The Potion Gardener

-JULY-

It was all going beautifully until the first Sunday of July, when Florian realised with some delight that it might finally be warm enough for a swim. A short walk past the beehives and beyond the field of wildflowers sat a cheerful little duckpond housing jade green water and a flock of fat waterfowl. The ducks paddled around with their tiny fluffy-headed offspring, as scenic as any Beatrix Potter painting. The only things missing were their little ruffled coats and bonnets.

Since the ducks were lacking any such trappings of fashion or modesty, Florian assumed that they wouldn’t mind if he shed his own and joined them in like style. The sun was warm, the sky was clear, and the dew-freckled grass was refreshing as he removed his shoes and socks.

Slipping the ring from his finger, Florian took a deep breath, stripped down to her skin, and threw herself into the pond. The water was bracingly cold at first touch, and the abrupt, full-body immersion was more of a shock than she’d anticipated. It would be another few weeks before the water was properly warm, but the balmy days and glowing sunsets had convinced her to give it a go. Forcing herself to stretch her arms and legs akimbo, she pushed off to swim a few laps, and quickly adjusted.

It was the first time since April she’d been without the ring. As spring turned to summer, she’d become so used to the glamours cloaking her body that they had begun to feel natural. When she looked in the mirror, she expected to see Florian, not Flora, and when she looked at her body, she expected to see those masculine attributes that the ring conjured so skillfully.

Though she’d expected the glamour to weaken with time, having never intended it to be a permanent enchantment, she found herself unwilling to let it fade. More than once, she’d fed the ring a little extra magic to keep the glamour running strong, reluctant to return to her old body, just as she was reluctant to return to her old life. She was beginning to suspect she might never want to do either.

It wasn’t that she’d ever hated her body. Before April, she’d never given it much thought at all except for something to be dressed up and used to get her from one point to the next. She was told she made a pretty girl, and it was easy to find clothes that fit her right off the rack. Her lovers had certainly never had any complaints, and she’d have judged them for their bad manners before she’d have considered judging herself.

After the ring, after the glamours, after becoming Florian, she still didn’t hate her girlish figure. It was more like, when he was a boy, he got this bright, giddy sense of excitement, like every mirror was a chance to preen. He took more of an interest in his wardrobe than she’d ever taken with her dresses. Stockings, especially, he was glad to never bother with again. To hear himself referred to as a boy unfailingly made him break into a beaming smile. He enjoyed being a boy in a way she had never consciously, intentionally enjoyed being a girl.

The problem was that it was entirely illusionary.

Treading water even though he could easily reach the bottom of the pond with his toes, he tipped his head back to look at the sky. He had wanted to try being in his body without the ring, just to see how he felt about it after three months of living in disguise, and he wasn’t much impressed with the experience. He’d given femininity a fair shake, double and triple-checked his feelings on the matter, and he could confidently say that it just wasn’t for him.

With that decided, it was time to exit the pond, even if it had reached a pleasant temperature. His fingers and toes were starting to prune, he’d swum up an appetite, and he wanted that ring back on his finger.

He pulled himself out of the water at the exact moment Kells crested the hill between the pond and the field, and for a split second, they both froze, staring at each other.

With a yelped curse, Florian dropped straight back into the water, submerging up to his chin. At the same time, Kells spun sharply on her heel, her back straight and her shoulders stiff as she pointed herself a full hundred-and-eighty degrees in the other direction. Florian’s heart raced triple-time, as if facing down a bank of hungry tigers rather than a wrong-footed potion-gardener.

“Sorry,” Kells said to the sky or the field or the cottage. “I thought we could have tea out here. Weather’s nice for it.” She carried a picnic basket in one hand, a blanket thrown over the top. A second later, Grim joined her, looking alert to the sudden drama.

“Ah,” said Florian. “That sounds nice?” He immediately winced at the sound of his voice, so much lighter than the ring made it.

Kells cleared her throat, head tipped back to study the spun-sugar clouds on the horizon. “Didn’t mean to intrude. Shall I go? Or…?”

They had made direct eye contact from less than ten yards away. There was no way Kells hadn’t seen Florian’s body, and if by some miracle she’d been struck blind by the sun in her eyes, then she certainly wasn’t deaf to the change in Florian’s voice. Being perceived in full unglamoured nakedness, Florian felt very much like a girl again. She could hardly bluff masculinity in any convincing way with the ring on dry land alongside her clothes.

It wasn’t a nice feeling, to get dragged backwards into girlhood so abruptly. And Florian had been so confident in his decision to remain a boy, just a minute ago.

But Kells didn’t seem angry. She was giving Florian the chance to explain the situation. Florian had no reason to believe Kells would react poorly to a little sexual deviance, but then, the topic hadn’t really come up before.

At least, not explicitly. Florian had got the impression, here and there, to suggest that Kells was as likely to lie with women as Florian was, but then, Kells had thought Florian was a boy. Florian couldn’t be sure there hadn’t been some crossing of signals. In that moment, Florian couldn’t be sure of anything, including his or her own gender. Kells had known him as a young man, she looked like a girl, but what Florian actually wanted was something more slippery and harder to define.

All he or she knew was that she liked Kells tremendously, and she was fairly certain that Kells liked him a fair bit in return. Florian didn’t want to lose that over something as silly as her naked body.

Running away was hardly an option, and pretending nothing had changed was regrettably likewise unrealistic. Emerging her neck and shoulders from the water, Florian therefore elected to tackle the situation head on. “You saw me,” she said, her bold tone disguising her desperation for Kells to accept her as she was.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think I saw?” Kells asked the clouds, still facing the opposite way.

Gathering her courage, Florian rose a second time until she was standing with the water holding her around the waist. “Turn around.” By some miracle, her voice didn’t even shake.

Slowly, Kells set the blanket and the picnic basket in the grass and turned around like she was giving Florian time to change her mind or hide again. But Florian stood strong, her chin up to hide her nerves. She’d stood naked in front of people before; whatever else she felt about her body, she wasn’t ashamed of it. Her only shame was that she’d been lying to Kells about her identity, when Kells had been nothing but generous and kind to her.

Her fear of rejection, on the other hand, was near overpowering.

Kells took her in with a sweeping gaze, followed by a nod. “You going to say anything?” she asked after a moment.

Florian had expected Kells to be the one to talk first. “You want an explanation?”

“I don’t know that there’s necessarily anything to explain,” Kells said with a shrug. “I’ve seen plenty of bodies in my time. If you feel the need to talk about yours, have at it. But I can’t see how it’s any of my business.”

Florian floundered. “You don’t feel deceived at all?”

“By the fact that you’ve got tits? Not particularly. Lots of people do.” When Florian still couldn’t manage a response, Kells sighed and picked up Florian’s discarded clothes. “Your name is Florian, yeah?”

“My mother named me Flora.”

“You introduced yourself as Florian. Do you want me to keep calling you that?”

Kells was a straightforward sort of person; it probably wasn’t a trick question. “Yes? Please.”

“And you want me to keep referring to you as a man?”

Biting his or her lip, Florian nodded.

“Then come on out and get dressed, and tell me how you’ve been doing it. Some manner of spellwork, is it?”

“The ring is enchanted,” Florian explained, tentatively picking his way out of the pond to join Kells on solid land.

Kells offered him the picnic blanket in lieu of a towel, and he dried off under the strengthening sun, standing before her as naked as a Grecian statue. As Florian buffed his hair, Kells examined the ring, turning it to see the light glance off the rose etched in the band, though she made no move to try it on. Grim came over to lick pondwater from Florian’s shins, apparently unbothered by his change in shape, if he’d ever been aware of the magic at all. Grateful and nervous, Florian pressed one leg against Grim’s sturdy terrier body, and Grim leaned back companionably before toddling off to menace the ducks.

With the picnic blanket wrapped around his waist, Florian held out his hand for the ring. Kells searched his face for permission before taking his hand to slide the ring up his finger, her touch as firm and no-nonsense as ever, which was an immense relief.

Even more relieving was having the ring back in place, returning his body to his preferred appearance.

Florian didn’t feel the glamour ripple over him, but he watched its reflection in Kells’ expression, the way her gaze flickered over his face and then his body, marking every change as if seeing him for the first time, which, in a way, she just had. As she watched, his chest flattened, his hips and waist squared off, and, hidden under the picnic blanket’s shield of modesty—

“Can I?” she asked, tapping his hip where the blanket was knotted, leaving no room for misinterpretation.

“Oh! Certainly. If you want to?”

She had already seen Florian’s naked girl-body; she might as well see him male, too. Rather than come over all shy, what Florian felt instead was a nervous, anticipatory thrill at the thought of giving himself up to her inspection. Tugging the blanket loose, he let it drop around his ankles, and, feeling ridiculous without being embarrassed, he planted his hands on his hips and invited her to look her fill.

“So, it’s all glamours,” Kells assessed, handing Florian his clothes. “You haven’t actually made any physical changes to your body.”

