Tradition

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Freshmen at the Hobbes Athenaeum occupied a very low place on the totem pole. Its founders had been English immigrants and brought all their ideas about education from there, though over the decades American pedagogy had slowly seeped in to the curriculum. Americans did magic very differently from their European counterparts. And at the college level it required knowing the basics of elemental manipulation backwards and forwards. Everybody grew up learning basic cantrips and even a little divination in high school. It was here that the truly talented began to shine.

"Patrick! Stand right where you are!" his Sophmore tormentress commanded. She was taller than him by two inches, and had a bosom that looked like a ship under sail under her clinging white Victorian robe-dress. The young man froze in place, eyes darting about on the tiled courtyard, before he found the spot again. "You can't move until your counterpart arrives."

Today was euphemistically called "The Grand Tour". Each Freshman and Freshwoman were assigned a Sophomore of the opposite sex. They had to follow them at a distance no farther than seven feet, winding on a long walk around the entire campus. With the body-clinging, lace-trimmed robes the female students wore, it could be a treat to watch from behind. But Patrick wasn't about to start leering at that sourpuss.

He tugged on his own blue robe, turning up the cuffs to frown at the runes someone had drawn there with a sharpie pen. In two colors, no less, he thought. They were a flowing runic script he didn't recognize. But he didn't have another robe, and the uniform was absolutely mandatory during official class hours. But something was obviously up. Nobody else's robe had been vandalized. Now they were making him stand on a certain spot on the cracked terrazzo courtyard between the Men's and Women's Residence Halls. The buildings themselves had been here at least sixty years, and the courtyard had overgrown oaks and purple-leafed Japanese plum trees.

The Freshwomen were just completing their own march around campus, coming from the opposite direction. Patrick smiled at the six girls. This year's entering class was very small, six women and eight men. That meant fierce competition for the available females. And all six were quite beautiful examples of womanhood, in Patrick's mind.

Their robes accentuated their best features. Hips and bust, they were actually more like quasi-Victorian dresses with low necklines, the tops clinging to their curves, while the bottoms flowed downwards like a waterfall and floated magically over the ground so they didn't get dirty. In contrast, Patrick's blue robe was all angular and short, with multiple layers that suggested physical strength, with broadened shoulders. These differences reflected the nature of magic itself.

They were walking precisely along a tile arc around him. He noticed that the prim-appearing girl at the very end of the line was looking at him with a very anxious expression on her face. The twelve students stopped, and the last girl's guide tugged on the front of her robe. "Well, go on, Cindy. Do it," he ordered. He was the spitting image, in attitude, of Patrick's own female guide.

She had long, straight dark blond hair and was maybe three inches shorter, with an athletic figure and great hips, though a little overripe in the breasts for his tastes. She bounced a little bit as she walked, though her pretty face was marred by anxiety. Patrick could tell she was looking at his face very closely, lips pursed pensively. Finally, she stopped in front of him. "Trade," she said.

"Trade what?" Patrick replied, one eyebrow raised.

"Give me your robe, and I'll give you mine. It's tradition," Cindy explained, one of her classmates behind her pulled down the back zipper and she slid her arms out of the sleeves, revealing a white satin bra and a fashionably pale, creamy complexion.

Patrick's own guide elbowed him in the ribs. "Do it, Plebian," she said. "It's tradition. This used to be an all-female institution, you know."

"Um..." He stammered, eyeing the frilly feminine garment that was now being shrugged off of the freshwoman's shoulders. Some sort of symbolic crossdressing? His classmates and the other Sophomores were all watching, expecting him to follow through. His roommate snickered, clearly glad it wasn't himself. Just how was that robe of hers going to fit, anyway? Maybe that's what the runes were for, though it seemed more complicated than needed for something that simple. "Um, okay."

Patrick's old-fashioned robe took a little doing to remove, with several buttons down the front at least he didn't have to pull it over his head. But he wore nothing underneath but boxer shorts. So the two of them were now standing half-naked in the courtyard, surrounded by nearly thirty of their classmates, some of whom began to chuckle, then laugh.

