I sat, eyes closed, on a stool in the bare dirt. A towel was draped around my shoulders.

“Are you sure about this?” Vida asked softly.

I nodded, though I wasn’t. My mouth was dry. “If I don’t like it, it’ll grow back.”

“That’s true.” I felt the wooden teeth of the comb against my scalp, then Vida’s hands in my hair, pulling it back into a ponytail. Cool metal pressed against the back of my neck.

Wait, stop–!

I heard a soft snick and my hair fell loose around my face. A breeze brushed against my neck, chiller than I’d expected, reminding me that although the weather was warming spring was still a few weeks away.

Oh.

Oh.

“Vida–” My voice caught.

“It looks beautiful, Des.” She pressed a kiss to the back of my neck. “Just a bit uneven. You wanted it short short, right?”

“Y-yeah.” My voice wobbled, and I wanted to duck away and hide, but there wasn’t anything to hide behind. My hands tensed, gripping the stool for dear life.

The comb ran through my hair again and again as Vida trimmed bits off. It seemed to take forever before she lifted my left hand and pressed something into it.

I opened my eyes and saw my reflection.

A boy stared back at me, wide-eyed. His brown face looked rounder than I was used to beneath a shock of damp-dark hair that stuck up in spiky curls. Spikes. It was short. I ran shaking fingers over my head, shocked by how little there was now. It slipped between my fingers too fast, so light it made my heart pound and pulse through my entire body. 

“Destiny?” Vida knelt in front of me and gently pushed the mirror aside. “Is everything okay? I can ask Blythe to come even it out if you want.”

I shook my head and pulled her up into a hug. “V– it’s perfect. You did–” I choked on a sob. “It’s perfect.”

She kissed the shell of my ear. “I’m so glad you like it, Des. Ready to show the others?”

I nodded.

“Good, ‘cause Deri’s right over there.” She pointed with the scissors.

“Aw, V!” Pryderi stood up from the grass, dark curls tousled. “How’d you know?”

Vida shook her head, making her ponytail bounce. “Puppy, your ears were sticking out of the grass. Why were you spying anyways?”

“I wasn't,” he protested. “Just came to tell you dinner's done, Da told me to get you both.” He tilted his head, and one of the wolf ears peeking from his hair twitched. “Your haircut looks nice, Destiny. Like there’s more you in there.”

“Thanks, Deri.” I smiled at him and stood up, reaching down to get the stool. He didn’t know how much more me I felt, finally ready to tell the pack what I’d been hiding for so many weeks. “Dinnertime, I guess…”

Vida shifted the scissors to her other hand and took my free hand. “Not to brag, but your hair does look nice, Des.” She nuzzled my cheek. “No more hiding behind those pretty bangs of yours, mm? Time to shine.”

“Right.” I hoisted the stool up and let her pull me towards the wagon. Our hands intertwined, locking together in a way I'd only imagined until recently.

I dropped the stool off by the wagon and smiled at Bloom as I dropped to the grass near her, making sure to catch her eye. “Hey. How’s your day been?” 

“Good–”  Bloom’s mouth opened into a perfect ‘o’ of surprise, as round as her twin puffs of hair. “Destiny, your hair!” She pointed, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Yeah.” Self-conscious, I ran my hand over the back of my head, my grin growing wider. “Vida cut it.”

Bloom tipped her head and raised her hands, framing my face for a moment before deciding, “It looks nice.”

“I know,” Vida put in smugly from behind me. Her knuckles brushed against mine on the grass before she asked, “It’s cute, don’t you think?”

Bloom nodded in agreement.

“You’d say that about any hairstyle, if it was on Destiny,” Fiachra teased from across the table.

Vida shrugged, undeterred. “And it would be true.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks and I looked down, a smile tugging at my lips.

“You look almost like a boy,” Dream observed.

“Well, actually…” Vida started, looking at me.

I squeezed her hand tighter. I was ready for this. “I sort of… am. Since recently.”

There was a moment of surprised silence.

Then Seren said, “I was wondering when you’d get around to telling us.”

What? “You knew? Since when– how?!”

One eyebrow lifted. “Next time you want to hide something, Destiny, I recommend not method acting it. Were you trying to hide it?”

“Well, um…”

He nodded. “Good, because you weren’t doing a good job. Do better when you’re actually trying.”

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but whatever it was, it wasn’t an admonishment to hide things better. Mother would have been angry with me for hiding it… and for thinking I wasn’t a girl.

“You’re not upset?”

Seren sighed theatrically. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing for it…” He paused, ears twitching in amusement as he drew out the pause. “I suppose one of the boys will just have to switch to being a girl.”

Blythe swatted his arm. “You tease. Out with it, are you going to tell him or not?”

“...Tell me what?”

Seren ran a hand through his hair. “I’m a woman, Destiny. I can’t be seen as a woman and as married to one, so it’s safer to be a man in town and around new people, but I’m not.”

“Oh,” was all I could think to say.

It wasn’t just me, then. Seren was just like me, but… reversed.

I didn’t quite know what to think of myself, and my magic.

