The next day, Darid showed up at Sarra and Teld's house early in the morning, long before Aran awoke. From what Aran had said the night before, Sarra half expected the boy to look shaken, or at least a little uncomfortable. Instead, he just looked concerned. The first words out of his mouth only reaffirmed his concern.

"Is he all right?" Darid asked, his voice uncertain.

"He's just fine," Sarra replied, smiling. She smiled even more at the look of relief that passed across the boy's face, followed by a smile just as bright as her own.

"Thank the Lady," he said reverently. "I... Did he tell you about meeting up with me before he came here?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"He told me that he kissed you," she said softly. She tried to keep her voice kind and unassuming, to keep from frightening her son's best friend away.

"I..." he said, sounding more lost than frightened.

"How much do you know about the prince of Jirri?" Sarra asked suddenly. "How much do you actually know about the magic that makes him unique?"

Rather than replying immediately, Darid stayed silent for quite a while. He thought long and hard, most likely trying to dig through his memories to find out what he really did know about the Jirri prince. Sarra silently applauded this, since it gave her hope that maybe the boy wouldn't have a hard time accepting her son the way the magic had made him. Finally, he looked up at her with a sad expression on his face. "Not enough..." he said.

"Why don't you come in, Darid?" Sarra asked. "Sit down, have some cocoa, and I'll tell you about the magic that makes the prince of Jirri what he is. I'll tell you what has been going on in Aran's life since he left."

"I'd like that," Darid replied, smiling weakly. Sarra smiled back at him and ushered him inside. As he seated himself in front of a fire, on the thick rug that still contained some of his fondest childhood memories, ones of playing with Aran and listening to fantastic stories from his best friend's father, Sarra headed into the kitchen to serve up two cups of the cocoa she had been cooking up earlier. Then she headed back into the other room and handed a cup to Darid before sitting down in her old rocking chair.

"Now, let me take a guess," she said. "Up until recently all you knew about the Jirri princes was that they prefer the company of men, wasn't it? And you thought it was a legend, or an exaggeration, didn't you?" Darid nodded with a sheepish look on his face. "It's true. I'm sure you figured that out already." Darid nodded again as red stained his cheeks.

"Now, what most people do not realize is that the prince of Jirri is not necessarily born the way he ends up. The seed is always there, but most often it is buried until the magic activates, making whoever it chooses the next prince. Very few of the princes in history have been interested in men before the magic. And even those who did have those interests were usually equally interested in women. Aran is no different than most of his predecessors in that respect. Still the seed of the interest is there before the magic activates, even if it is completely hidden by the normal attraction of the opposite sex.

"The magic makes the prince able to bear children. It is far from a natural process, and it is most of the reason why the Jirri are no longer the favored ones of God, as they once were. That is why the magic makes the prince become attracted to men. But, just because of the magic, the prince is not a pervert or a freak. He is just different from most men. And his preference for men is something that can occur naturally, without the magic, though in most places it is considered sickening, or even obscene.

"Aran was not expecting this, and neither were his father or I. Normally, every boy in Jirri is considered eligible to have the magic show up, but Aran has never lived in Jirri. Teld isn't Jirri, and Aran wasn't even born there. So we never suspected that Aran might be dragged into this. I never told him he might one day wake up to find himself the next prince, but only because I didn't think it could happen. That only happens to Jirri boys, and I have never considered Aran a Jirri boy."

"Why didn't you tell me this when I asked before?" Darid asked.

"Aran asked me not to," she said. "He did not want to accept it after I told him what was going on. He was ashamed of what he was becoming, and he didn't want anyone he knows to find out. He didn't want you to hate him."

"He thought I would hate him if I knew?"

"Of course he did," she said. This caused a hurt look to pass across Darid's face, at which Sarra hurried to explain. "It isn't that he thought you were a cruel person, because you should know by now that he loves you deeply. It was just that Aran knows what the people here think of the Jirri prince in general, so he couldn't blame you for thinking that as well. After all, that was, and possibly still is, what he thinks of the prince himself."

Darid slammed his mug of cocoa down on the table in anger, almost hard enough to make it shatter. The look on his face was one of both anger and absolute seriousness. "How could he think I would hate him just for that?" he asked hotly, his voice just a little too loud. "He is my best friend, I know him too well to hate him just because of what he is now! That would be like hating Lyka from the Happy Cow just because she's Rajhi!"

"Most people do hate Lyka for what she is," Sarra said, her voice still soft and calm, despite the vibrant anger of the young man in front of her.