Florian was so distracted by trying to read her expression — Kells wore a faint frown, but was that due to the brightness of the sun, her concentration on the ring’s magic, or some displeasure with the situation? — that he buttoned his shirt crookedly twice before noticing.

“It was just meant to be a party trick,” Florian confessed, spinning the ring around on his finger. “We all had silly costumes, and it was my bright idea to dress up as a boy. Only, once I was in the thick of it, I couldn’t bear to let it go. That’s when I ran away. What I told you about my romantic entanglements was all true, but they weren’t the impetus. I realised that night, drunk off my tits, that I’d never much wanted to be a girl in the first place. Meeting you and being able to stay out here gave me the chance to start over as the boy I wanted to be.”

“You jumped right in the deep end with both feet, just like that?” Kells asked, sounding impressed.

“It felt right,” was all Florian had to offer. “Sometimes you just know how something is supposed to be. You’ve got to go for it, when it feels like that.”

Kells gave a thoughtful hum, looking speculative. “You want to have that picnic?”

Sitting on the blanket in the damp grass, which was gradually drying as the sun approached noon, Kells spread the contents of the basket between them. Egg salad sandwiches on grainy, homemade brown bread, the eggs fresh from a neighbour’s hens, a salad of baby green leaves plucked from the garden and topped with a fruity vinaigrette, fresh-baked molasses ginger cookies soft enough to melt in the mouth, a hunk of sharp cheddar, and a bottle of last season’s cherry wine all had Florian’s mouth watering before he took a single bite.

From the far side of the pond, the ducks came waddling over to investigate the spread, plump and curious, with their feathered tails wagging. Florian didn’t feel inclined to share with them, as they seemed to be getting by just fine on their own, given their roundness, but he could be persuaded to share a bite of cheese with Grim. While the dog had started the picnic laying down by Kells’ hip, a picture of canine innocence, he’d begun stretching out long as the meal progressed, carefully inching closer to the food, hoping to avoid notice. Florian found it charming and, in his opinion, worth rewarding.

“Do you like being able to flip back and forth as easily as taking off that ring?” Kells asked, munching through her sandwich. “Or did you only take it off to make sure you wouldn’t lose it in the pond?”

“Yes?” Florian ventured, to one or both questions. “I definitely don’t ever want to be a woman. But I rather like being sort of half a man, you know? Embodying this lighter version of masculinity. The spell makes me look like a boy, but it doesn’t give me all the necessary parts, if you take my meaning.” He gave a pointed cough.

“A prick,” Kells supplied, perfectly blunt. “So, what I saw was just smoke and mirrors?”

“Right, yes. Exactly. You can see it, but there’s nothing to actually, you know, take hold of down there.” Now that the secret was out, the relief at being able to talk about it came pouring out in a stream of rapid-fire chatter between bites. “Which is fine? I don’t think I much want one. I like being called a boy, but I’m aware that I’m not one; not really. And I don’t mean that in a self-deprecating way. I mean, I don’t entirely want to be a man, even looking like this. Are you really so unbothered by it all?”

Kells shrugged. “Really and truly. You aim to be an androgyne, then?”

“Yes!” Florian beamed, tremendously relieved at having the word presented so simply. “Yes, that’s what I want.”

Neither a man nor woman, boy nor girl. Not he or she, either, but something nebulous and in between. That had been his first instinct on seeing himself in a boy’s disguise, and he’d been right, before overthinking it.

“The trappings I’ve got now are fine. I mean, the glamours are good enough; they get the job done. But I should like a more permanent solution, I think. If I’m just out here idly wishing for things, I mean.”

“Bodies aren’t permanent, though,” Kells pointed out, tipping a serving of wine into both their cups. “They’re always changing, even from one day to the next. No way around that.”

“No, but you know what I mean. I’d like something permanent in the sense of it being more substantial than a trinket I can take on or off. Or lose,” Florian added, with a twinge of discomfort. “Or have taken away.”

“Hm.” Reaching over, Kells plucked a fluffy white globe of a dandelion from the grass. “If you’re making wishes, you might as well do it right.”

Obediently, Florian blew, and the tiny fluffs dissipated, floating up over their picnic and away, vanishing into the blue sky.

“Since I’ve confessed so much today,” Florian said, after taking a fortifying gulp of sweet wine, “would you tell me something in return?”

“That depends,” Kells said easily, distributing the ginger biscuits between the two of them.

Grim shuffled forward, stretching his neck out to an improbable length, like a heron reaching for a particularly delectable fish.

Kells moved the biscuits further away without looking at him. “What do you want to know?”

“You seemed to like me when I was a perfectly normal young man who had turned up in your potting shed,” Florian said. “I thought we were getting along pretty well.”

“Sure,” Kells allowed. “I liked you well enough.”

“Now that I’m…” Florian made a gesture to encompass the whole of their body, allowing the ring to flash in the noonday light. “Would you say I’ve got a better or worse chance of getting with you?”

Kells broke into a broad grin. “Are you asking whether I fancy you more or less now that I know you haven’t got a prick?”

Florian’s own smile broke out of confinement in response to seeing hers. “Yeah, that’s the gist of it.”

Kells threw a biscuit at them.

◆◆◆

“I’ve been thinking,” Kells said two days later, setting down her breakfast spoon and pushing her bowl aside to fix Florian with her full attention.

Intimidated and intrigued, Florian paused in their pursuit of garden-fresh berries in their oatmeal to mirror her, folding their hands on top of the table and leaning in, bright-eyed.

“I’m already doing things with potions to change a person’s body this way or that,” Kells continued. “Like the contraceptive women take to stop their menstruating. The ingredients interact with the body’s natural cycles, mimicking or suppressing different hormones to make the changes. I bet I could make a potion to do the same thing as that spell on your ring, only you wouldn’t have to worry about taking it off or losing it. If that’s something you’re interested in.”

“About that contraceptive potion, by the way,” Florian said sheepishly. “I bought a number of them from you on the sly.”

Kells paused for a second, eyes narrowing. “You little devil. That was you? I thought I kept miscounting the damn things.”

“Sorry. It was before I heard about the Purissima Rose shortages, and I really did pay for them. I just … well, I hid the money around the cottage, so you’ll probably find it eventually.”

“Brilliant life choices, there. You couldn’t have just said you were buying them for a friend in London?”

“I didn’t actually have the money to pay when I first took them.”

“Christ, Flore, like I wouldn’t believe you’d be good for it.” When Florian opened their mouth to make things worse, Kells rolled her eyes, waving them off. “No, stop talking. You’re a bloody menace. Now, are you interested in this thing, or not? You can say no without offending me,” she added. “It’s just something I’ve been thinking on.”

Florian considered it. They certainly liked the idea, theoretical as it was. “This potion. I’d have to take it regularly, the same as the contraceptive one?”

“Probably once a month. Instead of, not in addition to. Which is just as well, seeing as I’m going to be short on that one for a while longer. It’ll be more frequent at first, though. I expect I’ve got some trial and error to run through before I figure things out.”

“And if I stop, my body will change back again?”

“Probably,” Kells repeated. “I haven’t tried anything, yet. I don’t want to go promising results one way or another until I’ve had a few goes at it. Ideally, I’d start slow, give the magic some time to build up in your system and let it do its work gradually, rather than dump a whole heap in at once and have your body trying to drastically change itself overnight.”

“So, I could sort of monitor it as I went along? I could adjust the strength of the magic here and there, and tailor my body into precisely what I want?”

“It’s magic, not a miracle,” Kells warned, tapping one blunt finger against the table. “There’s only so much you’ll be able to control. Bodies aren’t the most predictable things to work with. I’m not guaranteeing you anything like a custom-designed body at the end of this.”

“I understand,” Florian assured her. “Even without a miracle, I think it sounds marvellous.”

◆◆◆

Kells’ potions didn’t taste especially good. They didn’t taste bad, by any means, but they were a far cry from the other potions Florian had previously sampled in London, which had more in common with cocktails: fun little drinks that were as enjoyable on the tongue as their effects were on the mind or body. Kells’ potions had more in common with a good tea, which made sense, what with her cultivating both at once.

With teas and potions, Florian could taste each individual ingredient, bitter herbs or heady florals, sharp spices or smoky woods. Kells took the same approach to both concoctions, testing different combinations of ingredients, though the teas’ outcome was for the palate, whereas the potions’ more for the effects. Florian watched as keenly as she had watched her chemistry and biology teachers in school, the careful measuring of components, the weighing and portioning.

“Try this,” Kells instructed, handing them a mug of thick, golden liquid dotted with flower petals in pink and purple.

It smelled sweet and floral, though when Florian tasted it, it was less syrupy than they expected, something rich and almost smoky coating their tongue, hidden beneath the rose and lavender.

“There’s a good deal of honey in there, to help it go down easier,” Kells said, watching them. “The potion ingredients taste a bit naff on their own.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed,” Florian said, taking a bigger mouthful on their second try. “It’s sweet, but not disgustingly so.”

“I’ll pass your compliments on to the bees.”

“What’s it meant to do?”

