98: Coffee

Ryn’s PoV

I hopped back out of my grove and into the mundane realm to find it threatening to rain. The clouds above Avonside were dark and billowing, whipped up by the wind as it twisted its way through the mountains. It was going to make gathering stone a pain in my pretty little ass. My buns hated the cold.

The dark weather wasn’t doing anything for my poor tired brain either. So many things to make sure of. I wasn’t good at keeping tasks ordered in my mind at the best of times, but lately I felt like I was drowning.

Today I had to cut stone for construction, touch base with Professor Rivas on an insulin producing plant design, check on the obrec to see if they needed anything, and… shit, what was the last thing? Crap. Hopefully I remembered it by the time I needed to do it.

Walking through the campus was still a surreal experience, considering that like, a year ago, I was doing the same thing on a different planet and in a different body. The students going about their day were gone now, or at least they weren’t really students anymore.

A group of foragers, baskets on their backs, trudged along the same path as me, heading the other way. I wonder what they had all been studying before this. Before they were torn from their old lives and thrust into this dangerous new world. One of them had a thermos full of what smelled like coffee, and deep inside my brain, a remnant of my past self awoke. It seemed my coffee plants had been put to good use.

“Hey, excuse me,” I blurted, swerving slightly so they knew I was talking to them.

The group looked up as one, eyes widening as they realised who was talking to them. They slowed and exchanged looks, as though silently drawing straws to determine who would be unlucky enough to talk to me.

“Yeah?” A thin, awkward looking dude asked cautiously.

“Where’d you get those coffees, if it’s okay to ask,” I said, feeling a little nervous as I gestured to their beverages. The way they were all looking at me made my stomach squirm a little. Like I might vaporise them with an angry look.

“The Fogg building,” he said, politely but curtly. “Cafe at the bottom.”

“Thanks,” I smiled, trying my best to appear unconcerned by the strange attitude of the group. Was I really that scary? Did I have resting murder face when I was tired?

They moved on while I puzzled over their strange behaviour, but in the end all I could do was shrug and wander off in search of the cafe. It had been so long since I had proper coffee, and the smell just now had caused a craving.

The Fogg building wasn’t too far away, being near the center of campus. If I remembered correctly, it mainly housed student services and the cafe at the bottom. I think there might have been a few classrooms at the top too? I wasn’t sure. Either way, it was a small, colourful modern building shoved between two cold war era tower blocks that made it stick out like a sore thumb.

When I got there, a small line had formed that appeared to be growing by the moment. Yawning, I joined the queue and waited patiently.

It was a pretty cute little cafe, to be honest, and it seemed to have survived its time on the ring mostly unscathed. The decorative pot plants looked like they could use some watering, and the paint on the outside sign was slightly faded, but the windows were still there and they even had some tables and chairs laying around. Of course, they no longer accepted money. Instead, they had what were called Work Certificates, which were definitely not money. Nope, not at all.

Unfortunately, the people in the line were less than chill about me just rolling up like a normal person. Everyone was staring at me now, with a broad range of expressions and emotions, some more hidden than others.

Oops, guess I should work on a proper disguise. Something that was more physical than a simple illusion. Could help with research towards changing trans people’s bodies too. Not really a priority in the grand scheme of things, but important to me personally.

The stares were a lot to handle though, and I nervously checked my skin-tight magical shield. Was it still in place? Yeah? Okay, good.

I made my way up through the line, only for my gut to drop out when I saw who was serving the coffee. Rhea, the girl who’d been weirdly confrontational with me the other day when I was mining stone.

Shit, well… that might explain why the people with the coffee were giving me funny looks earlier. Maybe she was talking shit about me?

She hadn’t seen me yet, and I debated just leaving, but… I really wanted that coffee. She also wasn’t the one actually preparing the coffee either, just taking the orders. Worst case she wrote down the wrong order on purpose or something. That was fine, all coffee had its place, and I wasn’t feeling all that picky.

I immediately wished that I had just left when she actually laid eyes on me. Her expression soured in an instant as I stepped up to the counter, and I could tell she was calculating if she could get away with telling me to leave.