"Well it's not right," Darid said stubbornly. "Aran is still Aran. He'll always be Aran, no matter whether he's just plain old Aran the farmer's son or Prince Aran of Jirri. Nothing's has to change between us just because of this!"

A look of deep sadness settled on Sarra's face. In that instant, she looked every bit her age, and more. Time seemed to slow down for a moment as she took a deep breath and prepared to speak, to try and explain to Darid how he was wrong, how no matter what he wanted, he and Aran could never go back to the easy friendship they had once had, not after Aran's actions of the night before. But, before she could speak, a different voice rang out from one of the other two blanket-covered doorways leading out of the room.

"That's not true," Aran said. His voice, though almost soft enough that it wasn't audible, still managed to carry through the room perfectly. The fright and sadness it carried only made the effect greater. A pale face and eyes red and puffy from crying made him look even more fragile than before. He stood with his arms wrapped tightly around himself, as if he was trying to shield himself from the world. Without another word, he crossed the room from the doorway to a large, stuffed chair that was usually reserved for his father. He collapsed into the chair without a second thought and then stared at his mother and best friend, the barest hint of hysteria crossing his face just before he pulled his feet up onto the chair and hugged his knees to his chest.

"It doesn't have to be that way, Aran," Darid said. He did not sound convinced of his words. Rather, they carried a note of frantic denial, a plea to Aran to reassure him and tell him that he was right. "No matter what happens, you're still you and I'm still me. Just because your life has changed doesn't mean we have to make a big deal out of it, right?"

Aran shook his head. "It doesn't work that way," he said in a choked voice. "I have changed. I'm not the same as I was before...and I can't act that way. The magic won't let me."

"Why not?" Darid asked, his voice almost petulant, but not quite. "You were always able to just be friends with girls before, even the pretty ones. What difference does it make now that it's the guys that you like?"

For several long moments Aran just stared at Darid. The look on his face was one of incredulity, as if he couldn't quite believe that his friend was asking him this particular question. Sarra watched the two young men staring at each other, noting the tension between them, but did nothing to interfere. It was not her place to get involved, even if what was happening would only make her son less happy in the end.

Then, finally, Aran stood up, still staring at Darid. "It's just different," he said. His voice shook, like he was close to tears, and the frustration he was feeling was etched across his now too-pretty face. "You just don't understand!"

Aran then ran from the room, and the house. Darid stood to follow him, to catch him and try to get an explanation that would help him understand. But, before he could take more than a single step away from the rug by the fireplace, Sarra called out, her voice steady and clear, but slightly sad.

"Don't go after him," she said. "He wants to be alone for a little. Let him have the time he needs to get his thoughts in order. When he's ready, he'll find you."

"I can't do that," Darid said. "I don't want to see him hurt like this."

"But what if you'll only end up hurting him more by going after him?" she asked.

Darid continued forward, only to pause in the doorway and look back at Sarra. "I don't think he can stop hurting if we don't work this out," he said in a voice full of certainty. "I'm his best friend. I can't just leave things like this."

"He doesn't need a best friend right now."

But Darid was already out the door. Sarra had no idea if the boy had heard her or not, or even whether her words would have made a difference in the first place. She just knew that what her son needed even less than a best friend at the moment was a mother. All she could do was stay at home, and hope that her son might eventually come to terms with what he had been forced to become.

Aran continued to run, away from the house, away from Sarra, mostly away from Darid, until he reached the edge of the little town, where the houses became even less frequent, and growing crops covered almost all of the ground. There wasn't actually any defined line when the town ended and the farmland began, and consequently every inhabitant of the town had his or her own idea of where the change occurred. Aran, Darid, and his other best friend from childhood all happened to think it was in the same place, and it was there where Aran slowed down, and eventually stopped.

It wasn't because he didn't want to run any farther, or because he thought Darid wouldn't follow him that far. As he ran, he noticed a person walking along the invisible line that only Aran and his friends ever thought divided the town from the rest of the world there. He knew the girl; she was the other one who he had grown up with, and that particular place had always been a meeting spot for the two of them. Still, Keiri shouldn't have known that he was back in the town, unless Darid told her, and Aran doubted that Darid would have done that after what happened the day before, not without talking to Aran first.