“You’re only asking that now that you’re halfway through the mug?” Kells asked with a laugh.

Florian shrugged, pausing to lick their lips. “If you were going to poison me, I figure you would have done it months ago.”

“It’s our first attempt at reshaping your body, so I’m keeping it simple for now. Like my male fertility potions, I’m using ingredients from the Priapus family to mimic male hormones. Give you a little boost of something like testosterone. It shouldn’t do a whole lot on its own so much as give you a feel for what’s possible.”

The potion got thicker as Florian drank it, until the bottom was nothing but rich, amber sludge that Florian didn’t have the patience to drain. When gravity proved too slow for their liking, rather than hold the mug upside down for twenty minutes to let it slide out like molasses, they dipped their fingers in to swipe out the remainder, like a bear plundering a beehive.

“I could’ve got you a spoon,” said Kells, sounding aggrieved, but she made no move for the cutlery drawer, staring as if mesmerised by the thick honey coating Florian’s fingers.

Enjoying the attention, Florian raised that hand to their mouth, and slowly, in a long stripe, licked the honey from the knuckle of their hand all the way to the tip of their middle finger, wrapping their lips around the digit and sucking until their cheeks hollowed.

Leaning forward, Kells braced both hands against the table’s edge, fixing Florian with a glare that was either daring them to stop, or goading them on. Smiling around their finger, Florian dropped their pretense of innocence and let their eyes go dark and heavy, holding eye contact as they sucked their fingers clean one at a time.

When Kells kissed them, the speed of her approach was paired with a sudden slowing down, a breath of hesitation before pressing her lips to theirs. She tasted warm and sweet, though most of that was the honey stickying Florian’s mouth. It was closed-mouth, no tongue, just pressure, and it only lasted an instant before Kells drew back again. She only moved far enough that their lips were a single millimeter apart, such that the smallest movement from Florian would bring them back in contact. The temptation was amazing.

But when Florian tipped their chin, telegraphing their intention, Kells withdrew, her gaze trained on Florian’s parted lips even as she gave them a crooked smile, denying the touch.

“Just that?” Florian pouted.

“You’ve got to work harder than that if you want more,” Kells said huskily, almost laughing.

It was a challenge Florian was thrilled to accept.

The next morning, Florian woke with their chin tremendously itchy. When they went to scratch it, they were met with a handful of bristles, causing them to shoot upright and abandon their bed for the mirror. A full beard of thick, chestnut brown whiskers greeted them, bushy enough to put any wild mountain man to shame.

“Kells!” they shouted.

When Kells came to the bedroom door a moment later, she had to immediately school her features to keep from dissolving into laughter. “Well, it’s not what I’d call gradual.” She covered her mouth with one hand. “Do you like it?”

“No,” Florian said firmly. “No facial hair, no body hair. This is very much not what I want.”

“Sorry,” Kells managed, looking more entertained than apologetic. “I must’ve gone in a little heavy-handed. We’ll get that shaved off, and I’ll adjust the ratios in the next potion.”

The next potion had Florian starting their day without any sudden hirsutism, but instead, with a fully formed penis of very modest size, though lacking any testicles.

“Not this, either,” they told Kells, though only after trying it out for two days, just to see if they came to enjoy it. After a few rounds of experimentation, they found it wasn’t much worth the hype, and, as they had suspected, was rather more inconvenient to cart around than what they’d originally had down there.

“Well,” Florian amended, “I wouldn’t mind the option once in a while, if you could concoct something that only lasts for a day at a time. I could think of a few fun things to do with that. But not as a default, I’m afraid.”

“They make things like that,” Kells said, “that you can just buy and strap on without fussing with any magic.”

“That’s not the same as actually having one.”

“No? Well, I’ll buy you one of those toys for your birthday and you can decide whether it’s better than nothing.”

“My birthday is ages away,” Florian protested. “It’s not until next March!”

“I’m sure you’ll find some way to entertain yourself in the meantime.”

That was true enough, and if Florian was very lucky, Kells might even be interested in joining them. Florian just had to give her a good enough reason for it.

In that vein, Florian continued their quest to find something truly useful they could offer her. Kells continued to insist that Florian’s work in the garden was more than enough, but anyone could provide a willing body for manual labour. Florian wanted to be indispensable not just as an extra pair of hands, but as a person. Kells might enjoy their company, and she certainly seemed to revel in the challenge of mixing up body-altering potions, but Florian wanted to give her something more than friendship and intrigue. They wanted to do something so unprecedentedly useful that Kells would have to say, How did I ever manage before this?

Unfortunately, as much as Florian wracked their brain, no brilliant ideas were forthcoming. They swam laps in the pond, pulled weeds, befriended the bees, gained Grim’s gradual trust, and joined Kells at the market every Saturday to sell her products and their own little paintings. The sun shone warmly and the rain showered, the bees buzzed and butterflies flitted through the flowers, and still, no bolt of inspiration struck.

So, Florian returned to their botanical art studies. In the evening, after the day’s work was done and after tea, they spent an hour or two sitting at the kitchen table with their watercolours, one of Kells’ potted plants plunked on the table before them. As they painted, they allowed their mind to wander.

Kells joined them as often as not, sometimes with a hot tea, sometimes with something a little stronger mixed in. She sat on the side next to them, staying out of their light, or sometimes she sat in the chair by the fireplace, which was no longer needed in the early mornings or evenings, its heat having been replaced by the gentle buffeting warmth of midsummer. There were evenings when she read, or scribbled out lists to try different combinations of ingredients, either for Florian’s potions or for concoctions she might sell to ease more common complaints.

Just as often, she merely watched Florian work, seemingly intrigued by their brush strokes. She rarely initiated conversation in those times, and the silence was comfortable, leaving it up to Florian to decide whether they wanted to fill the cottage with casual chatter, or bask in companionable quiet.

When Florian wanted conversation, they would ask Kells to tell them about whatever plant they were painting that evening, and Kells would calmly lecture them on its attributes, whether magical or mundane. For all the plants in her gardens, she kept an equal number either in the house or in pots on the steps, and she knew each and every one of them, down to their smallest physical details and their most obscure uses, whether that was in cooking, brewing, or potion-making.

As they had done all through university, Florian let the lecture wash over them, the knowledge sinking deep into the crevasses of their brain as they worked. They might not look like they were paying attention, but they had always focused best when they were able to do something with their hands, whether that was writing notes or doodling in the margins. Kells seemed pleased to talk about her collection, whether Florian was asking questions or curled over their painting in concentrated silence.

After two weeks of experimental gender potions, Kells directed their evening conversation away from plants and onto that particular subject, instead.

“You’ve been giving me notes as we go along,” she said, pen and notebook at the ready, the same pair she used to write her grocery lists. “Which is helpful, obviously. The whole point is to get you what you want. So, I’d like to go over what we’ve done so far and make sure we’re both on the same track.”

“Alright,” Florian agreed. With a swish, they cleaned their paintbrush and set it aside, giving Kells their full attention. Their painting, still wet, they pushed to the middle of the table, safely out of reach of any enthusiastic gesturing they might do.

“You stopped wearing your ring?”

“A week ago,” Florian confirmed, thumbing the empty spot on their finger. “The glamours were hiding the physical changes, and I wanted to pay closer attention to what was happening.”

Kells nodded. “And we’re heading in the right direction, you think?”

“It’s brilliant,” Florian confirmed. “I’ve never felt better.”

“Hm. I think I started off too strong in giving you male attributes, which wasn’t what you wanted. Agreed?”

“Having a penis just felt like adding more gender, when I want less,” Florian explained. “No penis, no beard, no tits, no womb, no bleeding. I want to feel like a clean slate, with nothing but possibility ahead of me. It’s a shame the female gender can’t be removed as easily as the male,” they added thoughtfully. “Men can just shave or do a quick spot of castration and have it taken care of. Now, women can’t even cut their hair short without it being just another fashion trend.”

“I’m not sure putting castration and shaving on the same level is entirely fair. One of those takes a bit more doing than the other.”

“Sure, yes, I’m just saying, the mechanics are easy enough. We’ve been castrating animals for centuries; we know how to do it. Meanwhile, the breasts have too much surface area in comparison to take off in a single clean chop, and a hysterectomy is downright carnage. Far too much rummaging around internally, and too much risk involved. We’re not on even ground at all.”

“Well, I can get you some of the way there, at least. Especially now that I’ve got some practice with this particular mix of ingredients.”

“I appreciate it tremendously. A bit of trial and error on the magic front might take longer than the surgical approach, but I’m enjoying the process so far. It’s been illuminating; I’m learning as much about my own preferences as I am about my body’s mechanics. I think I’ll be much more satisfied with the results once we get there than I would be going to some mad scientist of a doctor.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, but those doctors likely know what they’re doing a bit better than I do, here.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. You’re a proper genius with potions.”

“As long as it’s only potions you’re after from me. I can butcher a chicken or castrate a bull, but that doesn’t make me a surgeon any more than mixing up a remedial potion or two makes me a physician. Just want you to be clear on that.”

