flat, simply there.

Eyes the color of twilight, not quite blue, not quite gray, watched her. They were too big for the face, in the way that made artists reach for their pencils, irises ringed with a darker halo. Her lashes cast fine shadows on her cheeks.

The nightgown’s bodice hugged a modest swell of breasts. Not the flat plane she’d known, not the strange in‑between months of hormone changes, but a natural curve that belonged there without argument. Her shoulders sloped gently into arms that looked like they had never carried more than a stack of books.

She lifted her hand. The girl did too. When she turned her wrist, the delicate bones shifted under smooth skin in perfect sync.

A laugh broke out of her—sharp and bright, like a cork popping from a bottle. It echoed in the vaulted chamber, bounced off the carved stone, and came back to her ears sounding like someone she had once tried to imagine through a filter.

Her hand flew to her mouth. Her reflection’s eyes shone.

The laugh faded, but the trembling in her shoulders didn’t. It was not the shake of fear. It was something she had never had the vocabulary for, because she had never experienced it fully: a release, a loosening, a sudden absence of an ache so constant she’d stopped noticing it.

Jamie’s memories flickered in front of this new image like film projected on glass.

Her old bathroom’s cracked mirror, the yellowed light showing a man’s jaw where she wanted curves, the way she’d tilted her head to find herself at the right angle and then quickly looked away.

The locker room at work, the too‑broad shoulders reflected twice in metal, the deliberate way she’d avoided eye contact with herself.

The first time she’d buttoned a blouse over the soft swell hormones had started to give her, the wild hope and sharp fear tangled in her chest like barbed wire.

Those moments felt now like scenes from someone else’s life.

“I look…” She didn’t finish.

There was no word that didn’t feel either too small or too sentimental. She let the unfinished thought sit in the air between her and the mirror, in the space where her old reflection used to mock her.

She reached up, fingers searching her ears. No cheap gold hoops here. Instead, small studs nestled against her lobes, each a tiny crescent moon carved out of opalescent stone. When she brushed them, they warmed slightly, as if responding to her touch.

“Welcome home, daughter.”

The voice came from behind her. Warm. Familiar, even though she had heard it only once in the mist.

Lyria—she realized the name fit here, as if thinking “Jamie” now caused a faint echo instead of a direct answer—turned.

Daya stood by the foot of the bed.

The goddess looked different in this room, more grounded. The starlight gown remained, constellations shifting slowly along its folds, but she had set aside the towering aura of incomprehensibility. Here, she seemed only slightly too bright for the space, as if the room itself worked to contain her.

She had no crown, no scepter. Her hair fell loose down her back. When she smiled, fine lines appeared at the corners of her eyes—the marks of someone who had laughed many times, and also watched many endings.

“How do you feel?” Daya asked.

Lyria’s answer caught in the fabric of her throat.

She turned back toward the mirror and lifted a handful of her hair, letting it slip between her fingers. The strands shone like copper wire in the silver light. She touched the curve of her own shoulder, then pressed a palm flat against her chest, feeling the heartbeat there. Steady. Not too fast. Not a rabbit’s panicked thrum.

She did not speak.

Instead, she walked the last step to the mirror and pressed her forehead against the cool glass, eyes closing. Her breath fogged it for a moment, leaving a small, imperfect circle. When it cleared, her reflection stared back, unchanged.

Her shoulders rose and fell. The sound that came from her this time was quieter than laughter, but just as sharp. A small exhale that sagged her whole frame, as if someone had untied a knot at the base of her skull.

Daya’s reflection came into view beside her own. Their eyes met in the glass.

Daya’s hand settled on Lyria’s shoulder. The weight was gentle, but it anchored more than just flesh.

“For the first time,” Lyria whispered, voice rough, “I don’t feel… like I’m wearing someone else’s life.”

Daya’s grip tightened, once. Her eyes in the mirror softened in that way they had in the mist when she’d spoken of Penelope and Agape Duro.

“This form was woven with you in mind,” Daya said. “Not as perfection, but as alignment.”

The word soothed some raw place.

Lyria pulled back from the mirror, turning to face Daya fully. “There’s no going back,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“No.” Daya’s expression did not flinch. “Earth’s tapestry continues without you. I cannot reinsert your thread there without shattering laws that hold the universes apart. Whatever happens in that realm now happens beyond our touch.”

Images flickered—Elaine’s laugh, the group chat blinking on a screen that would never light up for her again, HR memos sitting in an inbox no one would have reason to open.

Lyria’s fingers curled around the nightgown’s fabric at her sides.

“Do they know?” she asked. “Anyone? Penelope?”

“Penelope knows your thread was cut under Alus’s influence,” Daya said. “She knows I intervened. She does not know what form that intervention took. She does not know you as Lyria. It would be cruel to bind her to grief and hope both when she cannot reach you.”

Lyria looked down at her hands. The nails were glossy and unchipped, as if someone had taken care with them. Someone had. The thought that she had slept while a goddess prepared her new body’s details made her ears warm.

“So everything I had there is gone,” she said.

“Gone from your reach,” Daya corrected. “Not erased. Earth’s tapestry remembers you as Jamie. Your courage is woven into its fabric. It may inspire others. You, however, have been moved to another loom.”

A second chance. Not a continuation.

Lyria nodded once. The motion felt decisive.

“What constraints?” she asked, surprising herself. “You said there would be rules. Limits. I’d rather know now than be… blindsided later.”

Daya’s smile flickered, approving. She moved toward the room’s far wall, where a section of stone was carved into an archway without a door. With a flick of her fingers, the arch filled with light, then cleared into a view of the world outside.

Lyria stepped up beside her.

Beyond the arch lay a balcony and, beyond that, the realm itself: the crystalline city she’d glimpsed in the mist, now vivid and sharp. Towers of pale stone and glass rose in elegant curves, their surfaces shot through with veins of light that pulsed like the rug’s threads. Bridges arched between them, lined with lanterns that burned with steady, silvery flames. The sky above was an endless indigo, strewn with more stars than she’d ever seen from any Earth city, the moon hanging low and large, casting everything in gentle radiance.

People walked along the streets far below. Some wore robes that trailed threads of light behind them, others simpler tunics. No cars, no buses. The air even from this distance seemed… quieter.

“In this realm,” Daya said, “I can intervene more freely. But not without cost. And not without boundary. I have shaped its laws around love and consent. You will share that burden.”

Lyria watched a trio of children—she thought they were children; their silhouettes were small, their laughter carried faintly—run along a balcony farther down, their threads trailing like comets.

“You will, in time, see threads as I do,” Daya continued. “Where they fray, where they are stained by fear, where they are knotted by trauma or twisted by another’s direct violation. You will be able to mend some of them. Not all.”

“Not my own,” Lyria said, recalling the warning from the mist.

“Not your own,” Daya confirmed. “You may never use your power to alter your own fate. You may not override another’s will where it is truly present. You may not erase history. You may only offer new paths, gently redirect, or strengthen bonds that were already there.”

“And if I try to… force things?” Lyria asked. “To act out of resentment?”

“The magic will fail.” Daya’s tone turned firmer. “Thread‑weaving here runs on lifeforce magnified by unconditional love. If hatred, revenge, or petty jealousy dominate your heart, you will not be able to weave. If you attempt to push past that, you risk fraying your own thread. And there is no power in this realm—not mine, not yours—that can mend your own soul once damaged.”

The city’s beauty took on a faint edge at that. All this grace balanced on rules.

Lyria swallowed, feeling the shape of that boundary. “So I can’t use this to hurt people. Even if they… deserve it.”

“You can shield,” Daya said. “You can protect, redirect, heal. You can expose truth. But you cannot turn their will into your puppet’s strings. Not even for ‘good’ ends.”

Her hand moved through the air.

A small crescent‑moon charm appeared above Lyria’s open palm, as if dropping into it from nowhere. It was the size of a coin, carved from the same opalescent stone as her earrings, attached to a fine chain that shimmered like spun frost.

The charm warmed immediately upon contact.

“Take this,” Daya said. “It will help you learn.”

Before Lyria could respond, the charm pulsed.

A tiny projection burst from it, hovering in front of Lyria’s face—a floating crescent moon made of light, with a cartoonishly smug expression etched onto its surface.

“Divine Thread System initializing!” a voice chimed.

If laughter could be made into sound, into a person, into a chime bouncing off crystal, this was it. The tone was bright, a little too loud for the quiet room.

“Hiya, bestie!” the moon chirped. “I’m Selene—your guide, quest‑log, and future partner in palace gossip!”

Lyria blinked.

Selene wiggled, her projected form bobbing up and down. “Ooh, your vitals look good! New body, who this?”

A small bar appeared at the edge of Lyria’s vision, hovering like a HUD: a thin silver line, full, with a tiny heart icon pulsing at the end. Underneath it, faint text read: Lifeforce Reserve: Stable.

Daya’s mouth quirked. “Selene will assist you in navigating the palace and my realm,” she said. “She has access to information, not to threads. She sees what I allow her to see. She cannot compel you, nor can she perform magic herself.”

Selene threw her tiny arms wide. “Think of me as your cosmic BFF who knows where the bathroom is and which fork to use, but absolutely cannot, like, fix your love life for you. Much as I might want to.”

“You want a lot of things,” Daya murmured dryly.

Selene huffed. “I want what’s best for our girl here. Also, I want more wardrobe options. We’ll get to that.”

Lyria stared at the little moon. “You’re… an AI?” she asked, the Earth term slipping out.

“A‑ish,” Selene said. “Semi‑autonomous interface. Magical user experience overlay. U.I., if we’re being fancy. But you can call me Selene. And you, my dear, are overdue for a tutorial.”

A glowing text box popped into existence beside the floating moon:

Tutorial Quest: Moonlit Beginnings
Objective: Explore the Lunar Palace and meet key residents.
Reward: Unlock Thread Sight (basic perception only).

