Cameron To Candy

Candy was still riding the little high from the success of the day.

The CCS challenge had been annoying, humiliating, and somehow… winnable. She’d knocked it out anyway, jaw clenched, cheeks hot, knees bending the right way at the right time. It was proof she could still beat a system even when the system had her in a dress. And she'd made a new friend to boot; the leggy, weirdly strong, and impossibly clumsy Beatrix Thimblewhip.

So tonight, though she'd have her maintenance spanking later, she was first tackling something she’d been dreading: the genealogy. Not Cameron's, Candy's. The fake one that had been created for her.

She wasn’t Cameron anymore. They'd pressed that point over and over again. On her father’s side, the Ministry barely had to touch anything. One tweak, one clean swap. Her real father became her uncle, and “Candy’s father” became a complete fiction; a black sheep diplomat that was inserted to make the cousin story and orphan angle hold. It stung, but she would live with it.

Her mother’s side wasn’t like that. Her mother’s side was just gone. They’d been replaced with ten generations of fakes. Ten couples of meaningless names, a combination of invented people who never existed and real people who had died and left no family behind to question this, all stitched together with tidy ink like a rug thrown over a stain.

Candy stared at the maternal line until her eyes started to burn, waiting for the familiar names to jump out at her the way they should. They didn’t. They were all strangers, no matter how much she wanted otherwise.

The stupid part, the confusing part, was that she hadn’t even been close to her mom’s family. There hadn’t been much family to be close to. Her grandmother had died when Cameron was still a kid, so she hardly remembered her, and her grandfather had died when Cam was just a baby. Cameron's mom had passed away years before the transformation. There weren’t cousins filling the house, no aunts dropping in unannounced, no big noisy holidays, so why did it feel like someone had taken a knife to something vital?

Candy swallowed, and her mind, traitorous, tender, annoyingly sentimental, dragged up the two facts she’d always remembered about that line.

One: a distant female ancestor held the honor of being the longest-lived person in Paddlewickian history. Not just the longest-lived woman, the longest-lived person. It was the kind of record people repeated with pride, as if surviving that long meant you were giving the entire kingdom bragging rights.

Two: Cameron had been named after his great-grandmother, a woman.

Cameron’s mom had wanted to name her future daughter after one of her ancestors. While pregnant, she'd sworn up and down her child would be a girl. She’d been so confident it was almost funny; every woman for seven generations, the farthest back they could trace their line, had had girls. Her child would, therefore, be a girl. She’d said it like it was as reliable as the sun rising, and then Cameron arrived with the audacity to be male.

She hadn’t been deterred. She’d sat up in bed, exhausted but stubborn, and eventually said, “What about Cameron? After my grandmother.” His dad had hesitated long enough to calculate the social damage. “In Paddlewick, it’s a boy’s name,” she’d added quickly, already defending it.

In some parts of the Cone Cameron was only a man's name, while in others it was only a woman’s name. Cameron’s family, at least on that side, had roots in the southeast edges of Cleavendale, the part only a few days' ride from the kingdom of EverGrim. In those regions, Cameron could be a man's or a woman’s name. It wasn’t “confusing,” it was just a name. Of course, because in Paddlewick, Cameron was a boy's name only, Cam’s ancestor had always gone by a nickname. The truth was the government was slightly less involved in some of the outer cities back then. If they'd tried that today, the Ministry would have said, "Rename her a proper woman's name, or we'll do it for you."

At any rate, Mr. Alister had agreed, but he’d leaned in and made it a rule, quiet and absolute.

“We tell no one it was your grandmother’s name. He’ll get teased into the ground if they know we named him after a woman.”

It had been a private thing between his parents and, of course, her maternal grandmother, who was still living at the time. Cameron had lived in fear of anyone else finding out. Greg alone would have buried him in jokes. Nobody living knew about it, or so Candy thought.

Candy stared down at the paper, and the irony hit her so hard she almost laughed. She’d been named after a woman, turned into one, and still stripped of the name anyway, because Paddlewick didn’t care about irony.

She hadn’t expected to care this much. She really hadn’t. She’d assumed losing the old family tree would feel like losing someone else’s photo album, sad in the abstract, but not hers. Instead, it felt like exactly what it was; being told, with a straight face, that her mother wasn’t her mother anymore.

She sighed, thinking, "Well mom, you always wanted a daughter," she shook her head. "What would you think if you saw me now?" Candy huffed at the thought, then shoved the packet away.

She was going to need a drink after this. Not too much. Greg was coming over tomorrow and he tended to be loud. No matter how much you asked him not to be. He was not naturally hangover-friendly. But first…

She reached for her journal. It was the Ministry’s idea, of course. Wives were supposed to record their maintenance spankings, their corrections, their “feelings on care.” But her journal had a different weight than most.

The reviewer on her case wasn’t a random clerk. She was sworn to secrecy under her Level Four seal. Which meant, absurdly, this was the only place she could say the truth without getting punished for it.

Candy opened to the first page. The brass clasp made that little click again, like someone clearing their throat in judgment. She dipped the quill and wrote:

Dear diary,

I'm feeling pretty crappy about never being able to call my mom my mom again.

They replaced her, without hesitation. Seven generations of real ancestors pasted over with ten generations of strangers and imaginary friends.

I hate that the spell turned me into this. I hate that I can’t even keep my own name. I hate that I’m expected to smile and curtsy and memorize lies for homework.

She paused, ink trembling on the tip of the pen. She looked to the side, where the office mirror sat. She looked herself up and down; in the eyes. The one part of her that seemed unchanged. She sighed, then wrote a final line.

I just want to be a man again.

***

"In the high mountain kingdom of Paddlewick, named for the sturdy spanking paddles once used to tan unruly hides, both leather and otherwise, King Rodrick the Firm-Handed ruled with absolute discipline. Trade ran like clockwork, harvests were miraculously scheduled to the day, and..."

These are the opening words to Cameron to Candy. They weren't always, though, as the few of you readers who have been with this story early on might recall. I'd originally gone for a fast-paced swept under the rug feel, but it didn't work for a lot of people. NovelFire's own @LeilaniOtter had said, and I quote, "The world-building took a tea break and never came back." If you're going to critique, it's great to make it funny! :) And she was right, so I took the first lines of the very first Paddlewick story, THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT, and got the ball rolling that way. The short story is only pseudo-canon now, but if you've got a few minutes and have never read it, check out the cheeky origins of the kingdom of Paddlewick, here:

You Are Entering Paddlewick - The Queen’s Gambit: A Tale from the Peaks of Paddlewick | Scribble Hub

Oh and if you’re into furry erotica check out any of the series on LeilaniOtter‘s page. She’s got a ton of great stories.