Young Writers Society

"Oh, yes, we're all gay as larks. After these jokes, who wouldn't be." I said sarcastically.

"N-nah fam i meant like...like you know, g a y. Like I'm inside another mans body and that's...yeah. Gay." I explained, giving up the act. I looked my body straight in the eye.
"Do you understand?"

It took a moment to register, but I was able to divine the new connotations of the word.

"...Oooh. Oh. Is that what they're calling it these days?
Though you're, ah, a tad young for that sort of activity, aren't you?"

"I'M NOT TRYING TO BE GAY!" I exploded, letting myself react more energetically than i had meant to.
"But seriously though," I said, calming my voice, "is it gay or nah?"

"Not if you don't partake in... said activities. In and of itself, I'd say it's no gayer than borrowing a coat."

I believed in my own logic, but I admit that this argument was partially made for my piece of mind. If I was incorrect, I'd hate to think what it would mean for poor Aegeas.

The laugh, short as it was, lifted his spirits. He didn't have much of a sense of humor, and it being acknowledged in any way was strange. Yet, there was something comforting in finding it at the weirdest possible time.

And now Boris and Raiden were talking about being gay, so it was only getting weirder.

"I hate to break it to you," Aegeas said, "But I've seen things much more gay than that. You're just...changing forms, I suppose. That's pretty basic."

The moment they stepped into the library, Codix and Maahes immediately let out particularly loud gasps. The place was enormous, and was filled with a sprawling array of books and digital consoles. Kartiel was already standing at one of them by the time that they entered, reading through text that was too far away for either one of them to make out its contents.

Codix turned.

Maahes was already gone, hurrying off towards one of the bookshelves with a large grin on his face. He ran his fingers across the spines, and the grin only grew larger. "I remember this place," he dreamily said, "and I remember these books - Oh!"

He grabbed onto one of the books and pulled it out. Codix perked up. "Does it have what we're looking for?" he eagerly asked.

Maahes shook his head. "No, but it's an old Alteran story! I loved this one as a kid. I kept making Odris read it to me before I understood the language."

Codix stared. "...Wasn't this place deserted for awhile?"

"It was," Maahes confirmed, having put the book underneath his arm as he continued his search.

"Like thousands of years awhile?"

He nodded, positively beaming as he grabbed another old book off the shelves and put it next to the one he was already carrying.

Codix hesitantly went over to Maahes was, seeing that he had the best idea of where everything was - he doubted Kartiel even knew it that well. Besides that, he also had a pressing question he just had to ask.

"...Maahes, how old are you?"

Maahes paused and turned back to look in his direction. "Uh, maybe twenty thousand? It's hard to tell with the different time systems, and with my sporadic summoning early on-"

There was a loud crash as Kartiel knocked over the console. "Twenty thousand?" he repeated, a surprisingly nervous tone to his voice. "As in twenty thousand years?"

"Yeah," Maahes said, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head with his free hand. "I know it's hard to understand when you haven't lived as long."

Kartiel quickly looked away and silently returned the console to its rightful spot.

Bo stared into the giant library with wide eyes, immediately feeling overwhelmed. How exactly were they supposed to find what they were looking for?

"Does... anyone know where we might find what we're looking for?" he asked.

Kartiel didn't look up, seemingly to engrossed in his reading to hear what Bo had said. Codix shrugged; he had no idea where to even begin. It was Maahes who seemed to have an idea of where things would be in this place. Luckily, Maahes appeared to have heard the question. He closed the book he was in the middle of leafing through and put his hand on his chin. "Hmm...I'd say the technology section? It would probably be surrounded by basic instruction manuals, since they were used a lot."

"Ooooh, okay. Hmm, technology... technology..." he repeated the word quietly to himself as he scanned the labels on the sides of aisles - glad that Kartiel had somehow made it possible for this brain to understand Atlantian, or however you said it. When he finally found the technology sign, he bee-lined towards it. "Thanks much!" he called out to Maahes before he hurried away.

Nadira was silent for a moment.

"I don't know," she hesitantly commented. "He's inside another guy's body. That sounds pretty gay to me."


Codix wandered after Bo. Maahes was clearly more interested in reading things for nostalgia's sake, and Kartiel was...well...he was Kartiel, and he didn't seem to be in a particularly good mood right now.

Bo looked back as Codix joined him in the aisle, and he looked up at the tall shelves of books. "Hmm, so we're looking for books that might be about or have stuff about those little doo-hickeys Maahes was talking about that we all grabbed in the beginning. Let me know if you find anything!"

Aegeas blinked. "I think we have a very different idea of what's gay and what's not," he said.

I nodded. "I agree entirely. If the definition was loose enough to incorporate involuntary body-switching, it would be so all-encompassing as to be perfectly meaningless.
Therefore, I say we'd at least have to hold hands for it to count."

"Or wear matching ties." I added, on second thought.

Codix nodded, then started to dive headfirst into searching. He tried his best not to look too much in Bo's direction. Now that he had taken care of seeing himself every time he looked over at Maahes, the only thing that was left was being thrown off every time he looked over at Bo. He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't looking at Nadira, even though Bo looked and sounded just like her now.


Nadira looked over at Raiden, a small smile beginning to spread across her face. Codix was the one who usually cracked jokes, but she had the ability to. It was just that there was never really a need when Codix was there.

"I don't think the older generation gets us, Raiden."