Lyria’s lips parted. “You sound like a game,” she said.

“Gamification improves user adherence,” Selene said primly. Then she ruined the effect by doing a little spin. “Also, it’s more fun this way.”

Daya stepped back from the arch, letting the view of the city narrow. “This palace is full of threads tangled by prejudice and fear,” she said. “Some will welcome you. Some will see you as an experiment. Learn who is who before you begin to mend anything. Observe. Listen. Remember: no weaving until your heart is steady.”

Lyria’s fingers closed around the pendant’s cool edge. The chain slid against her skin like water when she lifted it to fasten around her neck. It settled against her collarbone with a small, satisfying weight, as if it had always been meant to sit there.

She looked at Daya. “I’ll try,” she said.

“I know.” Daya’s hand brushed her cheek. “I cannot walk these halls with you every moment. But I will watch. And I will be there when you need me to be a goddess, and when you only need me to be your mother.”

The word landed different here.

Mother.

Heat pricked behind Lyria’s eyes. She dropped her gaze, not ready to let Daya see that much, not yet. But her shoulders drew back slightly, as if something invisible had slotted into place behind her spine.

“Shall we begin the tour?” Selene squealed, already zipping toward the chamber door, leaving a faint trail of pixel‑like sparks. “Fashion, politics, people who will definitely side‑eye you—we’ve got it all!”

Daya laughed softly. “Go,” she said to Lyria. “Learn what this world is, before you start changing it.”

The corridor outside Lyria’s room curved gently, following the shape of the tower. The walls were made of the same pale stone as the canopy, veined with slow‑moving light. Alcoves held carved niches where silver flames burned without smoke, casting a cool, even glow.

Large windows punctuated the corridor, their panes not glass but thin, translucent crystal etched with lunar motifs. Beyond them, the city stretched in crystalline terraces, bridges weaving between towers, waterfalls of light spilling from some unseen source down into a central plaza.

Lyria’s nightgown felt suddenly too intimate for hallway exploration.

As if sensing the thought, Selene spun around mid‑air, tiny hands on her nonexistent hips. “Okay, wardrobe first. Daya’s sense of drama is great, but you can’t meet the nobility in your sleepwear, babe.”

Lyria glanced down at herself, cheeks warming. “Is there… something else I’m supposed to wear?”

“Already queued up! Check the armoire to your left.”

A tall wardrobe stood recessed into the wall beside her door, its double doors carved with a relief of intertwined vines and crescent moons. When she touched the cool metal of the handle, it sprang open noiselessly.

Inside, gowns hung in a neat row, each on a carved hanger: shades of midnight blue, lavender, soft gray, and one daring crimson. Fabrics ranged from heavy brocades embroidered with constellations to light, gauzy layers that looked like fog caught in fabric form.

Her hand drifted toward the crimson, then paused. It was beautiful—fitted bodice, off‑the‑shoulder sleeves that would leave her collarbones bare, skirt cascading in dramatic folds. It also screamed, Look at me.

She wasn’t ready for that yet.

Selene’s moon face appeared above her shoulder. “Bold choice,” she whispered. “But maybe save the red for when we’re ready to make the court collectively choke.”

Lyria’s fingers moved to a gown three hangers over: soft dove gray, with long, fitted sleeves and a skirt that flared in gentle panels rather than dramatic swoops. Tiny silver threads had been embroidered along the hem in a pattern of overlapping arcs, like ripples on a pond under starlight.

She lifted it down.

The fabric was cool and smooth in her hands, heavier than it looked. When she slipped it over her head, it slid into place like water pouring into a vessel designed for it. The bodice hugged her torso without pinching, the waistline settling at a point that made her feel—together. Balanced. The skirt fell to just above her ankles, enough to move easily but still drape.

A full‑length mirror on the inside of the armoire door showed her the effect: a sixteen‑year‑old girl staring back, hair falling loose over the pale gray, the crescent pendant glinting at her throat.

Her hands smoothed the bodice reflexively. The gesture was unfamiliar and deeply, deeply satisfying.

Selene made a soft noise. “Yep,” she said. “That’s it. Soft power. Understated fatalism. We love to see it.”

“You cannot love,” Lyria said automatically, then felt ridiculous.

“Functionally accurate,” Selene conceded. “But I can appreciate aesthetics.”

Lyria turned slowly, watching how the skirt moved. It swayed around her calves, whispering against her skin. No shifting waistband digging into the wrong place. No pockets gaping weirdly. No hateful, too‑masculine line.

She stepped into the corridor, bare feet silent on the smooth stone.

Selene floated ahead, projecting a small, semi‑transparent map into the upper corner of Lyria’s vision: a simplified layout of the palace tower, with a tiny silver dot labeled You Are Here.

“First stop: staff corridor,” Selene narrated. “Because nobility is all well and good, but the people who know what’s actually happening around here are the ones hauling linens at ungodly hours.”

“Is that… allowed?” Lyria asked. “Just wandering?”

“They’ve been warned,” Selene said. “Daya likes her children curious. And you’re not the only one living here, you know.”

They rounded a curve.

A woman came toward them, arms loaded with folded linens that glowed faintly along their edges—moon‑infused, Lyria guessed. She wore a practical dress of deep blue, apron tied snugly around her waist, hair pinned back in a bun streaked with silver. Fine lines bracketed her mouth, the kind carved by years of tight‑smiled patience.

When she saw Lyria, she stopped so abruptly one of the folded sheets slid sideways.

“Princess,” she said, bowing quickly. Her voice was low and hoarse, as if she’d been awake since before dawn. “Forgive me—I did not hear you leave your chambers.”

Lyria’s stomach clenched. The word “Princess” landed like a borrowed coat—still too big in the shoulders. Her first instinct was to wave it away, to apologize for existing in the hallway.

She opened her mouth.

Selene’s tiny form zipped into her peripheral vision, flashing a red exclamation mark.

“Palace Tip #1,” the AI whispered. “Royals don’t apologize for existing. Try: ‘Your dedication honors the court.’”

Lyria closed her mouth, swallowed the “sorry.”

“Your dedication honors the court,” she said instead, the phrase feeling strange and formal on her tongue.

The servant’s shoulders loosened, ever so slightly. The corners of her mouth tipped up. “You are kind, Highness,” she said. “Shall I escort you to the Sunless Garden? The night‑blooms are still open.”

Lyria glanced at Selene, who waggled her eyebrows encouragingly from her place above the woman’s shoulder.

“I’d like that,” Lyria said.

They walked together down the corridor. Lyria matched her pace to the woman’s, resisting the urge to pepper her with questions about her life, her family, how long she’d worked here. The servant’s eyes flicked sideways a few times, curiosity quick under the professionalism.

“Forgive my forwardness, Highness,” she said at last. “But it is good to see you awake. Some at court…” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “Some wondered if you would… take to this realm.”

Lyria’s hand tightened around her pendant.

“Some at court think she’s a project, not a person,” Selene muttered in her ear. “Just so we’re clear.”

Lyria didn’t answer the AI. She didn’t have to. The way her jaw set, the small flare in her nostrils, said enough.

The corridor opened into a broad archway. Beyond it, the Sunless Garden stretched in a wide, circular courtyard open to the sky. The name felt wrong at first glance; the place glowed.

Plants unlike any on Earth filled tiered beds and climbing trellises: vines with translucent leaves that glowed faintly from their veins outward; shrubs bearing flowers whose petals shaded from deep indigo at their base to pale silver at the tips; tall stalks topped with spherical blooms that pulsed gently, like breathing.

No sunlight reached here—only the constant, gentle radiance of the looming moon and the stars above. The air smelled of damp stone, sweet blossoms, and something sharp and clean, like the air after lightning.

A path of pale tiles wound through the beds. As Lyria stepped onto it, the tiles lit beneath her feet, marking her trail with a slow ripple of light.

Her chest loosened. A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, unplanned.

The servant dipped a brief curtsey. “I’ll leave you to your walk, Highness.”

Lyria looked at her, the impulse to ask her name strong on her tongue.

“Not yet,” Selene said softly. “We’ll see her again. Save the deep dives for when you’ve got more context.”

Lyria nodded once, both to the servant and, slightly, to the disembodied voice. The woman retreated, her own dress swaying simply, the hem brushing the lit tiles into darkness again.

Lyria walked deeper into the garden.

The plants weren’t uniform. Some beds were meticulously pruned; others were more wild, tendrils spilling over stone edges as if testing boundaries. Tiny lights—fireflies? No. Little motes of magic—drifted between blossoms, drawn more strongly to some than others.

She brushed the petals of a low flower near the path. Its surface was cool and slightly waxy, but warmth pulsed from its center, like a heartbeat.

“I feel like I’m in a video game,” she murmured.

“Welcome to Star Realm Online,” Selene said cheerfully. “Except there’s no respawn and your choices actually matter. Fun, right?”

Lyria snorted softly. The sound surprised her again. She hadn’t known she could snort and still feel… pretty.

Movement beyond the nearest trellis caught her eye.

Two figures stood in a side path: a young footman in simple tunic and trousers, his hands twisting the edge of his cap, and a woman in a gown of dark green velvet, her sleeves slashed to show pale chemise beneath, her hair coiled in an intricate style that probably took a maid an hour. Strings of tiny starstones decorated her braids, winking with every tilt of her head.

Their voices carried faintly.

“…not a true heir,” the woman said. The words were sugar‑coated, but the sneer beneath them carried. “Plucked from a dying world to play at princess. Daya’s… project.”

The footman glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide, thread of anxiety written in every tight movement. “My lady, if someone hears—”

“Let them,” she said, flicking a hand. Bracelets chimed. “A goddess may weave what she pleases, but bloodlines are not so easily rewritten.”

Lyria went very still.

Her first instinct was to duck behind a vine, to fold herself smaller, to be unseen. Years of doing exactly that made her muscles start the motion before she thought.