“Crystal. Although, when you say I’d better only want potions from you … Could you elaborate?”

“No,” said Kells, with a twitch of a smile.

“Like, for example, if I were to ask for something else…?”

“Something more than I’m already providing?”

“Another kiss?” Florian dared.

“Will that satisfy you, do you think?” Kells asked with a lazy smile that did terrible things to Florian’s self-control. “One kiss, and you’ll be good to go about your day? Go back to your painting, maybe?”

“I’d rather have one kiss from you that drives me mad for the rest of the night than nothing at all.”

“That’s the logic of a hormone-addled teenager. Whatever you’re thinking with, I’d lay bets it’s got more to do with what’s between your legs than in your brain.”

“I can think of better things to lay than bets.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“You like it.”

Kells didn’t verbally admit a thing, but she pushed up from her chair and came around the table to grab Florian by the shirt collar, holding them still for a crushing kiss. Shocked and delighted, Florian surged up to meet her, one hand flying to her shoulder and the other catching her around the waist, kicking their own chair back and out of the way.

It was true; they were as addled as any hot-blooded teenager, the potions flooding their body with a second puberty that left them hot and distracted. And Kells was distractingly hot to begin with. Kissing with messy tongues and roving hands, Florian turned around so they could hop up onto the kitchen table, legs spread around Kells’ hips as she crowded in against them.

“Want to take a closer look at what your potions are doing?” Florian asked breathlessly, their hands in Kells’ hair, lips grazing her chin.

“Definitely not stopping at a single kiss, then.”

“We can keep kissing. We can do nothing but kiss. But maybe with fewer clothes on, and in bed?”

Kells laughed against Florian’s mouth. “I do actually want to see those changes,” she admitted, her fingers digging into Florian’s waist over their clothes. “I’ve only seen you naked once before, that morning in the pond, so you’ll have to talk me through what the potions have actually done, if I can’t guess.”

“Right,” Florian agreed, pushing forward into her touch. “To be clear, though — is this a strictly scientific exploration? Or are we planning to both get off in and around the show-and-tell?”

“It looks inevitable, doesn’t it?”

“We could stop,” Florian pointed out, though they couldn’t hide their disappointment at the prospect.

“In the most literal sense, yeah, we could,” Kells replied amusedly. “But I don’t think we’re going to.”

“In that case, let’s move things somewhere more comfortable,” Florian suggested, their heart leaping excitedly at the confirmation that they were really, finally doing this. “And also, more horizontal.”

They went to Kells’ bedroom, which Florian had seen but never studied, and, based on their preoccupation with each other, wasn’t about to study that evening, either. Kells pushed Florian onto the bed, with its patterned pillows and heavy, heirloom quilt, and Florian eagerly fell back onto their elbows, appreciating the view of Kells standing over them.

“Want to start at the top and work your way down?”

“I see your face every day,” Kells replied. “I know what that looks like. Take your shirt off.”

Florian scrambled to comply, tugging their collar open and nearly popping more than one button in their haste. Their vest, they threw carelessly to the floor before crossing their arms to pull their shirt over their head, having deemed the buttons too much work.

Even in their undershirt, the potion’s effects were obvious. Their tits, of modest size to begin with, had diminished to nothing, as if from lack of appreciation. Thanks to their physical efforts in the garden, Florian filled out their undershirt with a decent show of muscle instead of looking scrawny or pigeon-chested. Florian was even more proud of their shoulders, which had squared out into a much more solid shape than they had ever dreamed of achieving as a girl.

And then there were their hips: always trim, but now narrow and angular rather than curving out like an hourglass. Their hips ached occasionally, especially at bedtime, which made sense if their bones were literally refiguring themselves, giving up any aspirations of childbearing.

Florian had never liked the look of their hips more than when Kells pressed one knee to the mattress, boxing Florian in like she meant to straddle them. Florian would be more than happy if she chose to, and made that clear by grasping the hem of her shirt, untucked from her trousers, and tugging her close.

Obliging, Kells leaned over them, catching the bottom of Florian’s undershirt with one hooked finger to drag it up their abdomen. The muscles in Florian’s stomach jumped at the touch as their skin was exposed to the bedroom air an inch at a time. They were naturally a shade darker in complexion than Kells, more prone to tanning than freckling, and the contrast of Kells’ pale Irish skin next to Florian’s was mouth-watering. When Florian’s undershirt was rucked up high under their arms, Kells set to studying their exposed body. Settling on the mattress with her knees astride Florian’s thighs just as Florian had hoped, she landed both hands on Florian’s hipbones to begin her exploration.

She traced the line of dark hair that ran from Florian’s naval to disappear under the waistband of their trousers. For all their insistence that they didn’t want any body hair as a result of Kells’ potions, Florian didn’t actually mind that particular trail, perhaps because they’d had a sparser version of it their entire adult life. Kells seemed to appreciate it, though she didn’t linger, already skating her hands over Florian’s ribs to their chest, where their nipples were flat and dusky pink, almost brown. They were a little larger than most men’s, though not enough to be worth commenting on, in Florian’s opinion. When Kells ran both palms over them, Florian pushed up against the pressure, enjoying the sensation far more than they had in the past.

“Do you think they’ll grow back if I stop taking it?” Florian asked, fighting to keep their voice steady under Kells’ ministrations.

“Not unless you take something else to make them. Tits aren’t like hair or lizard tails. They’re not going to grow back on their own, outside of puberty. Why? Do you want the option?”

“Definitely not. I just wanted to make sure.”

Kells hummed. “This suits you. You move more confidently, now. I’d never have guessed you were less than confident when I first met you — you hid it well, especially with the ring — but now, you move like a whole different person.”

“I think part of that is probably the physical labour, as well. Your potions work wonders, but I like to think I’ve come by my muscles honestly, if nothing else.”

“There’s nothing inherently dishonest about magic, but yeah, you’ve been working hard, and it shows.” Kells walked her fingertips back down Florian’s torso, outlining the shapes of their abdominal muscles, each step making them tense and flex deliciously.

“I never asked,” Florian said. “Do you even like men?”

“Does it matter?” Kells asked laconically.

“A little, yeah.”

“I don’t, not particularly. But I like whatever you’ve got going on.”

Florian perked up. “Even when I was wearing the ring? Before you knew?”

“You had an energy about you, yeah. Something to make me stop and look twice.”

“And now?” Florian prompted.

“You’re fishing for compliments,” Kells chided, though she couldn’t have been much upset about it, given how she was slipping her fingers under Florian’s waistband. “I already told you as much.”

“Yeah, but I mean, since I’ve started taking the potions. If these changes prove permanent, and I can’t make my body look like a girl again, not even some of the time, would you still be attracted to me?”

Kells rolled her eyes. “It’s not your body I’m attracted to, you little gremlin. Change it, enchant it, put it back the way it was; none of that makes any difference to me.”

“I can’t tell if that means you like me enough that you’ll like how I look no matter what,” Florian said, squinting up at her, “or if you like me enough that you’re willing to tolerate my body no matter what I do to it.”

“Technically, I’m the one doing things to it,” Kells said, and Florian got hot all over from the images that conjured. “What with these potions being my designs, and all.”

“Right,” Florian stammered.

Kells smirked like she knew exactly where their mind had gone just then. “Or, did you have something more specific you’d like me to do to you right now?”

“I mean, since you’re already up there,” Florian began, shifting their hips to align with hers, their hands coming to her thighs, hooking behind her knees to urge her closer. “I’ve got a few ideas, yeah.”

“I didn’t think I was done looking you over, yet,” Kells said, not quite giving in to their directions. “I’ve only done your top so far.”

“Well, I haven’t done any of you, yet. I think we should probably both take off all our clothes and see what happens next.”

Indulgently, Kells sat up and peeled her top off, casual and unhurried, dropping the shirt over the side of the bed. In the same movement, she loosened her hair, setting it free to tumble down over her shoulders in a glorious mane of red and gold. “Your turn.”

Florian rid themself of their undershirt, useless as it was, and then their trousers, shoving them down their legs and kicking them off their feet as Kells kneeled up higher, out of their way.

“The good news,” Florian said brightly, sitting up to wrap their arms around her waist and press their bodies tight together, “is that I definitely know how to get you off no matter what’s in my pants.”

Dropping her own arms over Florian’s shoulders, one hand playing with their hair, Kells raised a single brow. “Prove it.”

Gleefully, Florian spent the next hour doing just that.

◆◆◆

The last of the sun faded below the horizon, and the bees and butterflies in the garden were replaced with the gentle flickering glow of fireflies. Kells turned on the bedside lamp before returning to lounge against the pillows by Florian’s side, as lazy as a freshly-sated lioness.

Florian was content to lounge naked, stretching luxuriously against the sheets before shimmying up to drop their head to Kells’ shoulder. As Kells stroked through their sweaty curls, Florian caught hold of her other hand, examining the criss-crossed lines of her palm and the calluses from years of working with hard-handled garden tools, before turning it over to study the faint pink and silver scars that skittered across her knuckles and fingers, one of which was gently crooked, as if it had once been broken.

