Poor Unfortunate Soul

Despite Titus’s optimism, there was some part of Killian that couldn’t quite let go of the hope that he’d be back in about a month, just like before. But as days turned to weeks, and a new month came and then went, Killian had to resign themself to the thought that Titus must have found whatever he was looking for out there in the sky, and had no reason to splash around in lonely swamps anymore.

Though... the Swamp of Solitude was quickly beginning to be somewhat of a misnomer. Evidently Killian had been doing a good job as the interim witch—too good of a job, because now hardly a day passed without somefish stopping by with some inane issue to be resolved. Sure, Killian was fine with helping out. That’s what witches did! But these were hardly crises.

Like, one particularly busy day, Killian spent the morning brewing arthritis medicine for a sea turtle with bad knees. Around midday, she was about to get lunch when a pair of demanding manta rays showed up, insisting she judge their starfish stew recipes. Neither seemed to care that she didn’t even like starfish, and after she forced herself to stomach a taste of each and picked one at random, her appetite was completely ruined. And then, just as soon as she thought she could get back to studying, an octopus showed up who wanted her to critique his juggling routine. When she was honest about it, he broke down into tears and it took the rest of the night to reassure him.

Enough was enough. Killian didn’t want to close up shop, but he understood now why most witches cultivated a certain unapproachability. You go see a witch when you have a serious problem, and are willing to risk the consequences and pay a price. You didn’t bother a witch just because you’re annoyed at your cousins and want to gossip about that side of the family.

Killian needed to make that more clear, to put on a bit of a performance so that everyone took him seriously. Lucky for him, he was good at this.

One day, perhaps a little over two months after Titus’s last visit, Killian was searching through the mess of the library when Flotsam and Jetsam swam in, hissing excitedly. Killian immediately perked up, setting down the book she was holding to give them both scritches behind their headfins. They were great at letting her know when a visitor was about to arrive, which let her be ready. It was always a bit exciting… and there was always a tiny part of her that still whispered in the back of her head: maybe he’s back. But she tried her best to crush out that remaining hope, knowing she’d be disappointed like always.

Quickly checking to make sure she had the right pouches and powders, Killian swam into the front cavern, whispering an incantation to make inky darkness fall over the room. She could hear someone getting closer, taking a long time to swim through to the cavern itself.

“Hello?” they said, their voice twisted and distorted. Killian had been proud of that particular touch. The enchantment matched the darkness with strange echoes, so that visitors felt like they were descending into a bottomless pit.

She waited just a bit longer, letting their creeping fear reach that perfect peak, when most anyone would be considering turning around and going back. And then…

With a thundering crash, light flared in the cavern. Killian rose to tower over her visitor, one hand wreathed in fire and one exuding darkness. Flotsam and Jetsam whirled around her tail, spiraling up to peer over her shoulders with unnerving grins. With a booming amplified voice, Killian spoke out: “Tremble in fear, mere mortal, for you stand before the Mxtress of the Marsh!”

It was a very effective scene. On a couple of occasions, Killian had frightened her visitors right back out of the swamp.

But this time, the familiar-looking half-bird half-human just looked up with wide eyes. And then he started clapping and cheering. 

“Wow!” Titus said. “That was so cool! Muckstress? Is that new?”

“Mxtress,” Killian said, blushing a bit. She lowered her arms and the illusions died away. “I don’t know if I’m going to stick with it, but… Well, Mxter felt kind of like the wrong vibes, and— and oh gosh, you’re back!” She swam forward, giving Titus a tight hug. Then she realized what she had done, and backed away again. “I mean, um. Hey! Hi. Hello.”

“Hi!” Titus said happily. He grinned. “Surprised to see me?”

“Well, it has been a long time. I figured things had to be going really well.” Killian looked off to the side, trying to smile. “Oh, is this, like… did you come back to invite me to the wedding this time?”

Titus giggled. “No. Not quite.. Things have been…well, good. And bad. And weird.” His voice grew even softer. “I think… I think the sky is not the place for me after all.”

“Oh?” Killian said. “Oh gosh, where are my manners? Can I get you some tea? A cup of hot algae? I’ve been experimenting with that machine you brought me.”

Titus shook his head. “I’m fine. But on that note… I do have another gift for you!”

Killian let out a sigh. “You shouldn’t have. Really. I didn’t want you to bring me anything, I just—” She cut herself off before she finished the sentence, I just wanted you to visit. She absolutely couldn’t let him know that. Not just because she couldn’t stand him knowing that she might, possibly care about him, but because she’d feel even more terrible if he felt guilty about it too.

Titus wasn’t paying attention though. He was fiddling with something around his ankle, and when he straightened back up and held out his wings, one held a pair of earrings and the other held a thick gold anklet. “So…” Titus said, hesitating slightly. “Well, what do you know about harpy cultural norms?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Killian said. She carefully accepted the items, turning them over in her hands. They were so shiny. The gold band was smooth and glittered in the water, while the earrings were dangly, and set with topazes. Killian glanced down. They… they matched her scales, actually. Huh.

