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neopronouns-in-action · 2 years ago

Text

Neopronouns in Action #051: Neither Nor

Neopronouns: de/ad/ath/adself, used the same way as he/him/his/himself for this story.

Replace he with de

Replace him with ad

Replace his with ath

Replace himself with adself

EX:

"He is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as he gets a fence set up around his yard so the puppy can go outside without him having to walk it. His uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he’s letting him use, since he lost his. He's going to buy toys and train the puppy himself.”

Becomes:

"De is going to adopt a new puppy soon, as soon as de gets a fence set up around ath yard so the puppy can go outside without ad having to walk it. Ath uncle is going to help set up the fence, since he has a set of power tools he's letting ad use, since de lost ath. De's going to buy toys and train the puppy adself"

Repurposed because it's mine and I say so >:)

= = =

Patricia climbed the basements stairs one tired step at a time, juggling more than an armload's worth of mugs, and trying to make sure she didn't drop any. She'd finally used up all the mugs in the house for her coffee, and now she had to get the kids to wash them so the cycle could start all over again.

She always made herself coffee as soon as she got up in the morning, brought it down with her into the lab, drank it, and then left the mug to sit somewhere out of the way, forgetting to bring it back upstairs with her to be washed. And then the same thing happened the next day, and the next day, and the next day, until she'd used up all the mugs and they were all down in the lab in some forgotten corner.

The good news was that there was so much ambient ectoplasm in the lab after all the years of experiments and explosions that protoghosts spawned at a fairly regular rate, and, created in the real world as opposed to the Otherworld, they seemed to be attracted to food rather than ectoplasm. Every time it was time to bring the mugs back upstairs, she was sure to find at least a dozen different forms of postconciousness inhabiting the mugs, slowly consuming the dregs of coffee that had been left behind, and replacing it with the ghostly equivalent of guano.

The protoghosts themselves were mostly useless, but their guano was valuable- -it could be converted into extremely efficient ectopowered batteries that were then used to power their weapons, shields, nets, and other prototypes.

Granted, allowing the protoghosts to colonize her used coffee mugs wasn't the most efficient way to collect their waste, but setting up a proper containment area and making sure safety procedures were actually in place would be expensive, and time consuming. It was far easier to just put the kids in charge of it. They kept ectoplasm containment units in the pantry with the rest of the tupperware, and this had been one of Barb, Leonard, Paul, and Tanner's chores since they were old enough to lift a spoon. Since Barb was with her friends at their book club, and Paul and Leonard were at their mini science camp for the week, that left only one option left for the job.

But that was okay with her, because having a high ESP rating seemed to help retain power in the guano in some way she hadn't figured out yet, and out of everyone in the family, Tanner had the highest ESP rating, even higher than Tracy's. Even higher than hers.

She pushed the basement door open with her hip, calling out, "Tanner- -!" Only to stop in surprise when she saw he was already in the kitchen, sitting at the island with a red notebook. She smiled widely. Now she wouldn't have to go through the effort of dragging him out of his room. He was always locking himself in there these days. "Oh, there you are, sweetie! Perfect!" She lifted the mugs, then went over to dump them into the sink, saying cheerfully, "You know what time it is! I want these mugs squeaky clean by lunch time, and I want all the guano sorted by ectotype and recorded on the computer, and when you're done that, you can help- -"

Tanner tried to interrupt her. "Mom- -"

She resolutely carried on like she hadn't heard him. He couldn't weasel his way out of his chores, not if he wanted to get paid for them. She sorted the mugs in the sink from most ectoplasmically contaminated to least while she continued, "Clean out the garage, since your father's already collected more junk, so I need you to sort through it and make a list of what's there so I know what's salvageable and useful, what's actual trash, and what we can cannibalize. We need some more space to store the new cores I collected, and we're running out of room in the fridge, so we can use the old chest freezer out there. And when you're done that, we can --"

"Mom, can you just pause for a minute?" Tanner's voice was louder this time, more insistent, and she huffed in exasperation while she turned around from the sink, prepared to scold him for being rude, only to stop when she saw his expression. There was a seriousness there she wasn't used to seeing on her youngest son's face. She felt her heart skip a beat in alarm.

