We were born not far from each other on the Blue Moon Equinox, a festival of northern Ereachia. Two blue moons inseparable and yet separated by something invisible, inconceivable. It did not come to destroy us until we were almost adults, free from the entanglements of our younger lives.

It is said that a child born of the equinox will have white hair. I was filled with wonder when our mother said this, though my brother merely huffed, already skeptical at such a young age. “Our father probably had white hair,” he had argued, as if the mere concept of a bedtime story was offensive to him.

“I think you just don’t like fun.” My voice was squeakier then, easier to use. Not yet ruined by our teenage years. He had sounded just like me, as if he could be me. As if we were the same.

“I think you’re just too easily fooled.”

His words faded as the house grew dimmer - this part was always the same, be it after the stories with our mother or the fight itself. And then the floor was falling and he was falling, but my hands were too weak to hold him - or maybe he didn’t want to touch me.

He would sometimes recoil.

Sometimes he would scream all the way down, into the light.

I awoke with a jolt, in a bed that was no longer the lower bunk bed in that forgotten, dusty town, likely still ash and scorched buildings, bodies lost to the fucking nightmare of the army. It took a moment to remember that I was in Kanalion, with a wife I miraculously met, in a house with a ridiculously large bed. 

As always, Astra awoke not long after, reaching over to comfort me and clumsily smacking me in the face. She mumbled something about sleep and him, falling back asleep almost instantly. It was the thought that counted. 

It took awhile to go back to sleep, for I would look at the gentle glow of the First Light illuminating our furniture and think, for a moment, that it was one of the two blue moons left in this world.

–

My world, filled with my brother as my best friend and our endless adventures together, crumbled the moment we became teenagers, for I realized that we were completely different - and always would be. While he often ignored the attention of the girls flirting with him and doting on his slim face, his long white hair, I was busy lamenting in the mirror, wondering why our mother had insisted on cutting my hair so short. 

I knew then that I was not a boy, but I could not recognize myself in either light. I was something not yet born and something that had existed sixteen years too late. Overdue and nonexistent. Wrong.

“You fret too much,” Lumenaire had said, brushing out his terribly long hair with a comb, sleek-straight and easy to handle. He put it halfway up, his sleeves billowing around his elbows, looking impossibly girlish in a way that I could not - not with the hair that fluffed to my shoulders in a way that only made me less like the person I often dreamed of. Me but soft. Me but a girl. “You look perfectly fine. We have the same appearance, after all - if you think you’re hideous, you’re rightfully calling me hideous.”

He did not understand, for I never told him. I merely looked down at my crossed feet on the floor, picking at the suitcase already packed for our journey to Kanalion. We would not see our Ereachia for four years. Neither of us would see it again after that. “It’s not about that.”

“There’s clearly something you’re insecure about, moping around. Oh,” he paused, fighting a snort. He was terribly cruel, though often he did not mean it. He thought little of his words, for he thought little of people in general. It was either an anxiety he had, or a deep wrongness within him. Something no one could fix. “Is it… size related?”

“Stop. No.” I shuddered. Did he only ever think of the things that supposedly made a man? Did he not think of the softer things, or were we, for the first time, no longer identical even in thought? We were drifting, already towards our demise. “It’s - do you ever wish you looked different? Like you wanted to be someone else?”

He hesitated, looking at the lily he kept in a pot, downsized for travel. “No.”

There was no word for what I am, not until Astra taught it to me. We met soon after my brother and I were accepted into the Academy in Kanalion, and instantly, I knew I would love her. 

Despite being more like her than any of the boys in my dorm, we were separated by opposite ends of a seemingly endless hallway, forcing me to struggle down the halls and not feel like an intruder in the co-op dorms. Why was I forced into one of the only dorms that happened to have all of the same gender, when I was not a brother to them?

I visited her often. She must have known that I felt different, because on one long night, she talked of the feminine things that her other roommate hated - Cithrel. “I thought they were a girl - perhaps trans. I was very, very wrong.” Astra looked a little sheepish at Cithrel’s open door, empty despite it being far past curfew. I did this often, sneaking in and out, and though my roommates often assumed smugly that I was involved with someone, I merely wanted to talk to someone who felt like me.

“Why would they be trans if they aren’t a girl?” I asked, not truly understanding the word and only hearing it in passing. Astra had tilted her head, narrowing her eyes behind her too-big glasses as if seeing me for the first time.

“There are more than just girls who were born boys,” she said carefully. “Or have you only ever thought of those similar to you?”

