Latin Prefixes

Tattoos weren’t supposed to hum.

While it was certainly weird to awaken one morning with a dark tattoo encompassing his left shoulder, Vin at least expected it after the dream. What hadn’t been expected was the accompanying strange sensation underneath the tattooed skin. Not quite an itch — it didn’t hurt — and not exactly a buzzing either, more a gentle, contented-seeming vibration that occasionally intensified if Vin ran his fingers over it. In any case, it was constant enough that he barely felt it at all after a couple days unless he focused on it.

As for the tattoo itself, while the basic circular form and the complicated but oddly beautiful sigil that dominated the design stayed the same, he could swear that the smaller circles in the background were shifting when he wasn’t looking directly at it. Some days they resembled extremely stylized kanji, other days, the circular script from Doctor Who. He could also swear that the overall color changed subtly throughout that day, shifting from a deeply saturated black to a deep dark red under certain lights. It unnerved him just enough that he usually kept it covered with at least t-shirt sleeves, but judging by the humming, it didn’t seem to mind.

There was one other bizarre shift that first morning besides the tattoo: the red had returned to Vin’s hair with a vengeance. Not that it looked bad — he had to grudgingly acknowledge that the shift from the nondescript blondish brown to auburn was actually an upgrade — but it was yet another thing to adjust to, along with Carl’s abysmal and constant ginger jokes.

Even those seemed like a small price to pay for night after night of deep, dreamless sleep.

---

Several days later, on a gloriously sunny if still January-frigid morning, Vin woke up feeling like something had dialed up the intensity of the shoulder hum. It calmed down after a moment or two of rubbing it (why his tattoo responded to petting like a happy cat baffled him to no end), but it again ramped up to a pins and needles tingle as he took a shower. By the time he was toweling off, it had shifted to an insistent but painless throb. When he looked down at it, the entire thing was also visually shifting between its usual black to the faintly glowing, smoldering red it had been in the dream.

“The hell?” he murmured, exiting his bathroom and pausing in front of his dresser, frowning at his reflection in the mirror above it. “Tzella, what have you done?”

“Was that not enough warning?”

Vin started, violently enough that his arm, flailing outwards, brought his bedside lamp crashing to the floor. The rest of him lost balance and fell rather hard against the dresser, then to the floor, landing hard on hands and knees.

“I will take that as a no,” Tzella said wryly. She was seated almost in the same position as he had last seen her, but the bed she was sitting primly in the center of was his.

“Fucking hell, woman,” he groaned. “No, definitely not enough warning. Though I suppose next time my tattoo starts flashing I should expect you somewhere behind me in the next few seconds.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, then in a smooth motion rolled to the side of the bed and stood, offering him a hand up.

Vin took it, wincing as he got to his feet. There was definitely a nasty bruise forming near the small of his back where the corner of the dresser had caught him.

“Do you always startle violently enough to require chiseling you from your ceiling afterward?” Tzella asked.

Vin snorted. “First of all, I didn’t jump that much. I didn’t,” he repeated, seeing Tzella’s expression shift to dubious. “Second, I thought you didn’t do sarcasm?”

“Generally, I do not. You have been a terrible influence.” Tzella’s eyes briefly flicked downward, and pain immediately gave way to horror as Vin realized it was his turn to be stark naked and hers to be fully dressed. Black jeans, Docs so pristine they had clearly never touched actual ground, and the Sharpco Suicide shirt still draping down one shoulder, although now the black strap of a bra or tank top poked visibly out from underneath it.

To his eternal gratitude she didn’t comment, only swept his towel up from where it had landed on the floor, handing it back to him. “Also I am not exactly a woman.”

Vin hastily wrapped the restored towel around his waist and immediately felt better. “Sorry. I’m still not great about gender presentation versus identity.”

Tzella raised an eyebrow, her mouth kicking up on the same side. “Oh, is that a thing now?”

He blinked. “You mentioned it was a while since you were last… called, I think you said. How long has it been, exactly?”

“I am unsure.” Tzella looked around the room, her eyes lighting on the large Magic: the Gathering calendar that still showed the previous month, as Vin had neglected to change it. Her other eyebrow joined its sibling. “Are you truly in the two thousand twenties?”

“A little further along even. That’s last year’s calendar. It’s actually January.”

“Ah.” She looked thoughtful. “The last time I was present long enough to see one of these, the year began with a 19. Possibly followed by a 9/”

He whistled. “You don’t look any older than I am.”

“I also looked very different when I first appeared, you might remember.” Tzella’s mouth twisted wryly, and Vin saw her eyes and skin shift briefly back to black and red before settling back into her more human appearance.