"I'm not trying to argue about my chores," He said, hunching his shoulders defensively in his too-big, black shirt, his dyed-purple hair hanging down over his eyes, "I just need to talk to you. Can you -- can you sit down?" He gestured at the island in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded on all sides by the family's mis-matched stools.

Her mind immediately ran through all the possibilities of what he could be about to confess -- failing grades, being suspended from school again, being in trouble with the police, or worse, the psi-police...The possibilities were both endless and terrible. Tanner had been acting strange for the past year, and she thought was prepared for all but the absolute worst possibilities.

Tanner had once been such a good, quiet boy, but ever since their last annual camping trip, he'd been acting out, misbehaving at school, skipping classes, having a temper at home, not turning in his homework, not completing his chores, hanging out with that strange new girl with the bad reputation, running around at all hours of the night and refusing to say where he'd been…and his aura...

She had always had trouble seeing his, or anyone else's auras, but the few times she'd glimpsed it before the problems began, it had always been a bright, sunny yellow.

Now, though it gave her a splitting headache to try and look sideways enough to see it, it...it was different. But not in any way she could described. It was still yellow, but there was another color there too, somehow, one that defied her grasp of language to describe.

She'd been hoping it would change back on its own. And lately she hadn't been able to see it at all to check on it, and she'd been so busy lately with work and her experiments...

And Tanner hadn't said a thing to her, or to Tracy. A change in your aura was not something to be taken lightly, and there was no way Tanner wouldn't be aware of it. But he'd never come to her or his father for help, so she'd let the problem lie, waiting for him to trust her.

Auras were very personal things, and you didn't just go around interrogating people about theirs, even if they were your own flesh and blood child.

...And now she wasn't sure she even wanted to know what Tanner had done, now, that was so serious he finally felt the need to come to her about it, after all the months she and Tracy had spent trying to convince him that he could come to them with any problems he had.

But she didn't say any of that out loud, she just regarded him suspiciously while she took the proffered seat. She really wasn't sure she actually wanted to know. "Alright, Tanner," She said, trying to get her mind to stop imagining horrible scenarios. Even if it would lead to her being pleasantly surprised when it wasn't that bad, she still didn't like thinking about all the horrible things her son could have gotten into to put this expression on his face. "I'm listening."

For a moment, there was silence in the room, except for the soft humming of one of the protoghosts over in the mugs, the sound reverberating off the stainless steel of the sink.

Tanner shifted in his seat, then grabbed the red notebook that was on the countertop in front of him, lifting it so the back was facing her while he ran his fingers along the spine and creating a soft ziiping sound from his fingernail hitting the metal.

She looked at the cardboard backing, raising an eyebrow at the many black and blue scratch marks in pen where things had been written or drawn, with some of them crossed out in thick black marker, leaving only some shiny outlines still visible in the black ink. There were many drawings of eyes, some simple, some more detailed, in blue and black ink, and a few in purple or blue glitter gel. Some of them were colored in with marker or red pen, all different. There was no space on the back that didn't have some sort of drawing on it, in some shape or form.

It didn't give her any hint about what this conversation was going to be about, besides that Tanner really shouldn't be covering his notebooks in drawings. That was another thing his teachers had been complaining to her about lately, more than usual, and now she could see why.

More silence.

She was beginning to wonder how long they would have to sit here before Tanner got the courage to say whatever it was he needed to tell her, when he finally opened the notebook and flipped the front over the back, and, stared down at a page inside, his eyes distinctly scanning rapidly back and forth over whatever he'd written while she watched him.

Then he glanced up at her again, biting his lip.

"I, I- -uh, this is going to sound like a weird question," He said, his face flushing bright red, "But do you know what pronouns are?"

It took her mind a few seconds to catch up to what he'd actually said. The way he'd started blushing, she'd feared for a few terrible seconds that they were about to have The Talk whether she was prepared for it or not.

"What?" She said, trying to figure out what he was asking. Was this some sort of new slang? He was still blushing furiously. That was not a good sign. "Pronouns, you mean like in grammar?" Dear gods of the Otherworld, she hoped this wasn't some sort of slang for sex. She was not prepared to have that conversation on a Saturday morning when she hadn't even had any coffee yet.