For about two seconds Aran considered taking a different route out of town, one that wouldn't force him to encounter Keiri. He would have done so as well, except that just before he could turn around and run in a different direction, she gave a startled gasp of recognition. She had noticed him, and there was nothing he could do to avoid meeting with her after that, so he gritted his teeth and started forward again, ready for the less than pleasant reunion with the girl who had once been his best friend, and the one he loved and planned to marry more recently than that, up until he woke up with the symbol on his stomach.

"Aran, is that you?" Keiri asked. Her voice shook with something that was halfway between anger and tears.

Aran nodded, making sure not to raise his head. He didn't want to see her face yet, preferably not ever, since he didn't like what he had to do to her.

Keiri was not stunningly beautiful, but she was pretty. She managed to look feminine without being overly so, and had a body that had once driven a hormone-driven Aran made. Her face was one of the many that cried out to Aran to put immortalized in art, not classically beautiful, but with a natural look that many women would give to kill, and certainly not one that betrayed her still tender age of sixteen years. As she stood there, the morning sunlight caught her brown hair, bringing out the red and gold undertones and making it almost appear to be on fire. Her expression matched her tone of voice, and her light brown eyes were half filled with tears that had been there before she noticed Aran on the road.

"Where the hell have you been, Aran?" she asked.

"Away," he said softly. She frowned, but continued.

"Well why didn't you tell me you were going?" she asked. "You just up and left one day and didn't even say goodbye! And when I asked your mom she said you were gone for good, and that I should just forget about you! Where does she get the right to do that?"

"She is my mother, Keiri," Aran said.

"But that doesn't mean she can do something like that!" Keiri exclaimed angrily. "Doesn't she realize how much we love each other? Or does she not approve, so she wanted to keep us apart? That's what happened, isn't it? But it didn't work, did it? I mean, you're here now...and sure you look wildly different, but you're still you! What happened to you anyway, Aran? I barely knew it was you!"

"Not now..." Aran said, suddenly hyper-conscious that he was standing in the middle of a more or less open field with Keiri, so that anyone who might happen to wander by would be able to hear every single thing he said to her. And while his...condition...wasn't actually being kept secret, he was too self conscious to want everyone he knew to know about it. Being presented to all of Jirri, where everyone knew exactly what the magic meant and what he was was bad enough. He didn't need more people, people who knew him when he was young, people he grew up around, knowing.

Keiri, on the other hand, didn't look happy about his decision. "Why the hell not?" she asked, a little too loudly.

"Not here, then," Aran said. He then took hold of her hand and started walking toward a different edge of town, where the mixed farmland and houses gave way to forest. The same lake where he had found Darid was in that forest, and it seemed like the best place he could go, other than his parents' house, for a slightly less public conversation with Keiri. But, when his hand closed around his, he felt the magic in him rise up, almost as if it knew that the girl whose hand he was holding was someone who he had once been attracted to, someone he would give anything to still be attracted to, and it didn't like that.

As he walked, Aran could feel his hand growing uncomfortably warm. At the same time, Keiri seemed less than happy at being dragged somewhere without knowing where that somewhere was, and because of that she was angrily hissing at Aran to let her go, while at the same time trying to pull her hand out of his grip. He kept having to tighten his grip to keep hold of her, and between her and the warmth (he wasn't sure if she could feel it as well, or if it was just his punishment), his hand was not doing well. So when he finally reached the lake in the woods, which seemed to take an eternity with his hand screaming at him in pain, he released Keiri with a silent oath and cradled his throbbing hand to his chest.

"Did you go crazy while you were away or something?" Keiri asked, her voice venomous, as Aran sat down and tried to prepare himself for what he was going to tell her. He didn't want to tell anyone who didn't already know about it, and not even those who did know most of the time, but he knew that she had a right to know. He had hurt her by disappearing without a trace, even if he hadn't done it on purpose, and that was why she was acting like a porcupine, attacking rather than letting him get close and hurt her again, no matter how much she didn't want to do it. At least he hoped that was why she was being so mean.

"I'm sorry," Aran said softly. "I didn't mean it to be like this. You should realize that!"

"What am I supposed to think when you disappear without a word and your mother tells me to forget about you!" she shot back.

"She was just trying to save you from the worst of it," Aran said. "She didn't want you to get any more hurt than you already would be. And it probably would have worked if I hadn't come back."

"So you didn't want to see me again? You just wanted to forget all about me, never mind that I thought you were dead, or in trouble? Is that all you thought about? How you didn't want to see me again?"

"No, it's not..."

"You never even loved me, did you?"

"I said it's not like..."

"You were just pretending the whole blasted time! You just used me, took advantage of the fact that I loved you more than life itself."