Cindy handed her robe over, and he gave her his. She shrugged it on almost right away, and it fit her like a tent, leaving him to puzzle over just how hers was going to fit.

"It'll fit," the sour female Sophomore said. "Trust me. Like a glove."

"Magic, of course," he said to nobody in particular. He noticed that the inside of the robe-dress also had runes written inside. Except they were an angular script instead of the flowing versions inside his. Getting into this would take some doing. Dropping it to the ground, he stepped into the circle created by the skirts, then reached down to wiggle it up over his hips while putting his arms through the sleeves.

He had help. Rhonda, the Sophomore who had led him around for the past two hours, zipped him up. For a moment he was amazed that the fabric didn't rip. In fact, it felt quite soft against his skin.

"Okay," Patrick said, blushing at the continued sniggering from his classmates. He looked at one in particular, his roommate and friend of his who hadn't said a word through all this. "Now what?"

The runes flared.

Patrick felt his insides convulse, and he nearly doubled over in the not-quite-pain. His entire body felt like it was made of clay, the feeling of a mana-surge flexing against his body, changing it, twisting it. And there was a singular sound from his chest, like half-melted butter being poured on a countertop.

Glorp.

When he regained his senses, he was staring at his own face. Except... it was higher than it should be. And it had an expression of absolute shock and dismay. His reflection then fumbled for his robe's buttons, opening them... all strange, since these were sensations he didn't feel himself doing... and pulled out a white satin bra.

Wait a second, he thought, mind sputtering. He looked down.

And got a face full of cleavage. "Um..." he stammered. No. Not he any more. Not with that voice, and certainly not with that weird feeling between her legs. "What the... what the hell? Transfiguration? You swapped us?"

"Precisely," Rhonda said.

"Sorry," "Patrick" apologized, before going to take Patrick's place behind Rhonda. "They made me do it. It really is traditional here, believe it or not. We'll talk later, okay? Compare notes?"

"Um," Patrick stammered, cupping her breasts for a moment. Everything felt wrong. But the sensations were so overwhelming it was all she could do to keep on her feet. She was still wearing boxer shorts under the robe. Cindy had helpfully laid the bra over her left shoulder. She stared at her new cleavage. This is graduate-level magic! she thought. Wasn't it against some kind of regulations to use it on Freshmen--or Plebians, as they called them here? "Holy shit!"

"We'd better trade shoes, um, 'Cindy'," "Patrick" said. As a woman he had worn a pair of open-toed sandals with a small heel. Now his size-twelve feet spilled over the edges. "I wore sandals just for today," he explained.

By comparison, Patrick's smaller feet slid around inside her cavernous sneakers. She stumbled over next to her male-body double and sat down, pulling the robe-dress up so she could slide off socks and shoes. They came off without untying, revealing a pair of near-perfect feet.

"I'll miss those feet," he said wistfully.

Rhonda's male counterpart scratched his chin stubble and looked at her. "Should we have them swap underclothes behind the bushes?"

"No, Cramer. I don't want to make things more embarrassing than things already are for them," the black-haired Sophomore said in a surprisingly sympathetic tone. Then her voice hardened again. "Get going, pleebes. Shoes on."

That done, they were told to stand back-to-back, close enough so that their butts touched. They were then given a sheet of vellum, the border of which was covered in more runes. Patrick knew enough to recognize a geas-spell when she saw one. They were ordered to recite.

"I do solemnly swear the following. I will take the name of my female opposite and, to the best of my ability, under the watchful mana of this geas, continue her life unbroken and in good faith. This I swear, and from this day forth for the duration of this Hostage Exchange, I am Cynthia Ilene Kern."

"...Patrick Robert Rowe," her male-body double completed with a note of regret.

At the end, she could just feel the binding of the geas around her as the vellum flared and evaporated into clouds of spent mana. She couldn't even think of herself with the name Patrick now. The bindings tightened around her mind, bending it. Okay, fine. I'm Cynthia, she grumbled. Damn it. What is this? Some kind of twisted pleeb hazing?

