The room was quiet and comfortable, a ring of sofas and beanbags surrounding a low table on which various snacks had been placed. It was looking good, Emily thought. She was still nervous, this was the first time she’d run any kind of group by herself and there’d been almost a complete turnover between last year and this.

But the university had a good reputation for inclusivity, and that meant a lot of queer and trans people, and a lot of new queer and trans people. Enough that a group solely for the transgender students was entirely viable.

If she could make it through without panicking. That was admittedly quite a big ask.

There was a knock on the door to the meeting room. Emily looked up to see a face in quite heavy gothic makeup peering around the door.

“Is this the right place?” the new arrival said, “I’m new here.”

Emily smiled. “Yes of course! I’m Emily, she/her pronouns. I’m the Coordinator this week while Jamie’s out sick,” she said cheerfully, hiding her internal screams of anxiety.

“Oh cool,” the new arrival said as she sat down on a beanbag in a corner. “I’m also Emily, also she/her.”

Emily laughed. “It’s a common name for trans-femme people, I guess.”

Then the other Emily, resplendent in black and lace, vanished into her phone to wait for other people, and Emily...the coordinator Emily (she was going to have to work out how to handle this, names were important after all)...was left re-arranging the snacks and checking her watch every thirty seconds.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait for long.

“Hi!” came a voice from the door as a tall woman with a cane limped into the room. “Ooo snacks do you have anything gluten-free?”

Emily the Coordinator nodded. “Yeah. But don’t eat them yet please, we’re still waiting for people. I’m Emily, I’m the co-”

“Oh I’m Emily too! I stole my boyfriend’s deadname when he transitioned and he took mine, it was great!” the new girl said, bubbling with an energy that other Emilys could only dream of having.

“Same,” said Goth Emily from the corner.

Emily the Coordinator paused. “...How do I manage names when there’s three Emilys?”

“For now,” Goth Emily added, as the newly arrived and extremely enthusiastic Emily reviewed the snack selection. “It’s a common name for trans girls, after all.”

“There can’t be that many,” Emily the Coordinator said.

There was a knock at the door.

“Hi! Come in!” said Emily the Enthusiastic, to the relief of Emily and Emily, who were respectively dreading and anticipating with silent glee what would happen next.

“Hi everyone!” called a girl with a strong accent from somewhere in North America. “I’m Emily from Colorado and this is my friend Emily, also from Colorado! She’s just started transitioning so-”

She paused. “Is something wrong?”

---

Emily the Enthusiastic was giggling as the eleventh and final Emily entered the room, hand-in-hand with a red-haired French exchange student. She’d been going since Emily number six had arrived, pausing only to write a neat and careful ‘EMILY’ on each and every adhesive name tag and hand them out to the group, and showed no signs of stopping any time soon.

Emily the Coordinator already knew this one, a second-year doing Architecture. She’d had conflicting lectures for last year, so they hadn’t had any of this before. “Oh, hi Emily!” the Architect Emily said, to Goth Emily’s silent joy and Emily the Enthusiastic’s very not silent mirth.

A chorus of greetings came from everyone in the room, startling the two newcomers. As they looked around to a sea of identical name-tags, Emily the Coordinator cleared her throat.

“Please. Please tell me you haven’t brought another Emily,” she said, as Quiet Emily (a first-year Masters student who’d had some realisations over the break) held out a pair of name tags.

They both read ‘Emily’.

The Architect blinked, then smiled at the Coordinator as she took one of the two stickers. “Oh no. She’ll need a blank one. Her name isn’t Emily.”

“Oui!” the french girl said, a mischievous smile on her face. “Je m’appelle Emilie.”

Silence.

“So. Emily then,” said Goth Emily, flatly.

“It’s spelled differently!” Emilie objected, backed up by her girlfriend.

“Okay, we do have non-Emilys in the group,” Emily the Coordinator said, checking her phone.

“They’re just not here right now,” an Emily at the back of the room said.

