Years had spun past, dizzyingly.

I was searching a dream for Leon: not a shared dream of magic, this was the fever illusion of dark urges. Twisting alleys and Kafkaesque obstacles intervened wherever I searched. I needed him to fill something, I didn’t know what. I turned a corner and the dream snapped into shared magical lucidity – I was face to face with Leon, and the hunger in my groin told me exactly what I needed him to fill.

“Leon!” I called his name as I pounced. His hands came up in a defensive gesture and ended up cupping my breasts. I had my arms around him now, trapping his hands between our bodies, but he wasn’t squeezing, was not seeking my hard nipples. I ground myself against his thigh.

“Leon,” I repeated, “I can’t do it, I can’t survive like this. Its been five years and no sign of Twilight since your message.” The dream scene shifted and the dark alley was now an intimate pool of shade under a maple. Our clothes had vanished when the dream changed. “I need it now, I'm going crazy.”

“Tanna, no, stop this. I can’t, we can’t do this anymore, I’m married, get off me.” He pushed me away, gently but firmly. In spite of my desperation I had not the strength of a tried warrior, nor could my uncontrolled urges answer to his calm refusal.

Leon stood, but I lay on the ground, wept.

“I don’t know if I'm just turning into a slut or if something went wrong in the gender-swap spell. I can’t think, this lust is so bad. I want it to be you because I trust you.”

“Pull yourself together, Tanna, you can’t give up on Twilight. The moony pony said Twilight would break the spell. And I need to be able to trust you not to pull stupid shit like this.”

“Leon, I’m sorry, I can’t do this. If I keep on waiting for her there won’t be anything left of me if she comes back. I’ll go, I'll find someone or something willing…”

“Wait—” he started to call but I had already transitioned to alert, desperate, wakefulness. My breasts tingled with the memory of Leon’s touch.

“Dammit, is he ever going to forgive me for that? Or will I?”

I could have taken something to put myself into dreamless sleep and masturbate until I passed out, but I knew that would only buy me time, not resolve the situation. Drugs and self-pleasure would not abate this urge. It was almost as strong as my first time being taken as a female, the last time I had seen my Twilight.

As I saw it there were three possibilities. I could try to keep my libido under wraps with the faint hope that my behavior did not get too erratic. I could throw myself at random partners until one of them either scratched my itch or murdered me. Or there was magic. I chose magic and queued up a robot sitter for instantiation. Gloam probably would not even wake up while I was gone, which would get me half of the sitter deposit back. (And there goes the entertainment budget if she destroys another one.)

While I waited for the sitterbot I chose clothes carefully. Natural fibres, no metal, no plastic. Emptied pockets and pouches of metal and electronics which would be unwelcome. My only concession to the dangers of the night was a sharp wooden blade, carved to fit my hand, invisible to metal detectors and hopefully acceptable at the shrine I would seek.

Sitterbot programmed, I was ready to drift into the night.

“Just where do you think you’re going, Tanna?”

“You can’t help me Bear, you’re not equipped.”

“What would I need to acquire?”

Always logical, everything had an engineering solution to Bear. I could always count on his willingness, if not always his ability.

“Magic, or a penis. Preferably both.”

I was out the door without waiting for his reply.

Slipping through the city of night, my movements were largely unseen. A few times I felt the quantum itch that told me someone was idly looking at the feed for a particular street-cam as I passed, but it was infrequent enough I didn’t think I was tracked by anything hostile. No doubt, some of those glances were Bear. Though I might defy him, I appreciated his silent company, watching from the shadows. Sorry, I signed with my hand. If my destination existed as I surmised it must, he’d not be able to watch over me there. Keeping a low profile, I averted my face as a frame grabber archived a scene while I passed beneath a camera’s gaze; I skirted the occasional camera that recorded full motion. By roundabout path I came to where the shrine must be.

I knew this location vaguely from hints found in the library. I wouldn’t dare enter lightly but needs must when the devil drives. There should be a guardian on the path between buildings; the rune carved on my wooden blade would gain me admittance if I was challenged. The prayers I must improvise unless I find a guide.

A narrow aisle would take me between towers led to a forgotten square not on any map. My breath came in gasps, and I wasn’t breathless from any exertion, it was the need surging within me.

The empty nook told me the holy ground was unguarded.

I stepped from between cement walls to an open space larger than I would have credited. If I’d ever had any doubts, the secret existence of such a place put to rest the official party line of ‘no magic is real’.