“I used to box,” Kells said, patient and still as Florian examined her hand.

“Professionally?” Florian demanded, lifting their head to look at her, trying to imagine how that would work.

“We had a women’s boxing club in London. Not professional the way men’s sports are, but as professional as an underground organisation can be.”

“Did you fight? Were you any good?”

Her smile tugged sideways. “I was decent,” she allowed. “And I enjoyed it.”

“Did you break your nose?” Florian traced a line down the nose in question, the crooked bump in the middle. It was nearly invisible to the casual viewer, but Florian had never looked at Kells casually.

“Yeah, but that was an accident. You’re not supposed to hit people in the face.”

“Why did you stop?”

“I was an idiot. I hurt my knee when I was thirty, and thought I could push through it the way I could a decade earlier. Instead, I fucked up something that could’ve been healed with a few weeks’ rest and turned it into a permanent injury. Recreational boxing wasn’t worth the pain, and I didn’t want to end up needing a cane for the rest of my life. So, I quit.” She shrugged.

“Is that the limp I’ve seen you with? Does it still hurt?”

“It aches with the weather,” Kells said dismissively. “It’s always worse in the spring when it’s so wet all the time, before the temperature evens out. I’ve got a walking stick, but I’ve not had to use that in a few years. There’s a salve I use to take the edge off before it gets anywhere near that bad, these days.”

“I’m sorry.” Florian rubbed a thumb across Kells’ knuckles, then kissed them. It was easy to imagine her hands wrapped up and closed in fists for a fight. She must have looked amazing in the ring, red hair shining gold, skin glowing with sweat. Florian would have loved to see it. “You had a whole life before I met you, and you never even hinted at it.”

“That was years ago, when I still lived in London. I like the life I have now.”

“Do you miss it?”

Kells snorted, gently retrieving her hand. “Of course I do. But, shit happens. I try not to dwell on it.”

“Do you keep in touch with your old boxing friends, at least?”

“One or two of them, sure. We go for drinks sometimes, when I’m in the city for other business. Most of them have aged out of the sport themselves, but a few are still hanging on.”

“Could you teach it?”

“What, do you want to learn? I can’t imagine the damage you could do with a well-thrown punch.”

“I won’t say no if you’re offering, but I mean in general. Can you teach boxing to your secret underground club instead of competing, if you miss it?”

Kells paused, absently stretching her fingers as she considered it, as if the thought had never crossed her mind before.

“You’d make a good teacher. If you’ve got the patience to teach me gardening, you’ve got the patience for anyone. And you weren’t even allowed to hit me when I was being dense or annoying.”

“Never mind about my old life,” Kells returned, poking them in the ribs. “What about yours? Your family, and the friends you ran away from? The engagements?”

“There was only ever one formal engagement!” Florian protested, feeling the need to defend their reputation, tattered as it may be.

“That’s still one more abandoned fiancé than you should have.”

“Do you feel bad for either of them?” Florian asked, not sure they wanted to know the answer.

“You clearly had some issues to work through before you could think of happily settling down. I think the more important question is whether you feel bad for them.”

“I can’t say they deserved to be abandoned like that. But I absolutely couldn’t have married either of them. Which I did try to explain, you know, but no one was listening to me. They just put it down to nerves, or getting cold feet about the wedding planning. I mean, yes, I could have tried to really spell things out for everyone, but it’s not as if I planned to run away. It just happened, spur of the moment. I don’t even remember thinking about doing it beforehand.”

“It wasn’t premeditated.”

“Absolutely not. If it had been, I would have come up with some contingency plan about how to go back again, because at the moment, I really have no idea how to return to my old life without picking up from exactly where I left off, like coming back from holiday. And that won’t have solved anything.”

Kells hummed. Her hand in Florian’s hair felt heavenly, a gentle scratching interspersed with soothing, rhythmic pats. “Tell me about them? Your old relationships?”

“Oh, no,” Florian groaned, dramatically throwing one arm over their face. “What kind of pillow talk is that? No one wants to hear about ex-lovers in bed!”

“I don’t want to hear about them in bed. I want to hear about your life. What were their names? Anne and … some name that could’ve passed as a girl’s, but he was actually a boy, your fiancé, wasn’t he?”

“Anna and Charlie. Not Charles,” Florian added. “Always Charlie.” They heaved a sigh. “I come from a good family, as you’ve probably guessed. Upper middle class, well-to-do parents, and no siblings, so I was given free reign, and rather spoiled. There was always this assumption that of course I’d get married, of course I’d settle down with a nice man, and I never questioned it. That’s what everyone did. But when I finally stopped to think about what it all entailed, I realised I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t want to keep a nice house for a man or raise his children, and I certainly didn’t want to bear children, and the longer I thought about it the worse it all seemed until the very concept of marriage felt completely unbearable.”

“So, here you are.”

“Here I am,” Florian agreed forlornly. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression,” they added quickly, sitting up to look at Kells. “Neither Charlie nor Anna ever mistreated me; I wasn’t miserable with either of them. We started off as friends, all three of us, and I love them both very much. Only, once I got into a relationship with each of them, I figured out too late that I love them better as friends than romantic partners. Have you ever had that happen?”

“It’s unfortunate. But you kept trying to make it work?”

“Until I couldn’t anymore. When I was with Anna, I was a girl, but a very boyish girl, you know? I played butch. But she didn’t like real boys at all, and wanted nothing whatsoever to do with men. As far as she was concerned, I was just a rambunctious lesbian. And I didn’t have a problem with that. But my parents had certain expectations for me, and living with another girl for the rest of my life like a dusty old spinster wasn’t it.

“And then with Charlie, I was very boyish in private. He told me all about his days at boarding school, and I modelled myself on those stories, which wasn’t very difficult, because, as it turns out, an all-boys school sounds an awful lot like an all-girls school, at least as far as what behaviours come out of it. So, that was fine, too.

“But when I was with him in public, or around our families, I had to be a girl. And not at all a girl the way I was with Anna, but a proper young lady with my clothes neat and my hair styled, the right amount of makeup, knees crossed, hands quiet. And it was just awful. I might have gone ahead and married him, if not for that. I just couldn’t shake this feeling that as we got older, I’d end up trapped in this performance of femininity that fit me as awkwardly as if I were trying to wear one of my grandmother’s dresses and pass it off as something fashionable. And I think he’d have been miserable, too, with only our parents being happy. So, the moment I was drunk enough to think about it, I ran.”

“What happens now?” Kells asked.

Florian rustled up an enormous sigh, sinking back into Kells’ embrace, resting their head on her bare chest. “Even if I don’t go back to London immediately, I know I’ve got to break off both relationships for good. I was sort of pretending up till now that I might go back to them, but that’s not fair now that I’ve slept with you. Running away without notice was one thing, but I’ve never been unfaithful.”

Kells raised a silent, judgemental brow.

“Well,” Florian corrected, “I suppose running away without notice is its own sort of unfaithfulness. But I’ve never cheated on anyone before.”

The judgemental brow arched higher.

“Anna and Charlie knew about each other!” Florian protested, flailing upright again. “We had an understanding, the three of us. No one was sneaking around behind anyone’s back.” They cleared their throat, gathering their resolve to make the only responsible decision possible. “I’ll send them each another letter explaining things properly. It’s the least I can do, at this point.”

“Don’t break off your engagement by letter,” Kells said. “God above, you can do better than that.”

“But if I see them again, I’ll have to explain all of this,” Florian said, their voice getting smaller.

“Then make another enchanted ring to disguise yourself as a girl again. Or tell them you’ve had changes to your health. Make up literally any excuse, if you don’t want to tell them the truth; it doesn’t matter. But if they were really your best friends, you owe them a proper break-up face to face.”

“What if they’re upset with me?” Florian asked, their voice downright tiny.

“Honestly, they probably will be,” Kells said bluntly. “It’s well within their rights. But I didn’t take you for a coward, or I wouldn’t have slept with you just now. So, pull yourself together, and go deal with your engagements like a bloody adult.”

“I ran away specifically to avoid my adult responsibilities,” Florian said mournfully. “I wanted to be a little ornamental hermit in someone’s garden.”

“You’re closer to thirty than twenty,” Kells said reproachfully. “This is unbecoming.”

“Are you kicking me out of bed?” Florian asked, turning soft puppy-dog eyes on her.

Kells considered it. “Not yet. Your tongue is good for more than talking nonsense and making excuses. Stop preening,” she added. “That was the most backhanded compliment I could have given.”

“Sorry, you’re right. Let me just put my tongue to good use one more time before you show me the door.”

◆◆◆

Dear Anna and Charlie,

I’m so sorry for disappearing for as long as I did when we were rather in the middle of something. I’m coming back to London at the end of August, and I’d like to see you each in person, if you’re not too angry with me. Obviously, I have some explaining to do, but, even more than that, we’ve got to have a talk about where we stand and where we’re going next — if you haven’t already moved on without me. I wouldn’t blame you in the least if you had. Four months is an awfully long time for anyone, although I’ve found the summer has flown by faster than any summer I’ve known before.