I stood up so quickly that I nearly toppled over the couch, my eyes wide with horror - horror at her assumption, certainly, but more so at the way my heart pounded in my chest as if I had been discovered. “I - It’s past curfew. My brother-”

“I didn’t mean to assume,” Astra said quickly, standing to try to fix what she had done. A cavern had seemingly ripped into the dorm, separating us by thoughts I could not stop, thoughts I desperately did not want to have. “I just - you’ve always seemed so - for some reason, I didn’t even have to know you before I trusted you. You just - You feel like me.”

I had always felt the same. At the time, I had never felt so different. “I don’t think we are at all similar,” I said in a rush, ignoring how her face had dropped as I escaped, slamming the door shut behind me. I ran to my own dorm and did not look back, for I knew I couldn’t bear to see her face again.

The dorm was filled with the sounds of boys being idiotic. The red-haired one, Viscryn, was begging Lumenaire to let him try to bench-press him, though he was met with vehement anger.

“Are you a fool?” Lumenaire asked, crossing his arms. “I am not letting you lift me!”

“It’d only be for a second!” Viscryn said, following him into the kitchen. “Come on. You’re nowhere near the weight I press. I could throw you.”

“This fails to be convincing.” Lumenaire paused, spotting me against the door. His brows furrowed in confusion, though his jaw was tense with annoyance. “I’m sure you could lift him. He’s always been lighter than me.”

Viscryn looked at me with wide, pleading eyes. “Please.”

For a year, I thought perhaps I was just a gay man, confused with what he was supposed to be. I realized then that if I had to feel Viscryn’s hands on me, around my waist, that I would utterly hate it. I knew Viscryn was something - perhaps pretty is the wrong word for the scar on his nose, his sharp features, his toned muscles. I once saw a boy staring at him, practically drooling, until Astra nudged him. He was Astra's other roommate, tanned skin and hair similar to my length, masculine in a gentler way than Viscryn despite having a sword and armor. I liked him.

But I was not attracted to men. Between Viscryn and Astra, it was not him that I wanted.

I took a breath, trying to will myself to forget what I had just done. It was cowardly for someone who was supposed to be a Guardian. “I’m not in the mood today - Lum’s lying, also. He was the smaller one growing up.”

Lumenaire threw his head back and groaned, before finally relenting. “Just this fucking once, and then it’s over.”

Viscryn practically ran to lift him, and though he did it with surprising ease, his eyes widened. “Why are you … dense? You’re fuckin’ heavier than you-”

“Put me down.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of Lumenaire smacking the top of Viscryn’s head, wriggling free like a cat. As snappy as he was to others, he had always managed to make me feel better - even if he did it begrudgingly at times. As I walked back into our shared room, he followed me soon after, shutting the door.

He huffed, still a bit angry from Viscryn, though he did not regard me angrily. He sat on his own bed, staring at me. It felt like an interrogation. I was supposed to confess something, certainly - but I would have rather faced Astra than try to articulate it to the most stubborn person I knew.

“What’s your issue?” He asked, getting straight to the point. “You look like someone just slapped a dog.”

“That’s a weird way to put it,” I said, unable to help myself as Lumenaire huffed yet again. 

“Yes, well, you’re weird,” he retorted - a weak defense for him, who usually tried to say the most hurtful thing to win our bickering. Usually it was funny, though it often made people gawk at us. “Did the girl dump you?”

“What girl - oh.” I grew silent, then, and he nodded, clearly thinking he was triumphant. 

He hummed in thought, speaking before I could find a way to explain. “I knew she was no good for you. I mean, really, any first girlfriend is going to be a nightmare, especially one who titles herself a ‘wizard’.”

“I thought you were a wizard. At least, you think you are.” Lumenaire practically scoffed at me in offense, and I merely motioned towards the wand on his desk, the herbs and plants covering the dresser. “This looks like witchcraft.”

“What would you know, anyhow? You’re more witch than I! It’s a feminine word, anyhow - nothing to be proud of. Hm, perhaps warlock is better?”

My heart fluttered, though the pit in my stomach grew. It was true, then. I had been right for years, knowing what I was, being perhaps so obvious that Astra knew. Could he see it?

Did I want him to see it?

Lumenaire was still rambling about the linguistics of mage terms - mage was one he believed was too simple, though as far as I knew, he only did herbalism. It was more simple than Astra’s magic, alchemy and almost science-like in practice. It was not faith nor a traditional spell.

It was beautiful - all of it.

“You’ve gone quiet again,” he said almost suspiciously.

“You’ve been talking to yourself for the past ten minutes, so I thought I’d let you finish that little chat.” I looked at the time, suddenly grateful for a way out. “We’ve got class in the morning and it’s late. Are you done being neurotic?”