“So tell me about your body problem.”

  Dawn looked down at the hobgoblin, who had given a brief overview of the expedition members before circling back to this subject. They were effectively backtracking her fraught path from the city, but nothing seemed interested in bothering the expedition.

  “What do you want to know?” Asked Dawn.

  “You said it makes you feel crazy, Dawn. Why is that?”

  “Well…” Dawn was at a bit of a loss on how to expin ‘my face opens up to an eldritch eye embedded within my soul'. Probably not like that. “Sometimes I can see things. When I see myself like that it makes me really uncomfortable.”

  Zerel nodded as they hiked, or slithered in Dawn's case, “You see things that make you uncomfortable with your body? Like what?”

  Dawn made the mistake of thinking too closely about the eye itself, recalling its dread visage in her memory, “The patterns, the angles, the lines,” she started, “even the colors seem wrong sometimes. I look at myself and see something that's not congruent with… reality? I feel like I'm seeing from outside of my body.”

  “Geeze, dawn, that sucks. Have you ever… this is gonna sound weird, but have you ever thought you wanted to be a man?”

  The question broke Dawn out of her sudden trance. She was confused, though, “More than I think that I should have, but…”

  “Look, that sounds a lot like gender dysphoria to me. If you want, I have potions that I developed myself. I can get you the alchemical equivalent of magic testosterone to help you with that. I'm not positive that it'll work on you given your whole deal, but-”

  “Zerel, what? That's not what I meant. Like, I have an eye-”

  “Clearly.”

  “It doesn't open in the way you would expect. I can see differently with it, but its gaze is… wrong.”

  “Sounds like you're repressing. I used to have this look in all my old photos.”

  “Let me finish expining! Wait. You're trans?”

  “Oh- yeah. I am. I was a trans woman in my st life and I still am. It's why we developed the potions. Some other cn members take them, too. It's why we make masculinizing potions, too.”

  “Huh. Really? That is pretty terrible, but… no, Zerel. I don't want a masculinizing potion. I have no desire to be a man again.”

  “What do ya mean ‘again’?”

  “Um. I was. Before this.”

  “...”

  “Zerel?”

  “What was it like before you remembered, in this life? How… did you come to look like that?”

  “I don't think I was particurly self aware until I had picked the serpent clean. It took a few hours until I decided that I wanted a name, which made me wonder when I had learned English. By then, I was like this, except naked. I found the robe in the temple. Why?”

  “I was peeling ginger…”

  Dawn tried again, “Why did you want to know?”

  “I… didn't do so well, after I remembered. I was living something like my previous childhood in a different genre, and I woke up to the nightmare. It makes me a bit jealous.”

  “It's not all sunshine and rainbows. I had a wife and kids.”

  “Oh, holy shit, Dawn. That's awful. I mean I had a coup girlfriends, but a family? shit.”

  “A couple? Oh, polyamory. Like that Hilda girl.”

  “Careful, she can still recognize her own name in conversation, even if she doesn't know English.”

  “Are you sure about that? She seems…”

  “To understand us? Yeah I think she can. I figured I'd try and get her to expin ter.”

  With a strangely serpentine lean forward, Dawn whispered in Zerel's ear, “She keeps looking at us, you know. The extra eyes aren't just for looks.”

  “Hah! That doesn't make you dizzy?”

  Standing back upright, Dawn expined, “It did at first, but I got used to it. Like it took me some time to start processing the information properly.”

  “Weird. So you say you were a man… do you think you're, uh-”

  “Trans? Uh, maybe? I don't know if it counts like this.”

  “It definitely does. Reborn as a woman? That's gotta be one of the most trans things I can think of.”

  “Sure… Did I understand you right earlier when you said you invented magical hormones for yourself?”

  “Haha yeah that's pretty trans, too. So what was this about an eye?”

  “I have a ninth eye.”

  “Four hands. Four on your face. Is it on the back of your head?”

  “Not really. It's… hidden. Have you ever read any eldritch horror?”

  Zerel cocked her head, “Do you have the Serpent's Eye?”

  Dawn averted her gaze, “It had a lot of eyes…”

  “I think you know what I mean.”

  “It's not the serpent's. It's my Eye. But yes. It's the same, if smaller.”

  “Okay… Okay. Okayokayokay. I see. I understand. Your body makes you feel crazy because you have a crazy eye in it…”

  “It only opens when I want to see something with it.”

  “Like people?”

  “Yes. I found the nearest settlements that way. I even saw the big one at the base of the far tower.” Dawn gestured northward.

  “Oh boy. Did you look at us earlier today like that?”

  “Yeah…”

  “We can feel it when you're looking at us like that, Dawn.”

  Dawn blinked. They could feel it? “Oh no...”

  “Yeah, it was a bit of a thing in Ademhill a coup days ago. We'll try not to tell any imperials about it. The lord of Beacon… might be mad.”

  Dawn wasn't quite sure what to think about that.

  Zerel began to expin a number of things to Dawn. Which seemed awfully helpful, but Dawn could already tell Zerel enjoyed a good info dump. Beneficial for both of them, she guessed. It reminded her of Victoria, and she had to regute herself a little to keep that thought positive, then ask Zerel to repeat herself.

  She learned of the Ademhill cn, Thraes Hold and the empire, in brief terms. The goblin cn was looking to recim the city for themselves. Thraes Hold was involved in the slow recmation of the southern wilds which Dawn had hatched amidst. The empire was off in the background doing predictably imperial things like fighting an extended naval war with another simirly expansionist nation.

