Mirror, Mirror

2.21 Haircut

I have started dreaming again. Mainly mundane things, like about Crys telling me to drink water, or the maids spilling tea all over the rug. Nothing as wild as when I was a child, but still.

It makes me wonder, if I lived longer, would I eventually have been able to have the dreams I used to, with the magic and the colors and stories?

❖

"I have an idea," Rayvin announced to Starla one night.

"Do you now," Starla said without looking up from her book. She was curled up on his couch with a blanket, just like she always used to. She was deep in one of her favorite childhood series, the one about fairies, and it was the end of the second arc where they defeated the big bad evil guy and saved the world.

"I've decided I want to come out during my send-off celebration." Starla digested that for a moment.

"Oh," she said, carefully bookmarking and setting down her book. "Like, come out come out?" He nodded. She turned to give him her attention, sensing an important conversation incoming. He was sitting on the other side of the couch, fiddling with the frayed threads in the old brown sweater he was wearing. The sweater she'd given him because it was baggy and hid his chest well, even when he wasn't binding.

"Are you sure?" she said tentatively. She was afraid of saying the wrong thing. "I mean— do you feel ready? I want you to do it because you want to."

"Yes," Rayvin said. "I think I'm— no, no more thinking. I am ready.

"I've been thinking about what you said for a while. You said something to the effect of, why do you care so much about what other people think of you?"

"That was a stupid thing for me to say, and I apologize," Starla groaned. "Of course it matters what people think of you. If anything, I am WORSE than you when it comes to caring what others think of me, and look where that has gotten me."

Rayvin blinked in surprise, looking up from his sweater with a half-smile as if waiting for the rest of a joke. "What? I look up to you when it comes to being yourself. You're so unapologetically confident and so... you."

"Oh," Starla said with a perplexed frown. She didn't think that was true.

"Anyway, I want to come out for myself," Rayvin said, looking down again. "Not for anyone else. I don't want to pretend anymore. I don't want to be Rayna anymore. I've long outgrown her anyway."

When had his voice gotten so deep? She gazed at him sitting on the other side of the couch and struggled to even imagine the Rayna he supposedly ever was and had since outgrown. She couldn't understand how anyone could see him as anything other than the man he was. She tried to think of the right thing to say.

"I'm proud of you," Starla said finally.

"Don't be proud of me yet," Rayvin said with a smile. "I'll need your help for this."

"OK, Mister Rayvin, what's your plan?"

❖

Part of Rayvin's plan entailed getting a makeover. Starla was happy to comply; she loved a makeover. Plus, she wanted to do anything she could to show Rayvin she cared about him in the short time they still had together.

The first part was finishing his suit. Even though the idea was there in Starla's initial crafting of it, there were parts that still didn't fit quite right. She had Rayvin change into it and she made the adjustments on the fly.

There was also the matter of the shoes. Traditionally, Ice Princesses wore glass slippers, and there was no way Starla was going to find masculine-looking glass shoes, much less a pair that fit Rayvin, on such a short notice. It was an impossible ask. Not only that, she still wasn't on speaking terms with the cousins, so she couldn't lean on Riv for his boy clothes. So, she had to make do with what she had.