It's early in the morning, eleven days after the strange dream. (Though Ava hasn't been counting.)
She wakes up, and looks over at her side table where her glasses are. Moving on autopilot, she puts on her glasses...
Crash-scramble bootup. Okay, she's Sable and her girlfriend is panicking, right, no time.
"Bwuh? C'mere, sweetie."
She sits up in bed and pulls Ava into her arms.
"Tell me what's going on. Also, d'you sound different or something?"
"Do I sound different?"
More squeeze regardless.
"Huh. And I can see you clearly without my glasses, now that you mention it. So either we're both having the same hallucination, and we-Pirates have never really been prone to that, on top of shared hallucinations being less likely than separate, or this is probably real."
"No, if Lucy was right, Maya would be laying atop us rather than in my head right now. This is something weird and unprecedented. We're still like... recognizable? But prettier and more femme and upgraded. So. Huh. Something weird's clearly going on."
She squeezes Ava tighter. "Probably the thing to do is not to panic, and just look for other clues? If there are any? And otherwise just enjoy it?"
"So, uh, practical considerations. Do we menstruate now? I think we can probably keep our current IDs without many awkward explanations... Though this certainly does suggest I should get my name and gender marker change through sooner than later. Should we tell any other people we know? Um, not to be crude but we're going to need to relearn sex too. Do we stop going to the optometrist? Do we go to a different optometrist to check that everything, is, uh, normal? Do we keep wearing glasses for fashion? Has anything else changed? Like, we don't have tails now or something, right?"
Sable smiles tenderly, still petting Ava softly, and replies. "Okay, taking it one at a time. We'll find out about the periods in a month or so. IDs should be fine, we can just say we got some surgeries when we get the photos done. Yes, you should get going on your name and gender marker, no reason to hold back. Only tell people we trust not to throw more of a fit than we can handle, so that probably means a couple online friends, probably no one else. Going to the optometrist would produce lots of questions we couldn't answer unless we managed to keep our past records from getting sent on. Fashion glasses are up to you, we can just as easily claim contacts with anyone who asks. And we don't seem to have tails or anything else, which is a kindness for the explanations we'll have to make, at least."
Gentle petting, gentle caresses, slow and steady, holding her warmly.
"It's going to be okay. We can handle this. I love you."
How about this handwritten note in red ink and sharply spiky cursive sitting on the bedside table next to the girls' obsolete glasses?
Hello, Ava and Pirates—
You're both likely rather confused at the moment. Allow me to explain what's going on, in as much as I can.
Yes, you've both been transformed into the most closest bodies to your ideals I can give you while still being somewhat superficially explicable to mortal science. You girls unknowingly did me a good turn some time back, and I make a point to pay my debts.
To explain in more detail, you're both fully functional, though sterile. You'll have the normal hormonal cycle, but modified to be bloodless since there's no need to keep refreshing uterine linings for a pregnancy that won't happen. Your eyesight is repaired and a bit upgraded, your metabolisms should be a bit more cooperative, and your flexibility enhanced. Ava, your knee and ankle are healed, as are your hearing damage and your tachycardia. Pirates, that bit of nerve damage in your finger is resolved, as is the glitch in the nerves around your right elbow that kept putting your fingers to sleep at certain angles, along with your shoulders and knees. Generally every instance of functional damage in either of you has been completely repaired. Scars have been left in place, however, because their disappearance would be harder to explain, and Hailey's attached to several of them. Balance and coordination is improved as best I can without involving any mental changes, and your aging has been permanently halted.
Furthermore, your sexual sensitivity has been increased, as has your libido and pain tolerance. You also both have easily suppressible gag reflexes now.
Have fun.
—a friend
"Okay, my best bet now is that it's, like, Jade, or Nathan, or basically any other random trans person I ran into in my work as an online mod. I'm trackable down by mundane means I'd bet, and if magic is in the picture, it's probably even easier to find me. Someone who lived, or had a friend live, or something like that. I can think of dozens of people who'd want to give away transition magic if they had it, and I was a bit of a public figure for a while, so..." She rubs the back of her head. "So if that's Who, the What is — some kind of biohacking, pretty clearly, if they can make that detailed of changes and locate all my physical issues. Probably it doesn't extend to brain work, or maybe they just didn't want to maybe mess with my personality — I know I wouldn't like to wake up as a different person suddenly. For all that I have done exactly that more than a few times, it's different when it's by another's choice."
Sable stretches and grins. "So someone either or both of us looked after hit the magic jackpot and decided to throw us a sneaky upgrade as a thank you? Yeah, that's a pretty solid angle. The "unknowingly" bit makes me wonder a bit, but maybe the writer's just being cheeky. Who knows. Either way, this is a pretty decent explanation and we can probably celebrate."