I stood in front of a mirror as Juno helped me adjust the dress she’d bought. The plunging neckline showed off breasts that I still wasn’t used to. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to have them for the first time in my life. The. . . extra physics of it all just took a bit of an adjustment. And, of course, there was sleeping with them.

  Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t lie on my stomach as I slept last night like I was used to. My tits felt so smooshed, and it hurt.

  So, I did my best to lie on my side, and it. . . didn’t result in the best night’s sleep. This may have been why I kept yawning.

  “Look at you. All dressed up and can’t stop yawning. You’d think you were going to Slumberland instead of tea with the governess,” Juno teased.

  I chuckled.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Juno pulled down the sides of my dress a centimeter or two and rested her hands on my hips for a moment, which sent a jolt of electricity through me. I suddenly stood at ramrod straight, eyes wide open.

  “Tilda, I’ve known you for about a day now, and I think you’ve apologized more than any person ought to in a whole month. Why is that?”

  Because I’ve spent my entire life trying to stay out of people’s way, and that’s hard to do when you’re a hulking postman, I thought. So I ended up apologizing whenever people took notice of me. If I didn’t want to see myself, surely everyone else deserved an apology for being forced to.

  “Dunno,” I lied.

  Thankfully, Juno didn’t follow up that line of inquiry.

  She pulled the skirt back a little bit, and as my companion’s fingers brushed my ankles, I yipped and skipped.

  A boisterous laugh erupted from Juno’s lips, and she left me alone to get her own dress on.

  “You’re too much sometimes, Tilda. I can’t help but laugh at all the little things you do. I can’t wait to find out what else makes you squeak on our journey together.”

  Our journey together. . . right. Now that I was an official apprentice of the guild, we’d be traveling together across the countryside making deliveries.

  When I pictured us seated in Juno’s wagon moving from place to place, I couldn’t help but smile as a warm, fuzzy feeling overtook me. I brought my palms together and turned to look at myself in the mirror again, my fuzzy ears standing tall on my head. My smile grew, and I thought, Opha, you didn’t do half bad.

  Candlelight lit most of our shared room at the inn, with one small bed by the window and another closer to the door. A full-length mirror hung on the back of the door. It wobbled whenever someone walked by in the hall but never looked to be in danger of falling.

  A thin red rug with a few holes torn in it covered most of the room’s center. Hardwood flooring with tiny gaps between the boards stretched out from under the rug all the way to the white-painted walls.

  Between the armoire and desk, a small table with a jug of water and a wash basin on top waited to be used. Two white rags and towels sat folded behind the basin, half-dangling off the table.

  Outside the window, the sounds of Kylson’s evening streets crept in, groups of people walking by laughing and the occasional clatter as someone stumbled into a waste bin or a tree.

  I learned exactly how unabashed Juno was when she stripped in the center of the room to her undergarments. Her thighs and tummy carried stretch marks, and I quickly looked away before my eyes could examine much more of her body.

  Juno stood there for a moment, stretching with her arms above her head. She wore off white panties and had her bosom wrapped in a thin matching fabric. One thing I’d noticed before turning away was that her breasts were smaller than mine. I wasn’t sure how “soft” I expected Opha to craft my new body, but she’d done it in spades.

  When I turned back around, my companion had slipped into a gray dress that fell to her knees. The sleeves covered half of her arms. And the fabric of her dress was thicker than mine.

  She then spent the next few minutes fishing through her bags and applying a cream to her face that smoothed some of her features. While she painted her eyes a soft peachy color, the messenger hummed a little tune only she knew. Though, it sounded not all too different from a lullaby.

  As she finished and re-packed her cosmetics, Juno faced me again.

  “You know, I can’t help but wonder. . . what things must have been like where you came from, Tilda.”

  I cocked my head to the side.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Juno sat down on her bed by the window and crossed her legs. She patted the mattress for me to sit beside her, and I did, again feeling awkward due to proximity.

  “I mean — you say you’ve never been called adorable. You’ve never owned a dress before. And you act like you’re treading through a world made of glass. All of the environments I picture that would lead a goddess to act this way are. . . worrisome.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Looking at the floor, I felt a heaviness pooling in my heart. And dammit, I was too tired from today’s activities to be thinking straight. I mean, meeting another Luck Goddess, dress shopping, joining a guild, and now tea with the governess? That was a lot to do in a single day! Maybe the only reason I was still awake was BECAUSE I was a goddess.

  And yet. . . the exhaustion wore away at my secret. Or rather — the walls I’d hastily constructed to protect that secret. I mean, let’s face it. The walls were hardly up to code, even as a metaphor.

  So maybe. . . maybe I could be vulnerable. Perhaps I didn’t have a choice. Surely I owed Juno some trust at this point with all she’d done for me. But even as I thought this, dread crawled out from the crevices of my heart. What if she didn’t want to travel with me anymore? What if she was disgusted? What if keeping my secret this long ruined any trust she had for me?

  I’m not sure I’d survive her giving me a look of disgust, even for a split second, I thought.

  And that’s exactly how most of the folks I knew back home would react upon learning someone was trans.