Your absent friend,

Flore

◆◆◆

With the letter sent promising their return to London, Florian was running on borrowed time. The end of August was further off than Kells might have liked for a resolution, or rather, a confrontation, but it wasn’t so far off that Florian couldn’t feel it breathing down the back of their neck.

“I told them months ago that I’d be gone for the summer,” Florian reasoned as July gathered its things, taking a long and leisurely goodbye as it prepared to make way for golden-hued August. “They’re not expecting me back until the fall anyway. I just want to enjoy the season with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kells replied, exasperated.

The two of them were harvesting tomatoes and summer squash in the vegetable garden, as a few stray clouds drifted lazily in front of the sun. Kells didn’t grow many vegetables, preferring to reserve her land for potion ingredients and trade or buy fresh produce from her neighbours, the same as she did her eggs. However, she kept a variety of leafy greens, string beans, snap peas, and tomato plants, those being intended for her own table, and a number of summer and autumn squash, which, she had explained to Florian with a long-suffering air, had grown rogue on her property, and seemed impossible to eliminate.

Florian had underestimated the squash’s tenacity until the zucchinis came up, with their prickly, oblong bodies and bright, trumpet-looking flowers. Florian had never seen so many zucchinis in a single place before, and suddenly understood Kells’ problem with the invasive little buggers. Unlike the tomatoes, the squash were destined for the market, though Florian wasn’t convinced there were enough people in the entire county to take them all off Kells’ hands.

“The sooner you get this over with, the sooner you can come back to stay with me,” Kells said, referring to Florian’s friends, not the zucchini harvest. “You think I’m going to uproot my entire garden and disappear on you? If I wanted rid of you, you’d have been gone months ago.”

“I’d feel more convinced if you weren’t trying to throw me back to the wolves.”

“They’re your friends, and they’re bound to be worried about you. All I want you to do is go tie up the loose ends of your old life so you can enjoy your new one here, without all that looming over you like the sword of Damocles.”

“Is this my new life?” Florian asked contemplatively, pushing a sun-warm cherry tomato into their mouth. It popped between their molars, a perfect burst of summer flavour, unmatched by anything they’d ever tasted in the city.

“It’s been your life since April. Whether you want it to be going forward…” Kells stumbled over her words for a second, and rubbed one rough hand over the back of her neck, unsticking her hair from her sweaty skin.

Florian paused, setting their basket of tomatoes by their feet where they knelt.

“We haven’t talked about your long-term plans,” said Kells. “Whether you’re eventually going back to London for good, or staying here indefinitely.”

“Indefinitely,” Florian repeated. Uncertainty dipped into the pit of their stomach, which had previously been full of nothing but sunshine and pilfered tomatoes. “As in, properly moving in with you? As a housemate, or a — a partner?”

“Either.” Kells shrugged, not quite looking at them. “I’ve got used to having you around. The company’s nice, to say nothing of the extra hands. It’s an option, is all I’m saying, if you’re undecided about where you want to be.”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” Florian managed, which was somehow true. They went through so much of their life living in the moment that they often failed to consider the future until it was upon them in the form of marriage proposals or invitations to permanently cohabitate. It was a personal failing, they knew, but knowing it never seemed to help avert the repeated happenings.

“Well, start thinking,” Kells said. “It doesn’t matter to me either way, but you probably don’t want to stay here over the winter without a proper coat, at least.”

Although her brother had left a few outfits at Kells’ place for his convenience, cold-weather apparel in the form of jumpers or a good overcoat were not among them.

“Right,” Florian said faintly. “I’ll do that. I’ll think on it.”

◆◆◆

The next morning, Florian snuck out at the crack of dawn to visit the bees. Perhaps sneaking was too strong a word; though they were rarely up and about before Kells, it wasn’t as if they had to report their comings and goings, and it wasn’t as if any of the gardens were off-limits. Kells had said the bees gave good advice, so Florian slipped away in the pale dawn light to sit with the domed hives, cradling a morning tea.

Florian had never much appreciated the sunrise in London. Not because they found it lacking, but because they were invariably asleep for it, prioritising their evenings over their mornings. As they sat in the dewy grass with their tea balanced on bent knees, they didn’t regret missing so many sunrises before this one. They doubted a smoggy London sunrise could compare.

The mist that blanketed the wildflowers and curled between the distant trees slowly dissipated as the sky turned from periwinkle blue to rose-petal pink to butter yellow, each change such a careful gradient that it made the experience seem simultaneously fleeting and stopped in time. As the sun peeked over the horizon, the bees woke from their slumber, tip-tapping out of their homes before taking to the air with clumsy grace.

“I know you would be happy to keep me here,” Florian said to them. “You’ve been perfectly welcoming from the start. Everyone has been, really. I just don’t know if I’m cut out for it.”

One of the bees bumbled over to investigate them, checking their hair for pollen before bumping off the side of their face and going on its way.

“Mentally, I mean,” Florian clarified. “Emotionally. Obviously, I can do the work well enough, and the company’s been lovely. I just worry that one day I’ll wake up and find myself bored of it all and wanting to escape, the same as I’ve done with so many other things. I wouldn’t want to do that to Kells. She deserves better.”

The bees gave an encouraging hum.

“I’ve always been flighty,” Florian continued apologetically. “You might think, oh, well, I’ve been here since April; that has to count for something. But it really doesn’t. I’ve spent longer than four months absolutely immersed in a subject, only to drop it the next week and never look back. I’m just not cut out for commitment.”

One of the bees landed on the back of their hand, walking over the ridge of their knuckles with its bristly little feet.

“Well, yes, there’s my art,” Florian agreed, “but that’s not safe, either. I wasn’t always obsessed with botanicals; I wasn’t even interested in painting plants until three years ago. As a child, I had a phase where I only wanted to draw cats. At twelve, I had a month-long infatuation with native songbirds. I haven’t drawn a cat or a bird in over ten years. Everything has a time limit. Anna and Charlie both did. The problem is that I never have any idea when the time on any given obsession is going to run out, until, abruptly, it does. Four months is nothing, really. I could stay here another year, or I could get disillusioned with the whole thing and want to return to London tomorrow.”

Two bees binged off their chest in quick succession, hitting their shirt buttons in between the open cardigan they’d pulled on to keep the morning chill at bay. A third bee joined them and settled there, clinging to their shirtfront right over their heart.

“Is it love?” Florian wondered. “I just don’t know if it makes a difference. I love Anna and Charlie. I love cats and songbirds and watercolours and university and working in the garden. And I love Kells, and Grim, and you, of course. I think love is the problem, actually. I love so many things, and I know I’ve got the potential to love so many more. That’s why being tied down never seems to work.”

The bee tapped pointedly over their chest.

“Do you think I should stay?” Florian asked plaintively, lifting a finger to coax the bee onto it. “There’s no sense in running away from something before I’m tired of it, is there?”

The bee ignored their finger, ineffectually buzzing at their buttons before zipping up to bop off their face, its tiny body colliding with their squared-off jaw before tangling in their short, boyish hair.

“You’re right. I should talk to her. At the very least, she should know what she’s in for with me.”

Exasperated, the bee went buzzing off.

“Was that not what you meant?” Florian called after it, confused.

When the bee didn’t return to clarify, and none of the others volunteered to help, Florian finished their tea and got to their feet. The sun had fully emerged, which meant Kells would be getting out of bed imminently. If Florian hurried, they could whip up a modest breakfast before Kells started her day, and, if they held their nerve, they could discuss their uncertainty around the prospect of commitment before it was time to get to work again.

Alternatively, they could use breakfast as a distraction to avoid the subject altogether, and hope Kells was so impressed by their improving culinary skills that she wouldn’t bring it up again.

Alternativelyalternatively, Florian could walk in the opposite direction, past the duck pond, and keep on walking until they hit the next county and found a new potting shed where they could take up residence and try again. Running away had worked awfully well for them last time, after all.

Shutting their eyes, they turned themself in dizzying circles until they were completely disoriented, and resolved to walk in whatever direction they were facing when they stopped. As soon as they gave their decision over to fate, what their heart truly wanted would become clear. Everyone knew that was how decision-making worked.

Eyes flaring open, their head swimming with indecision as much as dizziness, Florian took a single step forward before they even registered the scenery ahead of them. Cottage, duck pond, or another direction entirely, they didn’t know, because they immediately tripped headlong into a rabbit hole and went crashing to the ground. Their empty tea mug flew out of their hands to topple safely into the grass, but their body didn’t fare nearly so well. With the toe of one shoe snared in the hole, their ankle twisted sharply when they fell, and a searing pain lanced through their entire foot and up to their knee.

“Hell,” they gasped.

On hands and knees, they got their bearings. At an angle ahead of them, the cottage waited beyond the vegetables, and then the potion garden, and then the tea garden with the flowers and the cherry tree. It seemed a perfectly limpable distance, but first, Florian had to get their feet back under them.