Her second impulse, newer and more fragile, was to step forward and announce herself, to let the woman choke slightly on her own words.

She did neither.

Instead, she turned slowly and walked away, back along the path. The tiles lit under her feet again, steady and certain.

Selene hovered at her shoulder, little moon‑face watching her.

“You could’ve called her out,” Selene said. No judgement. Just observation.

“I could have,” Lyria agreed.

Her fingers relaxed one by one from the fist they’d curled into.

“She’s wrong,” Selene added. “About bloodlines.”

“I know,” Lyria said. “But I also know what it’s like to have your existence be someone else’s debate topic. I’m not giving her that stage.”

The AI emitted a small sound, like a hum of approval. “Noted. Plus ten to emotional intelligence.”

Lyria huffed a laugh through her nose. The tension in her shoulders eased a fraction.

They spent the next stretch of time—she couldn’t have said how long; the sky didn’t change—moving through different sections of the palace.

Selene steered her to the servants’ dining hall at off‑hours, where a cook in a flour‑dusted apron paused mid‑stir when Lyria entered, then offered her a bowl of something steaming without fawning. Lyria tried it, eyes widening at the taste: not quite any spice she knew, but warm, grounding. She listened to the murmur of conversations at the far tables, catching scraps of words like “patrol rotation” and “thread‑sick cousin,” storing them away.

They passed through a gallery where portraits lined the walls: past champions, past daughters, past consorts. Lyria stood before one painting longer than the others—someone with a jaw like hers, wearing armor inlaid with tiny moons and a dress whose skirts had been slashed to reveal leggings beneath. The plaque bore a name she didn’t recognize. She traced the air beneath it, feeling an odd kinship with a stranger painted centuries ago.

Later, Selene coaxed her into a rehearsal room where dancers practiced a formal pattern, skirts swishing in unison. The dance mistress, severe in a candle‑flame orange gown, eyed Lyria critically, then nodded once and beckoned her into the line. Lyria’s steps were unsure, but her body knew how to follow rhythm. By the third sequence, she was turning at the right beat, her gray skirt flaring among the others like part of a pattern instead of a disruption.

Through it all, threads floated at the edge of Lyria’s perception. Not lines, not yet. Hints. A faint halo around some people—brighter near the cook who’d offered her food, dim near the green‑gowned noble. She reached for them instinctively and found nothing to grasp.

By the time she returned to her chamber, her bare feet were chilled and her head buzzed with new names, half‑remembered directions, and the way her dress had moved when she’d bowed to the dancers at the end of their practice.

She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, letting the quiet of the room settle around her like a cloak.

Selene dimmed a bit, as if respecting the stillness. “Tutorial complete,” she said softly. “You survived your first day without tripping over your hem or punching a noble. Gold star.”

A notification bloomed in Lyria’s vision:

Quest Complete: Moonlit Beginnings
Reward: Thread Sight – Tier 1 (Perception only).

The world shifted.

For a heartbeat, everything in the room pulsed—the bed, the rug, the mirror frame—as if a web of fine, luminous lines had been overlaid on reality.

Then it snapped into clarity.

Lines—threads—stretched from Lyria’s chest out into space, faint and silver. One ran toward the archway, out into the city, thinning as it went: Daya. Another, softer, newly woven, curled toward a point somewhere below and to the left: the servant with the linens. A cluster of very faint threads drifted off toward more distant points—faces she had passed, eyes that had met hers for half a heartbeat.

She gasped.

Her own thread, when she looked down, arched from her sternum upward through the ceiling and beyond, into the sky. It glowed brighter than the others, shot through with many colors: silver, indigo, a line of deep ruby that pulsed faintly as if in anticipation.

Her fingers twitched, wanting to touch it.

She raised her hand.

The thread shimmered prettily and remained out of reach.

She tried again, focusing on the faint line leading toward the kitchens, thinking of the cook’s flour‑dusted hands, the way she’d slid the bowl of steaming stew across the counter with no comment on titles.

Nothing.

The threads moved when she moved, floating gently, but no matter how she reached, they stayed intangible, like reflections on water.

“Careful,” Selene said quietly. Her usual lilt was muted. “You’re seeing, not weaving. There’s a difference.”

Lyria dropped her hand, heart thudding. “I just wanted to… smooth something,” she said. “Just a little. Isolde. That noble woman. Or that footman. Or—”

“Or yourself,” Selene supplied.

Lyria’s mouth closed.

“I see you want to fix everything,” Selene continued, drifting closer until her projection hovered near Lyria’s shoulder. “Understandable. But your magic has… rules. You can’t force anything. Not a noble’s heart, not a servant’s fear, not your own scars. And you definitely can’t tweak your thread, even if it’s just to, like, increase your Charisma by five percent.”

“That’s not what I—” Lyria started, then stopped. The protest felt too much like old defensiveness.

Selene let her hover in that silence for a beat.

“To weave,” the AI said finally, “you’ll need three things. Training. Lifeforce to spend. And a heart that’s… clear. Not empty. Not numb. Just not tangled in wanting to punish.”

Lyria moved to the mirror.

The girl in gray looked back, pendant resting against her collarbone, threads curling around her like filaments in a lamp. Her own face still made her breath catch. But now, behind that face, she saw the line of her thread stretching up and up, too bright, too fragile.

“What happens if I ignore that?” Lyria asked, eyes still on her reflection. “If I try anyway. Out of anger.”

“The weave won’t hold,” Selene said. “Your magic will sputter. And if you keep pushing, you risk your own thread fraying. You can’t patch that. Not even Daya can. You tear yourself too much, and you’ll start slipping.” A pause. “In and out.”

“In and out of… where?” Lyria asked, though she knew.

“The place between tapestries.” Selene didn’t dress it up. “The place you came from when you left Earth. Not fun. Ten out of ten do not recommend.”

Lyria’s fingers tightened on the edge of the vanity.

In the mirror, her eyes were wide, pupils dilated. Her shoulders had gone stiff again, the way they had in HR meetings, in alleys, at family dinners where her father had refused to say her name.

She forced her grip to loosen. One finger at a time.

“I don’t want to disappear again,” she said. Her voice was very soft.

“Then don’t,” Selene said. “You don’t have to fix everything tonight. Or tomorrow. Or ever, honestly. You’re allowed to—wild idea incoming—live. Eat starfruit tarts. Teach nobles how wrong they are by existing. Form crushes. Adopt stray kids.” The last part came out too quickly, like a glitch, but she barreled on. “Weave when your heart’s ready, not when your guilt is screaming.”

Lyria’s mouth twitched despite herself.

The threads around her pulsed gently, as if in agreement.

She lifted a hand again, slower this time. Not to grab, but to trace the air along the line of her own thread, following it upward with her eyes.

It led somewhere she couldn’t see yet.

She let her hand fall.

“Okay,” she said. “Seeing is enough for today.”

Selene dimmed further, her projection shrinking. “Good call,” she said. “We’ll practice with things like, ‘Is this noble secretly aligned with Alus?’ and ‘Does this servant actually hate you or are they just sleep‑deprived?’ before we attempt ‘Rewrite the consequences of generational trauma.’ Baby steps.”

Lyria laughed once, a small, half‑exhale. It eased the tightness in her chest.

She unfastened the crescent pendant and set it carefully on the nightstand, next to the vase of moonflowers. The blossoms glowed softly in the dimming light, their petals curling inward as if settling to sleep.

Thread Sight faded from full intensity to a faint overlay, like afterimages behind her eyelids. She let it.

As she slipped the nightgown back over her head and slid under the dusky duvet, the bed’s warmth enveloped her. The beads of tiny moons pressed against her ribs in reassuring lines.

She lay on her side, facing the window slit where a slice of the indigo sky showed between curtains. The moon hung huge and close, cratered face serene.

Her hand found the spot at her chest where her thread emerged. There was no physical mark, but she pressed her palm there anyway, as if she could feel the line anchor.

Somewhere far away, threads twisted by Alus writhed. Somewhere closer, threads around servants and nobles and a certain young astrologer she had barely met shimmered faintly.

Tonight, she could only see.

Tomorrow, she would begin to learn what to do with that sight.

In the quiet, with the palace’s stone breathing slow and deep around her, the words Daya had spoken in the mist echoed softly:

The thread begins anew.

Lyria’s eyes closed.

Sleep came, not like falling, but like being gently woven into a pattern that had waited a long time for her shape.

Beauty and the Vial

A Mythic Coming of Age Novel

Prolog: Penelope and Aphrodite

By Gail Rose Landers

Will Perseus, with Helen's help, find a way
to enter Aphrodite's presence and gain beauty for his mother?

Agape Duro Series

Beauty and the Vial Copyright © 1995, 2025 by Gail Rose Landers. All rights reserved.

Prolog ~ Penelope and Aphrodite

The Grecian plain glistened with the clinging droplets everywhere from the blessing that had been received from the heavens. A poor Grecian boy stood as a guest in the home of his friend, a poor Grecian girl. Perseus listened intently to Helen as she whispered to him about the field that Aphrodite visited each year close to the village.

“I discovered this myself and I have told no one till telling you now. Tomorrow is the day, Perseus!”

“My mother is so lonely. If only she could have the beauty that age and hard work have robbed from her then someone would fall in love with her and she would have all she needs. I know that she won’t ask for beauty for herself. She thinks of everyone but herself.”

"Only your mother or her daughter could petition Aphrodite for beauty. You don’t have any sisters,Perseus. You could be the daughter that asks Aphrodite for your mother.”

Helen dressed Perseus up as a girl. Perseus looked at the reflection in a mirror and admired Helen’s skill. Perseus could pass as a girl before anyone. The only exception was the Goddess herself who could see beyond the exterior to the soul.

"Would Aphrodite ignore this deception to see beyond to my motives for my mother?

"It's up to you. I feel that it would work."