Dimly I could make out a square grotto, trees around the edge and surmounted by blank walls. A hundred stories above could see a postage stamp of stars and navigation lights. The perfume of moss and grass filled the space. A cromlech stood here, two pale granite slabs, a third spanning the gap between, approached by a path of flat black stones. I had found Nature’s stronghold in the very heart of the city.

There was no priestess to lead my prayers, but instinct spoke. I stepped out of my sandals before setting foot on the mossy lawn. The rest of my clothes followed and I stood skyclad in the hall of the goddess. I stepped onto the path, tried to slow my breathing, calm my racing pulse as I stepped from stone to stone. From the last stone I took one more step. Two meters before the symbolic stone doorway I stopped. A sliver of new moon, sharp as razor, had slipped into sight at the apex of the dark well.

I raised my hands, my voice “Astarte, Aphrodite, I beg aid but I don’t know how to address you correctly. I don’t know what prayer or ritual you will accept. Intercession, I plead, for the sake of the love I share with my chosen! Let Celestia forgive me, let my Twilight come to me and take me home.” I could feel the moisture trickling down my thighs, could feel need rising to a juncture beyond retreat. It was instinct again that told me to dip my fingertips in the rivulet flowing from my hunger and raise my hands again to the sky.

,,This is the ritual,,

It was Gaia who spoke inside my head, not Aphrodite.

,,Mother,, I replied with a silent voice.

Without transition I found myself face down on the grass, gasping and breathless as if I had landed hard but no pain from any impact. The ground moved beneath me, heaved and swelled in waves. I could hear the trees around me sway, they were wild dancers. My eyes told me none of this was real, I closed them to embrace the invisible storm. I moved with the rhythm of the waves to stabilize myself and the action ground my pubic mound against a high spot in the emerald lawn. My body responded to the pressure on my clitoris, to the brush of cool grass against my breasts. My need moved to a state of erotolepsy beyond crisis. I yearned for the mystic ocean of power I had drawn from and almost touched when I was with Twilight. I synchronized with the undulation beneath me and the movement built stronger. I kept my eyes tightly closed for fear they would lie to me and tell me that the night was still, that the heaving surface was not really tossing me like driftwood off the ground to slam back down upon it. I knotted my fingers in the grass to anchor myself, buried my face in the green blades. The cool, living, musk of plant and soil was intoxicating and in mystic drunkenness arousal grew and blossomed to a silent thunder of climax. Again the dark ocean opened to my secret senses, but no longer distant, now it was immediate and present just beneath the edge of the mundane. I could press my palms against it and my being, my spiritual awareness was not quite inside my flesh. The mystic surface heaved in the same waves as the grass and the ocean supported me so that my detached spirit occupied almost the same space as my body but my existences on two planes were no longer tied together. When my still-wet fingertips made contact with the invisible sea the mingling of moisture to moisture opened the waves for my spirit to plunge and be renewed. Beneath the waves the movement was more subtle but utterly inexorable. Sinking into the shadows of power I could look up and see my body on the physical plane, still in the throws and tossed by the secret storm. Looking beyond the physical plane I could see the spell I had crafted binding me to Twilight, brilliant and untarnished, crackling with the connection between us. But all that I could scry of Twilight herself was that she yet lived and in this moment that was enough. I drifted towards the surface as the orgasm faded. Grasping at the power uplifting me, I pulled it close, embraced the ocean, brought the connection back with me. Slowly I found myself back in my physical body.

Echos of pleasure and release still pulsed through my nerves. As the lassitude grew I whispered a kiss, “Gaia, mother”, my lips pressed against grass and moss.

,,You will abide, child,, she answered.

The heartbeat in the earth beneath me still pounded in my ears.

—

They came for me then, as I drifted to sleep, two ruffians.

Dregs of the city with rapine in their hearts, they chose their prey poorly. A thin thread connected me to the power I had touched: barely aware of the new strength I used, I swatted at them with my mind. I was fully asleep before their crumpled corpses impacted the wall.

Author's Note

'Precarius' is a legit Latin word, with a legit subtily different meaning than 'precarious', the English word that descended from it. The English word has come to mean any fragile metastability; the older word meant something specifically only achievable with prayer. Vocabulary choice complaints may be directed to English teacher Mr Hansen at [REDACTED] Sr. High -- this one is his fault.