A third member of the conspiracy stood up on one of the planters. He was gray-haired and old enough to be one of the professors. "I am going to let everyone know that the geas extends beyond Patrick and Cynthia, here. Unless you know the dispeller, all those in this courtyard will be unable to discuss the matter with anyone outside this group. To the world at large, even to their own families, these two are the very same people. Okay?" He looked at the swapped duo and smiled. "This doesn't mean you two can't have some fun. I'm Professor Rangel, and I'll be supervising this so-called 'prisoner exchange' in the War Between the Sexes. Off you go."

That done, the newly christened "Patrick" marched away, under Rhonda's close watch, moving all wrong. There was simply less hip than he was used to. Everyone else laughed as "Cindy" watched wistfully and slipped into the perfect-fitting sandals. "Shit," she muttered.

"It's not ladylike to swear. Get marching, Cindy," Cramer told her with a dry grin. "We just have a couple more laps before we'll let you go back to your dorm rooms. You'll get used to those boobs and the name before you know it, Cyn-thee-ya."

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The dorm buildings were four-story structures, the female version dating back to the founding of the Athenaeum in 1895 as a college of "practical witchery for women" as they called it in those days. Cynthia didn't know much about the university's history, though the events of the past hour had certainly piqued her interest. All that concerned her now was expectations, her own, and what her classmates expected of her.

She was hard-pressed to keep up with Cramer as they quick-marched around the pathways that wound in and around campus, going the opposite direction than before. The satin bra was still slung over her shoulder, and her chest bounced in the bodice. But even that wasn't so strange, compared to the rolling of her hips around her not-really-empty groin. Alien, alien. It was one thing to see female anatomy in an issue of Playboy, and quite another to experience it from the inside.

The other female pleebs kept taking glances at her whenever they turned corners, while the male Sophomores steadfastly kept from leering at any of the pleebs in front of them. She swallowed, realizing Cramer was a good six inches taller. And she certainly felt much lighter, even in the cumbersome robe-dress.

The group passed the male pleebs only a third of the way around. They were moving quite fast, and as before, Cyn--she felt some pressure from the geas--Patrick was bringing up the rear. He gave her a helpless shrug as they went by. "I left some things for you on mmmmuh... the desk!" he shouted, face twisting as the geas changed even that seemingly innocuous line of thinking.

It was nearly five in the evening when they finally arrived back at the entrance to the Regina Wood Hall, the women's dorm. Cramer and the five other male Sophomores stopped them in a line in front of the main entrance, which was on the side opposite from the courtyard. There were a couple dozen upperclassmen and assorted faculty walking around--the library was just a hundred feet away. So the geas was now in full effect. Otherwise Cindy knew there would be sniggering.

"Okay, girls. The Grand Tour ends here," Cramer said. "You're officially off class time, so you can go dress in your street clothes and go eat or whatever it is you girls like doing. I highly recommend getting acquainted with the library. You'll be using is a lot the next four years--or longer if you opt for graduate study. Good evening, girls."

It seemed someone knew how to find cracks in the geas, Cindy thought with a mental grumble.

The young men left, without so much as a leer, and went back towards their own dorm.

The young woman next to her, a taller brunette with shoulder-length hair and brown eyes, immediately grabbed the bra that was still draped over her shoulder and hid it under her arm. She smiled warmly. "We'd better go up to our room," she said. "You left a few things for yourself up there." From the look on her face she knew more than she could say here.

The newly-female Plebian followed her inside the dorm. Cindy truly didn't know what to expect. The dorms were strictly single-sex, even down to the ward-spells and mundane security guards. Letting any man through if the wards failed (or were disabled by masculine ingenuity) meant instant loss of job for the guard, so they were sticklers about it. The same went for the men's dorm. So even with the geas and the new body, Cindy felt just a little strange walking right in, though she really belonged there now.

The building hadn't been updated since the Eighties, and it showed with the worn carpeting and flickering light fixtures. Rooms were assigned by class order, with the patricians--seniors--having their own rooms on the bottom floors, and plebeians bunking two-to-a-room on the fourth. Since this years entering class was so tiny, the juniors and sophomores even had rooms of their own. The building housed a hundred students in a space intended to hold twice that many.