“I think that Aphrodite would listen to a boy rather than one who tried to deceive her. Would you please go to the shrine to Aphrodite and give an offering for my mother and me? Thank you for your help. Seeing myself as a girl makes me wish I were my mother’s daughter. Nevertheless I go in truth and in love for my mother.”

"I had not thought of that Perseus. I even had a girl’s name picked out for you, Penelope. I will do as you ask and may you have favor with the Goddess.”

“Perhaps someday there will be a Penelope.”

Helen helped Perseus remove the disguise and he left dressed as he had entered.

Perseus ran to the field and spied a beautiful maiden in the field. Perseus thought, “This is the Goddess herself just as Helen had told me.”

He came and knelt at her feet. She touched him and told him,“Arise. Why do you come here to me? “

“Lady, I come here to bring a petition for my mother.”

“You did well to come before me in truth even though as a man you are not worthy to come before me. The girl, Helen, who thought that I could be deceived by her handiwork should be taught a lesson.”

“I beg mercy for her, Lady. Her judgment was clouded with her great desire to help me.”

“Mercy shall be granted to her. Come be with me this day and help me harvest the seeds and fluid from these plants. After the work is done I will answer your petition, Perseus.”

The Goddess handed Perseus a vial and pouch, identical to hers, to hold the fluid and seeds and after she showed him the method where no fluid would be lost and no seed missed.

The pair worked in the field thru the noonday. The Goddess told stories of women who had loved and in each story portrayed a different hue of a many colored love. When the Sun hung overhead past its full strength the two had finished the field. Perseus gave the Goddess the fluid filled vial and the pouch that contained the seeds.

“You have done well Perseus. Come eat supper with me.”

They both retired to a grassy spot underneath the shade of a tree with a pond just beyond. They dined sitting on a cover of fine linen partaking of delicacies only known on Olympus. Following the meal, Perseus was overcome with drowsiness.

He spoke, “Lady, I beg your forgiveness but I can scarce keep my eyes open.”

“Sleep now, Perseus. You have my blessing.”

Perseus surrendered and fell asleep, thankful for the Goddess’s understanding. About an hour later the child awoke to find the Goddess smiling at her. There was no mistaking that she was now a girl. Amazingly enough she wore the clothes of a handmaiden almost identical to the outfit that the Goddess herself had worn as she portrayed a girl in the field. Now Aphrodite was clothed in her Olympic splendor. Yet the Goddess had the same demeanor toward her as though she were destined to be in this form all along.

“Now you are worthy, dear Penelope. You have wondered why a Goddess would disguise herself as a maiden and labor herself to gather the fluid and seeds. The fluid is blessed by the Gods to bring beauty. To be exposed as much a mortal woman could not contain the beauty and any man would be transformed. You will find yourself precocious having matured as much as an 18 yr. old even though you are only twelve.”

She withdrew a fluid filled small vial and gave it to Penelope. She wondered more why she had awoken a girl which was the Goddess' gift rather than a tree, an animal or even dead. Perhaps Aphrodite had seen her heart when Helen had dressed her up and known that even though a boy had been on the outside, a girl was within trapped yearning to be released like a butterfly exits her cocoon. The Goddess was gracious to her as all this wonder passed over her in a moment leaving her in awe as she carefully held the precious gift of the vial in her hand.

“I will ask you to bring this vial to your mother later and have her use it as I show you to place 2 drops under her tongue.”

Aphrodite demonstrated by placing a drop under her tongue.

“When she does it that will give her back her beauty during the next time she sleeps. Both of you will need only one drop each year to renew your beauty. I’m also going to give you a few seeds and before the vial is exhausted you should be able to use the plants to refill it. I’m also going to give you a scroll that gives the dosage, effects and warns of the danger.”

Aphrodite gave to Penelope the vial, the pouch of seeds and the scroll, that she had promised. Penelope prostrated before her in a deep curtsey upon receiving all three gifts from the Goddess. She discovered that she now had a sweet feminine voice when she first spoke to Aphrodite.

“Thank you My Lady for granting my petition and my wish and for caring for me this day. Now that I may offer my own offering to you I will be faithful.”

Aphrodite gave her a hug and said, “Come, You will attend me as handmaiden as I bathe then I will send my gifts home with you to your mother. Bathe yourself so that you may serve me.”

Penelope joyfully when she reached the pond removed her new clothes, entered the pond and bathed herself. She then helped the goddess to undress and bathed her in the waters of the pond. When finished they turned back to the shore and robes and towels had been provided. Drying herself and the Goddess she helped Aphrodite dress in more elegant Olympian garb and found provided another clean, beautiful dress for her to wear.

“Thank you so much for the wonderful clothing, My Lady. Your blessing has surely been poured out on me.”

Aphrodite smiled and said, “You must keep the secret of the plants safe because unknowing souls would trample this sacred plain and their greed would bring death. Say no more than you have been blessed by Aphrodite. This that I give you is mine only to give so use it only for your family and its descendants. Penelope, you will always remain a woman to reward your acts toward me this day. If your family betrays this trust I will take away these added gifts of my blessing to your mother for her and your family. Penelope, I have revealed your identity to the priestess in the village should any doubt your identity. I have a necklace to give you to show that you have been my handmaiden and are under my protection.”

Aphrodite placed a necklace terminating in a ruby stone on Penelope. She looked at the necklace which would show to all the favor that Aphrodite had given to her.

“Thank you, my lady for your grace toward me.”

Aphrodite sensed that Helen was nearing the plain in despair for the fate of Perseus whom she had expected back with an answer long ago and she feared something had happened to him.

“Helen is coming to the plain. Along with the joyous news of your blessing there is other news I must give Helen. Go meet her and bring her to me!"

“Yes, My Lady.”

Penelope ran to meet Helen. When she finally caught up she gave Helen a big hug.

“I am now Penelope but this morning I was Perseus. The Goddess granted my wish and now she commands me to bring you to her.”

Helen took her hand without a word and the two ran to meet the Goddess. Helen after questioning Penelope became convinced that she had been Perseus. She was truly struck with Penelope’s beauty and that she had passed from girlhood to womanhood while retaining the innocence of a child. When they arrived Helen knelt at the feet of Aphrodite.

“Arise, my child. You have done well in keeping the secret of this plain and the day of my visits till this day. This day you also planned to deceive me but you repented of it. You offered gifts to my shrine for Penelope and her mother and for you and your mother. You, by your self, have my mercy for your transgressions, Helen."

"Thank you, My Lady."

"I must bring you sad tidings, Helen. Your father has been killed. Lydia is no longer your Mother, she is priestess of my temple in Ephesus. Priscilla is no longer your sister for she is my acolyte of my temple in Ephesus. But Helen you shall not be an orphan. Daphne, Penelope's mother is now your mother and Penelope is now your sister. So have I decreed it and so shall it be to reward you for your keeping of the secret of the plain. Helen you will teach your new sister, Penelope all she needs to know about being a girl, and Penelope will teach you my ways concerning the gift I have given to her mother and to you now, her new sister. I know it is a sacrifice to lose your family but it is how you must serve your Goddess."

Helen replied, “Thank you My Lady and I will be faithful to your instructions that Penelope shall teach me and in serving you.”

“I must go now and so you both are free to return to your home. I know that you both will want to help but I ask you not to return here for it would mean your death to help in the harvest. I will always hear your petitions thru the shrine and will give you answers thru the priestess. If we do need to speak face to face I will come to you. I wish it were not so but all you can do by meeting me here in the future is to lead someone to the secret place. “

Penelope answered for the both of them, “We will do as you command.”

“Go now my children. Farewell till I come to you again.”

Each girl replied “Farewell, My Lady”

They both turned away and started their journey. Helen turned back to look at the plain and saw it empty. Aphrodite had returned to Olympus. Helen felt devastayed! She had lost almost everything. Her father dead and the Goddess had stolen her Mother and sister and divorced her from them. Her sins had found her out. How could she have thought that she could fool a Goddess? But her friend and now sister had interceded for her. She was still human and adopted into a family with the Goddess blessing. She'd have to be brave for now for Penelope's sake. Later she would grieve for all she had lost!

“Are you okay, Helen? This sure changes things for me and for you. Until today I thought that you would one day become my lover and wife, beloved.”

“Now we will be sisters for always, Penelope. I guess that makes both of us looking for boyfriends.”

“Just don’t rush me with the boys. I’m going to have to get used to being a girl.”

“With a body like that once they get beyond you having been a boy you are going to be rushed by them.”

“Then I’ll deal with it. Well sister, dear you will have to deal with it too since you too will receive the Goddess' gift!"

"How are we going to deal with our family with the gift?"

"Both you and our mother, will take it tonight then we will all be beautiful in the morning.”

“We all are so lucky.”

Helen and Penelope came to Penelope’s house. Helen could help explain the transformation. Daphne, Penelope’s mother met them at the door and greeted them, “Welcome, Helen. Who is your friend and where is my son?”

“This is Penelope who was your son, Perseus. Perseus found out from me where Aphrodite would be today, He asked the Goddess to grant you beauty so that you would find a husband and no longer be lonely. Perseus helped Aphrodite harvest the beauty fluid and after a nap was transformed to Penelope. I became an orphan, but Aphrodite decreed that I should be your daughter and Penelope's sister, Mother”

“I can see that she is my daughter now and you are too!. Welcome home Penelope and Helen!”

Mother and daughters embraced. Penelope was overjoyed at the closeness she was feeling with her Mother and with her new sister, Helen. Helen was distracted from the grief with the overwhelming love outpoured from her new Mother and sister. Daphne wondered at the new bond of parental love she felt towards Helen as deep as for her new daughter, Penelope.

“Mother and Sister, I have a gift to you both from Aphrodite.”

Penelope took the vial and placed 2 drops under both Daphne's and Helen's tongues. Penelope handed the vial, seeds and scroll to Daphne. Helen would enjoy the beauty from the Goddess that her sister already had. Daphne would enjoy bringing a male back into her new family with beauty from the Goddess as her Husband and Penelope and Helen's new father.