“Yes. So we have me, Goth Emily, Emily the Enthusiastic, American Emily and Other American Emily, Geology Emily-”

Geology Emily cleared her throat. “You mean The Emily who Rocks,” she said loudly.

There was a chorus of groans. Emily the Coordinator glared at her and kept going. “Quiet Emily, Loud Emily, Science Emily…”

An Emily in a labcoat nodded agreement. How she’d managed to keep it on around the campus without being told off by someone Emily the Coordinator had no idea.

“...Non-Binary Emily, Architect Emily, and Emilie,” Emily the Coordinator finished. “Right.”

She paused.

“I was going to do introductions and discussions but I think we’d need a spreadsheet.”

“Oh I do spreadsheets!” said Emily the Enthusiastic.

“Please don’t add a Spreadsheet Emily to the Emily Spreadsheet.” Geologist Emily (or possibly The Emily who Rocks) said, deadpanning. “It might get confusing.”

Emily the Coordinator slumped forward, head in both hands against the table.

“Why…”

“We could go for lunch and work out the names thing later?” Quiet Emily said, quietly.

A chorus of relieved agreement rippled through the room.

Emily the Coordinator stood up slowly. “Okay! Right! This is the first meeting of the trans social group, we’ve split off from the queer group this year but you’re welcome in both. We haven’t worked out what to call it yet-”

“Emily?” Non-binary Emily suggested. “It is a very common-”

“No. But we’ll work that out later and do a spreadsheet and discussions and talk about what we want to do as a group this year. I’m Emily, I’m your Coordinator and that’s the end of the formal meeting,” she said. Jamie wouldn’t be impressed, but he wasn’t here. “Let’s go to the cafe. I need a burger.”

---

Emily the Coordinator had calmed down by the time everyone had made it to the main cafe on campus and gone through the lines one-by-one after her. The Emilys had found a corner section,easily able to fit the entire group, and the social discussion she’d hoped would happen in the meeting proper was now well underway.

She’d just say she moved the meeting here. No one would blame her. It was working well now and that’s what mattered, she thought.

It wasn’t the icebreaker she’d planned, but she’d take it.

The first plate of food approached in the arms of one of the waitresses, laden with agria fries and the cafe’s signature burger. Her favourite meal here, and something the place was well-known for on campus.

“Burger for Emily?” the waitress said.

“Yes,” came a chorus from around the table, with one loud “Oui!” in the middle.

Then a moment of silence as eyes met, broken only by the sound of Emily the Enthusiastic starting to giggle again. From her seat, Emily the Coordinator looked around the group with wide eyes.

“....We didn’t all order the burger, did we?”

Alex cracked his knuckles nervously as he waited for his master to appear. Fae tended to lie in, which was great for the alchemist, but not quite so kind to faer apprentice. He’d been promised a special lesson today, and his chest was tight with anticipation as the big clock in the corner of the shop tick-tocked away. Or perhaps that was just his binder. Either way, it was now half an hour since he’d been ready to get started.

A few more minutes, he thought, and he’d get out his book. He’d been looking forward to it, and the secrets of alchemy could jolly well take a backseat to vaguely homoerotic detective fiction if his master couldn’t even be bothered to get out of bed.

True to form, just as Alex reached into his bag to escape to a world where he wasn’t an apprentice alchemist and grand-master nervous wreck, a yawn echoed down the stairs from the rooms above. It seemed he would not be able to learn if Detective LeGrande and his faithful assistant might finally-

“Alex, my boy!” his master said, cheerfully. Fae padded down the steps, still in faer dressing gown and slippers. Alex quietly let the book slip from his fingers, back into the bag. It was fine, he could read it later.

“Alex my boy,” his master said again, repeating faerself eagerly. “It’s time to do something fun, exciting, and involving flesh dissolving acid!”

Alex blinked. He’d been expecting more grinding and mixing.

“It has occurred to me, your wise and esteemed teacher,” his master began. “That I haven’t actually done anything interesting with you in over a week, and frankly I for one am bored as fuck.”