He nodded, still blushing, and now unable to meet her eyes, which only increased her confusion.

But she began to relax though the confusion, some of her worry slipping away. Maybe he wasn't in trouble, maybe he just needed help with his homework and was embarrassed to ask. Had she really made it seem like he couldn't come to her with questions about his homework?

She said, trying to keep herself from laughing with relief so he wouldn't think she was making fun of him, "Do you need help with your English homework…?"

Tanner looked up, and stared at her like she'd grown a second head, the blush slowly fading from his still-red skin.

"What?" Then he stammered, laughing a little as his eyes widened, "Oh, no, no, oh my gods, no. I don't need help with my homework. We aren't even learning about grammar, we're reading a book." He shook the notebook at little, for some sort of emphasis.

"Oh." Now she was confused again. "Okay…? Then why are you asking me about pronouns? Help me out here, kid, you're confusing me."

Tanner didn't say anything right away, but his shoulders tensed as he stared down at the notebook, fiddling with a corner of one of the pages.

Then he said, his voice tense and stilted, "Because I want to change mine."

Patricia felt her eyebrows raise themselves up to her hairline. "Huh?"

What did that even mean?

"What are you --" she started to ask.

He interrupted again, his voice determined. "I'm nonbinary."

She took a moment to process that, but came up with nothing but confusion. She stared.

"What does that mean?" She asked, shaking her head, trying to fit the pieces of this conversation into something coherent.

First she thought he was going to tell her he was on the run from the police or something, then she thought he needed help with homework, and now she just had no idea what was going on. "I don't understand."

Tanner set the notebook back down on the table, flipping the cover back over so it was shut again. She noticed that the front was just as covered in drawings, some of them scratched out or painted over, as the back.

He tapped his fingers on the cover, as though reminding himself it was there, before he said, his voice hesitant, "Do you know what the word transgender means?"

Her eyebrows raised even further, even as a slowly dawning realization and memory began to take root. "Yes…" She said slowly, trying to keep her tone of voice normal and calm despite the way it suddenly felt like her heart wanted to leap out of her chest.

Now she knew how Tanner must be feeling, from the look on his face. "I knew a couple people back in college who were like that. Actually, one of my roommate's friends was trans. She asked us to call her Riene instead of her birth name, and asked us to use female...oh."

Oh. Oh. That was why he'd asked if she knew what pronouns were. He wanted to change his pronouns. Her son -- no, wait, daughter -- no, wait --

Tanner looked at her, his expression hopeful. "So you'd be okay if I changed my pronouns?"

The words "Of course, sweetie." were out of her mouth before she even processed them. Now her mind was racing for a whole different reason. She would have to start practicing calling Tanner by female pronouns right away, she would have to tell Tracy, and Barb if she didn't already know, and Leon and Paul, she would have to- -

"Okay, well, that- -that's good. I want to change them to de, ad, ath, and adself."

Her thought came up short like a record scratch, or a train crash.

She blinked. "What? I thought you meant you wanted- -"

She stopped.

Now she was really confused.

"I thought you would want to use female pronouns? Don't you want me to call you 'she' and 'her' from now on?"

Tanner grimaced, shaking his head. "No. I mean, they aren't really female pronouns, but that's- -" he shook his head again, and waved a hand dismissively. "No. I don't want to use she/her pronouns. I'm trans, but I'm not a girl. I'm nonbinary -- I'm not a boy or a girl. I'm…"

He shrugged. "Not binary. I'm neither. I'm something else. That's why I want to change my pronouns."

Patricia wracked her brain, trying to remember what he'd said he wanted to change them to. Something with a D…? She'd never heard of them before.

"What did you say you wanted to change them to?" She asked, mentally shoving all other thoughts away so she would remember them this time. She was determined not to mess this up, even if she was extremely confused.

This was what she got for not drinking her morning coffee.

"De, ad, ath, and adself." Tanner said, flipping open the notebook so he could rip out a page and push it across to her, trailing little bits of paper on the table from where the edges had gotten caught in the spiral.

