If You Were A Woman (And I Was a Man)
This is one of those things that just happened, partly because I'm insane and partly because Bonnie Tyler's crazy 80s music makes me compulsive. There was no helping this. It overtook me and spilled from my fingers onto my computer before I could stop it. I find it mildly humorous, so I thought I'd share it with all of you. If you enjoy this, please tell me. If you don't, tell me anyway. I like reading flames, since they make me laugh.
Jaenelle was focused. She was intensely focused. So intent on her purpose was she that she didn't realize the door had opened. A pair of faces, one furry and one devastating, regarded her with expressions of interest. The two watched her as she manipulated Craft in that special way that only she, possessing Twilight's Dawn, could manage.
Not two breaths later, the whole of what she was working on blew up in her face. It was a noisy affair, as explosions often are, but it was accompanied, quite unusually, by flashes of very colorful light. Blues and purples and pinks bounced off the walls while greens and oranges ran, almost mellow, along the floor.
While Daemon rushed to his lady wife, who he had forgotten was angry with him, Ladvarian burst open the room's only window so the smoke would leave the room.
"Are you alright?" Daemon asked, looking down at the woman cradled against his chest.
Jaenelle didn't meet his eyes. He noticed the tracks of tears running down her cheeks and his heart broke entirely.
"I made you cry," he said, irritation lacing his voice.
Snuffling, Jaenelle pulled away. "So what if you did," she snapped. "We were arguing."
A small smile spread on Daemon's face. "Over something stupid," he reminded her. "Can you forgive me for being so male?"
Jaenelle turned to him with a shy smile. A brush against his mind was all Daemon needed to know that she had forgiven him.
"What were you working on?" Daemon asked her, coming to lean his chin on her shoulders. He scrutinized the mess that had once been a worktable. "The explosion was impressive."
"You'll laugh," she told him.
Daemon couldn't help the chuckle that escaped him. Of course, she thought he was laughing at her, and so she tried to pull away. Daemon refused to move, keeping her in the warm embrace of his arms.
"Now that I have laughed at the idea of laughing at anything you were attempting to do, why don't you tell me?"
Jaenelle hesitated only a bit longer before letting her words rush out of her. "I was trying to make a spell that would translate male."
"Why would I laugh at that?" Daemon asked quite seriously, although he was working to suppress his laughter. "It seems like quite a reasonable thing to do. Did it not work?"
The table blew up, Ladvarian pointed out, speaking up.
"So it did," Jaenelle muttered. "And no, it didn't work."
"Ah, well. The mysteries of the genders will remain. Come, my Lady, and let us attempt to work out some of those mysteries." Daemon's eyes, hot and glazed with unhidden lust and love, traveled over Jaenelle's body. She blushed, and that only intensified his interest.
Not very far away, a young woman screamed loud enough to wake the dead. Which she did. In the three years since The Purge, as history books had come to call it, the few demon dead there were, in Kaeleer at the very least, associated more with the living. Kennedy lowered the book he had been using to cover his eyes and glared at Jocelyn, his living ward.
A girl of sixteen, she was rather unequipped to handle reality. She wasn't insane; she merely preferred the perfectly green pastures of the imagined to the tangible. She liked pretending she was landen and in doing so she often conveniently misplaced her Jewels. This wasn't altogether intelligent since she was fairly powerful as a Healer, and she was blessed, or cursed as was her opinion, with Birthright Opal. Because she was so prone to ignoring the truth of things, she really did need a keeper.
Kennedy, who had simply decided to keep on working instead of dying like he was supposed to when he had had his heart attack thirteen years prior, had become that keeper. Now demon dead, he continued to serve Jocelyn's father as his daughter's guardian instead of as his stable hand. This position was thrust upon him because, apparently, the demon dead spooked horses, not because Jocelyn's father harbored Kennedy any ill feelings.
"What's wrong, Jocelyn?" he asked.
She turned to him, her golden eyes huge, like lady's hand mirror. "What's wrong? What's wrong?!" she shrieked. "I'm a girl, that's what's wrong! Mother Night! I have tits!" She grabbed her breasts, her expression becoming thoughtful. "Nice ones, too."
Kennedy returned to his book, completely unperturbed by what he assumed was yet another flight of fancy or game of make believe. "Of course you have breasts," he replied, turning the page with a blithe disinterest that would have offended anyone except Jocelyn. "You're a girl."
"But I'm not a girl!" Jocelyn shouted, flailing her arms as if she were drowning. "I'm male!"
"I'm sure," Kennedy agreed.