“I will explain all to you both. But the most important is that these are to be secret and kept in the family. When you wake from your next sleep, Mother and Sister, the goddess’s blessing of beauty will have happened. “

"Thank you, beloved sister for giving to me Aphrodite's gift and to the Goddess for giving it to our family."

“Thanks be to Aphrodite! Penelope, how will we explain to the village that you are my daughter that used to be my son?”

“The priestess can tell them if we ask her to. Aphrodite revealed my transformation to her.”

“I’m going to place all of the blessing from Aphrodite in this box for safe keeping till we need them again.”

“We only need a drop each year on this day to keep the beauty fresh and new.”

Both Penelope and Daphne told her good night then they all went to their rooms to go to sleep. Penelope and Helen slept together in Perseus' old room. At last Helen could not contain her grief any longer and Penelope cradled her in her arms in bed. Eventually the loud sobs and flowing tears gave way to sighs as the two girls found sleep. As promised when Daphne awoke she became beautiful and young. Helen's sorrow had turned to joy when she saw her new beauty. And the three women welcomed in time a new husband and father, but they zealously guarded even from him, the secret of the box containing the vial, pouch and scroll of Aphrodite's gift of beauty.

The encounter of Perseus and Aphrodite was only the beginning. Erida who was threatened by this new line of followers of Aphrodite, declares war on all those who would worship Aphrodite. Working through hate and jealousy, Erida seeks to declare war on all those who would worship the Goddess of Love. The creation of Aphrodite of another line of priestesses in her service is a momentous event. The line of priestesses beginning with Penelope will endure for centuries in the future.

---

Beauty and the Vial

A Mythic Coming of Age Novel

Chapter 1 ~ Erida and Alexander

By Gail Rose Landers

How will Alexander deal with the curse that Erida caused to be put upon him?

Agape Duro Series

Beauty and the Vial Copyright © 1995, 2025 by Gail Rose Landers. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1 ~ Erida and Alexander

In the past a group of Greek immigrants settled this area and called it Agape Duro. They sensed that one particular grove was blessed by the Goddess and resolved to keep it sacred and unspoiled.

"What brings you here to Agape Duro, sister of Ares?"

"I know my place and can not incite what is not already there in these mortals' hearts."

"Erida, you know that your scream can not overcome my protection. I will not have my town thrown into war."

"Yet I have some who have given their heart to me within. To my own, I need not shout but instead whisper."

"Even if you have wolves in my sheepfold, you shall not disrupt my purpose here, for I will not allow that."

"That remains to be seen, Dite. As to my purpose here, it is done and so simple to affect these fragile mortals by turning off a single gene by influencing the mother to provide the means herself."

Yet Erida had been at work in Agape Duro or Lamur as it was called today. A later influx of french immigrants started calling this place L'amour. An earlier attack by Erida caused much of the history of this place to be lost to the inhabitants. In the recovery from that attack, they took pen and paper and established a town with a mis-spoken and remembered form of L'amour. And thus Lamur came into being as the place was known today

Even though the two being goddesses were evenly matched in power, this sacred ground filled with thousands of years of receiving the power of her presence and the human love here she inspired, was Aphrodite's advantage. Without warning a blast of constructive power greatest of all emitted from Aphrodite. Erida avoided it by escaping in a pocket of space time which the blast sealed up banishing Erida from Earth for now.

"I must discover how Erida thwarted my protections. Perhaps the dryads from 'Zeus' Grove' might be able to tell me what had been missed."

Aphrodite was drawn to another site where Erida had been at work. A solitary oak tree, yet born of "Zeus' Grove" had been a symbol to Lamur Institute and they rolled the tree in celebration of their victories much like the followers of Auburn did with the trees at Toomer's corner. A zealous teen of a rival school had poisoned the tree. It was dying and so was the Dryad who tended it which had been locked inside by the poison. Aphrodite further cloaked her presence by engulfing the tree with her power. She opened the tree and released an aged horribly disfigured and scared dryad from it.

"Poor child, what do you call yourself?"

"Thank you, my Lady. I am Gynylya and also called Lia"

"I will help you Lia, but all is lost unless your tree be saved too. I shall entreat Zeus to intervene to save your tree."

"Thank you, My Lady. It is good."

"Father Zeus, Please hear the plea of your daughter. Erida's follower has cursed this tree so it die except for your intervention. Both the tree and Gynylya must be saved for either to survive. As you heal the tree, I will heal Gynylya so both be saved, if it is your will Father Zeus."

"I so will, Daughter. Let it be done!"

As Aphrodite focused her power to beautify Gynylyta, Zeus rejuvenated the tree so it was healthy and alive. When the tree gained back its power, Lia was restored to her youth and she prostrated her self for Zeus.

"I take great pride in you, Daughter. Erida has wronged us both, so together we shall have an avatar in Gynylya who has been filled with power from both of us. Gynylya will you swear fealty to Zeus and Aphrodite?"

"I will. I, Gynylya, do swear Fealty and service unto Zeus and Aphrodite – To speak and to be silent, to do and to let be, To come and to go, in need and in plenty, In peace and in war, in living and in dying,
From this hour henceforth, until my Lord release me, Death take me, or the world end.

"I, Zeus."

"And I, Aphrodite.

"Hear and shall not forget, nor fail to reward, that which is freely given: Fealty with love, Valor with honor, and Oath-breaking with vengeance. Rise, Avatar Gynylya, favored of both Zeus and Aphrodite. Go in our esteem"

"Aphrodite, instruct our avatar on what we require of her, in our service at this place. I depart."

"Lia, you are to be our eyes and ears here. You must warn us of attacks on the grove and those of my line of priestess here. Repel any that you can in you own power and commune with us to intervene where you are not able."

"I will, My Lady, with all of my being."

"Was it the tree or you Lia who inspired Erida to attack?"

"It was me, My Lady, I had observed women from one line being killed in apparent accidents caused by their daughters who perished with them. That line is your line of priestesses. Now all who remained outside your chosen unborn girl and her mother were Fathers and Sons. Erida has inspired in the Fathers and Sons deep bigotry where they war with any they deem inferior to them. I discovered this and sought to warn your chosen girl's mother. Before I could do so, her follower poisoned the tree, with me inside it trapping me until you and Zeus intervene."

"That was some time ago. What happens now?"

"I watched helplessly as Erida gave the mother the means to imprison your Penelope in the flesh of a boy by introducing something in the womb that turned off the gene that would have allowed her to form normally as a girl. Erida inspired hatred of what she knew was her unborn daughter. She hoped that if she had a son instead that both might be saved. She gave birth and gave her Penelope indwelling boy flesh, the name Alexander."

"I urge you to protect Alexander from the bigotry of the males of his family. Penelope will indeed emerge, for she can not help being her real self. All is not lost, for my priestess, her great aunt Montine resides far away in Denver. Send the child to her when she becomes of age so that she can choose her destiny."

"I will do all that you have asked, My Lady"

"I take my leave of you. Call me back if Erida intrudes again."

So Aphrodite left and Avatar Lia remained with a very big job ahead of her.

**********************

Celia took care for her students very carefully as the headmistress of Lamur Preparatory very seriously. She had come to Lamur AFB on a transfer and served the Air Force school for dependents inside Lamur AFB in various capacities. It was the original site of Lamur Institute which was originally a boarding school and included elementary through college. Pre-school to middle school was what remained when a new Lamur Institute was built outside the Air Force Base. The Lamur Oak was clearly viable through the high iron bar fence that marked the base boundary between the two schools.

The new Lamur Institute was constructed, maintained, staffed and administered by the local board of education,C which was always having funding problems. The new facilities included Air Force provided Dorms on campus for use of any military dependents if their parents were on assignment. The Air Force funded the construction and turned over to the board of Education, dorms for general student use.

Celia was key in encouraging Damion and Chloe Megalos to take advantage of their Air Force benefits and enroll Alexander in Lamur Preschool at no charge since Alexander had been classified as a special needs child. Celia had detected signs of Alexander being rejected at home and with their extended family due to displaying attributes of female gender. The summer after third grade, Alex, as he liked to be called, became involved in an incident of abuse when his uncle who has since been incarcerated, beat Alex for relaxing for a moment and acting like an ordinary girl. After initial reluctance, Alex's parents let him become a boarding school student.

Celia saw her responsibility as being two fold towards Alex. First she made sure the child's female nature had ways to be expressed in a manner where it was not exposed to others, especially to those who might persecute Alex. Second, she made sure that Alex knew how to emulate male behavior and had all the skills that a male child, Alex's age would have. She made sure that Alex would not let down and relax at any time away from the school.

Unfortunately there were summers that both his parents were gone on assignment and Alex had to stay with one of his uncles. While they were careful not to physically harm Alex, they did not feel that verbal abuse would be provable so they made Alex's life even more miserable when he did not have any chance to truly express himself. While the best place for Alex to be was at his Great Aunt's in Denver, they could not place him that far away without parental permission which never came since Damion and Chloe blamed Alex's challenges on her.

One summer when Celia knew Alex was old enough to not unintentionally reveal a secret, She made a new way for Alex to cope.

Celia was watching over Alex as he escaped his uncle's yard, looking for some respite from all the verbal abuse. She caught up to Alex when he was bent over crying and offered her shoulder to comfort him. When he had cried himself out, composed himself, Celia was ready to offer Alex a wondrous chance.

"Alex, do you trust me?"

"With my life, Miss Celia!"

"Good! Follow me!"

Alex followed Celia into the sacred grove. Alex had heard stories of all kinds of strange things happening there. A lot of the children said that it made them very uncomfortable to be anywhere around it. Yet he felt right at home being right in the middle of it. Celia led him to the other side of the grove which was bounded by a steep incline. They had passed the banks of a stream which meandered through the sacred grove and watered all the trees vegetation and wildlife within it.

