How to be Megnificent – book 2 of girldragongizzard

I filled out my forms, I submitted them along with the administration fees. I did that over a week ago.

Today is my court date.

I find it fascinating as I enter the building and cue up to the metal detector that this is the first time since dracomorphosis that it occurs to me that I’m naked. I’m going to court naked, except for my purse.

The purse goes in a basket on the conveyor, to be examined more closely by the little boxy x-ray machine. Rhoda helps take it off for me, before dealing with her own stuff, because she’s accompanying me.

Today she’s my emotional support human. That’s what she told me. And I appreciate it.

But then she says that she just really wants to be there to see me get my new name.

She seems more proud of me than I am.

And I appreciate that, too.

It’s really nice.

The guards are cordial and usher me through, and I set off the metal detector.

There are sighs all around, and I’m directed to step aside while one of the officers examines me with a wand. And the wand doesn’t stop humming. There is not an inch of me that doesn’t set it off. I’m wondering if this isn’t telling me something about my physiology I didn’t know. But I’m also getting nervous about it.

Another wand is used to the same effect. Then both wands are tested on Rhoda, who rolls her eyes, and they don’t buzz.

The guard lowers his chin and looks at me through furrowed brows and says very straight faced and sternly, “Do you swear not to breathe fire or eat anyone while you are in this building?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Okay. That’s going to have to do. Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yes,” I reply.

“Courtroom A,” Rhoda supplies, reaching over to put my purse around my neck again. “Judge Nguyen.”

“Excellent. That’s name changes today, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Congratulations, I hope it goes well for you,” the guard says.

“Thanks.”

“Thank you,” Rhoda adds.

“The elevator’s that way,” the guard gestures.

And we go.

For some reason, I half expected a recreation of the Matrix lobby scene. I don’t know what makes me more rattled. That there was the one glitch that caused the extra hullabaloo, or that it went so smoothly anyway.

When we get to the courtroom, we’re early. But it’s open, and people are filtering in from the thin traffic of court goers, lawyers, and petitioners headed to other places. Most people in this building are regular citizens taking care of unfortunate or hopeful business, dressed in everything from a yellow windbreaker and a hoodie to a Men’s Warehouse suit. The people with more expensive clothing, if they are here, are already in the rooms they want to be in, few and far between.

In this courtroom, there are a handful of women of different ethnicities and ages in either their Sunday best or professional work clothes befitting a restaurant hostess, and a couple men accompanying their teenage children. And one couple that look like they’re feeling all newlywed. Presumably. For some reason, besides the children, I’m gendering everyone based on how they look, and I’ve been trying to avoid that.

I can’t sit in any particular chair, but we find a space that’s usually set aside for wheelchairs and I use that. I’m not exactly mobility impaired, but I am disabled in other ways, and I’m certainly space impaired. I’ve definitely gotten bigger.

I’ve been hoping I might be the Artist of transformation, just so that I could change my own size and shape, to avoid the day I wouldn’t be able to enter a building like this. But, Chapman’s agreed to work on another piece of jewelry for me, to reduce my size back down to where I started when I wear it. It just won’t be ready for a couple years, is all.

And as I sit in that spot, I feel my tablet buzzing in my purse while I wait for the Judge to join us. I resolve to ignore it through the whole process. Nothing is as important to me right now as getting through this court hearing.

And then the bailiff announces Judge Nguyen’s entrance and tells everyone to stand, which I do along with everyone else who is capable of it. By the time this happens, a few more people have joined us, including someone in a wheelchair who is across the aisle from me.

Nguyen enters looking slightly less like a judge than I expected. She’s dressed very professionally, but for some reason I expected a robe. But, maybe that’s for fancier courts. Or just for photos? I’m going to have to look that up. 

But she carries herself like a judge, and pushes her glasses up as she casually and cheerfully says, “Hello. Thank you for attending today. This is one of my favorite functions as a judge, and I hope to make this process as smooth as possible for all of you. You may be seated.” Then she sits down. “Now. When I call your name – your new name – I’d like you to come forward with your identification ready, and answer my questions. And when you and I are done, you may either be seated, or you may leave. If I award you your name, I will hand you your signed court order, which you should take to the clerk’s office to get it stamped and recorded. And the public list of name changes will be displayed in the hallway tomorrow morning. You won’t need to check that, because you’ll already have the paperwork you need verifying your new identity.”