“Oh,” I said again, and started to smile.

“Honestly I should've seen this coming,” Dream mused. “Lucius.”

“Lucius,” Fin agreed. “Des, why didn’t you say sooner?”

“Vida said you wouldn’t mind… and I didn’t know how.”

“We don’t mind.” She glanced at her brothers, then at Dream and Bloom, looking for agreement. “Right? I’m only curious.”

I shrugged, awkward.

“Do you want anything to change?” Blythe asked gently.

I froze up. “I– I don’t think so? Except for being called he now, I guess.”

She gave me a warm smile. “Of course, Destiny.”

A nervous grin tugged at my lips, a laugh of relief bubbling up from deep inside. Sweet Light, it was so wonderful!

He, he, he. The word echoed in my ears, sending my heart skipping every time I heard it used to mean me.

There was something… not quite right about it, but I shrugged it off, thinking that it was only because of how new it was. It made sense that I’d have to break it in, like the new-ish shoes I’d gotten once.

Only… it didn't stop. Spring eased into summer, and he still felt strange. But it was better than she, the idea of which made my skin crawl now.

How could they both feel wrong? If my magic wasn’t what caused this, then what had?

The day we went swimming in a cool, clear river was the day I realized I wanted my hair back.

I ducked and swam with Vida, Dream, and the twins. Vida's hair streamed out behind her in the current, Fin's hair swept over her face when she surfaced and she had to push it away. I felt a stab of envy.

That was stupid. My hair didn't get in my way. My hair would dry faster. My hair was short, and wouldn't tangle, and, and….

And my neck felt strange without its weight. I missed catching my hand in a curl and twisting it, I missed running a brush through my thick curls at night. When I kissed Vida and wound my fingers into her autumn-auburn curls, I missed the feel of her fingers carding through my hair.

As we walked back to the wagon, I ran my hand over the already-dry fluff on the back of my head. It was long enough to feel and twist between my fingers now, but not much else.

“A penny for your thoughts, love?”

“Just thinking about how lucky I am to have such a wonderful girlfriend.” I wrapped an arm around her waist and nuzzled her neck.

“You two are worse than our Mams,” Fin remarked. 

Dream stifled a laugh. “Worse, or just worse at practicing restraint?”

“Mum said they were pretty bad when they were courting.” Fia eyed my arm around Vida's waist and glanced at Dream. “Mum said that when she and Ma were courting, Ma’d bring her a fresh kill most every night and flowers in the spring, and Mum wrote songs just for her.”

Vida blushed and ducked her head.

“V!” I leaned into her, dropping my head onto her shoulder. “Did you write a song for me? Aww, I feel so special!”

“Oh, stop it, you.” She pushed me off, laughing. “I’m trying, yeah. I’ll sing it for you someday, when I’ve got it perfect.”

I nuzzled her hair. “If you wrote it, it already is.”

“Flatterer. It's not.”

“Is to me.”

“Lovebirds,” Fia accused. “Race you back to the wagon.”

I lifted my head off Vida's shoulder. “Only if you don't shift.”

“Deal, but V, no wings.”

“Of course not.”

“Ready?” Fin asked. “One, two… three!” And we were off like a shot, me and Fin and Vida.

The wind didn't toss my curls into my face as we ran. It didn’t whip my hair into tangles I'd have to coax out later. It only blew into my face and over my neck.

It felt wrong.

That evening, in my bedroll, I ran my hand over the fluffy curls on my head and the prickly-short hair on the back of my neck, thinking. I could grow it long again, tie it back and stay a boy. People called me sir that way, with my hair back and my chest bound, even without makeup turning my cheeks angular.

But… I didn’t want that.

I turned over to look at where Vida slept, loose red curls spilling over her pillow and her spread wings. That was what I wanted, though I hadn’t realized until I didn’t have it. I wanted my curls over my shoulder like that, I wanted to choose when to pull it into a ponytail or let it blow loose based on how I felt, not on if I'd still be taken for a boy. I wanted to ask Vida to braid it– I’d never had a friend braid my hair before, only my mother. I didn’t like that, but I was pretty sure it would be different with Vida. Her hands were softer than my mother’s.

I didn’t know how to reconcile this with being a boy.

Where I’d grown up, and in the towns we’d been to so far, most boys had shorter hair. If it was long enough to do anything with, it was usually pulled into a simple ponytail or protective locks like Dream’s. And it wasn’t long like Vida’s wing-length curls, long like mine had been, long like I wanted mine to be again.

Fionnuala’s hair was barely longer than her twin’s, and Bloom’s hair wasn’t long either. I had a sneaking suspicion that if I mentioned my uncertainty to Vida, or Seren, or anyone else in the pack, I’d be told that hair length was irrelevant to whether someone was a boy or a girl. Still, it felt like it mattered.

Wait.

The Emperor had long hair, well past his shoulders. At least, his statues did, and the picture of him Mother kept on the door.

So that was all right then. Content, I rolled over and finally went to sleep.

I didn’t mention cutting my hair again, and neither did anyone else.