“Well, harpies love jewelry,” Titus explained, looking off to the side. “It’s like a status symbol thing. The ladies wear earrings and the guys wear these bands around their legs. I know you don’t have legs, but… well, you could wear it on one of your arms? I figured it might be nice for you to have both. And in case…” Now he was blushing a bit, too? “Well, if for some reason the water isn’t right and how you feel on the inside doesn’t match the outside, you can at least wear the right jewelry, and if I was around I’d know um, how to treat you, and maybe that… would make you happy?”

Killian stared down at the jewelry. She raised her eyes to look at Titus, a complicated expression on her face. “That’s… that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever given me.”

“It’s just a little thing, not really a big deal,” he said, still looking away.

“I… Thank you. You have to let me give something to you too. Do you need any potions? I’ve been doing some research, and…”

“There is one thing, maybe.” Titus said. He looked back at her, his face somewhat serious. “I think I need some more magic.”

“Oh. Oh no. Like…”

Titus at least had the decency to look sheepfish. “Yeah.”

“Titus…”

“Okay, okay,” he said, holding up his wings to wave off her protests. “Let me start from the beginning?”

Killian frowned. “Okay.”

“So I get my wings—they’re lovely, by the way. It took some practice to get used to them, but flying is fun. More different than swimming than you’d expect, actually? You always have to keep moving, and—” 

“Titus.”

“Right, sorry. So I get my wings and find the harpy gal I had talked about before. We get to talking, and hit it off, and the next thing I know I’m flying back to her nest to meet her flock. There’s about a dozen harpies, and they’re all so nice, and they accept me immediately. Did you know that male harpies are a lot rarer than female harpies? So I’m pretty popular as the only… the only guy there. But at first it’s really much more like… well, like one big sleepover, hanging out with your girlfriends. I’m having a great time, they’re taking turns braiding my hair, everyone’s showing off their favorite shiny trinkets. But then I start to realize some things.”

“You miss the water?” Killian said. 

“Nah. Well, maybe a little bit. No, what I notice is that I’m the only one whose hair is getting braided. When I ask one of them to show me how to do it, they roll their eyes and say it’s a girl’s job to braid the guy’s hair. And that’s… flattering, but. I start to notice how they all treat me just the slightest bit different. Harpy cultural norms are pretty different than ours, but they’re there. And pretty rigid, too. If I ever mess up, they’re nice about it, but firm in letting me know that I’m not supposed to do something. I’m not supposed to wear this, or act in that way. And it makes me feel... left out.” He let out a despondent sigh. “For a moment I really did think that I had found a place that I fit, where everything made sense. But my problems had just followed me.”

Killian tilted her head, looking at him. “I don’t think I understand.”

“So, every few weeks, all of the harpies fly out for a few days to go hunting. It’s the responsibility of the male harpy to stay behind and watch over all the eggs. That’s when I start to put the pieces together. Imagine: I’m completely on my own, feeling incredibly lonely, sitting in a big nest at the top of a mountain. My only company is an egg the size of my head, that I’m awkwardly perched on top of because I’m supposed to keep it warm. It’s just me and my thoughts, all the time in the world to think through my life and the ways I keep failing to be the person I want to be.”

“Let me guess, the egg cracks open?”

Titus shook his head, laughing. “Nah. At this point, hatching anything was the furthest thing from my mind. No, I just had some realizations about myself. Because when I started to think about it… who do I want to be? Why do I keep making these huge changes, but feel the exact same discomfort with myself? It was never about wanting legs, or wings. It was about wanting… needing to be…”

There was a soft thump, and then fluttering pages. The two of them turned simultaneously to watch as the Hextionary glowed, opening itself to a particular page.

Cautiously, they both approached to peer at the tome. Killian looked down, reading the runes out loud, “True Form Transmutation.” She looked up to meet Titus’s gaze. “That’s what you need.” 

He looked pale, but he nodded slightly. Killian kept reading, skimming through the instructions and details of the magic circle. But then she hesitated. “Wait. No.”

“What?”

“Look, you can’t do this. The cost for your true form is… well, it’s your name. It’s the classic ironic twist: you can have the body you want, if you lose who you are.”

Now Titus was giggling, though.

“What?” Killian said. “Take this seriously. I’m not going to let you give up something so important! You keep giving up parts of yourself for this magic and it’s sending you in circles, chipping off a little more every time. I… I don’t want to see you disappear entirely.”

“Killian, it’s okay,” Titus said softly, resting a wing on her arm. He smiled serenely. “Please. Do this for me. It will make sense in the end.”

Killian ground her teeth. But she went to get ingredients, her stomach doing flips the entire time. She tried to tell herself she was just being protective. She didn’t want to lose Titus, and…

And she realized that there was some dark part inside her that was more than that. Part of her worried about something entirely different: what if it did work? What if Titus got his new form—his true form. Then he’d finally be happy. Then he could leave and never come back.

It was sickening, but Killian realized that on some level, she wanted this to not work, so they could keep trying. So Titus would stick around for once. But that was so selfish, so needlessly cruel, that she hated herself for those feelings.

“Are you okay?” Titus said softly.