Holding as still as possible, they tried to figure out just how badly they were hurt. Once that was determined — the answer being that it hurt a jolly awful lot — how to get their foot out of the rabbit hole without hurting themself further. Any attempt to turn around felt like it would snap their ankle clean off, so instead, they scooted backwards an inch at a time until they could take hold of their injured heel with one hand and try to manually lift it out. Above their shoe, their ankle was noticeably swollen in their sock, and when they grabbed it, they nearly blacked out from the pain.

“Bollocks,” they ground out from between gritted teeth, once their vision had cleared again. “Oh, that’s not good at all.”

If their ankle wasn’t already broken, they didn’t want to do anything stupid and make the injury worse. The safest course of action would be to stay put and shout for help, but when they tried it, all they managed to do was alarm the nearby birds.

When Kells didn’t immediately appear to rescue them, Florian despondently settled down to wait. At least the weather was pleasant, but they would have liked to have saved their tea. If Kells never found them, they would be hard-pressed to waste away, surrounded as they were by plant matter and the promise of frequent rainfall. Still, it seemed a shame to perish so close to the comforts of home.

A short time later — long enough for Florian to have drafted their will a few times over in their head, but not so long that they’d figured out how to write it down — Grim came trundling along on his customary morning patrol. Upon spotting Florian in the grass, he trotted over with his tail wagging furiously to say good morning, nosing them all over with increasing concern.

“Grim, you’ve got to go get Kells,” Florian told him, balancing on one hand to pet him with the other. “Tell her I’m terribly injured and I’m going to die if she doesn’t come to save me, alright?”

With an anxious sound, Grim licked Florian’s face, either to reassure them, or just because he rarely had the opportunity.

“Good boy,” Florian told him, nudging him gently in the direction back to the cottage. “Go fetch Kells, yeah? Go get help!”

With a growling yelp, Grim tore off back the way he’d come. Florian could only hope he had heroic intentions, rather than merely wanting to get back to his breakfast.

Their answer came five minutes later, with Kells trudging up the path wearing an expression that was at least as much concern as beleaguered confusion. Grim gambolled around her ankles, running forward to guide her way before darting back again, ensuring she didn’t stray from the destination he had in mind.

“What happened to you?” Kells asked as soon as she had eyes on Florian, who was kneeling pathetically in the grass, wearing a beseechingly hangdog expression.

“I’m dying,” Florian replied, looking up at her wetly through their hair.

“Are you, now?” Wasting no time, Kells marched over to kneel by Florian’s back half, investigating the injury and its cause in short order.

“Is it broken?” Florian asked.

“It’s swollen up something pretty, anyway. A rabbit hole, eh? Figures. Deep breath.”

“What?”

With a firm grip on Florian’s shoe and her other hand on their calf, Kells braced the joint before pulling their foot out of the hole in one go. The pain was a short, sharp burst of agony, but the whole thing was over so quickly that Florian didn’t even have the chance to shout.

“Up you get,” Kells said, coming around to grasp Florian under the arms to pull them upright, easily taking their weight.

Florian wobbled alarmingly, all the blood rushing out of their head and, from the feel of it, straight into their throbbing ankle. Gripping Kells’ biceps, they swayed like a Victorian damsel roused too soon from her fainting couch, and barely managed to keep their injured foot from touching down to the ground again.

“I don’t think you’re dying,” Kells informed them, “though you’re a bloody sight paler than I like. Let’s get you back to the house.”

“I thought you had wards up to keep the rabbits away.”

“I don’t bother out past the beehives. They’ve got to live somewhere.”

Florian groaned. “I wish I’d known that earlier.”

“You still wouldn’t have been watching your feet.”

“Will you carry me home like an invalid?” Florian asked, eyes shut, their forehead pressed to Kells’ solid collarbone.

“Yeah, but know that I’m humouring you.”

“That’s alright.”

Back at home, Kells got Florian situated at the kitchen table with their injured foot propped up on the second chair. Kneeling, she picked out Florian’s shoelaces before easing the shoe off, then gently peeled their sock away. Florian winced their way through it, every touch dull agony, though Kells didn’t seem overly concerned.

“It’s not broken,” she announced after a moment’s examination, “and it’s not going to kill you. We’ll get some ice on it, wrap it up, and then you just need to keep it elevated and stay off it for a few days.”

“Only a few days?” Florian asked hopefully.

“A week or two,” Kells amended.

Florian wailed as Kells stood to fetch some ice from the box. “This is terrible! Your garden did this on purpose to keep me here.”

“Were you planning on leaving?” Kells asked, returning with a bundle of ice and also a tin of salve from her potion cabinet. She sat down on the second chair to take Florian’s foot into her lap, pressing the ice down gently.

“No. But I wasn’t planning on staying, either. I mean, I haven’t had a plan at all, this whole time. And then, when you asked me to stay—”

“When I offered it as an option.”

“It got me panicking! Because I’ve got a history of running away from commitment, haven’t I? Which your garden obviously knew about, because look at the lengths it’s gone to keep me around.”

“As opposed to you not watching where you were going, and you stuck your foot down a rabbit hole. Do you think my garden conspired to clip your wings? Just because I said something about you moving in permanently? It’s not as if I proposed. I know how you feel about that,” she added pointedly.

“I don’t not want to stay,” Florian said miserably. “All I know for certain is that eventually, I get bored of everything, no matter how much I wanted it initially. I like being here tremendously — I like you tremendously — but I don’t see why this should be any different than anything else I’ve ever liked.”

“People get together,” Kells said, adjusting the ice on Florian’s ankle. “People break up. The chance of something not working out is no reason to run away before it even starts. I thought you were all about leaping in without first checking to see how deep it goes.”

“You’re more important to me than that,” Florian muttered. “Anyway, I’m not running or leaping anywhere now, am I? Not with a broken ankle.”

“It’s not broken.”

“How am I supposed to help with the gardening if I can’t walk?”

“I can manage without you for a few weeks. It’s how I was doing things before you came along, after all.”

“But the only reason you let me stay in the first place was because I was helping! If we’re sleeping together and I’m not earning my keep, then I’m just some kept thing, like a mistress, or a pet. No offense, Grim.”

“You’re neither, and you have been earning your keep.”

Removing the ice from Florian’s ankle, Kells opened the tin of salve, instead. The salve was light green, almost white, and even from a distance, smelled sharp and cold like spearmint. The instant she set it to Florian’s swollen, overheated skin, rubbing it in circles with two fingers, Florian’s pain fled as swiftly as a nightmare chased away by the morning sun.

“But,” Kells continued, “if you’re concerned about the ethics of it, we can stop sleeping together until you can contribute again.”

“I didn’t say that,” Florian said quickly.

“In any case, I’m not throwing you out with a twisted ankle. Stay off it for a bit, rest up, and get back to things when you’re healed.”

“I don’t like feeling useless,” Florian whined.

“You’re not useless,” Kells replied, with a hint of exasperation. “You’re injured. I can put you to work sorting herbs or writing labels if you want, but I haven’t got any of that that needs doing this minute. Read a book or work on your paintings or something.”

Begrudgingly, Florian followed her instructions. As Kells went to tend her tea garden, Florian painted her a flower: specifically, a portrait of the herb Kells used to make her soothing salve. It was a pretty little plant, too simple to ever be found in a bouquet, but it had an understated elegance to it, with its clusters of tiny white flowers and long, leggy stems. The label on the salve’s tin called it Saint Raphael’s Flower, after the angel of healing, though the name seemed grander than the plant itself.

Regardless, Florian painted it true to life, size and colour both, and then pulled it from the paper with a lively spark of magic. When that was done, they popped it in their cup of paint water, as the flower didn’t need clean water to stay alive, and they weren’t permitted to get up from the table until Kells returned for lunch.

When she did, it was with a double take. Sitting down at the table with a chunky sandwich for each of them, she pointed and asked, “You painted that?”

“Do you like it?”

“The painting is fine,” Kells said, ignoring her lunch to hone in on the flower, plucking it from its mug. “But you imbued it with magic.”

“Yes?” Florian said confusedly. “To take it off the paper, the same as before. You watched me do it.”

“No, I mean, you brought it to life with the magical properties of the real plant.” Kells turned the stem between her fingers she stared at the tiny flowers. “You didn’t just paint a Saint Raphael’s Flower; you actually made one. Can you do that with anything you paint?”

“I don’t know?” Florian stammered. “I just painted it the way it was. Are you sure it’s got healing magic?”

“Yeah, definitely.” Kells sounded baffled. “I don’t know if it’s as strong as the real thing, but it’s definitely there.”

Humming with excitement at suddenly discovering a new ability, Florian said, “All those paintings you’ve been watching me do in the evenings; bring them over here. Let’s see if I gave them magic, too.”