Written on the page in black marker, the hand writing so careful and perfect she could almost feel the nervousness in it, the paper read:

De/ad/ath/adself:

he = de

him = ad

his = ath

himself = adself

Example:

Tanner is my child, and de is nonbinary. This means de isn't a- -

The sentence continued further, but Tanner spoke again before she could read more, drawing her eyes back to his and away from the paper.

"I know it might seem complicated," He- -de!, she reminded herself at the speed of light -- started to say, lifting a hand to the back of -- she glanced down at the paper – ad? Ath? yes! -- head in embarrassment, "But you just replace what you used to call me with the new ones. If you would have said he, you say de. If you would have said him, you say ad. If you would have said his, you say ath, and if you would have said himself, you say adself."

She was doing her best to memorize this, burning the pattern into her mind as quickly as she could, and she nodded seriously to show she understood. 'De, ad, ath.' she thought to herself, 'de, ad, ath.' Easy enough. 'De, ad, ath.'

But h -- de must have seen something in her expression to sow doubt, because de crossed ath arms defensively over ath chest, and said, as though to counter an argument de assumed she was going to make, "Matt and Alice have been using my pronouns for two whole months now."

With the unspoken insinuation that if she tried to protest that it was 'too difficult' or 'too complicated', then she was admitting that a pair of highschoolers were smarter than her.

She didn't know what it said about her as a parent that her child's first assumption was that she would hate ad for being transgender, but she needed to do something to fix that ASAP.

"Okay," She said, hoping her tone came across the way she wanted it to-- calm and accepting and not angry at all, "So I just want to make sure I'm saying this right. Um, okay --”

She closed her eyes to concentrate, and said making up the sentences as she went along, “Tanner and I are going shopping today, since de needs some new clothes and school supplies, and afterward, I want to bring ad to Nicko's, since I know its ath favorite restaurant, and it's just the two of us while everyone else is out having fun, and they shouldn't be allowed to have all the fun.” She opened her eyes again. “Did I get that right?"

Tanner was staring at her, ath face slightly blank. Then a smile quickly began to spread across ath face, until de was grinning widely. "That was perfect! How did- -wha- -" De looked shocked, and more than a little confused. "I thought you'd be…"

De trailed off, obviously not wanting to say the words 'screaming at me' out loud.

Patricia felt the disquiet in the pit of her stomach sink deeper.

Her child thought she would hate ad for being transgender. Her child thought her reaction would be to scream and yell and punish ad.

As though de could sense what she was thinking, Tanner said softly, looking away, "We thought, well, I mean,I thought you'd be mad." De laughed nervously, still not looking at her. "I actually wondered if I should pack a bag before I came down to talk to you."

And it suddenly occurred to her why de'd waited until now, specifically, to tell her this. It was just the two of them in the house, and it would be for the next three days. Tracy would be picking Barb up from the school, and they'd be going out on their father-daughter-bonding camping trip.

If she'd reacted badly to Tanner's revelation, de only had one person de needed to run away from, and three days to figure out how de was going to deal with the reactions of the rest of ath family.

The urge to ask ad where de would have run to was strong, but she kept her mouth shut. There was no point in asking, because de probably wouldn't tell her, and she could already guess.

De would have gone to Matt or Alice's. Probably Alice's, since the Shearmans were rich enough that if she or Tracy tried to press the issue, the Shearmans could probably just sue them for child abuse and have all of their kids taken out of their custody faster than she could cry 'kidnapping'.

So instead of asking questions neither of them wanted to answer, she leaned over the table, reaching a hand out, and said, "This is your home, Tanner, and you will never be forced to leave just for being yourself."

But Tanner was still looking towards the living room, and either didn't notice, or was pretending not to notice her offered hand.

"How do you think dad will react?" Ath voice was quiet, ath voice rough like de was trying to control ath emotions.

Ath eyes were closed, she suddenly realized. Tanner had ath eyes tightly closed, and ath fists clenched on ath knees. De was breathing slowly and deeply, and she suddenly realized that as anxious as she felt, it couldn't begin to compare to how Tanner had to be feeling. She bet if she could see ath aura right now, it would be roiling.