They came to the stream's source which was a waterfall that flowed into a basin which fed the rest of the stream. Celia led Alex on a hidden path which led around underneath the waterfall. Hidden from view was a framed marble rectangular block flush with the almost vertical incline. However there was no indication of a knob or key hole or anything around it which might suggest a way to open it.

"Thank you for showing me this, Celia. Looks like we have come to a dead end since we have no key to open the door"

"At least you see it is a door. What if you are the key?"

"I'm the key? How could I be the key? Would I just touch my palm to the door and it would open?"

"Why don't you try it?"

"Okay."

"Alex touched the door and found that it wasn't really solid and his palm passed right through it. Next he walked forward and Celia came forward through the apparent door too. From this side, inside the room under the waterfall, it appeared to be open, revealing the path and the waterfall beyond. Then he noticed something amazing. He didn't look like a boy anymore, he looked like the girl that he'd always imagined himself to truly be. Goodness, those pronouns did not seem right now. She looked like the girl she should have been."

"What is this, Celia? I'm a girl and..."

Gail, since that was the name she always associated with her true self, realized it was rude to keep looking at her reflection from the wall and turned to look at Celia. But what she saw caused her to stop and stare as well. You see what she saw was a wild girl in tune with nature like the nymphs or dryads from mythology instead of the familiar face of Miss Celia.

"Miss Celia, is that really you? Is this really me?"

"Yes, I'm still the person you know as Miss Celia. You see this place reveals the true self of who ever enters it. The true me is a Dryad with a funny name but my nickname is Lia either way and I hope you'll call me that. And the girl you see before you reflected is your true self. What would you like for me to call you?"

"Please Miss Lia, call me Gail. Have I really turned into a girl? May I be like this for always?"

"Gail, I'm sorry. You just look like your true self using a glamour which is a kind of majick. It would take more power than this room has to transform you into a girl for always. As for me, I was born a dryad and I use a glamour when I am in the human world. This room removed that glamour when I came inside it. Sweetie, I wish it was completely real, but do you like the way you look now?

"Oh yes, Miss Lia. I love it!"

"Good! For you this place is for learning and discovery. It is always a place where you can take a time out from the sometimes cruel human world. All you have to do is imagine something and it will appear as real as it needs to be for your purpose. Food and things you need to sustain yourself would be real while other things would be a glamour mostly."

"When may I come here?"

"Anytime you desire to or need to come. Just remember to be courteous to those in charge of you even though they are horrid to you sometimes."

"I understand. It's a special place to spend special times but not somewhere to hide away from the world totally. And I do it just the way I did this time?"

Every time you want to get here. Yes."

Gail was very happy to play in the room which became anything her imagination could create. She was aware of the clock and before it approached the time she was expected back, She left. While it was sad to see himself as Alex again, but not so bad seeing Celia back beside her. They walked through the open door but when they looked back from the other side, it looked as solid as it had looked before. Celia took her leave of alex and he scurried happily home, remembering to act like the boy everyone else thought that he was.

In that summer and the summers that followed, Alex went and played in the room. The room was so wonderful that she could play for hours by herself. Gail was a prompt girl and never once was she missed by coming home late.

**********************

As Alex grew up, he started to need to go to the room less and less. By the summer where he turned twelve he only came on his birthday just so Gail could have a birthday party as well as the one Alex received in the human world.

Headmistress Celia called Alex into her office close to the end of the school year after the year he turned thirteen. Alex wondered which uncle he would be staying with this summer since again they were both on assignment as the end of the school year approached.

"Thank you for coming, Alex. I've made arrangements for you to stay over summer until the next school term. This summer you will be staying with your Great Aunt Montine. You are old enough to satisfy the regulations which we have to send you by yourself on a plane to Denver. You'll be flying military passenger service so I know that you'll be well looked after on the trip.

"I'm so glad that I will be able to spend the summer with my Great Aunt Montine. She's a wonderful lady no matter what the rest of the family say. The only thing is that Gail won't get a chance to have a birthday this summer. May I make it up when I get back, Miss Celia?

"Next term you'll be old enough for a pass solo off of the grounds as well so you'll have a chance to do that if you wish."

"Wonderful! Thank you so much for everything, Headmistress Celia."

"You're welcome, Alex. Dismissed."

Alex left the headmistress' office, with his head filled with all the things he'd like to do with his Great Aunt and in Denver.

Beauty and the Vial

A Mythic Coming of Age Novel

Chapter 2 ~ Montine and Alex

By Gail Rose Landers

Will Alex, with Great Aunt Montine's help,
discover the things that had been denied to him all his life?

Agape Duro Series

Beauty and the Vial Copyright © 1995, 2025 by Gail Rose Landers. All rights reserved.

Chapter 2 ~ Montine and Alex

The flight starting with an Air Force Personnel flight from Lamur AFB to Dobins AFRB, the helicopter ride from there to Atlanta Airport and then from Atlanta Airport aboard Delta had been truly amazing. Sitting by his side the whole way was Celia's friend Ariel. Celia had duties which kept her on the base so she had enlisted Ariel to make sure that Alex reached Denver safely.

Time passed quickly on the flight even though it was a three hour and twenty minute flight, they would arrive at a mere one hour and twenty minutes later according to local time since they were passing through two time zones. The time passing quickly was due to Ariel being really fun to talk with her. Dr. Ariel taught Algebra at Lamur Institute but she seemed to know a little about everything. She attributed it to being well traveled due to her other occupation. Ariel was surprisingly closed mouth about it, so Alex pretended that she was a spy doing secret missions.

"How close are you to your Great Aunt Montine?"

"I'm pretty close to her considering this will be the first time that I have visited her in person. We've spent a lot of time together over the years."

"How did you do that? Via video call?"

"Not exactly. I'm not sure how to explain."

"Does it have anything to do with the 'Refuge at Agape Duro' the one with the entrance under the water fall that only you can open?"

"Yes, that's it! How did you know? I didn't even know the place's name until now."

"Let's just say that if I entered that room where you spent so much time that I wouldn't look the same way I do now, like Celia only different. I have my own special entrance that I have been given permission to use."

"Yes, that helps. I used the room to contact Great Aunt Montine when I was Gail. The room transformed to look like her house and a real life image of her, just like I see you, was with me while at her house she had a real life image of me in her house. Both acted just like their counterpart in the other place."

"Yes that room is very special and I can believe that it could do what you describe. How do you think Aunt Montine managed on her end?

"She had some unexplainable majick. She was over seventy but she looked a genuine 30 without any of the 'cheats' used to fake a lesser age these days. She freaked the rest of the family out since her not surrendering to age the way most do was a bit disjointing and uncomfortable for them to be around."

"You did not seem to have the same problem and were very comfortable with her?"

"I had learned to treat her as the matriarch of the family (which she was) in public as I referred to her. while in our times together, I treated her as she treated me which was as a contemporary."

"Was that the reason why, besides you were persecuted, that you spent so much time in the room?"

"At times, especially when I was a little girl, she was like a little girl to me and she was my playmate. Other times she shared stories of long ago which only someone who is mature and has lived a long time could do. She knew that I enjoyed the paradox and treasured every moment we had together."

We went from the plane through the air way to the Airport. Dr. Ariel led me right up to the place where Great Aunt Montine gave me a big hug just like the first time when I first contacted her with the room."

"Oh it is really you after so long, Great Aunt Montine. I love you."

A woman approached us, walking with a purpose and she was just getting close enough so that she would be recognized.

"I love you too, sweetie. Thanks for keeping Alex safe, Dr. Ariel. Oh No! Do you see Erida too. I must deal with her. Alex go with Dr Ariel, now"

Dr. Ariel took my hand and we went through a door into an empty sky lounge. Ariel erected some sort of shield around the room. The TV came alive but instead of showing programming, it revealed what was happening between Aunt Montine and the one she called Erida.

"You've lost old woman and I have finally won. Dite will no longer have a priestess once you've gone. I've taken care of making sure that you have no one to follow you in the way of Dite."

"I'm not dead yet, I may not have a lot of time but I can give my successor a crash course in her birthright. She'll see all of the wonderful things that she has to look forward to as a priestess of Aphrodite."

"It would take a life time of experiences to overwhelm the fear and hate that I have commanded my followers to concentrate on her."

If I can no longer afford to be patient and prudent, I'll find a creative way to see the way of love is far greater than your way of hate.

I was so glad that Dr Ariel was in the room with me. It was bright as day in this room and that cheered me up. Suddenly a lady appeared shining brighter than a supernova flash. I shielded my eyes but I could still hear.

"I banish you, Hate. Arisia Rrab, rise and shine. Everyone who hates and does evil hates the light and will not come into the light in fear that her deeds be exposed. Behold the light!"

I felt Dr Ariel hugging me tightly. Somehow the TV did not transmit the intensity of the light but it did white out the screen so there was no picture for a moment. When it returned to normal only Aunt Montine remained and Erida had vanished.

As we got ready to leave, the room returned to normal. After we passed out the door, I heard an attendant announce that cleaning was completed and the room was ready to be occupied again. We walked to to meet back up with Aunt Montine. As they approached the two of them exchanged some knowing looks

"Thank you for watching Alex and for everything you've done. I had best get Alex home before his body realizes that it is two hours later than it appears to him."

"Thank you Dr. Ariel. It was fun. I guess you are right Aunt Montine, let's go home."

Since we had my belongings, Aunt Montine led me out of the Airport. I glanced back and saw Dr Ariel going down what I thought was a dead end and going out of sight. Since she did not come back, I guessed that she knew something that I did not.

The car ride was long since the airport is quite a distance from the rest of Denver. Finally after all the adventure, I was in her living room, sitting across from her on the couch with my bags by the door.

""Welcome Alex! I am so glad that you were able to accept my invitation to spend the summer with me."

"Thank you for inviting me, Aunt Montine. We can do lots of wonderful things together. I just love spending time with you."