If there was one thing good about his master, Alex thought, it was that fae was definitely very blunt with how fae talked about things. The academy had been terrible at that before he’d dropped out to take the apprenticeship instead.

“So,” his master continued. “We’re gonna go back to the proper lab and I’ll show you something a bit more interesting than herbal remedies.”

Alex nodded. Perhaps the day would be interesting even without Detective LeGrande.

The lump of flesh on the table was, in almost all respects, a perfectly normal lump of flesh. This wasn’t something Alex was a particular expert in - in fact he was trying quite hard to reduce the number of fleshy lumps in his life - but to his everyman’s eye it looked perfectly normal.

Except for it being pitch black and emitting a faint whispering sound.

That was quite unusual, in Alex’s experience. Even the meals he’d had to cook for his master at the start of his apprenticeship hadn’t managed that, and what he had made had been enough that both master and apprentice mutually agreed that it was perhaps best if they skipped this part of the traditional apprenticeship.

Though fae’d given him some bonus lessons on poison antidotes, so it had worked out alright in the end. This though…this was something new.

“And here, my apprentice…your first foray into the more…unusual… ingredients that we as alchemists sometimes work with!”

His master made a triumphant wave at the lump on the worktable.

“Mystery meat!” fae declared, faer eyes twinkling with glee.

“What,” Alex said, flatly.

“Mystery meat!” his master repeated. “It’s meat, that reveals secrets!”

Alex looked at it for a moment. “What…is it?” he asked. “Was it? Where does it come from?”

“Haven’t a fucking clue,” his master drawled. “If it tells you, let me know.”

Alex gave the lump a careful poke with a gloved finger. “So it’s…supposed…to whisper like this?”

“Oh you can actually hear it!” his master said, flapping faer hands with excitement. “That’s not common at all until we’ve properly mixed it into a potion!”

Alex blinked. “Wait, so I’m doing something-”

“You’re doing something better than I am, my dear! I can’t hear it. Not as much magic as you I guess. Though not hearing it’s supposed to be a good thing so I suppose we’ll see…”

Alex started to open his mouth to ask the stupid but suddenly very important question of why being naturally able to hear the black lump of meat whisper the secrets of the universe unprompted was a bad thing, but his master was already on faer way, pulling bottles and vials from shelves.

Perhaps he should have stuck with Detective LeGrande instead. The cover had showed him and his loyal sergeant hiding in a cupboard pressed against each other to hide from some shadowy figure and completely coincidentally gazing deeply into each others eyes, and that was very promising considering what had happened in the last one.

“Now!” his master said having set up faer equipment. “As we’ve covered before, a lot of the more advanced alchemy is technically magic. And what’s the most important part of things that are technically magic?”

Alex sighed. “Believing your own bullshit?” he said wearily.

“Believing your own bullshit!” his master repeated, nodding sagely. “We’ve gone over it before, but today we’re actually doing it. Greatest secret of alchemy: most of it is utter bullshit. But if you believe the stuff that’s utter bullshit, it might work, because magic works based on intent and feelings and firmness of belief all that junk… but you’re also an idiot, because this all makes no fucking sense.”

Alex nodded, nervously.

“So,” his master continued. “The trick with the magic side of things is to make yourself know it works so firmly that it does, without falling down the dark side of actually believing any of this junk and stuffing crystals in uncomfortable places. Don’t do that.”

Alex swallowed. “I wasn’t really intending to?” he said. The whispering was getting clearer now, he could almost make out words and phrases.

“Good start, always good to see in apprentices. Much rather have a kid like you than one who thinks they know how things work. They’re insufferable let me tell you,” his master complained. “I’ve been doing this for decades and I have no idea how this stupid mess actually works because it doesn’t but…”

Fae smiled at him.

“I know that I can make it work if I want to.”

Fae paused. “That was almost profound, I should get a job doing this.”

Alex coughed. “You do have a job doing this,” he said, playing along with his master’s whims.

“Oh good. Let’s get to it then!” Fae said, picking up the slab of meat and slamming it down on a cutting board.