Killian realized she was staring at her shelf of powdered sea mosses. “I’m fine,” she lied. “Let’s do this.” She would be strong, and she would give Titus what he wanted, no matter what that meant for her.

With a chilly precision, she drew the magic circle, as Titus kept an eye to help with comparing it to the book’s diagram.

“This is kind of getting familiar by now,” he joked. “Maybe I should learn to be a witch, too.”

“It’s not all fun and spells,” Killian warned. “There’s a lot of reading involved. And math.”

“Ew.”

But soon enough, everything was together. Titus took his place at the center of the circle. Killian took one last look in the Hextionary. She could always just mispronounce a few words, right? If she picked the correct ones, that’d make it fizzle out uselessly. Then maybe Titus could stick around, as they figured things out, and…

She hesitated. “You sure you want to do this?” she asked. “Last chance to back out.”

He took a deep breath. “I want this,” he said. “More than anything.”

And Killian knew there was no way she could betray him like that. As selfish as she wanted to be, when it came down to it, it was easy to put his happiness first.

Killian started reading, crisply enunciating each syllable, and the familiar vortex of magical power began to churn throughout the waters of the cavern. Colorful bubbles swirled around and around, in a dizzying display of sorcerous potential. They coalesced around Titus, sticking to him until there was just a rainbow shape at the center of the room—not indistinct from an egg itself, Killian thought. As she breathed out the final words, she watched attentively as the sphere of bubbles pulsed and quaked.

One moment passed, then another. Cautiously, Killian swam a tailslength closer. Was it supposed to be doing this? Wasn’t something supposed to happen?

She ever-so-cautiously reached out, and as soon as her fingertip brushed against the surface of the bubbles, they popped in a crashing cascade, the colors so bright that they were almost overwhelming.

When the bubbles had cleared away, a mermaid floated in the center of the room.

She was small and beautiful, with a long silver tail, a slight iridescent sheen playing along her graceful fins. And she was most certainly a she—the length of those fins made that perfectly clear, even aside from the swell of her breasts. As the mermaid blinked her eyes, Killian was struck by how long and delicate her eyelashes were. And then the mermaid’s full lips curved up into a smile that brightened her whole expression, and made Killian’s heart do a flip.

“It worked!” she cried out, wrapping her arms around her midsection as she twirled in place. “And I have a tail again! Oh, how I’ve missed you.” She grabbed the tip of her tail in a hug, and then giggled to herself, tracing her fingertips along the edge of her caudal fin. She looked up, still smiling, and saw Killian staring, open-mouthed. She giggled. “How do I look?” It was the exact same voice that had always made Killian’s heart skip a beat, but now it fit completely and without reservations.

Killian closed her mouth, and then opened it again. “You look... good. Really good.” She swallowed. “Um. Beautiful.”

And seeing the mermaid light up with an expression of pure joy finally made everything else click in Killian’s head. 

The story about the harpies, the long-lingering dissatisfaction that wouldn’t go away… “That’s what the realization was,” Killian breathed out.

“Yes,” the mermaid said. “I feel a bit silly that it took me so long. But… it was just so easy to rationalize it as anything else. I know now for sure how right this feels. But for the longest time I just felt like… I wasn’t allowed. Like it wouldn’t actually work for me. You know?”

“I do,” Killian said quietly. “But sometimes you have to do what makes sense for you, even if others might not understand.”

“Exactly.” The mermaid blushed slightly, leaving the most enchanting pink across her cheeks. “When I was sitting alone in that nest, part of what helped was thinking about you. I… I really admire how much you’re unabashedly yourself.”

“Th-thanks,” Killian muttered. She cleared her throat, searching in vain for some more comfortable topic. “But… what should I call you? It’s not like I can just keep calling you—” She cut off, confused. What… what had her name been? For some reason, Killian couldn’t even remember. It was like there was just this blank space in her head where that information once fit.

The mermaid must have had the realization at the same time, because her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. But then she grinned broadly. “That’s so cool!”

“I guess it really did take your name.”

“Or at least a name. One that I had never liked much to begin with.”

Killian nodded. “Then you have something else in mind? Wait, let me guess! Um. Helvetica?”

“Ugh.” The mermaid let out another joyful giggle. “No, but I do have a name picked out though.” She hesitated as she looked up at Killian with her big, round eyes. “It’s… Celia.”

Killian smiled. She stuck out one hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Celia.”

Celia looked down at her outstretched hand, her eyes sparkling. Then Celia tackled Killian in a huge hug.

“H-hold on,” Killian said, not quite sure how to deal with the extremely happy and affectionate mermaid. How could she affirm Celia, and show her just how happy she was for her? An idea came to mind. “Wait, one moment, you’re missing something.”

“I am?” Celia said, looking momentarily worried.

Killian nodded. She reached up to remove one of the new earrings from her ears. “I think you should keep one of these. Then we’ll each have one. We can match.”

Celia’s face had gone completely scarlet, but she held still, trembling only slightly as Killian fastened it on her right ear.

“There,” Killian said. “Perfect.”

“Killian,” Celia said quietly. “You’re certain you don’t know anything about harpy social customs?”

Killian blinked. “Nope. Why?”

“No reason!”