"You remember the room is pretty cramped," Alicia was saying carefully as they rode the ancient, rattling elevator up. There was a junior in there with them. She had her nose in a book of runes. When she got up on the third floor, her roommate stared after her. "Now there goes a dedicated student. Classes don't even start for almost a week."

The top floor was empty, with only the florescent sconces providing light since the ceiling rods weren't working. Alicia snapped her fingers and created a white witchlight to see by. Feeing a little numb, Cindy followed her wordlessly until they reached their room.

It was a little smaller than the rooms in the male dorm. Two beds, two desks, one huge shared closet, two footlockers. But what really caught Cindy's eye was just how amazingly neat it all was. Move-in Day had only been yesterday, and Patrick's room hadn't even been unpacked yet--except for the computer and a few other bare necessities. There were even sharpened pencils in the holder, and in the center of the desk sat a day planner and a handwritten note sitting atop a new white MacBook.

"Rhonda came in last night and told us what was going to happen," Alicia explained. "It really is tradition. Something having to do with when they first admitted male students in the early Fifties. She didn't want to do it, but Rhonda was very persuasive. So she spent all night getting things ready for you. I've never met anyone more obsessively organized." The taller girl sat down on her bed. The springs creaked, then tossed the bra she carried to her roommate. "Want some help putting that on?"

Cindy caught it awkwardly, then held it by her fingertips as if it was mana-active. "Oh God. I really do have to wear these, don't I?"

"I only met you yesterday," Alicia said. "Frankly I... um... I want to help. There's a lot of stuff you probably don't know, and you swore to..."

"Live her life 'unbroken'. I know! How am I supposed to do that?" Cindy interrupted unhappily. Just how long was this supposed to last? A day? A week? Or God forbid, a year? Longer? It'd be easy enough to fool people for a few days, but after a while people would start to wonder about a pretty girl who couldn't dress herself in the morning. So maybe her roommate's offer wasn't so unwelcome after all. "Thanks, Alicia. I'm going to need it."

"Don't mention it, Cindy. Look, I'm going to get out of this stupid so-called 'uniform'," she continued. "I don't want to make you so uncomfortable so soon, but I think we're going to see each other's boobs a lot. I can see you looking at that note, so maybe you should just sit at the desk and focus on it while I change clothes. Then I can leave the room while you change yours. Okay?"

"Sounds good," Cindy muttered. "I guess."

The dark blond girl sat with her eyes fixed on the day planner, then picked up the note. It was a tight, precise script that almost might have come off an inkjet printer. It wasn't a long note. Clearly she hadn't really known what to say.

Dear "New" Cindy,

I hope I've anticipated your needs correctly. Alicia and I spent the whole night trying to imagine the situation for you--and also for me, to be honest. In my day planner I've written down some necessities--when my period is, which brand of tampons and panty liners I like, what I generally like to eat to keep fit, the contact information of various old boyfriends and other friends who might give you a call. On my computer are some family histories and descriptions of my parents and younger sisters. All sorts of things. I even marked what colors I look good in and what styles of clothes I like to wear.

We're not supposed to be able to consciously screw up each other's life. And I'll do the best I can not to foul up yours on accident. I sincerely hope this switch will help us grow as people. We're supposed to be able to meet each other regularly for advice and stuff. Guess I'll see you--me--around.

--Cynthia-the-future-guy.

Morbidly, she opened the day planner and started flipping through pages. Finding today's date, not too far ahead were several days marked with yellow highlighter along the top. The five days after those were marked with red highlighter, heavy at the start, getting lighter towards the end. And written in pen in each respective section: PMS, and Menses.

Blanching, Cindy put her hand on her belly, holding her legs together, when Alicia finally put her hand on her shoulder. "All done, Cindy. What are you..." she looked over her shoulder. "Oh. Right. Um, that. Well, we'll worry about that when it comes. I pulled an outfit for you to wear, okay? Let me know if you need help putting on the bra. Here, let me do one thing before I go."

The brunette helpfully pulled down the zipper on the back of the uniform.

"I'll meet you downstairs at the courtyard entrance living room," Alicia said. "No pressure or anything. Take your time."

Cindy was left to her own devices.