She pauses to look around the room to see if everyone was listening.

“If you have further questions, the clerk can help you with them. Now, I’m going to go about this alphabetically by last name,” she says. “Can Corin Ascalia please come forward.”

I do pay a lot of attention to what is said, to make note of it and know what to expect, but my emotions and thoughts are occupied by how cool it is that I seem to be going through this procedure with other trans people.

Corin looks so happy, and they are bouncing a little bit throughout the whole interview, which is short.

And when Judge Ngunyen is done, she signs the court order, then hands it to Corin Ascalia with a hand shake, saying, “Congratulations. It is my honor to serve you with your new name, Corin Ascalia.” And she’s beaming with her own smile.

As Corin leaves looking pumped full of endorphins, Judge Nguyen calls forward the next person, who I guess is a single young woman who is probably changing her last name. I don’t know if it’s due to a marriage or a divorce, or to distance herself from her family. But she seems satisfied with her decision and pays extra attention to every direction.

With my new last name starting with a “D”, there are only two other people before I’m called up. I do my best to appreciate each of them in turn, to try to remember who they are. But I’m getting too nervous and dissociating a little.

Then Judge Nguyen says, “Can Meghan Estragon Draconis please come forward.” And she looks directly at me over her glasses, and everyone else follows her gaze. She smiles. It’s not her first smile today, but it’s directed at me and it looks genuine.

Rhoda pats me on my shoulder, then hands me my ID and birth certificate, which I take gingerly in my mouth.

And I get up and walk down the aisle to Judge Nguyen’s bench.

My tablet buzzes, and I continue to ignore it. It doesn’t seem Judge Nguyen heard it.

“May I see your identification?” she asks.

I place it on the bench, and she picks up my card and then my birth certificate and looks at them reverently and carefully, comparing them to my file, which she’s just opened in front of her. She nods, placing my items back on the bench in front of me. Then she speaks some more.

“Meghan, do you swear that you take this new name in good faith? That you are not using it to evade responsibility or debt? And that it represents who you feel that you are and want to be moving forward?” she asks.

“Yes,” I reply, in my own voice. I gathered from all previous applicants that I wouldn’t need my tablet for this. I’m proud to use my own syrinx to speak these words.

“Very good,” she says. “Then it is my honor to sign this court order stating that you are, from this day forth, to be known as Meghan Estragon Draconis.” She doesn’t offer to shake my hand, but she does carefully bundle my identification with my newly signed court order, and files it in a folder with a paperclip, before holding it out to me. Her eyes are sparkling, as she adds, “I’m proud of you for this. It’s a good name. It suits you.”

She obviously saw my deadname. She knows I’m trans, not just a dragon taking on a new draconic name.

I’m a little overwhelmed.

“Thanks,” I say, wishing I’d learned a more formal version. I could add “you” now, but “thanks you” would sound even weirder.

Then, I smile as I take my paperwork.

I take a step back and bow low, lowering my shoulders and my head, rising quickly enough after a beat that she doesn’t have much chance to comment. Then I turn and walk proudly back up the aisle to Rhoda, my head held as high as possible.

My tablet is going mad with buzzing.

Dammit, what the fuck is happening?

I can’t deal with it. I need to go to the County Clerk’s office. That’s next.

The clerk’s office is just annoying simple bureaucracy with a line and more paperwork. But short paperwork. Mostly paperwork handled by the person behind the counter.

And then we’re done and making our way out of the courthouse.

It’s Thursday, September 19th, and I’ve received my new legal name on Talk Like a Pirate Day. I kind of want that to be special, but it really mostly feels kind of funny.

But the clouds coincidentally move just as I step out of the building to uncover the sun, which shines down on me with as much warmth as it can muster, and I’m struck.

It literally feels like the Earth, the mother of all dragons, is blessing me and my new name, and it’s like the blessing is warming my heart, gizzard, and fire sack directly. And for quite some time after that my very soul feels larger than my body and visibly radiant.

Rhoda lets me see her tears, crying about something happy.