  Zerel expined that she was part of the cn leadership, and had decided to organize this expedition for a variety of reasons. Dé Cyon, as the city was known, would be a safe second settlement for their burgeoning popution. Goblins were not regarded particurly well in the empire. It made plenty of sense to Dawn. They eventually discussed the basics of each other's past lives. Zerel said she wasn't sure if they were from the exact same world, but it sounded pretty close when she summarized her past life as a “goth trans girl from Boston”. Dawn had been born in Wisconsin and lived in northern Illinois with her family.

  The two spent most of the afternoon talking, with the occasional interruption from the expedition party to talk over their route. Dawn did eventually have to stop Zerel to ask a question, though.

  “What's ‘Isekai’?”

  Zerel gave her a look, “you don't know what isekai is?”

  “Hey I'm not some big pop culture buff, Zerel. I pyed minigames and spent time with my family. Never heard of it.”

  “Okay. It's like… It's Narnia, fundamentally.”

  “Like children finding a whole world in their closet?”

  “Yes but it's rgely about being put into a strange and fantastical world, like our current predicament. The word is from the Japanese cssification of the genre, combining ‘ise’ for other and ‘sekai’ for world.”

  “Oh! I get what you were saying, then. We're in a stereotypical otherworld, then?”

  “Yeah, like it's got tolkienesque influences with elves and various fantasy races but it's also reminiscent of modern fantasy role-pying tropes and we've even got this overdone discriminatory system of svery going on in the empire. There's stuff that's different like godbeasts and whatever you have going on, but that's every setting, right? This world we're in is legible as a certain isekai stereotype, at least as far as I can see. I'm gd we're not moving though the empire itself actually, I wouldn't be surprised to run into bandits.”

  “Bandits are a stereotype?”

  “Yeah, I mean if you're traveling near civilization, running into bandits is such a common thread. It makes sense, I mean; people get desperate and need money so they do some highway robbery, but the way it's always pyed is so dull.”

  “Huh. I mean, I don't wanna kill people if I can help it. I don't have valuables either.”

  “That's pretty sensible. It's just an example, though. There's a whole bundle of common tropes that I'll have to tell ya about ter, since I figure we should cover more important stuff for now. Do you want to stay in a tent, Dawn?”

  She did. Zerel's expedition happened to have brought a rger tent for some reason, and Dawn could probably fit snugly into it. Zerel usually slept in it by herself - for some reason? - and Dawn could repce her if she wanted.

  “I mean, if you want, we could sleep in the same tent,” Zerel joked, “but I figure you'd appreciate the privacy.”

  Dawn could tell Zerel was shielding her offer for company behind a little jape, but for a moment, she considered it. She might want the company of the only other person she could talk to. It was only staying in a tent together, right? Like camping with a friend.

  Dawn ignored the part of her mind that knew she was deflecting.

  “I don't mind,” Dawn said, “honestly I appreciate the company. You're the leader here so I can't imagine your time isn't valuable.”

  Zerel smiled, “It's nothin’. This is kinda my vacation anyway. We're out here doing exploration that I want to do instead of managing the cn like I always am.”

  “The whole cn?”

  “Eh. The parts that I lead. I have to coordinate with others at times and it can feel like I'm in charge of the whole thing.”

  Dawn felt like that was a non answer, but the conversation managed to switch to Warhammer, of all things, for the remaining daylight of their journey. As twilight set in, the expedition found and secured a campsite. When she saw Zerel's tent being set up, Dawn made a comment about receiving the royal treatment, which earned a snort from Hilda. When both Dawn and Zerel gave the noblewoman Looks, Hilda just avoided eye contact and retired to her own sizable tent with the catgirl and the elf woman.

  Then Dawn and Zerel promptly failed at finding a configuration for themselves within the tent that didn't result in some generous physical contact. Zerel assured Dawn that it was fine but the snake woman found herself with a strange problem. A reptile instinct told her that, if Zerel was warm and safe to be around, then Dawn should curl up on her to soak up the heat. It was shockingly difficult for her to resist. Somehow, neither of them seemed interested in changing the arrangement.

  Zerel woke up once, shifting a little, only to find herself rgely cushioned in serpentine coils while Dawn's torso slept restlessly in reach. Feeling bad for the woman, Zerel put a hand over one of Dawn's, calming her a little.

  In the morning, Dawn woke up quietly crying. She knew why. She knew the exact routine she had for years waking up next to someone. She didn't understand why she could cry this much, though. Dawn, in her previous life, had long felt nearly unable to cry. Why did she do so much now?

  Zerel woke up despite Dawn's best efforts to suppress her sobbing, and the hobgoblin quickly shifted through her serpentine coils. Zerel rubbed Dawn's back and made soothing sounds until the poor woman finally calmed down.

  The snake spoke softly, shaking, “I never cried this much. Even when my dad passed. Maybe when we lost a pet? Why am I like this now? Am I just some weak, hormonal girl now? ”

  The queen's response came to sooth her worries, “No, Dawn. You're not weak. You might be hormonal. I'll give you that, but you're not weak. It sounds like you're dealing with grief - grief that I've had more time to process - and to make it worse, you might have been desensitized to parts of your old life. Unless I'm misunderstanding your retionship with your father, it isn't normal to be unable to cry like that. It happens to trans folk pretty often. Even my cnsfolk, in this world. It might be forward, but at least for now, I'm here to help. If you need it.”

  They were quiet for a long, long moment, before Dawn quietly whispered, “...thank you, Zerel.”