I'm getting out of this filly robe, she resolved. I feel like Cinderella in this thing. With the zipper already undone, she pulled her arms out of the sleeves and pulled the skirts down off her hips, doing her level best not to really look at herself. The boxer shorts she was wearing were simply too loose and came down with the skirts, leaving her completely nude.

This isn't my body, she thought, quickly pulling on the panties Alicia had put on her bed. I'm just... borrowing it. She picked up the bra and with quick, practiced ease hooked the front together and adjusted the straps. And I'm supposed to act like nothing has changed. How am I supposed to do that if I can't even dress myself? Er... wait a second.

She reached back and easily found the hooks, then released them. The bra came off. Then she repeated the process: hooked in front, slide cups around front, shoulder straps through, adjust. All done in less than ten seconds. Her body seemed to know the motions, as if from years of practice. "Um... okay. Some kind of skills transfer?" she wondered aloud.

The denim shorts and the snug red tee-shirt weren't any big deal, though the way the shirt fit around her chest was an interesting sensation in itself. But there was also a feeling like she was missing something. How else can I test this hypothesis?

In the top drawer of the desk was a makeup mirror and a series of neatly-organized containers that included just about everything a girl could need, including something called "runeshadow" she was unfamiliar with. "Okay," she said. "Let's see here..."

As before, her body knew the motions. But it felt a bit mechanical as she applied a small amount of foundation and a few other highlights. She wasn't about to cake it on, though, so after a bit of lip gloss she put it all away and looked at herself in the mirror again. She couldn't help but laugh. "This is so, so weird."

She did her long hair the same way. The locks of lanky, straight dark blond hair were going to be troublesome. A few drags through with a brush and they crackled with static electricity. She tied it back with a scrunchi, grabbed the matching denim purse off the windowsill next to her bed, and pronounced herself ready to meet the world as a female.

Cindy grimaced at the view, both in the mirror and simply from looking down. Like it or not, she had sworn to continue with this girl's life as if she really was her. Honor--and the geas--demanded that she make the best of the situation and follow through with her superlative effort. At least the exchange spell had given her some basic skills. Perhaps there was even more. Okay, maybe not the world. Let's start with just campus.

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"Don't I need some kind of athletic supporter or something?" Cin... the geas gave his mind a squeeze... Patrick grimaced as he removed the satin panties off of his hips. They certainly weren't made for a man, having no place for a package. He was trying really hard not to look at the dangly things. But they somehow felt really, really vulnerable.

His roommate sat with his back turned, appearing to look at something really interesting out the window. "Nope! It all just dangles. But if you want to switch to briefs, there's a Target about a mile away. My 'rents took me there a couple days ago before Move-In."

"Okay, okay. I get it, Carlos," Patrick grumbled. He found it hard not to stare at the broad expanse of his chest, for the first time since childhood not to have the view obstructed by what were really two bags of fat and nursing machinery. There wasn't really a six-pack to be had, but at least his borrowed body wasn't overweight. But he was almost as pale as his old body. If it wasn't for the dark, curly chest hair it would look almost feminine.

"Can I remove the blinding runes now?" Carlos complained. "Please tell me you at least have your boxers on."

"Er... just one second," Patrick stammered. He pulled a pair out of the still-unpacked suitcase and pulled them on. Then he started fumbling for something to wear that matched well. Khaki shorts and a polo shirt. He was finding that his body already knew the motions, even though these particular garments weren't really that different. "All done."

Carlos drew a couple angular runes in the air, which flared and evaported, then blinked a few times. He rubbed watering eyes. "Well, you look pretty good. I guess now we get to pretend like we've known each other for five years." There was a note of resentment in his voice.

"You're part of the geas, Carlos. You can go talk to her anytime you like if you're out of earshot," he replied.

"I think that would be just a little awkward, pretty girl like her," the brown-haired young man replied. He chuckled. "Besides, I'm almost wishing it was me."

"Really?" Patrick's doppelganger said.

Carlos shrugged. "Only almost, 'Patrick'. Kind of like how a soldier will take a bullet in the shoulder to save his buddy in the platoon. He still wouldn't enjoy it very much. Let's go eat! I'm starving."

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