De was just a kid, coming out to a parent, with no way to know how she would react. She couldn't imagine how terrifying it had to be to not know whether your parents would still love you, or whether or not you would still have a home to belong to when the conversation was over.

Her parents hadn't approved of her choice to study ghosts, even with her confirmed status as an esper, something they were supposed to be proud of, but that was her choice. She could have chosen any other field of study, and while her parents were dismissive and disappointed, she'd never feared for her safety, never feared for even a second that they would disown her.

Were Tanner's eyes closed because de was fighting back tears?

How could she have raised her children to fear her?

"Tanner…" Her voice struggled not to break. She couldn't cry right now. This was about her child, not herself. "Your father loves you just as much as I do. He's still going to love you no matter what. You don't even have to worry- -he's the one who taught me how to use our friend's pronouns back in college--

"You see, I kept messing up because I never thought about it until I was right there talking to her, and it was so embarrassing and frustrating for both of us, especially because I always made such a big deal out of messing up, but he pulled me aside to explain that I needed to practice with her pronouns if I wanted to get them right.

"He'd been friends with her longer than I had, he knew her back before she asked people to change what they called her, and he gave me sentences to practice in my head so I wouldn't keep messing up, and it helped so much.

“I stopped embarrassing myself and Riene, and…" She trailed off, unsure where she was going with this, besides: "Your father and I love you. We aren't going to kick you out, or disown you, or anything like that. Your father will be happy to use your new pronouns, and I guarantee you that he- -and I - -will destroy anyone who tries to cause you problems."

Something in Tanner's face twitched, and she took it as a sign that she was on the right track.

"We're going to support you, Tanner, no matter what pronouns you use, no matter that you're...what did you say it was called? Nonbinary? I'm not judging, I just never heard of it before now."

De nodded, still keeping ath eyes closed, though ath breathing had calmed down a little. "Yeah, I'm nonbinary. Non-binary, as in not binary. Which in my case means neither girl nor boy, neither male nor female, neither…" De trailed off, then shook ath head.

"It just means I'm your kid instead of your son." De said, "Or, well, Alice suggested you could call me your sprout, because vamp likes plants so much, but I'm not very good with plants so...yeah, you can just stick with kid for now, if anyone asks." And still, ath eyes were closed.

Patricia pulled her hand back, since de still hadn't taken it or noticed. The fact that he had referred to Alice as 'vamp' didn't escape her notice. "Okay, nonbinary. That makes sense." She said, mentally face palming at how obvious it was once she thought about the word. Nonbinary, non-binary, not-binary. Neither male nor female, girl nor boy, son nor daughter. "Your father will understand, probably even better than I do, since he knew a lot more trans people back in college than I did."

And knew them better, too.

...Should she ask about Alice? The fact that de'd said anything at all meant de would probably want to share more, and she felt like it would be better to just get all of it out in the open at once.

"So, has Alice changed- -" She hesitated for a moment, then forged on, "Pronouns too? It sounded like you said 'vamp'."

Which definitely sounded short for vampire, and from what she knew of Alice, that fit the bill perfectly, though she wasn't aware of any pronouns in any language that sounded like vampire. But then, she'd never heard of de, ad, or ath, either.

Tanner had finally opened ath eyes again, and this time de was looking at her, looking much more relaxed and normal. "Yeah," De said, "Alice has a few different sets, and Matt and I cycle through them." Ath eyes narrowed a little."Do you want to know Alice's pronouns?"

There was definitely a challenge in ath tone, and were it not for the situation, it would have annoyed her. But she knew de was only sticking up for ath friend, making sure her support wasn't conditional on the person in question being a member of the family.

So she smiled, glad she was going to pass the test. After the reaction Tanner'd thought she'd have, she needed to restore ath faith in her. She couldn't believe she'd ever let it slip so far, couldn't believe she'd allowed her kid to believe she could ever hate ad. "I would love to learn Alice's pronouns." She said.

Tanner's expression stayed suspicious. "Alice uses vamp/pyr/pyrs/vampself, ghost/ghosts/ghostself, bat/bats/batself, and thorn,thorns,thornself. And before you complain, bat started using ghost/ghostself specifically to annoy thorns parents, so if you start complaining, it'll just make ghost even more spiteful."