"If you'd just listen to me, Keiri..."

"I can't believe it! You heartless bastard!"

By that point Keiri was unable to stay still. As she listed her different complaints, she got more and more agitated, and as that happened she started to pace around the clearing, carefully avoiding the water without even seeming to notice that it was there. And with every new charge against Aran, she got closer and closer to him, until finally with the word bastard she was standing right in front of him, shouting at the top of her lungs. And that was finally enough for Aran. Without even meaning it, he felt something inside him snap, as if a dam had broken loose within him, and a rush of not quite anger washed over him, temporarily masking even the near-constant feeling of the magic inside of him.

"I said, that's not it!" he shouted, and though his voice was rusty from too many nights crying himself to sleep, it was powerful at the same time. His shout was weak compared to Keiri's, but it still made her pause and fall silent. For just a moment, his voice was not that of a frightened, lost sixteen year old, but that of the Prince that the magic in him forced him to be.

"I still love you, Keiri," he continued, quieter, his voice losing the desperate, frustrated note of command, but gaining a quiet confidence that actually urged Keiri to listen to him closely, without interrupting. "I always have, and I always will. It's just...things have changed." He hung his head, trying to think of a way to explain it that wouldn't hurt her any more than she already was, and failing.

"What do you mean, "things have changed"?" Keiri asked, her voice focused and tight with just barely suppressed tears of frustrated rage.

"I still love you," he said. "But it's different than it was before. I love you as a friend, and I always will if you'll still let me, the same way I always loved Darid.

He paused then, falling silent for several moments. When, after those moments, she stayed icily silent, he finally looked up at her with pleading eyes. "Can't that be enough, please?"

"Why?" she asked, grabbing the front of his shirt and hauling him forward. "If you don't hate me, why does it have to change. Aren't you attracted to me anymore?"

"No," Aran said, so softly that he could barely hear himself. Still, she heard him.

"Why not?" she shrieked. "I haven't changed since you left! I'm just a little older, and not anywhere near enough that it matters. Is it because you went somewhere different and saw a bunch of exotic women who aren't plain and boring like me? Is that it?" Aran shook his head. "Then why? I'm still beautiful, like you always said, right?"

"Of course you are," Aran said.

"Then can't you still be attracted to me? Can't you still love me?"

"I just can't..." Frustrated, Keiri dropped Aran's shirt, which sent him falling to the ground. Silently, he returned to a sitting position as she began to scream again.

"Why? It's not like you're one of those weird Jirri guys who like other men, so why can't you like me?" She looked for a moment like she was about to continue, but then she paused, having noticed how Aran flinched when she mentioned "those weird Jirri guys who like other men." After a few seconds of thought, a look of suspicion and realization spread across her face, immediately followed by one of horror.

"You are one of those fags, aren't you?" she asked. "In just a couple months, you went from being normal to being an unnatural freak! You chose liking guys over me!"

"It's not like that, Keiri..." Aran said, but she ignored him.

"Are you going to move to Jirri now?" she asked nastily. "Maybe go petition to give their freak prince an heir?"

"To your first question, yes, I already have," Aran said, to her great surprise. "And to the second...I can't."

Keiri stayed silent for a few moments, just staring at Aran, who had gone calm, but had sounded more sad than he had during the whole conversation. Finally, she took a deep breath. "Why not?" she snapped. "Do they not like you because you're not Jirri."

"I am Jirri," he replied, staring steadily at the ground so that he wouldn't have to see the shock on Keiri's face when he continued. "Half, on my mother's side. No...it's just that as far as I know, it's not possible for a person to fuck himself, and in order for me to give the "freak prince" of Jirri an heir that's what I'd have to do."

Keeping his eyes trained on the ground, Aran pushed himself to his feet. Then, without looking back at her, he took a few steps forward, then stopped. He turned back partway, but not far enough to see her face, just enough that she would know he was talking to her and not the air.

"I still love you as a friend, Keiri," he said. "I always will. I just wish you could have been a little more accepting. It's not like I wanted this to happen, so I wish you would stop treating me like the one to blame. I didn't mean to hurt you, if you actually believe me. I just hope that you can find someone to be with who'll make you forget all about me, since I hate knowing that I made you cry like this."

He turned forward and took a few more steps, before turning back one more time. "Goodbye, Keiri. If you ever decide you hate me a little less, come visit. It shouldn't be too hard to find me." And with that he started running, just so he would be as far away as he could possibly be before she actually realized he had left.