COMPASS OF TRUE LOVE - CHAPTER 23

Chapter 23: Apparently my ex is trans and I totally understand what that means!

-Sephie-

I woke up to a pile of Cassie lying on top of me, her head nestled between my breasts. Her eyes fluttered up to meet mine and she gave me a warm smile.

“Morning Sephie,” she moused. “You made a bunch of cute noises in the night.”

But I wasn’t… I didn’t… Fuck. This was bad. She wasn’t suspecting anything, right?

“Uhh. Morning Cassie,” I answered, choosing to simply leave the other thing uncommented. Very classy, I know.

Cassie snickered. “What?” I blurted out, a little less classy.

She leaned over and whispered in my ear. “I know you were having a lewd dream, Sephie.”

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. I felt my entire face flush red and quickly scrambled myself up. Then I noticed the wetness between my legs. I glanced down and immediately pulled up the blanket again. I was visibly soaked and I didn’t leave the sheets clean either.

Cassie grinned at me smugly. “You weren’t very subtle at all, you know.”

“Uhh,” was all I managed to stammer out, while my brain shut down.

“You girls done flirting?” Nydia’s voice cut through the room.

“Flirting?!” I eeped out, my voice cracking hard. “We- we weren’t… I didn’t…”

Nydia shushed me. “Sephie you can be a bottom later, right now I need your brain to work, somewhat.”

She got up from her bed and sat down with us, leaving the tiny sleeping form of Ashe alone.

“What can you tell me about your ex? Is she a good person? Can we trust her?”

What? Marlon? Wait, she?! Huh?! My brain shut down again. This day was shaping up to be worse than the last one. And my life wasn’t even on the line… yet.

“He- she- they’re good people. Wait, what is this about?”

“Sooo, you remember when you invaded my dream again?” Nydia asked. Cassie glanced between the two of us with a confused look on her face. “I think you pulled your ex with you.”

“You two were dreaming together?” Cassie blurted out. Then she turned white and her eyes grew wide. She pointed at the two of us. “YOU HAD A LEWD DREAM TOGETHER!”

“Shush now Cassie, this is important,” Nydia scolded back in a dry tone. “Anyway. Marion is also headed towards Rizishma, so maybe we’ll run into her on the way.”

“You… talked with Marion?”

“Yes.”

“And she said she was my ex?”

“Yes. Wasn’t she?”

“Uhh. Maybe?” This Marion situation was starting to give me serious headaches and I felt like I couldn’t run away from confronting the facts much longer.

“You don’t seem very sure about that, Sephie,” Nydia remarked.

“Well it’s really fucking complicated okay!” I whimpered. “I had a boyfriend, but he broke up with me and then I suddenly started dreaming about a girl version of him, Marion. I thought she was just a figment of my imagination, but then I received a letter from her, warning me and Cassie about a goblin hunting party. And NOW she talked to you and is apparently on her way to Rizishma.”

“Ah.” Nydia spoke up. “So she’s trans. That explains why her body was covered in transmutation magic.”

“She’s what?” me and Cassie asked at the same time.

Nydia let out an exasperated sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay. So… There are people whose body does not match their soul. Take, for example, Marion. She has always been a woman, because her soul is that of a woman, but she may not have known that was the case for some time, being raised as a man and all that. Usually, trans people feel uncomfortable with their form. The mismatch hurts them, so they try to change their body to match their soul. Make sense?”

Cassie nodded. I frowned. It did make sense somewhat, but doesn’t that mean Marion and Marlon were actually one and the same? And then Marion would have been my ex. My actual ex, whose dream I invaded the same way as I did Nydia’s. Wait.

Fuck I slept with my ex. Oh no. But it was really good though… I kinda want to do that again- no stop thinking lewd stuff Sephie!

“So are we going to go south?” Nydia asked after I’d worked through most of those revelations. “Or do you want to check with the compass first?”

Oh yeah, I had that! I quickly pulled it from between my breasts and took some time to align it properly towards the north.

I smiled a little, seeing the blue needle point towards Nydia. Gosh she was such an angel.

Then I looked at the yellow needle and sneered. It was spinning in place, as if to spite me. I really, really disliked yellow, it was starting to affect my tastes in colours as a whole.

Green and purple were still right on top of one another, but they had both moved to south-southwest.

Red and orange we both pointing southeast, though the red needle was slightly off from the orange one. We were pretty much directly at the border to the wolfland forest, so going after them would mean entering one of the most dangerous places on the continent.

At least everyone was to the south, so there wasn’t much of a decision there. Wait.