That was a lot to take in, but Patricia nodded, having guessed that much for herself. She didn't know any of Tanner's friends very well, what with the fact that when they were over, they were always in Tanner's room playing on the Vasdeck, but she'd picked up enough about Alice to know that...vamp did not take kindly to authority figures.

Since Tanner had been kind enough to write down ath pronouns, she could guess how the others were meant to be used. Just replacing she, her, hers, and herself with the words Tanner had listed. Though she was going to have trouble remembering which ones Alice used. She tried to remember...definitely the vampire ones, and the ghost ones...but the others, she was drawing a blank.

"It might get a little confusing if there's a ghost,” She said, wanting to not let on just how confused she was, “but I don't think it should be that hard to get used to." She hesitated, wondering if this next question was going to make her lose those precious parenting points she'd been earning throughout this conversation. "Could you write these down for me so I don't forget?"

To her surprise, Tanner smiled widely, ath eyes finally opening to positively sparkle up at her with clear happiness. Apparently, that had been the right question to ask.

De opened the notebook again, and pulled out another piece of paper, and slid it across the table to her.

She looked down at it, and saw all of the pronouns de'd listed out for Alice. De'd already had all of them written down.

Then de pulled out another piece, and passed that over as well.

"Matt uses tech/techno/techs/techself. Both their parents know about their pronouns, and Matt's are fine with it, Alice's..." De shrugged, but smiled. "Not so much. But that's the way ghost likes it."

Patricia took both pages and studied them, seeing that they were in the same format as the first, showing the old pronouns and the new ones, with an example sentence to show how to use them, with each letter written out so neatly it must have taken ten minutes just to write out a few simple words.

She wondered why de hadn't just used the printer. But then, that would have required asking to use the printer, and of course she would have wanted to know what de was printing...so, no, it made sense for why de'd hand written them.

But there were other questions she should be asking. She remembered dealing with these questions way back when in college. "So, is there anyone I shouldn't use your pronouns around?"

She really didn't want to phrase it as "am I one of the last people to find out", but she was having a hard time figuring out a better way to phrase it... "Like if we're out at Nicko's, or if I need to talk to one of your teachers. Do you want me to use your pronouns, or…?" And she hadn't even asked if de wanted to change ath name yet…

Tanner nodded. "I want you to use my pronouns. Now that I've told you, and I'll tell dad and the others once they get back, I want to use them all the time. I want everyone to use them. It just- -" Ad smiled widened. "It just really makes me happy, I don't know how to explain why. It just feels right."

She nodded, trying and failing to understand, but accepting it anyways, knowing it was more important that she supported ad rather than that she understood perfectly.

She didn't need to understand it to respect it- -that was one of the things she'd had to learn quickly in college if she didn't want to lose all her friends and husband-to-be.

Realizing what sort of people she would have had to make friends with if she chose the wrong path had set her straight almost immediately. She'd always thought of herself as open-minded, and her days in college had been the first time that conceptualization had actually been stress-tested in the real world.

She was just glad she'd been willing to listen and learn instead of cementing herself into the mindset of a bigot- -she'd seen the sort of people who mocked Riene for being trans, and they were the exact sort of people who would mock any woman for not conforming to their perfect ideal of womanhood, whether they were trans or not. They were the conservatives and republicans, hateful bigots to their core. They hated the poor, they hated the disabled, they hated women, they hated people who weren't straight white Christians, and they hated queer people.

She hated that she could have so easily become one of them if she'd only made a few different choices. If she'd believed the lies that had told her that people like Riene were trying to infiltrate and destroy feminist spaces, trying to lull her into a false sense of security. Riene wasn't dangerous, wasn't trying to infiltrate anything, and neither were any of the other trans women and men that she'd met thanks to Tracy.

And it was only now, decades later as she looked back, that she realized that people like her kid had been back there too. There had been Skit, who'd always rejected being called a man or a woman, and Jesse, who'd gone back and forth and in between and was always changing pronouns...