She obviously couldn't, since it was my coffee beans she was handing out, and I think she must have realised that because she plastered a smile on her face and asked, “Why hello, Ryn. What can I get you?”

“Um…” I began, unsure how to process her behaviour. “Just whatever is easiest, thanks.”

I placed a Work Cert onto the counter and waited for her reaction. If I didn’t let on what coffee I liked, she couldn’t purposefully give me the wrong coffee. Now you’re thinking with portals, Ryn!

One of her eyes twitched in irritation, but she nodded and picked up a crude paper cup, scribbling something on it and placing it to the side. “It’ll be ready soon, they’ll call your name.”

I nodded my wary thanks and stepped to the side, wondering what she’d put on the cup. A cup that looked like it had been made after Avonside arrived on the ring, funnily enough. I wonder how they had managed that so quickly. Was it even hard to make disposable paper cups?

Some random dude from behind the counter plucked my cup off the waiting tray and began to make my coffee without so much as a glance in my direction. He looked exhausted, and I didn’t blame him. Making coffee for hundreds of people in the space of an hour or two could be tough work. Any service job was.

I wonder if there was some way I could make a coffee spell. Oh, or teach my buns to make coffee! Would they tolerate that?

“Elias?” the called name lanced ice into my heart, and my lungs failed to take in the next breath.

I looked up to see the dude who’d made my coffee looking around. Looking around at all the guys, not at all realising what Rhea had done. To his side, she stood, a look of cruel victory on her face.

Hurting as I was by the sudden intrusion of that months-dead name, I did the only thing I could. I walked up to the guy as calmly as I could, took the cup from his confused grip, and rushed out of the cafe.

Oh god. Why did it hurt so much? It was just a name. I’d heard it a few times since I’d become Ryn, but never… never in a way that was so vindictive, so nasty. She had used that name to send me a message, to tell me that I wasn’t a woman in her eyes, that I was still him. Then there was the name on the cup, written with obvious care onto the paper in permanent marker.

Using a sharpened telekinetic tentacle, I carefully sliced off the name, like a surgeon performing a life-saving operation. The flake of paper never reached the ground, because that same tentacle eviscerated it with a wild savagery that was in stark contrast to the care I had just used. The cup was a little less structurally sound, but that didn’t really matter to me. I could hold the cup together with my mind, after all.

Timidly, I took a sip from the coffee, then breathed a sigh of relief as I found it to be just the way I liked it. Strong enough to princess carry me. At least I had won out there. Silly bitch thought I wouldn’t like it darker than her heart.

Well, time to get to cutting stone, I guess.

Nobody was really around at the quarry when I arrived, which was more than fine by me right then. I wanted to take out some of my stress on some inanimate objects without anyone seeing the tears that came with it.

What the hell was Rhea’s problem anyway? I hadn’t done shit to her, and now she had some sort of petty vendetta out for me? Ugh, whatever. I’d leave extra stone here for the university to use, more than we’d agreed when they let us use the stone. At least that way I was channeling my pain into something useful. Plus, I figured the easiest way to combat her evil whispers was to do even more good than before. The rest of Avonside couldn’t hate me if I was responsible for the roof over their head, right?

Doubted it, to be honest. Humans sucked, and they’d hate people, things, and ideologies for whatever damned reason they wanted, regardless of logic. Still, it made me feel better, so I guess that was something.

A few hours later and I was just polishing off the last load of cut stone when an obrec ranger jogged up to me, waving as she did so.

“Rynadria, greetings,” she said in the obrec tongue. “Otho requests your presence at our lodge. There is a human boy from the Anver states here, he claims to know you.”

“A… huh?” I blinked, trying to imagine who on the ring it could be. The Anvers were… all the humans who lived down in the clusterfuck of principalities to the south. Yeah, that was them… and… but I didn’t know anyone from there, did I? I had passed through with the other members of the order and we hadn’t really made any friends. Confusing. I guess there was only one way to find out.

“Alright, let’s go then.”

QuietValerie

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