Chapter One: The Bra and Panties

I hate to remember those days of confusion and struggle when I, Nichole the Bright, was still Human and quite different from how I am at the time of this recording. There was a load of unnecessary pain back then I do not like to revisit, but for the sake of historical accuracy, I shall do my best to recount faithfully as much as I am able.

A normal day for me meant get up, take a shower, get dressed, go downstairs, do dishes, eat, and relax if I didn't have any master's degree coursework to do. I hated it. By The Realm of the Forgotten, it was the same day after day! As it was, I had finished doing dishes about an hour before and sat down to watch my favorite movie in recent years up to that point: Wolf-Walkers. I related to Robyn Goodfellowe so much it hurt. I smiled wistfully at the screen as Robin and Mebh ran and played together in their wolf forms.

So much freedom, I remember thinking. Away from everyone, Robyn can be herself.

In the middle of the song, a knock at the door jarred me back from my imaginings. "Oh, for fuck sake!" I blinked as I continued to listen to the quiet beyond the front door. My Dad's Chihuahua usually led the charge against anyone the dog didn't like, and thus far, he only liked me and Dad while tolerating Mom. I blinked and listened again. Scarlet, the sweetest Catahula Curr unless you came on the property uninvited, also remained silent. I shook my head and sighed before I slipped on my forearm crutches and walked out to check.

At the foot of the ramp, a small box sat, plain and unmarked. I raised a brow at the strange package and worked it up the ramp inside the house by kicking it repeatedly with my crutches and adjusting course as needed. When I got to a place where I could open the box, I sat and reached out. The box exuded an energy. It wasn't sickly or malicious, but it did feel odd enough to give me pause. It felt…charged, like the energy in a lively atmosphere concentrated into the space of the box. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, cut the tape seal with a pocketknife, and opened the box.

I blinked and stared. A cotton white training bra with matching lace panties met my eyes. Even as my face burned, my mind went to one person: my older brother, Thomas. However, I quickly dismissed that possibility for a multitude of reasons. I did not hear his four-wheeler, nor did I hear the Chihuahua who absolutely hated Thomas. One far more personal reason also flashed in my mind. Absolutely no one in my family knew about my…curiosities at the time. After being thoroughly embarrassed as a twelve-year-old by Dad when he read off my search history at a family gathering, I swore with myself never to look further into that part of myself.

Here I sat, a twenty-nine-year-old still haunted by seventeen (likely more) years of repression and embarrassment with a taste of freedom within my grasp. My eyes floated up to the TV of their own accord. I shook my head as I saw the still frame of Robyn reaching to free Mol while her father tried to hold her back from what he saw as a mindless beast. My eyes then traveled to the clock under the TV.

I've got time.

I nodded to myself, grabbed the underwear, and walked over to the elevator to go back up to my room and change. The cargo lift that was called an elevator seemed to be even slower than normal as the wench pulled the chain and cage up. I was used to it being slow, but now it seemed to crawl a few nanometers in a minute. In my frustration, I focused and felt myself launch up the shaft like like Yoda or Anakin. When I landed, I stayed standing on the second floor for all of five seconds before my legs collapsed under me. "How the Hell did I do that?!" I almost yelled breathlessly before I shook my head and sighed. Can't go back and pick up my crutches unless I grab my walker first.

Let me tell you. An open floor plan is a bitch if you have Cerebral Palsy or any other neural-muscular disorders that make falls a daily fact of life. I sighed and used the wall as a leverage point to force myself back to my feet and smiled in victory as I wall-walked to my room with the precious cargo clutched securely in my good, left hand. I shivered in excitement when I reached the end of the wall and took the two or three unsteady steps to make it to a safe fall zone of my bed. Then, I let gravity take over and plopped on the bed as the springs groaned in momentary protest.

I looked at the underwear and sighed. The panties wouldn't be too difficult. They would go on just like normal underwear. The bra, on the other hand, would be a problem with the difficulty I had controlling my right arm with any dexterity or precision. I shook my head and forged forward. I'll find a way around it; I thought. I'll adapt. I always do.

I smiled at the thought and looked at my camouflage cargo shorts and Taz "I'm only like this when I get up." T-shirt. I pulled them both off with an unusual haste. Then, there was the moment of truth. I slipped on the panties and shrugged. They were a little tight around the groin, but I was used to that after years having to wear women's cut jeans due to a surgery to put my hip back in socket that unintentionally made my hips wider than normal. Then, I moved to the bra. After a few tries to do it with my left hand only, I sighed and focused on my right. Awkward and slow, I tried to get the clasps to meet. It reminded me of buttoning a shirt blind. I was thinking about backing out and just wearing the panties when I felt the right end of the clasp seem to move on its own before it met and secured itself to the left side. I raised a brow at that but after Jedi jumping up the elevator shaft, I didn't really want to think about it.