Every now and then, she talked on the phone or shared emails with her old classmates, the ones who were still the kind of people to stay in touch, but between studying the natural ghost manifestations that Port Free Haven was a hotspot for, building prototypes for their own new-age shrine in their basement, preparing for and then raising five kids, and now hunting ghosts as a full-time job, there wasn't much time left in the day to chat with old friends, let alone make new ones.

She knew Port Free Haven had its own thriving Queer community, but she'd never had time to join in on any of the events, though she knew Tracy had been making the time.

But maybe she should make some time, too.

But there was one more question she should be asking, just to be sure. "So do you want to change your name?"

De sat back a little, brow furrowed. "Um..." De shrugged again. "I'll have to get back to you on that, since I haven't decided what I'd change it to if I did. You can still call me Tanner for now."

Well, that was one thing she didn't have to worry about. Setting up appointments with Port Free Havens' legal courts was like pulling teeth since the ghost incursion began, since they were so backed up with insurance claims and all manner of ghost-related problems.

It would take months, if not a year to get an appointment to legally change Tanner's name if de chose to change it, though that wouldn't have stopped her from calling in to the school to make them change it on their files, or from telling people to use ath new name.

Tanner was tapping ath fingers on the notebook again. De was smiling again too, she was glad to see. And it seemed like the redness was fading from ath eyes even as she watched.

"I really didn't expect this conversation to go so well." De said, shaking ath head a little to get ath hair out of ath eyes, "Thank you, mom."

She shook her own head. "You don't need to thank me," she said firmly, "I am your mother, it is my job to love you. I'm sorry I ever made you think I wouldn't love you just for being yourself. That is my fault, and I take responsibility for it. I've known about trans people since I was in college, and I made the mistake of assuming that you, and your brothers and sister, wouldn't be, couldn't be. I should have known better, and I'm sorry for never talking about these things with you when you were younger, so you knew what they were and that I knew what they were.”

She wanted to say, 'I guess your father and I have been too busy with work to talk to you about our friends', but she didn't want to make excuses.

“But I want to support you, and I want to try to fix my mistakes. I still have Riene's phone number and email, and, I mean, if you want, I can call her and see if she'd want to come over. I know you said you're not trans in the way she is, but she's really nice, and she might be able to answer any questions you have, and it'd be nice for me to catch up with her, it's been a long time since we spoke, and she lives over in the next city, so it's not too far of a drive. We could even go to visit her if she doesn't want to deal with the ghosts."

Tanner had frozen like a deer in the headlights, and she wasn't sure why. "Your friend...from college? Was this the same college where you met, uh, uncle Kurt?"

She winced at the reminder. "Ah, yes, but I promise she's nothing like Kurt." She reassured.

Kurt had always been Tracy's friend, not hers, and he was the one exception in her husband's impeccable taste in people. He had wanted to date her since he first met her, and no matter how many times she turned him down, he just kept trying to convince her in small, subtle ways, and Tracy was completely oblivious. She loved her husband, but he had a blindspot the size of Texas when it came to Kurt and his behavior.

She'd tried talking to him about it a few times, but he always brushed her off, insisting that she was reading things wrong, or it wasn't a big deal, ect ect ect. It was the strangest thing, too. He always listened to her with any other topic, always took her concerns seriously. But not when it came to Kurt. If she didn't know any better, she'd think he was being psychically influenced, but she'd checked, and Kurt's aura was so dim he probably wouldn't feel a psychic wave if it slapped him in the face.

She'd stopped bothering to bring the problem up with Tracy, and now just tried to stay as far away from Kurt when he visited as she could.

Fortunately, he lived several states away, so avoiding him was easy for the most part these days.

"Are you sure?" Tanner pressed, still on the question and looking nervous. "Kurt's... really creepy."

"No, Tanner, I promise it's not another Kurt situation. I know your father is...very attached to Kurt, but he'd always been...well, he's always been a bit of a creep.” There was really no nice way of putting it. Kurt didn't care who saw him flirt with her. He even did it in front of her own kids, and they were old enough to recognize it for what it was, and tell it wasn't just a joke. “Your father just doesn't want to acknowledge it. But Riene, I promise, is nice, and completely normal, and not in any way a creep, I promise. In fact, she disliked Kurt as much as I did, and it was lucky he never really hung out with the rest of us, or he would have been kicked out. I promise not all of our friends from college are creepy. Kurt is the outlier."