"You can also spend time with girls your age while you are here this summer too."

"Just the girls, Aunt Montine, what about the boys?"

"I wouldn't mind you being with boys, but there isn't any in my neighborhood."

"The odds against that happening must be astronomical."

"What can I say, Alex? It must me something in the water. but they have made the best of it. They formed a teen sorority and they do everything with it together."

"How great is that! I'm the only guy on a block full of girls! I'm going to have fun this summer."

"I'm glad that you are excited, Alex. Let;s get you settled in the guest room for tonight. I'll give you a full tour later. We'll pick out where you would like to stay for the summer."

"That sounds great, Aunt Montine. I guess I am a bit tired from the flight out to Denver and the car ride out here."

Great Aunt Montine and I took my things to the guest room. while it was still early there, it was way past my bedtime by my original time zone. I fell asleep quickly.

~ ~ { { - O - } } ~ ~

With my internal clock still a bit off, I got up very early and explored the kitchen and found everything to make breakfast. Having secured the ingredients, I prepared a breakfast of omelets, oatmeal and orange juice and was pretty proud of myself. I found a tray and piled everything on it and took it up to Great Aunt Montine's room. I knocked on her door.

"Come in, Alex!" She saw what I had brought and an even bigger smile filled her face.

"Alex, you are wonderful! We can eat at the window table."

A portion of her bedroom had a space where it would have been a hexagon had two of the sides not completed and open to the room on one corner where a breakfast table had an amazing view out the four windows in the wall facets. I set places for each of us and filled the plates and cups with the contents of the tray. While I was busy with the setup, Great Aunt Montine had gotten up and pulled on a robe and joined me. We both sat down and ate the breakfast that I had prepared.

"Where did these cooking skills come from, Alex?

"Mom taught me. She said that any teen should have some cooking skills. She told me that the polite thing to do was to wait on myself some to pull my weight."

"Your mother is a wise woman and please let her know how much I approve in how she has raised you. Thank you."

"I will Aunt Montine. I was wondering where the girls would be so I can meet some of them today."

"They will be at the Delta Iota Alpha chapter Nu Epsilon house. It's seven houses down on the left and has a sign in the front yard. It's a functions and recreation room instead of cohabitation like a college sorority house. It's become the center of social life in the community for the teens."

"How could teen aged girls manage something like that just for their activities?"

Delta Iota Alpha came first to the college, as Chapter Nu Alpha, but the sorority sisters heard about the natural sorority here and they made it an outreach project to turn them into a high school chapter (Nu Epsilon) of their sorority. Together the two groups of girls along with parents alumni and businesses raised enough money to buy a foreclosed house and renovate and furnish it to be a recreation center for the girls and were officially chartered. You can google them and get their internet site for more information."

~ ~ { { - O - } } ~ ~

Even knowing a lot about them from Great Aunt Montine and their internet site, I was shy and uncertain of myself. I did not try to run into some of them at the mall or other places. I went instead straight to the Sorority House to meet them. I didn't expect the reception when I knocked on their door. Mrs Norman, the house mother, employed by the sorority greeted me and took me into a small entry room that had a couple of chairs and a table between them and invited me to sit down.

"I'm sorry Alex, but we have no Co-ed activities sanctioned by the Sorority. I can't let you visit here at the house. I wish that we could help you find friends while you are here but by the time we figured out a way to do that you would be gone. The community already being a sorority is why we have this degree of organisation. We are not prepared with plans on how to deal with this. We have to answer to the national and our sponsor chapter in what we do."

"Thank you for seeing me, Mrs Norman. I understand and I feel it is great that the girls have this and I would not want to do anything to give an excuse to someone to take it away. I came to be with my Aunt Montine. I'll leave it to fate if I am able to make any friends my age while I am here."

When I returned, Great Aunt Montine could see my discomfort and directed me to sit with her in the living room. I noticed that she was wearing around her neck on a cord, a small Grecian looking vial, that I'd never seen her wear before.

"Alex how did things go with meeting the neighborhood girls?"

"Not so good, Aunt Montine. They never thought they would have to deal with Co-ed activities so they have no rules to permit it. I met with the house mother and she told me that even beginning immediately to take care of the over sight, the process would take long enough that I would be gone before they managed it."

"They all go to an all girls charter school. In the school year, they arrange co-ed activities with other schools but not over the summer. The girls make do with sorority activities. Of course they individually date and go on family vacations and parties, too."

"I'm not disappointed that I'll be spending all my time with you this summer, Aunt Montine. That was the big reason for coming after all."

Aunt Montine was silent and pensive for a moment. Finally it appeared that she had decided something and she had a big mischievous smile on her face. I loved the things that followed when she got that way so I was prepared for something interesting."

"Alex do you remember when you told me that you had decided that you had no idea what motivated that unknowable species, the teen aged girl.? How would you like to participate in an experiment?"

"Aunt Montine. would that experiment involve me posing as a girl?"

"Yes, you would become a girl. You could join the sorority and then your problem meeting and spending time with them would be solved."

"I'd agree if I could be sure I would look like a real girl and that there would be no way for my disguise to be uncovered."

"Alex, if you trust me, close your eyes and open your mouth and try to touch your nose with your tongue."

I felt silly doing it but I trusted Great Aunt Montine. I felt a few drops of something land under my tongue. I thought by telling her that last thing, what I was really doing was saying no to the experiment since I didn't want to be caught dressing up as a girl. I didn't see what harm it would do so I let my Great Aunt Montine do what she wanted to me.

"Do you feel anything, Alex?"

"I feel a little tingly through my body as though my whole body had fallen asleep instead of just an arm or a foot. I feel tired all of a sudden.

"You might like to go get ready for bed, Alex."

"This really feels weird. I feel a bit dizzy. Could you help me, please? I'll do exactly as you say.

"Of course, I'll help you, Alex. Lets get you up and into your bedroom."

Aunt Montine held my hand and steadied me and led me to my room. Once there she helped me undress. Instead of my pajamas, she helped me put on a pair of panties with a maxi-pad stuck inside it and a nightgown. I did just what I said and did what she led me to do without question or comment. I caught a glimpse of myself in the nightgown and thought that no one would mistake me for a girl. Great Aunt Montine helped me into bed and then covered me up under the covers and tucked me in. I felt wonderful with the feel of the fabric and the kiss on the forehead that Great Aunt Montine gave to me.

"Good Night Aunt Montine. Thank you so much. "

"Good night, Sweetie In the morning, you will be ..."

I must have gone to sleep before she finished speaking since that was all that I heard. As i woke, i realized two things immediately. I was a girl but that did not feel odd or unusual, it just felt normal. I also was not Alex mentally anymore, I was a whole new female person. Alexis maybe? I felt all aches and discomfort, not with my genitals but that something wet and sticky was covering them. Thank goodness for the pad that had not let any of that get on the sheets or the rest of me. I let out a little Ewwweh and my voice sounded normal to me but also very girly. I was proud of myself when I decided what to call out to Aunt Montine.

"Aunt Montine, Could you please help me? I've had an accident."

"I'm proud of you sweetie for not panicking."

" What has happened to me?"

"You are a normal teen aged girl now and you've had your first period. Get up and go have a nice long soak in the tub. I'll get you some midol and some comfortable clothes to put on after you finish your bath."

"Is this permanent?"

"No this is only temporary and should last for a month. With the change there is also something that has changed reality so that you will be recognized as a girl named Gail Adella Landers and no one will realize that Alex ever existed. In this life you are an 18 year old young woman who suddenly lost her parents and has no other family, that I chose to take in my niece to live with me."

"I have a lot more questions but I feel icky so I'll go ahead and take that bath which you suggested."

I got out of bed and walked slowly to the bathroom. I noticed my reflection in the mirror and observed that I was now a young woman and that fact would not be questioned anywhere. That didn't matter now as much as cleaning up and taking that bath. I entered the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I started the bath water and put some scented bubble bath in it that I had found by the tub.

I prepared myself for the bath water then sunk down into the waters and finally relaxed. Too soon for me, just before I had begun to be 'pruney' I got out and patted myself dry. I put on the clothes that Great Aunt Montine had laid out for me including another maxi-pad for my panties.

I went to the living room, wondering what I had gotten myself into, to join Great Aunt Montine to get some more of my questions answered.

~ ~ { { - O - } } ~ ~

Beauty and the Vial

A Mythic Coming of Age Novel

Chapter 3 ~ Gail and Montine

By Gail Rose Landers

Will Gail, with Great Aunt Montine's help, discover the mystery of shopping and perhaps a more supernatural one as well?

Agape Duro Series

Beauty and the Vial Copyright © 1995, 2025 by Gail Rose Landers. All rights reserved.

Chapter 3 ~ Gail and Montine

Great Aunt Montine soon arrived in the living room with a tray from the kitchen. She had me take a lap tray from beside my seat and set it up across my lap. She served me and then pulled up a tray table for herself and served herself. I finally broke the silence instead of starting to eat.

"You tricked me! You knew that when I told you that I would do it if I could be undetectable as a girl that I thought I was saying no."

"You had a priceless expression on your face when you realized what happened. Not even getting your period at the same time threw you. Didn't you secretly wish for this to happen?"

"Maybe? I don't know, Aunt Montine. I'm glad it happened because I feel so alive and right and congruent. I feel a little loss because Alex is dead now. The memories hurt because every thing about them are foreign to me. The only times that don't hurt are when I had been with or interacting with you. I didn't know what to call it then but I've always been Gail with you, haven't I?"

"You don't know or you have not decided yet?. I've always known how to coax Gail to show herself but I didn't create her. You were born being Gail but everyone else taught you that you should be a boy. You were a good girl and wanted to please them so you formed a boy persona to show to the world and pushed the real you so far inside that it seemed like she didn't exist anymore."