Kells collected the paintings from where they sat stacked on the tiny writing desk in Florian’s bedroom, bringing them back to spread over the kitchen table. Florian took up the topmost painting and, brow furrowed in concentration, carefully peeled it from the paper. It was a flower Kells used as part of her conception concoction: the rabbit-moon plant, it was commonly called, with delicate, globe-shaped flowers of luminous silver, and broad, dark leaves that gave off a rich, musty scent when crushed. Reaching over, Kells plucked one such leaf from the painting, gently twisting it off the stem to rub between her fingers. They came away stained dark green as that familiar scent wafted through the air. She stared at the living painting for a second before turning to stare at Florian, instead.

“I didn’t know I could do that,” Florian said.

“That first ink rose you showed me didn’t even have a scent,” said Kells. “Is it because this one is in watercolour? Is this the first watercolour I’ve seen you bring to life?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Florian said slowly. “I’ve been doing this trick with watercolours for well over a year, and I’ve never noticed anything special about them. I think,” they ventured, “it’s because of the thought I put into it. All those evenings sat here listening to you tell me about your plants, I think I poured that knowledge into my paintings, when normally, I only pay attention to the look of the thing I’m drawing, not its attributes.”

They both looked at the stack of paintings on the table.

“Do you think they’ll work in your potions?” Florian asked.

“I’m certainly going to find out. If they do…”

“I can paint as many as you need,” Florian said quickly. “I can paint full-time for you, if it’s helpful.” With a start, they leaned in to plant both hands against the table, practically vibrating with newfound purpose. “I can paint the Purissima Rose!”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Kells, but she picked up the rabbit-moon painting and held it like it was something miraculous.

That night, Florian joined Kells in bed again.

“So, you weren’t serious about us not sleeping together while I’m injured?” Florian asked hopefully as Kells walked them from the guest room to her own.

Kells rolled her eyes in response, her arm around Florian’s waist and Florian’s arm around her shoulders, acting as a crutch for them to hop their way across the hall. “I don’t trust you not to try scampering around and fucking up your ankle something worse when I’ve got my eyes off you.”

“It hurts too much right now. I wouldn’t try scampering for at least another day.”

“Just sit down where I put you and let yourself be looked after. Christ alive.”

She really did veto the sex, as Florian was much too active and overenthusiastic to manage it without further injury. But kissing was deemed safe enough, so they spent the better part of an hour doing just that, laying entwined on top of the sheets with Florian’s ankle firmly wrapped and elevated on a mound of pillows at the end of the bed. When the two of them had kissed until their lips were sore, Florian announced that they either had to call it a night, or actually commit to getting off, at which point, Kells, hard-hearted goddess that she was, chose the former.

“You can go to sleep, or you can tell me what’s so awful about the thought of living with me that you went haring off at dawn,” she said. “Player’s choice.”

With a groan, Florian settled down to pillow their head on Kells’ shoulder. Kells agreeably wrapped her arms around Florian to hold them there, one hand idly stroking their curls. Grim poked his head through the doorway, determined that they had ceased their messy kissing, and hopped up to situate himself at the end of the bed, stretching out along Florian’s legs and hooking his chin over their calf, mindful of their ankle.

“Does he know I’m hurt?” Florian wondered, reaching down to stroke the wild curls of his back.

“Of course he does. And he’ll stay plastered to you till you’re well. He’s a sensitive soul.”

“Aren’t we all,” Florian murmured.

“Some more than others.” Kells tapped Florian’s forehead. “Talk to me.”

“I’m not scared of living with you,” Florian said, craning their neck to look Kells in the face. “I mean, obviously not. I’ve been here for months. I’m scared of hurting you when I inevitably get up and run full-tilt towards the next shiny thing that catches my eye.”

“You got something in mind that you’re leaving me for?”

“No.”

“You been bored at all since you got here in April?”

“No.”

Kells shrugged, a comfortable shifting of muscle under Florian’s body. “Then I’ll take my chances.”

“You’re being awfully blasé about the fact that I might run out on you without notice,” Florian observed, tentative hope unfurling in their chest like a tender spring shoot.

“Blasé’s the wrong word for it. But I like having you around. I don’t see the sense in getting rid of you now to try to save myself heartache further down the line. I’ve faced worse things than a broken heart, and I probably will again.”

“Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all?”

“I’m just not much of a worrier. I like to be sensible about things, take precautions and temper expectations, but life’s unpredictable. I’ll take my comforts where I can get them, and in all the time I’ve known you, you haven’t bailed on me yet.”

“I’m not a reliable person,” Florian warned.

“My experience with you says the opposite. Flighty, sure. But not unreliable.”

“How well do you really know me?” Florian asked in a whisper.

“I know you’ve been steadfast in everything you’ve done since you got here. You talk about a fear of commitment, but I’ve only ever seen the opposite. You committed to me and my garden as soon as you got here, without exploring a single alternative, because you decided based on a first impression that this was what you wanted. You decided one night that you didn’t want to be a girl anymore, so you weren’t, and the first chance you got to take a magic potion and make it permanent, you jumped on it.”

Kells ran her finger down the smooth, flat centre of Florian’s chest. “You knew you didn’t want tits or a monthly cycle, so you got rid of them. You wanted short hair, so you cut it.”

The bees, Florian realised. That was what the bees had been trying to tell them.

“You wanted me, so you flirted with me nonstop until I kissed you. Maybe you churn through hobbies and interests; so what? Most people do. But at your core, I think you’ve got the same values driving you no matter what you’re doing. You’re curious, and creative, and kind. You want to keep busy and have people think well of you. You want to be useful.” Kells paused. “Are you crying?”

“No.” Florian was pretty sure they weren’t, though their vision was a little glassy. They wiped their eyes, just in case.

“You want me to stop?” Kells asked.

“No. I just…” Florian sniffed, taken aback by the strength of their reaction to Kells’ assessment. “I don’t know that I’ve ever felt really seen by anyone before,” they admitted. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“I make you feel seen?”

Florian turned to bury their face in the crook of Kells’ neck, sinking their fingers into her hair where it splayed in red waves over the pillow. “I’ve never had the chance to be really useful to anyone,” they said softly. “I was supposed to be pretty, but modestly so. I could be clever, but not really wickedly intelligent, or the boys would be intimidated. My poor parents despaired of me. I was always wanting to get into everything, and try ten new things at once, all the time. They were exhausted, trying to keep me in check. I think if I’d been a boy, they’d have cut me loose and let me do whatever I wanted out of sheer exhaustion, but a girl needs more overseeing than that, apparently. University was their compromise. They weren’t thrilled, but I think they were relieved to get me out of their hair and let me go off and be someone else’s problem for a while.”

“I don’t consider you a problem.”

“Because I can bring painted plants to life?” Florian asked suspiciously, raising their head.

“Yeah; I was keeping you around this whole time just waiting for you to pull that out.” Kells snorted, tugging lightly on Florian’s hair. “Although, I did have to make sure you were good in bed before asking you to stay. That’d be bloody embarrassing to find out after the fact, if we were shite together.”

Florian tried to laugh, and instead, a worried, pigeon-like noise escaped. They clapped one hand over their traitorous mouth.

For a second, Kells stared at them, a frown gradually deepening between her brows. When Florian couldn’t immediately joke it off, Kells rolled over, pinning Florian on their back, mindful of their ankle.

“I’ve been telling you this all along,” Kells said, “but evidently, it hasn’t sunk in. So, I’ll try again. You’ve been a great help this summer, but I never expected you to pay your way. I haven’t been waiting for you to prove your worth before asking you to stay. I was waiting for you to give me some sign that you actually wanted to stick around.”

She folded her arms over Florian’s chest, their noses an inch apart. It was horribly unfair, being pressed together so closely without being invited to kiss her, but Florian didn’t dare interrupt.

“If it turns out your paintings can replace the rare plants I need to outsource, I’ll trade you the potions you want for the paintings I need. You can go back to London, and get engaged to ten different people. Or, you can stay here as a friend or an associate or whatever we’re doing right now. I’m not about all that hot-headed melodrama. I like my quiet life with my plants, my dog, and my bees. And I like you. So, stop panicking about being tied down, and just tell me. Do you want a future here with me, in any capacity? Or do you not?”

Florian sucked in a breath. Reasonably, Kells would have been well within her rights to ask about Florian’s intentions months ago. Reasonably, she should have asked Florian all the way back in April. She’d been more than patient, and Florian had been skipping along with their head in the clouds, not thinking about the future whatsoever.

Staring up at her, nearly cross-eyed, Florian managed a nod.

Kells looked quietly pleased. “Alright then. That wasn’t so difficult.”

“I do have to point out,” Florian said breathlessly, “that you are quite literally holding me down right now, though.”

“I think you like it.”

“I do. But you’ll let me up if I ask?”

“Are you asking?”

Florian really thought about it. The flustered panic from that morning seemed awfully far away. Laying on Kells’ bed with her weight pressing them into the mattress, that earlier fear of commitment seemed like something that had happened to someone else.

“I’m not asking. At least, not right now.”

Kells nodded. “I’ll keep an ear out for if and when that changes. Until then…” She dropped a lazy kiss to Florian’s mouth. “I’ll not worry over what the future holds.”