  Of course, Juno had shown me nothing but her own brand of carefree kindness and generosity since I’d arrived. Maybe I was doing her a disservice by assuming so little of her beliefs. Bella told me the people of Fevara raised their kids without expectations of gender until they decided who they wanted to be. Gender norms were different here than they were back home.

  Okay, Tilda. Calm down. Just answer your friend’s question, I thought. She’s just a woman who spent years of her life praying for your arrival. Don’t overthink it.

  The mental sarcasm of that last line left me shaking my head.

  “Okay, Juno. If we’re going to travel together, you deserve to know the truth about me. I didn’t come from the heavens. Not at first, anyway. I came from a world where I was an ordinary letter carrier, much like you,” I said.

  Her eyes widened as she listened to my story.

  “The main difference between us is that. . . back in my world, I was a boy. At least, I looked like one on the outside. But I’m discovering now that I didn’t want to be a boy. I wanted to be a girl, and back home, thoughts like that could get a person in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Juno asked before clamping her hands over her mouth.

  I sighed.

  “Well, depending on how unlucky you were, you might get ostracized. You might get kicked out of your family. It’s entirely possible you’d be attacked for such a thing, especially in the town where I delivered mail. So, I kept those feelings locked down, and I did my best to live a life just trying to stay out of everyone’s way. I don’t think I was very happy.”

  At some point in my story, Juno had taken my hands. I didn’t realize it until now. Her eyes were starting to water like she might cry.

  “That sounds awful, Tilda. I’m so sorry.”

  I shrugged as best I could with my hands clasped in Juno’s.

  “Anyway, when I, um, died, Opha offered me a chance to be reborn and come here. She sent me to you as a Bunny Goddess and instructed me to use my magic to give you, and others in our path, as much luck as I could manage. So. . . that’s why I’m so squeamish when you call me adorable or when your fingers happen to brush against me. In the life I used to live as a man, I wasn’t used to having those experiences.”

  Juno looked over at the window for a moment while thinking, and I felt my shoulders bunch in. This was it. She was going to say we needed to separate ways. Or Juno would wrinkle her nose and tell me to leave the room. My heart shivered while I anticipated her verdict. And that’s exactly what it felt like, a verdict. I was standing in a courtroom with a judge seconds away from banging the gavel and sentencing me.

  But to my complete surprise, Juno lifted a hand to wipe her eyes. Then, she turned to me with a soft smile.

  “Do you like being a girl?”

  I nodded. I didn’t even have to think about it. Being a girl made me the happiest I’d ever felt in my life, an almost searing joy that made my heart feel like it was about to burst and spew confetti.

  “Do you like it when my fingers brush against you?”

  Again, I nodded.

  “And how about when I compliment your appearance? How does that make you feel, Tilda?”

  “Like I want to run down to the street and start dancing with strangers,” I said before biting my tongue. “Sorry, that sounded stupid.”

  Juno stood up in front of me without warning, and I almost flinched backward.

  “No! It’s not stupid. None of what you’ve said or done since arriving in my life has been stupid. Those are just. . . mean old thoughts in your brain. And you need to shake them out. Right now, Tilda! Stand up and shake them out with me.”

  My companion helped me stand, and before I even knew what I was doing, we were shaking our heads from left to right. It was a bizarre ritual, but I tried to imagine all my past negativity falling out of my ears and spilling onto the floor.

  “Keep shaking, Tilda! Get ALL of those nasty thoughts out. Let them fall from those cute fluffy ears of yours!” Juno said.

  And by golly, I shook my head all the harder. I rattled my noggin until the room spun so hard that I fell to my ass. Juno did the same, and soon we were sitting back to back on the rug, giggling like school girls.

  When we’d caught our breath from laughing, Juno leaned her head back against mine and stared at the ceiling.

  “There. Do you feel better?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Juno.”

  “No problem. I know a thing or two about bad thoughts. Sometimes I think I became a messenger just to outrun them. But listen to me. If you’re happy as a girl, then I don’t think you have anything to be ashamed of. I appreciate you trusting me enough to share your story.”

  My eyes fell to the rug where a small orange beetle slowly crawled up through a tear. I extended a paw and let the insect inch its way into my hand. Then, I walked to the window and set the bug in one of the potted plants perched on a tiny balcony just outside our room.

  When it was free, I turned back to Juno and offered her my other paw, helping my companion get to her feet.

  “Thanks for not treating me any differently,” I said.

  The messenger drew me into a tight hug that took my breath away. And where I started to tense, this time, I chose to let her trust envelop me. I loosened into her hug, believing that it was a gesture of kindness shared between a couple of girls. That word included me. Juno confirmed it.

  “I will never treat you differently,” Juno said. “Each day of our journey, you’ll still be my Bunny Goddess.”

  Holding the hug a bit longer so she wouldn’t see me tear up, I took a deep breath and finally let Juno go.

  “Thatta girl,” she said, rubbing the tops of my arms.

  I smiled.

  “So. . . tea with the governess?” I suggested.

  “After you, girlie,” Juno said, motioning for the door.

  I smiled all the wider.