Jocelyn's jaw worked for a moment, making her look incredibly stupid. Finally, she seemed to decide on a new tactic. "I want to go to Halaway," she announced.
With a sigh only a martyr can manage, Kennedy stood. He seemed quite used to Jocelyn announcing random excursions. He rolled his shoulders, working out a few kinks, and nodded. "Fine. If we leave now, traveling the Opal Winds, we should get there in an hour or so," he said. "Fetch your purse." Kennedy turned, walking toward the house, and Jocelyn followed. Kennedy's hand, the one bearing his Purple Dusk Jewel, clenched.
Unfathomable distances from Jocelyn and Kennedy, a man fainted. To be fair, he had been working hard in formidable heat for the majority of the day. Nharkhava's heat wasn't often kind. Then again, not one of his friends wanted to be fair.
When he finally came to, Allain found himself the recipient of the mockery of three other males. Not knowing what else to do, he burst into tears.
"How dare you treat a Lady like this!" he exclaimed.
His friends suddenly became wary.
"Hell's fire, Allain, what are you talking about?"
Allain stared at them. His eyes, dark like all of those hailing from Nharkhava, were wide. He was a handsome man and, by most people's estimation, incredibly level-headed, logical, and reliable. At twenty five years, he was considered by many to be a fine catch, mostly because of his status as a Gray Jeweled Warlord Prince. What made him even more appealing was his unnaturally genteel nature. Though he outranked Prince Aaron, Allain had refused the position of Warlord Prince of Nharkhava, saying Aaron would be much more suited to the position. This show of grace had cemented a relationship that had initially been fragile and, in most people's eyes, the scariest thing they'd seen since The Purge. Allain, however, was surprisingly oblivious to this.
Allain wasn't negligent, and it wouldn't be fair to call him dense, he merely didn't keep track of people very well. He could look a person dead in the eyes and forget they were there a moment later.
"I don't know?" Allain offered a moment later, giving his friends a tentative smile.
With a roar of laughter, Aaron clapped Allain's shoulder. "That was an interesting show!" the other Warlord Prince exclaimed. Though most Warlord Princes couldn't stand to be around each other for an extended period of time, Aaron and Allain meshed as well as Daemon and Lucivar might have if they both weren't twisted and deranged individuals. Neither minded the other's presence, but that might have been partially to do with Allain's inability to remember people.
Allain took Aaron's offered hand, staring at the other Warlord Prince as if he had never seen him before. Which Allain hadn't. Allain, at the moment, was quite certain he had never seen any of these people and that was due to the fact that Allain wasn't Allain, just like Jocelyn wasn't Jocelyn.
"What are we doing?" Allain asked abruptly, surveying the rocky field in front of him.
"Kalush asked us to fix up this patch of land, remember? She wants it safe for Arianna to play on with her friends," Aaron replied.
Allain paused as Jocelyn kicked his mind into gear. As exciting as this was, she didn't care for adventure of this kind. She preferred to be a landen overcoming insurmountable odds without using Jewels. To her, such things were far more interesting. So she worked quickly to figure out some excuse to get away from these people and to figure out a place she could go.
"I have to go," Allain said abruptly. The group of men stared at him, all looking perplexed. "I can't explain, but something really… confusing… important just came up. I'll be back in a day or two, I promise. I think."
Reaching out with his mind—or was it her mind? Jocelyn was becoming confused. Regardless, Jocelyn-in-Allain grabbed onto the nearby Opal Winds and vanished, speeding toward Dhemlan.
When Beale finally reached the doors to SaDiablo Hall in Dhemlan, he was mildly surprised to find them still standing. The pounding, which had started approximately three minutes ago, had not ceased for a second. As he opened the door, revealing three people, a demon dead male, a Warlord Prince, and a Healer, he figured they had probably taken turns trying to beat down the door.
He frowned, wondering why the Warlord Prince's psychic scent seemed decidedly female. For that matter, he was also curious as to why the Healer's scent was male.
"We're here to see Lady Jaenelle!" the Warlord Prince exclaimed, stomping his foot.
Beale, for the first time in his numerous years, didn't know how to respond. He had never seen a Warlord Prince stomp his foot like a petulant, childish female.
"Please," added the Healer with a tentative smile.
The demon dead man, who looked as if he had been trampled by a herd of horses six times over, gave Beale the most pitiable look. "Really, please," he said, sounding desperate. "I'm about to crack my skull open on one of the rocks in the drive."