"I remember little girl Gail from the secret place my friend Celia led me too. I'm a teen-aged Gail now. If being Alex wasn't real, why do I grieve his loss so much?"

"Being Alex connected you to family and friends and Gail inside treasured family and friends so much that she gave her life so Alex could keep those connections. I'm sorry for tricking you but I wanted you to have the chance to let Gail out so you could decide for yourself about being Gail without all those other voices drowning out yours. That's what summer vacations for a teen have always been about for those who dared discover who they really were inside instead of being the sum of expectations."

"This is a lot more than coping with puberty and starting the transition from child to adult. At least if the real me has always been Gail then that explains why I've not been enthusiastic and put the breaks on any lust my male body has felt. Does this mean I'm going to be liking boys? I've got the body for it now and if my mind goes with it unlike before then something could happen, couldn't it?"

"It could happen but I would not expect it to happen quickly. We might like to go to the mall to get you some clothes that fit. You might not realize it now, but the problem isn't your willingness, but theirs. Not only are you a girl but you are incredibly attractive. You might like to take precautions and ordinary birth control doesn't work on me or you any more. We'll get you an appointment with my gynecologist You'll need to use barrier methods, watching your cycle and spermicide. This is temporary now but if you become a mother it will be permanent."

"Thanks for the warning, Aunt Montine. I will be careful. Guy's are really going to be that attracted to me? Really?

"Believe it, Gail! Guys who are that turned on will try everything. With you being a novice that puts you at a real disadvantage. That's why you'll need to be careful."

"I understand now. Why don't we go choose my room? I guess you wanted me to wait till today so I would realize that I was going to spend some of the summer as a girl. How long will I be a girl? Is the visitor going to come calling again?"

"Gail, as things stand now your visitor will likely come again but that might be the last time. How are you doing with your visitor, dear?

"Even though you have prepared me for it, after it started, I felt so scared. I'm so relieved, knowing I might have to go thru it only one time more. I'm getting used to it and thinking of it less of a bother and more like a promise of even more beauty and life."

"Good girl! Anyway for the rest of what you asked. With the jet lag from your flight, I would have waited anyway to give you the tour. But knowing you would start the summer as a girl is important information I wanted you to have as you are choosing. I guess we can talk and walk at the same time."

"Is it possible that I could spend the entire summer as a girl? Would there anyway to make that happen if I would like to stay a girl?"

"It's possible to extend your time but no way to make it end before it runs its course. There will be signs before you turn back. When that happens, we will discuss what we would like to do."

"I don't suppose there is any use in asking you where the magic comes from or how it works, Aunt Montine?"

"Sorry Gail! Nor at this time. What is it the spies say? Oh yeah. You have no need to know."

"That's okay. The blessing is not unwelcome just because I don't know where it comes from. It's very welcome and thank you so much Aunt Montine."

We both got up and shared a great big girly hug that I enjoyed. I helped Great Aunt Montine by taking the remains of our Breakfast to the kitchen, putting away the food and putting the soiled dishes in the dish washer. I returned and the two of us went up the stairs. The living areas and Great Aunt Montine's bedroom and the guest bedroom where I stayed last night were on the first floor. This was my first look at the upstairs where I noticed a hallway with a number of room doors which were all bedrooms.

Great Aunt Montine took me to the first door and we stepped inside. This was obviously a girl's room with pastel decorations and a girls bedroom suite including a nice vanity. There was a large walk in closet which had been customized to use all the space efficiently. There was a place for everything including places for a large number of shoes. The room fit the new me so I knew that I didn't need to see the rest of the rooms.

"Aunt Montine, it's okay if I don't see any more of the rooms. I love this one and I feel that it is a good fit for the girly girl that I expect that I will be."

"Gail, I feel that this is a good choice for you too. You may leave anything that is distinctly Alex's in the guest room. We'll replace the clothing and other items when we go shopping. You need not be frugal in making do by .using things that fit Alex better. I have set aside a large budget to get you settled and I don't mind you spending it all. I don't want you to fail at experiencing everything a girl does just because you wanted to pinch pennies for me. I want you to do this right since you may never get this chance again."

"Thank you Aunt Montine. I'll go pack a bag and bring those items up here now."

"Please make a shopping list of the things that you would like to replace because they scream Alex. You don't have to list clothing since I know what you need better than you may know yourself yet."

I went down stairs and packed a few things and afterward I made a shopping list that was long. I looked at the bag that I was using and added 'luggage' to the list. I brought them upstairs and Great Aunt Montine helped me put them away. I handed the list to Great Aunt Montine and she smiled at me and nodded when she saw the list.

"Gail, we will be able to get everything that you need with some left over for items we may have overlooked. Let's get cleaned up and changed. I'll lay an outfit out for you on your bed. Then we'll drive out to the mall and start shopping."

Getting cleaned up was interesting but Great Aunt Montine left a step by step list for me. I put on the clothes and filled my purse and was ready except that I did not use any makeup. I looked stunningly beautiful even without it so it was dawning on me that Great Aunt Montine was right about me being a stunner and to keep my guard up. I followed Great Aunt Montine out to the car and off we went.

"Aunt Montine, I still don't understand. What is the big deal about women and shopping? Shouldn't the shopping gene go along with becoming a girl?"

"Don't worry Gail. You have the shopping gene. Once you understand what shopping is all about and immersion in shopping takes place, it will kick in. You'll never know what hit you."

"What do I need to understand?"

"I believe an illustration is in order. Let's go into Claire's and get your ears pierced. Don't worry. the reverse process will make them whole again."

"Let's get my ears pierced!"

We went inside Claire's and it was pretty obvious where we had to go to get it done. We watched as a tall blonde woman was getting her ears pierced. She was sitting in the chair so patiently clutching the Claire bear like a little girl. Her friend was taking her picture as her first ear was pierced with a cute happy smile on her face even though I knew her ear had to be stinging. The girl doing it stopped and turned to us.

"Hello ladies, may I help you?"

"I'd like to get my niece, Gail's ears pierced."

She handed Great Aunt Montine a clipboard and directed me to the starter earring display.

"If you'll fill out this form and pick out which earring that you'd like for her, you can be next after Allison there."

The attractive, sophisticated blonde with the cute shoes and camera waved. I smiled at both of them and waved back. While Great Aunt Montine was filling out the clipboard she came over to me and pointed out a large heart shaped earring with facets cut into it so that it shone like a large diamond when the light caught it.

"Would you like that one, Gail?"

"Oh yes! Thank you!

Just then the gun misfired and did not pierce her other ear all the way through. The girl doing it was upset but the blonde in the chair sat patiently smiling. While the shop girl was getting things ready for another attempt, an illusion appeared in front of me of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen but her features were obscured in a light brighter than the sun yet I was not blinded by it. The woman's image faded but the bright aura rested on the woman in the chair clutching the bear. Somehow I knew that the only way that the aura around her would finish with her is if I kissed her on the lips. I was sure it was just the woman since just then the girl came into view in front of her with the second successful try piercing her ear. The woman exchanged places with Allison and they traded the Claire bear and the camera.

"Wish me luck, Ari, I haven't gotten my ears pierced since I was 6 years old. You were so calm through the entire thing."

"For Luck, Allie."

Ari kissed Allison on the cheek. The sales girl positioned the gun to give Allison the second ear piercing that she wanted in the first ear. While setting up for the second ear after a successful first, I closed in and kissed Ari full on the lips. The aura permeated all of Arl and vanished. I smiled at her and she smiled back at me.

"Thank you. I'm afraid I don't remember your name?"

"I'm Gail. You've been such a brave girl. I felt that I had to kiss and make it better"

"Thank you for your gift, Gail. I feel amazing, so it must have worked."

Ari was changing but she didn't seem to notice. She was trying to get a good pic of Allison getting her other ear pierced. I noticed things that I hadn't before. Her large hands and feet became smaller. Her hairline, nose and chin changed. The grey faded from her hair and from her brows she seemed to become even more blonde and the shag cut grew out until her hair reached the middle of her back She shrunk a few inches as she became thinner and more delicate. Her breasts grew 3 cup sizes and her hips flared out giving her a perfect figure. The bulge on her throat went away as her shoulders narrowed. I guess she might have been 45 before like her friend but now she appeared to be at most 25 years old. her clothes altered so they fit her perfectly but also were appropriate for her new age. The thing about it was that no one else noticed it, not even Great Aunt Montine. I was so consumed by all this that I missed them calling me for my turn and Great Aunt Montine led me to the chair.

"Are you ready for this, Gail?"

"I'm ready. Thank you."

She pierced both my ears and handed me a mirror. I admired the earrings in my ear and I was overjoyed on how they sparkled. I realized that Great Aunt Montine wanted me to see how an accessory like jewelry added to my beauty and that made me feel good and those who enjoyed my beauty were happy too. The women who cooperated to help me felt happy too. So a shopping trip was to spread happiness around.

"Do you understand now, sweetie?"

"Yes, shopping together brings happiness in cooperating to enhance beauty in each other. The things we get give us happiness when we enjoy our own beauty. It brings happiness to others who enjoy the beauty. That's like those boys who are over there staring at my boobs. I can tell they are really happy right now. Let's go before one of them works up the courage to say hello."

"My niece is growing up! You get a gold star for that answer. So let's go shopping!"

And we did! We went by the cosmetics counter in Macy's and I got a makeover and purchased my cosmetics. We lost the boys when we went to the nail salon for a Mani / Pedi. We had our hair styled at the salon. We went to the gynecologist where I got a full exam. Oh joy! The doctor fitted me for a rubber baby buggy bumper and gave me a lecture on birth control without the pills. The IUD's looked like an option but Great Aunt Montine vetoed that for now. And small world we met Allison and Ari at the desk checking Ari in for an exam as we were checking out. We had a great time buying a small but versatile teen girl wardrobe for me. And the best thing while I was happy to be gaining all of those nice things was that Great Aunt Montine introduced me around as her niece, Gail Adella Landers.