“You said Marion was headed to Rizishma?” I asked Nydia.

“Yes, why do you ask?”

Well if Marion and Marlon are one and the same, or rather, Marion had always been herself, then she left to the capital with Gerden the night after I returned with the compass. To the west. Now she was heading south to Rizishma. My eyes fixated on the green needle.

“We’re going south. Let’s circle around Omar and then follow the green needle.”

*****

“Sephie. Who does the compass point to? The blue needle pointed at Nydia and now we’re following the green needle… who is your ex I think?” Cassie asked just as we left the village behind us.

A bit my lip a little. It was still embarrassing to talk about this, but it’s not like there was any point in hiding it anymore.

“I… I was really lonely after the breakup, so I sought out this compass I read about. It points to your One True Love. Apparently… I have six True Loves.” I took out the compass and held it out in front of us.

We were walking side by side; Nydia and Ashe were side to side behind us. The Ratling was extremely quiet ever since we woke her up an hour ago.

Cassie glanced down on the different needles and breathed in sharply. “Oh,” was all she said before biting her lip and rubbing her eyes a little. She seemed really sad all of the sudden, but I couldn’t really tell why. She fell back slightly and changed her place with Nydia.

A part of me wanted to reach out to her and ask what was wrong, but another part of me told me it wasn’t my business and if she wanted to talk to me about it, she wouldn’t have distanced herself. Maybe I’ll ask her tonight, when she’s had some time to think to herself.

I looked down on the compass. Yellow was still spinning. Annoying bitch. She was probably on another plane of existence or something. Yes ‘she.’ Now that I know that my boyfriend has always been my girlfriend, I’m pretty sure I’m just… gay-gay and not just… a little gay.

Gayness aside, we were making some pretty good progress. By midday we had circled enough around Omar to feel safe travelling on the road again. There was a massive column of smoke coming from the city and it was obvious it was still under attack.

The safest route to Rizishma would be to head towards Segronne, then through the mountain pass into Arang and then straight south, but that route would take us closer to Omar again.

So we decided to head towards Stonefield next. From there we could head towards the capital and into Arang, far away from the besieged city. We could also travel through the Wildlands to get to Rizishma, but, while they weren’t as bad as wolfland forest, they were still incredibly dangerous and wholly untamed.

By the time the sun was beginning to set, we estimated we’d made about a quarter of the way to Stonefield. If the weather played nice and we didn’t run into any other surprises along the way, we should have a warm bed to sleep in in three days.

*****

We set up camp a good fifty metres off the road. The sun was setting on our third day on the road. Tomorrow we’d sleep in a nice, comfy bed.

Every now and then, I checked the compass for Marion’s progress and to my surprise, she was moving east and was now almost directly south of us. Part of me wondered how far ahead she’d gotten, but, if my geography wasn’t failing me, she couldn’t be directly south, unless she was either still in Argonne, which I doubted, or she somehow crossed into the Wildlands, which worried me.

I wished I had some semblance of control over my ability to invade dreams, so I could talk to her again, but I had no idea how I’d even go about that sort of thing.

Nydia sat down at the campfire and snuggled up with me. “If she is in the Wildlands, I’m sure she’ll be fine,” she mumbled into my chest. “She spoke as if she was travelling in a group and we know purple is with her.”

It was true. The purple needle hadn’t left Marion ever since they met, presumably, in the capital. And with the speed that purple had been travelling at the time, I assumed she was a powerful spellcaster of some sort and Marion had always been an amazing battlemage.

But the Wildlands were still the Wildlands and we had to cross into them eventually as well, if that was really the route my ex had taken.

Cassie plopped herself down across from us and stared into the flames. I’d tried talking to her two nights ago, but she quickly brushed me off. She refused to talk to me the next day on the road as well. Ashe’s silent mood hadn’t improved either, though she did at least talk a little bit every now and then.

Speaking of the cute rat girl, she just came stalking back into camp after scouting out the surrounding area a little.

She swiftly stepped up to the campfire and then promptly threw a wet cloth on top of it, dousing the flames almost immediately.

“What the fuck?!” Nydia snapped, but Ashe quickly shushed her.

“Goblin pack. West of here. I saw their scouts creeping towards our camp and came back as quickly and quietly as I could. We need to go right now, or fight.”

Cassie looked up to me, almost frozen. Our last experience with goblins shook the both of us pretty bad, but she dealt much worse than me with the situation.

“We go then,” I decided and immediately wrapped up my bedroll.

Feels like this entire kingdom is falling apart. Next we know there’s a coup or the king dies or something.