"No need to be quite that desperate, I can assure you," Beale replied as levelly as he could, stepping aside to admit the bizarre trio.
"There's quite a need," the demon dead man muttered.
Frowning, Beale showed them to a drawing room. "Please, sit here. I will attempt to find the Lady for you," he said before vanishing.
Hurrying through the house, Beale came at last to the garden ringed by the Coven's rooms. Even though the Dark Court wasn't formally a court, no one seemed to care. Currently, a number of the witches were in residence, though most of the males were absent. Karla greeted him as he walked past her to Jaenelle and Daemon.
"Lady," he said, trying to interrupt their conversation as politely as he could. "There are three individuals here to see you."
"Oh? I didn't think we were expecting guests," she said to Daemon.
"We aren't," Daemon replied.
Jaenelle looked to Beale for an explanation.
"They seem rather…" Beale stopped, recomposing himself. "There is a demon dead man, a Warlord Prince, and a Healer. I think."
"You think?" Jaenelle asked.
"It is very hard to explain, Lady," Beale replied.
Jaenelle was in the sitting room two minutes later, staring at the mess that was in front of her.
The demon dead man, who had identified himself as Kennedy, was currently hiding under the coffee table. Thought it wasn't dignified, no one in the room could blame him.
Allain and Jocelyn, who Kennedy had pointed out, were in the center of the room throwing furniture and insults at each other.
"Every time I see your face I vomit a little in my mouth!" Allain screamed. But, since Allain was really Jocelyn, it was Jocelyn who said it. Jaenelle's lips pressed together. At least, that was her impression.
"What a barb! Calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people!" Jocelyn shouted back. Again, Jaenelle had to pause to think about that, since it was Allain shouting at Jocelyn from Jocelyn's body.
"I really can't believe that just came from the mouth of one of Kaeleer's Warlord Princes," Daemon muttered. "Especially his, from what I've heard from Aaron."
"You're living proof that men can live without brains!" That from Jocelyn-in-Allain, Jaenelle told herself.
"Why don't you donate your brain? It's good as new, seeing as you've never used it!" From Allain-in-Jocelyn.
A vase smashed into the wall. Jaenelle was fairly certain that was Jocelyn-in-Allain's fault. From beneath his coffee table, Kennedy whimpered.
Jaenelle rubbed her temples. I don't know whether to scream or to laugh, she told Daemon on a private, Red thread.
If it reassures you, love, I want to kick their asses across the Realm, Daemon offered, his tone tinted with both humor and annoyance.
Taking a breath, Jaenelle held up a hand. "Enough!" she roared.
Allain and Jocelyn stilled immediately, neither really wanting to risk pissing off the once Queen of Ebon Askavi, still Witch.
"Sit," she ordered them.
They sat as Daemon did his best to right the majority of the sitting room. Kennedy slid surreptitiously from under the coffee table, sitting beside Jocelyn-in-Allain.
"I want to make sure I understand this," Jaenelle announced once Daemon settled beside her on the armchair. He looked alarmingly calm. "You," she said, pointing at Allain-in-Jocelyn, "are in fact the Warlord Prince Allain?"
Allain-in-Jocelyn nodded. "Yes, Lady Jaenelle."
"And you are Jocelyn, a Healer?"
Jocelyn-in-Allain nodded as well.
"And you've never met?"
Both shook their heads.
"And you don't know how this happened?"
Again, they shook their heads.
A wry smile quirked Jaenelle's lips. "I have an inkling," she told them.
"Then it can be fixed!" Jocelyn-in-Allain exclaimed. "Because I'm getting really tired of having a cock flopping around between my legs."
Allain-in-Jocelyn stiffened almost imperceptibly. "Imagine how I feel, having your moon's blood dripping down my thighs," he muttered.
"Actually, those would be my thighs," Jocelyn-in-Allain snapped.
Jaenelle held up her hand, silencing Allain-in-Jocelyn before he could bite out a rejoinder. "Both of you, stop snipping at each other," she told them. Pressing her fingers to her tempers again, she sighed. "Yes, I believe this can be fixed."
"How?" Jocelyn-in-Allain asked, nearly leaping from her seat with excitement.
"I'm going to need a bit of time to think about how to go about doing this, but I should have a solution in a day or so," Jaenelle informed them. "In the mean time, I'm going to ask that you two, Jocelyn and Allain, stay in the Hall. I don't even want to begin to imagine what kind of havoc you'd wrought in Halaway or any of the other nearby villages."
Jaenelle stood, and it was clear to all that the conversation was over.