“So what you look like is voluntary,” he said slowly.

“More or less.” She had started to slowly prowl around his studio, examining the titles on his bookshelves, the knickknacks, Funko Pop figures and model trains decorating the surfaces and the framed posters on the walls with solemn interest. “Between the summoning spell and the blood fueling it, we have a suggestion of what physical form would be most desirable, but we can play within those parameters.”

“Really?” he scoffed. “I guess it was lucky that the poor fool that accidentally summoned you was straight.”

She looked amused. “What fool would that be, exactly? You prefer your sexual partners to be women, but you have been drawn to your own gender in the past, correct?”

Vin felt his face go from slightly chilly to blazing hot.

“So that is still considered shameful, then? A pity, it seemed like the stigma was finally starting to lift last I paid attention.”

“Well, yes and no. It has lifted quite a bit in some ways. We’re kinda in the ‘several big steps back’ part of progress right now though. And there’s still a lot of…” He made a vaguely all encompassing gesture with the hand not holding the towel. “Guys are still kind of expected to conform to a certain definition of manliness, whatever that means. Usually including being cishet.”

“Cishet?”

“Cisgender and heterosexual.”

“Ah, so you’ve stopped classifying those as normal and just added contrary Latin prefixes to the applicable words. Interesting. Cisgender, not cissexual?”

He shook his head. “I’m the wrong person to ask about the terminology.”

“Are you?” she responded, a mischievous expression tugging at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She leaned against the wall and for a moment the air around her seemed to blur, as if Vin were looking at her through hot air. When the blurring cleared, It took him a moment to realize the outfit was the same but the body underneath it was not; curves had hardened into muscular angles, the shoulders were broader, the chest had flattened, and the face, though still very clearly Tzella’s and still framed by a messy fall of inky ringlets, had settled into a slightly heavier, more masculine shape. Confusingly, she (he? they?) was still gorgeous, albeit a slightly different flavor of it.

Catching Vin staring, Tzella grinned. “Should I have appeared like this instead?”

The same inflection and tone dropped into a velvety bass plucked at Vin’s nerves enough to be wildly uncomfortable. There was also a sharp, burning feeling in part of his shoulder, and he knew without looking that the part of the tattoo specifically drawn to resist Tzella’s allure was blazing yellow fire.

“Don’t do that,” he whispered, closing his eyes.

The burning eased. “I apologize,” Tzella said, voice returned to the previous register. “I was teasing.”

Vin opened his eyes, the sudden panicky tension in his back and groin easing as he noted Tzella had shifted back into the girl he was familiar with. “So you only look like this because it’s what the spell told you I’d find attractive?”

She did her single shouldered shrug. “It makes sense, if the end goal is copulation, to try to check off as many of the deeper desires as one can get away with to ensure that happens.”

“It does.” He sighed. “So let’s say I was a bit more comfortable with being attracted to guys — there’s a can of worms I didn’t expect to open today — you might have shown up as one?”

“Correct.”

“So are incubi not a thing, or…?”

She rolled her eyes. “The question everyone asks eventually. I am perpetually astounded by how directional prefixes somehow always become tied to gender.”

“Huh?”

“Latin again. Incubare, Succubare. Concubare. Lie on, lie under, lie with. The prefix denotes relative position. There was some ancient notion that the male must be on top during sex — lying on — so the concepts were conflated.”

“Oh.” Vin looked sheepish. “I had no idea, I didn’t take Latin in school.”

“To answer your question, we are not polymorphic. Incubi and succubi, as you think about them, are two words for the same entity. As for what gender we actually are?” Tzella shrugged. “Either, both, all, in-between, neither or none, as we will.”

“Do you have a preference?”

Her mouth twisted a little. “It has been historically easier to accomplish what is needed if I appear female, and I confess, I am lazy.”

“Sounds like a lot of my justification for just calling myself straight,” he said, with a scoff.

She cocked her head curiously. “Why does your attraction to men make you so uncomfortable?”

“Can I pass on unpacking that right this second? Also…” Vin pulled in a deep breath and held it for a moment before exhaling. “I’d feel a lot better about this conversation if I were dressed while having it. Maybe also with a couple of coffees under my belt.”

“Very well. Should I leave?”

“No,” he said, too quickly. “Just… I don’t know, turn around?”

Tzella smiled. “A good opportunity to stand at the window and see how your world has changed in the last twenty odd years.”

“True. Just don’t expect flying cars. We can barely trust them on the ground still.”