“Today, I’m going to be making some potions to help with intuition. Active ingredient is this chunk of mystery meat. But if we just chuck it in a bottle and give it to our customers two things will happen that, as an alchemist, you really don’t want to,” fae explained, as Alex scribbled away on his notepad. “The first thing is that they’ll get really sick because frankly this stuff is awful and also it's raw meat. The second thing is that they might get intuition about anything at all, and that’s not marketable. People want specifics.”

Fae pulled over a basket of flowers. “And that’s where these fuckers come in. You read up on your flower languages, Alex?”

Alex nodded. “Of course.”

The alchemist smiled. “And what did you think of it?”

Alex grimaced. “I thought it was stupid and I hated it,” he said bluntly.

“Good! It’s horrible! It’s wretched! It's horrendously romantic and icky! But people expect it to work so if we swallow our scientific thinking and make it work…we can give people exactly what they want. Or more accurately I can, and you can watch and learn because you are a sensible young man and learning this bullshit is going to be hard for you.”

Alex nodded, trying to ignore the half-phrases hissing from the meat. He was starting to understand some of them now…

“Now pass me the black roses,” his master said. “We’ve got half a dozen jilted mistresses wanting to know when and how Lord Carter finally snuffed it and I don’t have the contacts to just go ask his wife. Lovely lady. Very good with hemlock, would you believe? Though that doesn’t preclude other options-”

He tuned fae out as he dutifully went to pick up the roses, when suddenly-

They don’t kiss.

The words leapt from the mass of whispers, startling him into gripping the stems tightly. He yelped as the thorns drew blood.

“Careful there,” his master said sternly. “You alright?”

“Ah…yes, master. I just…heard something.”

“From the meat? That’s rough. Hopefully it doesn’t throw too much at you.”

Alex sucked on his finger as his master kept working, faer commentary pattering away as flower after flower went into various vials. What had that even meant? They didn’t…

The countess couldn’t have done it.

Wait…

The author has realised his audience but is too cowardly to follow through on-

“Uh, master?” Alex said, trying to drown out the chorus of hateful whispers.

Fae looked up from the meat grinder. “You look a bit pale,” fae said. “Are you alright? We’re about to get to the part with the sulphuric acid and trust me you do not want to watch that if you’re not feeling-”

“It’s telling me things about my book!” he interrupted, indignant.

His master looked at him flatly. “Your book?”

“My book, the one I bought the other day but hadn’t read yet.”

A shocked look flashed across his master’s face, then a look of intense annoyance.

“Oh fucknuggets!” fae shouted, slamming faer fist on the workbench and scattering the various vials. “That’s just what we need!”

Alex’s hands were trembling. He tried to hide them from his master, but fae’d seen his anxiety in action before.

Fae put faer face in faer hands, sighed heavily, then turned to faer terrified apprentice. “Sorry, Alex. You’re alright, it’s not your fault. It’s mine. I left the meat out overnight. Can’t use it now.”

Alex went through his breathing routine, calming himself down. A task that was made easier when his master threw the meat into a chute down to the waste bins below. Though since he was the one who had to clean them out, that wasn’t going to be the end of it for him.

“Sorry about that, apprentice,” his master said, peeling faer gloves off. “I wanted to give you a big show before we get back into the mind games stuff of getting you to think the right way for this shit. Looks like it’s not happening now, that meat wouldn’t have done what we wanted, whatever flowers and fuckery you put in the vials with it.”

Alex nodded gingerly. “Um…why? What was wrong with it?”

His master gave him a curious look. “You’re the one who was hearing it. Think about what it revealed. Think about why that’s a problem….then you tell me what’s wrong with the Mystery Meat.”

Alex thought. It had been a mishmash of threads at first, the way his master had said was apparently supposed to happen, before it had become clearer…talking about the book he hadn’t…

No. That was far too stupid.

But the expressions that must have flitted across his face had given away his realisation. His master nodded gravely.

“It’s spoiling.”