Dinner that night was both excruciating and interesting, depending on who you asked and when you asked them. Khardeen, who was visiting with Morghann, didn't help the situation much. He sat beside Jocelyn-in-Allain, asking all sorts of question that, while they seemed innocent, really weren't. Jaenelle suspected he was only doing it to see how quickly he could get the poor girl's ears to turn a blistering red.
Finally, Morghann cut Khary off the in the middle of a question that had even Karla choking on her wine. "Khary," Morghann hissed. "Stop torturing the poor girl."
Khary smiled weakly, but his blue eyes were still full of trouble. Not even impending fatherhood would rid him of his mischief.
Setting her glass down, Karla looked at Jocelyn-in-Allain from across the table. "A lot of people have called me ballsy," she said lightly. "But I've never actually had them. What's it like being a male?"
Jocelyn-in-Allain paled a bit as she pushed peas around on her plate. "Weird," she eventually replied. "I'm not all here, you see. I mean, I am here, but it's only my personality. Like everything in Allain's head got messed with until it resembled me instead of him."
Jaenelle's eyebrow went up, but only Morghann seemed to notice it.
"So I'm in here, all female, but there's all this maleness here, too. And it's weird," Jocelyn-in-Allain concluded.
The women at the table laughed, but the men rolled their eyes.
"Here, here!" Khary called, lifting his glass. "I would wager it's much the same for poor Allain!"
Allain-in-Jocelyn looked up from taking a drink of his wine. Everyone's eyes were now trained on him. "I suppose. There are a number of pesky female instincts trying to govern my behavior."
"Pesky!" That was Karla taking offense. "At least I don't follow behind a cock every time I stand up."
"No, you just follow behind your tits," Khary replied.
A good natured shouting contest took up the remainder of dinner, though Jocelyn and Allain both excluded themselves from it. As he glanced over at Jocelyn, Allain sighed a bit. He had learned one thing since being trapped in her body.
The following morning saw Allain and Jocelyn sitting on stools in Jaenelle's workroom as she manipulated Craft to switch the two back. The entire process took a little over an hour to complete, but it was done, much to the joy of both Jocelyn and Allain. Jocelyn didn't waste anytime in throwing herself on Kennedy, thrilled to be back to normal. Kennedy looked aggrieved. Allain offered Jaenelle a bow before excusing himself, saying he needed to attend to affairs back home.
Before he was halfway down the stairs to the drive, Allain was stopped by Jaenelle calling his name.
Turning, Allain looked back at Jaenelle and Jocelyn. Jocelyn, before Allain had made his escape, had announced that she wanted to remain at the Hall to learn Craft from Jaenelle. While Allain knew this should have elated Kennedy, the demon dead protector looked only more distraught.
"Lady?" he inquired.
"Tell me, both of you." Jaenelle's eyes changed, becoming haunted and ancient: a rich sapphire with endless depths. "What was it like, truly? Have you come away with any understanding?" Witch asked.
Allain opened his mouth, then closed it. Silence hung between the three, interrupted only by the chattering of birds. When someone finally spoke, it was Jocelyn. "I don't see why we don't understand," she said softly. "A heart's a heart. I think that's the only thing needed to translate across the genders."
"A heart is a heart," Witch repeated. Jaenelle's brilliant smile chased Witch's eyes away. "Quite true. I'm sorry to have caused you both so many problems. I hope everything will be alright when you get back home, Allain." Jocelyn, it would appear, truly was staying at the Hall.
Allain's lips quirked and he offered them both another bow. As he turned and caught the Winds to return to Nharkhava, comfortably within his own body once again, he did notice a bit of something different. A heart's a heart? he found himself asking himself. He touched his chest. His Gray Jewel flared in response to something a bit foreign, but not dangerous. A little piece of Jocelyn, perhaps.
Jaenelle looked down at Jocelyn. Jocelyn watched the place on the drive Allain had last stood.
"It seems a bit more was left behind than I thought," Jaenelle said abruptly.
Jocelyn shook her head and fixed Jaenelle with a brilliant smile. "A heart's a heart," she said with the absolute certainty of a teenager who believed she was invincible, "so it doesn't matter. Maybe, if I were stuck with his brain, we'd have a problem. But a heart's a heart and we're not really that different."
As Jocelyn skipped merrily back into the Hall, Daemon stepped out. "Love?" he asked Jaenelle.
"Yes?"
"Can you promise never to try and translate male again?" he asked, a faint note of desperate pleading in his voice.
Laughing, Jaenelle linked her arm in Daemon's.