Tanner still looked extremely skeptical, but after a few moments de said, begrudgingly, "Well, if you're sure, then yeah, I guess it'd be cool to meet her. Could I invite Alice and Matt over too?"

"Of course,” She said quickly, “I'm sure she'd love to meet them! The last time we spoke, she told me she was running a sort of summer camp for young queer people, and I'm not sure if she's still doing it, but would that be something you'd be interested in? Not this year, obviously, but maybe next year?" She was thinking of the for-parents groups Riene had also said she ran, to help queer parents, and parents of queer kids, learn more so they could better support their children.

Tanner laughed nervously. "Um, how about I let you know after I meet her?"

"That's fair." She conceded easily. Kurt really had set a bad precedent for introducing their old friends to their kids. She would have to make sure to look up some better friends, see what they were up to. Maybe she could find out what Skit was up to these days.

They sat in silence for a few moments, then Tanner asked, "So, uh, I was going to invite Alice and Matt over after I talked to you if it went well, to tell them the good news. Can I, or do I still have to wash the dishes?" De was warily side-eying the pile of mugs she'd put in the sink, and the faint sounds the protoghosts were making.

She'd almost forgotten about them entirely.

She shook her head, willing to let it slide just this once. For now. The longer the protoghosts were inhabiting the mugs, the more samples that could be collected, and she could go without coffee for a day. The lack of it hadn't failed her too disastrously, it turns out. "You can do those tomorrow, go ahead and invite Alice and Matt over. If you still want to go to Nicko's --"

"Yes!"

"– we'll go for dinner instead of lunch, and Alice and Matt can come with us if they want, my treat, then you can clean out the garage and wash the mugs tomorrow, and we can go shopping then too. You get the rest of the day off. Does that sound fair?"

"Yes!" De was practically vibrating in ath chair, and beaming so widely it had to be hurting ath face.

Suddenly, de bolted out of ath chair, and flung ath arms around her in a hug, almost causing her to fall backwards off her stool. She caught herself on the edge of the table with a laugh, then hugged ad back tightly.

"Thank you." De said softly, ath voice slightly muffled in her shoulder so that it came out sounding a bit strange.

"You don't need to thank me." She whispered back, hugging ad tightly, "I'm your mother. It's my job."

De let go, she released ad, and de stepped back, still grinning from ear to ear. "I'm gonna go call Alice and Matt!" De exclaimed. Then de spun around, bolted out of the room, and sprinted up the stairs.

She heard ath door slam shut, and thought to herself, 'at least this time it's from excitement instead of anger.'

She looked around the kitchen, then, trying to figure out what she should be doing now that she wasn't going to be getting those guano samples until tomorrow. Or coffee.

She'd been planning on building the first in a series of new ectoweapons, which, if they worked the way she thought they should, should cancel out a ghost's ectosignature once it gained a sample from it, which would either destroy the ghost outright, or at least reduce it to such a weakened state that it wouldn't be able to take on any form except a puddle of inert ectoplasm. She would only find out the exact results after she tested it.

It was something to look forward to.

She smiled to herself as she pushed out of her chair and headed back down into the lab, taking the pieces of paper Tanner had given her with her, knowing that she had multiple sets of pronouns she needed to practice if she wanted her kid to continue trusting her with important information about adself.

She swung into her chair in front of the computer, and thought, 'de, ad, ath, adself' as she loaded up the program she used for laying out the microchips. 'Tanner is my child, and I love ad very much. I hope de knows de can trust me with anything, and that I will love ad no matter what.'

If she started now, and worked until it was time to bring Tanner and ath friends to the restaurant, then continued working on it when they got back, the new ectoweapon would be complete by the time Tracy and Barb got home from their trip, and Leon and Paul got back from camp, and she and Tracy could patrol together to test it after Tanner talked to everyone.

Maybe if they were lucky, they would even be able to hit some of the notorious Legion of Park Street.

She smiled to herself, and thought, 'de, ad, ath...'

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