Vin watched her cross the room to one of the two ceiling high windows, where she leaned her forehead against the glass. His place was on the fifth floor overlooking a fairly busy downtown street; Vin had spent many an idle hour standing in the same spot, often with a cup of coffee, watching the traffic going by. He took the opportunity of her turned back (and a quick retreat into the bathroom for good measure) to hurriedly pull on boxers, jeans and a hoodie before heading towards his narrow kitchen and the Keurig maker contained within. “Do you want— wait, do you even drink coffee?”

“I like coffee, yes,” she replied, a chuckle in her voice.

“How do you take it?”

“Make mine the same way you would make yours,” she replied, after a pause.

“Easy enough.” He pulled down two mugs, ran the Keurig once, then while it ran the second time, added cream and sugar to the first mug before bringing it to Tzella at the window. She accepted it without turning around, bringing the mug close enough to her face to smell it. “Coffee has not changed,” she purred, happily. “Thank you.”

“No worries.” He went to retrieve his own coffee, then joined her by the window. “Anything out there catching your eye?”

She took a cautious sip, humming delightedly before refocusing her attention out the window. “The cars are bigger than what I remember. Also rounder somehow. They seem to be able to move more gracefully through space than before.”

“True on all points, I guess. 90’s cars were still pretty boxy.”

“Mmm. You were correct, there are not many people out. But the few that I can see have my attention.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Those two,” she said, pointing at a tall man in a dark wool peacoat and a significantly smaller woman in large glasses and a mauve puffy parka across the street. They were holding hands as they walked. “Morning after a very passionate first date. They are going to get breakfast, and even though they won’t admit it yet, very much want to return to bed and continue where they left off.”

Vin sighed enviously. “Good for them.”

“Them.” She moved her hand to point to the knot of six older people wearing blue t-shirts over windbreakers or coats, waving flags that said “Peace” or “End war” or “how long must we protest?” at the cars turning or passing the corner.

“What web of drama is the Saturday Morning Peace Squad tangled in?”

She was quiet for a few seconds. “Not a web,” she finally concluded. “One of the ladies powerfully wants one of the others, and it looks like she might have done so for a very long time, but the object does not reciprocate.”

He shook his head. “How can you tell all this?”

“We are drawn to desire. It makes sense that we are able to sense it, even at a distance.” She looked at him, head once again tipped to one side. “Then there is you.”

Vin could feel his face reddening again. “What about me?”

“What do you desire, if not simply pleasure? Whatever it is, you want it intensely enough to suppress your carnal drives, no matter how loudly they scream.”

“Oh.” He sighed. “Just how I’m wired, I think. I need physical intimacy to mean something more than just a means to an end.” He smiled, a little sadly, remembering Tzella’s kiss. “Even if that end would probably be amazing.”

“Hmm.” She frowned a little. “Noble. A bit silly, maybe. But it is not my place to judge you.”

“That’s a first. Most people love judging me.”

“And? Do most people have to live your life?”

“I guess not.” Vin grimaced. “Hard to remember that when it happens, though.”

“Then practice.” Tzella finished her coffee, handing the empty mug back to him. “Did you wish to ‘unpack’ your sexuality now, or do you truly need the second coffee first?”

He coughed, her blunt question catching him mid-swallow. “Not big on forgetting things, are you?” he asked, once he could breathe.

She frowned. “You said—”

“I know, I know. I didn’t actually want to return to the topic.”

“Then you should have said that,” she retorted. There was a barely detectable edge to her voice he hadn’t heard before. “Are all humans disposed toward conversational opacity?”

“Okay, okay, fair shot.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’m particularly bad about that. Forgive me?”

Her brief flash of annoyance melted after a moment. “I also apologize. You confuse me. Which is intriguing, but also incredibly frustrating.”

“Gods.” Vin groaned, self-consciously shoving a hand through his hair. “I can’t decide which is worse; the fact that this is not the first time I’ve been told that, or that my talent for being confusing and frustrating apparently isn’t limited to humans.”

“Something for you to think upon, perhaps?” She smiled, placing her hand on his arm as she stepped around him, making the same area of his tattoo briefly flare again. “I should take my leave.”

“You don’t have to,” he protested. “I would like it if you stayed, actually. If you can.”

“Sweet of you. But I hunger for a bit more than coffee at the moment.”

“I could make something for break…” Vin trailed off, blushing. “You aren’t talking about that kind of hunger.”

“I am not.” Tzella acknowledged. “May I consider your offer another time?”

“Sure,” he answered. “What do you like for—?”

She was already gone.