She pats me on my shoulder again, and then manages to gasp out a question, barely able to talk from emotion, “Maybe you should check your messages? Or should I do that for you?”

I look at her, partially closing my eyes, and then I look down the street toward our coffee shop, which is just two blocks away.

“Yeah,” she says, more strongly. “Let’s go do that over some tea and cookies.”

There are a bunch of things I do not think about as we walk to our actual home, our coffee shop. But it’s probably a good idea to review them here anyway. Things that might matter.

They are certain to occur to me fairly soon, in any case.

I’ve not been particularly attendant to my groups of people, humans or dragons. I set them up. I pushed them in directions I wanted them to go. Or, rather, I stated clearly what I hoped they would become. And then I found myself forgetting about them.

I’ve only delved into Discord, for instance, to deal with the things I’ve wanted to deal with, and I’ve found it hard to look at or review many of the notifications. I’ve been pretty good at private direct messages, but there haven’t been very many of those directed specifically at me.

I’ve treated my group SMS chat fairly similarly, though I’m more engaged with that. Until today, obviously. I was busy today.

I did post that document of advice for direct action and group security that Rhoda gave me to my discord and to our group chat. But then, I didn’t really do anything more than that. I’m not sure what I expected of myself or others there. I just did what I felt I could, and then I got distracted by other things. And then I didn’t hear from the Arboretum Klatch, as I’ve continued to call them, since.

Everything seems to have been fine and operating smoothly.

And I also haven’t really been paying a lot of attention to the local news, even though my situation seriously depends on it. I guess I’ve been relying on Rhoda and Chapman to keep tabs on that and alert me to any issues. But it means I don’t immediately know what’s going on in the government or what’s about to come down. I don’t know who has said what, and I’m not as familiar with the local politicians and their stances as I really should be.

I’ve been scared about Daniel Säure, and his influence over the local law enforcement and his demonstrated ability to kidnap me in my sleep. And so I’ve been focusing on addressing that directly by searching for that big gun I can use against him. My innate, inherent power that I’m maybe supposed to have, having been the center of the dracomorphosis.

I’ve maybe been a little too focused on that, but I still don’t know what I could have done differently, except maybe take time to write more letters with the help of the other dragons? It seems silly, though. I don’t know if our letters are even read.

Except the Mayor had been impressed with the one I sent her.

And this is saying nothing about national or even global politics, because fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. The tidbits of news I get about that from other people’s conversations and memes on the internet are terrifying and too much to handle.

Really cool things are happening with dragons around the globe. Really surprising and wonderful things. Individual people are praising and lauding the dragons in their lives. And dragons are reporting how surprisingly wonderful their humans are. 

But then there’s the violence. The legislative violence and the physical violence. The words that people in power say on occasion.

Before August 24, the global focus seemed to me to be on trans people, and that was bad enough, and it was one reason I was still in the closet.

Now, it’s all about us dragons.

And I’ve been doing my best to ignore all that and focus on me, my people, my territory, my block, my building, my coffee shop, my two Artists and their weird stories and theories, Rhoda, and my name. And mostly on the latter three, because that’s where I seem to have the most strength, potential impact, support, and joy. The most agency.

I think I’ve been following the common old advice to do the easier things, the small things, to make sure the fundamentals are taken care of first, and work outward from there as possible.

But I’ve definitely been avoidant, too, and I should fix that.

I have also been feeling like I’m forgetting things, losing track of little details. But since I’ve forgotten them, I can’t do anything about them, and so I brush the thought aside and move on.

And since I’ve gotten my name changed to what it feels like it has always been, for those two blocks of walking with Rhoda in the late Summer sun, I’m simply blissful.

If I’m thinking of anything else, I’m maybe wondering if my soul is as old as Wentin’s.

As Rhoda opens the door for me, and I strut into the coffee shop all ready to utter my full name with my own syrinx, which I spent the last week and a half teaching myself how to do, I see the look in Jill’s eyes.

They are wide with alarm and eager to get my attention. She’s shaking behind the counter, and Cerce is carrying that nervousness too as she tries to work the espresso machine to fulfill orders.

The rest of the shop is very quiet, despite how many customers are in it. They’ve all been looking at their phones, tablets, or laptops. But now they’re looking at me.