I heard the Chihuahua yapping and shook my head. When did Thomas get here? I thought before I crawled to the spiral staircase with the trainer rubbing my chest in time with every moment. I hated crawling, but sometimes, it was the only locomotion option I had. Even so, I felt an odd comfort in the odd sensation of the trainer against my chest. So, I crawled until I got to a railing I could pull up on. Then, I started the careful journey to the bottom of the stairs.

As I neared the bottom, I heard Thomas coming and mentally braced for impact. My left foot touched down. Thomas jumped out from behind the wall and growled. I stumbled back and barely caught myself with enough room to return myself to standing position. Without really thinking, I muttered, "Kaysh mirsh solus."

Thomas gave me an odd look. "Was that Spanish?"

I sighed, "No, este es español." I laughed when he looked even more confused. "Ese fue langua del Mandalorian."

"What?"

"Nothing…" I shook my head and debated going to Koine Greek for my next response but decided against it. Part of the fun of defanging someone in a tongue other than their birth language lay in the look of shock when the person successfully translated. In addition, I had only ever learned to read Greek and feared destroying the language if I tried to speak it because I only had a partially reconstructed pronunciation based entirely on transliteration and English pronunciation of the Romanized letters.

"No seriously," he turned his class ring upside down and slammed it on my head. "What did you say?"

I sighed, barely aware of the impact because he'd pulled the same shit so many times before and always became more abusive with his "jokes" as he drank. Then, I slammed a crutch into the exposed ball of his right ankle. "I said, 'Take the entire case of Michelob.' We both know that's the only reason you ever come around to Mom and Dad's." I then shook my head. "No, on second thought, I can't let you go without half the stock of Mom's homemade cherry wine." I said as gestured to the rows of freshly bottled wine on the counter. "Go on, borrachin."

"What the Hell?!" Thomas screamed as he spilled his open beer on his shirt while he stumbled back from my attack.

I shook my head and laughed darkly. "I'm just tired of constantly being the family's personal prison bitch." I said with a sickly-sweet smirk. I reached up and gently patted his cheek. "Get me?"

Thomas stared at me like I was another person. "Who are you?"

"I'm me without any more fucks to give," I said without missing a beat. "You don't like it when your target decides to fight back. Do you?"

Thomas stayed silent. I turned around and shook my head before I walked out of the house to go for a walk to calm myself down. I turned to the driveway and began to walk in a cadence as best I could in time with "Vode An" from Republic Commandos. One would expect a war song like that to get my blood pumping and hype me up further, but the lyrics and music always helped me direct anger into movement and thus calm me down. This continued as I checked the mail and began to make the return trip back to the house.

Walking back to the house, I felt the desire to sleep and also a strange feeling from somewhere beyond me. I gritted my teeth and pushed against it until I set foot back on the porch. Not yet, I demanded of my body and…a Current of energy pulsing through the land around me and even from the house but to a weaker extent than the plants and animals around me. Safety is top priority. Even as the thought rolled through my mind, I scanned around for other people. I could feel a herd of deer moving in the woods around thirty meters away. Beyond them, I sensed nothing, so I reluctantly listened to my body and curled up on the couch before I finally went to sleep.

I dreamed. I dreamt of places that shouldn't exist. As I walked down the halls of what Dragonae would come to know as Ygdrasil and alternatively The World Between Worlds. In the portals, I saw worlds and timelines yet to be and simultaneously universes long extinguished. One face I knew on sight made me rise in anger. He looked exactly like he did on Mortis but somehow much younger.

"You!"

The Father laughed. "I see you received my gift."

My eyes flashed golden, "I call bullshit!" Something in me snapped free and a flood of what can only be called memories from the future, as bizarre as the idea sounds, rushed into my consciousness. "If you truly are The Grey Heretic, you would be terrified of me."

The Grey Heretic laughed, "Why would I fear a cub who has yet to find her teeth or her Twin?"

"Shit!" I found myself screaming even as The Greyman threw me into a portal an impassive yet smug smirk. "I shall have my Son corrupt The Halfling. Vader shall die by his master's hand as it must happen. You shall not stop me!"

I woke up to a cacophony of sounds. Smiths' hammers smashed into my awareness first. Then, I saw the darkness around me. It wasn't normal. Consciously, I knew I shouldn't be able to see anything, yet the world around me seemed a little brighter than the night on a full moon. I could smell sweat and wood smoke in acrid detail. If I focused, I could smell a scent of what I can only describe as calm coming from one man in the gathering of soldiers who stared at the campfire in deep thought.

"Βασελιον Λεωνιος…" I heard a man say, though his voice was strange. "…η ανθροπη…" He moved to look at the man who was undoubtedly King Leonidas of legend as the soldier's voice grew slightly fainter and continued speaking, this time too rapidly for me to understand words. I couldn't see the man for the tent flap, but when the soldier's voice grew slightly louder again, I knew my tent was the focus of his gaze.

I completely checked out after that, my brain deciding to latch onto one particular phrase: η ανθροπη- "the woman". Well, hello, Nichole, I thought to myself. Nice to finally meet you.

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