Morgan the Ringmaster: Remastered!

AN: Hey! Toldja I'd come back to this eventually! Not too much has changed yet, and any real changes will be a long way off. Mostly cleaning up my poor writing. (Not to say I'm some great author or poet or somethin' now— I just improved enough that reading over the original again made me die inside a little.)

AN2: Oh dear, I wrote this new version in December of 2024 and never posted it. Sorry! I wanted to wait until I had several more updated chapters as a backlog before I posted this one, but that's unlikely to happen anytime soon. Had a sudden burst of inspiration before falling asleep and decided to clean this up and post it now. Might be what I need to actually start working on the next few. Here's hoping!

"Hey, nice place ya got here! It's no flying island or sprawling palace, but it's better than what I usually start with."

Y'know, when I was a little kid and still believed in magic and wonder, I never thought it'd be anything close to this. I thought magic was all wise wizards, dreadful dragons, flitting fairies and other assorted alliterations.

Teenage me was a bit more accurate with her assessment, that horny little weirdo.

"Oh cool! Is this what stoves look like now? Where do the flames come out?" My spectral visitor asked as she floated in my kitchenette, her stark white hair (not gray, not silver, white), flowing after her like it was underwater. "Do you still use iceboxes?" I was withholding my judgement on whether she was an unwelcome visitor or not.

My treacherous eyes were leaning towards welcome as they roved over smooth skin, then I **** them away again.

I looked down at the simple silver ring that had seemingly welded itself to my finger— painfully might I add! —and up to the essentially naked ghost-woman admiring my tiny apartment like it was a futuristic mansion.

Down, at the faintly shimmering band of metal I found on the sidewalk on my way home from work and slid on my right ring finger like an idiot. Were those little marks I thought were scratches actually runes?

Up at the deeply tanned and white-haired woman dressed in nothing other than loops of delicate chains connected to shackles on her wrists and ankles. Aside from the flying and the hazy transparency of her form, her outfit was the strangest part of her appearance. There was no rhyme or reason to what the chains covered, no attempt to hide her delicate curves, as if she'd rolled herself through several cobwebs made of sliver and called it good enough.

Down. Up. Down. Up. To an outside observer I probably looked like a bobblehead.

Yep. None of this makes any sense. This is what I get for picking up strange jewelry off the street!

"Uh, hi..." I started, but she had stuck her head in the freezer without opening the door, and the way her pert little ass wiggled side to side thoroughly derailed my train of thought into the gutter. Turns out, her hairless vulva is a pale pink with small, almost silken lips, with a single length of sliver chain nestled between those lips, hiding nothing and accentuating everything, before continuing up and over a similarly colored asshole that seemed to be winking at me after her every movement.

I have no idea how long I stared, but it was long enough for my open mouth to dry out and my pants to become painfully tight.

"Brrr! How do you keep the box so cold? There's hardly any ice! And what's with the bits of cardboard?" When her head reappeared and she asked about frozen pizza, I averted my gaze so fast I nearly got ocular whiplash.

Before my tongue untied itself enough to answer her, she got distracted by the full moon shining through my window despite the light pollution. The two of us spent a long minute staring at a pair of different but equally beautiful moons.

"Hey," she turned to face me as a thought suddenly struck her. "Did you mortals ever figure out how to get to the moon? That Kennedy guy seemed pretty confident last time I was here."

Icy blue, pupil-less eyes ringed with gold and filled with eager curiosity made words pour from my dry mouth. "We did land on the moon a few times, though it's been over fifty years since then and we haven't gone back. And uh... President Kennedy was assassinated before we could go more than once. That was a really big deal at the time." Man, understatement of the century there Morgan...

She sighed in mild disappointment, like she missed the premiere of a movie. "Aw man, I wish I had been on this plane to see that! My previous Master here died right before the launch." She lean forward with one hand cupped next to her mouth, voice hushed to a whisper, "never try to fuck while on a hangglider. That was a huge mess..."

I cleared my throat and tried again at communication.

"Excuse me, previous Master?"

"Oh right, sorry. Feels like it's been a couple decades since I got a new one, I'm outta practice." She held a fist to her mouth and let out a surprisingly loud and deep cough as she cleared her throat before looking at me with a somber expression. "You have claimed a Reality Ring for yourself and are therefore granted the title and Powers of a Ringmaster." I could hear the Capital Letters in her tone. "Along with ownership of me, the Spirit of the Ring."

I didn't see much point in doubting her or the situation. My dreams were weird sometimes, but never this internally consistent. And normally I would be having sex by now if this was a dream. "So... You're a genie?"

She waggled a hand side to side. "Ehhh...same basic concept, but I don't have any real power of my own and I'm not imprisoned, I'm literally the Spirit of the Ring. In a very real sense the Ring is me." She shrugged. "An actual Djinni or Ifrit is very different and tend to find the G-word insulting, though."

Oh. "Sorry?"

"No worries, you couldn't have known." The Spirit casually drifted up to examine my dusty ceiling fan as she spoke, the light glittering on her chains. "You mortals have trouble seeing behind the Veil at the best of times, I hardly expect you to know what's politically correct, not that I take any particular offense. Just be careful with it. Djinn are pretty spiteful about being enslaved for some reason." She sneezed adorably and coughed while backing away from the explosion of dust.

Veil? Is that implying what I think it's implying? Later, Morgan, ask later. "Ah. Well, I certainly understand that... Perfectly reasonable to be upset. What exactly is a Reality Ring? Do I get more than a fancy title?"

The Spirit tittered and held a hand to her cheek. "Fancy title he says..." She reached down and pat me on the head with a ghostly hand, barely mussing my hair and hiding the wince I made at her wording. "You definitely get more than that! You just gotta work for it a bit."

"That's fine." I shooed her away from my head. "I'm working for twice minimum wage right now, this can hardly be worse."

She grinned, showing perfect and slightly sharper than average but not unnatural teeth. "Don't worry, this work will be very rewarding~" She began to pace midair as she explained. "Long, long, lonnng ago in a distant land, the gods forged thirteen Rings to give to their most devoted servants. Each Ring gave their respective Ringmaster absolute* control(within certain limits) over an aspect of Reality." Somehow the Spirit managed to let me hear her caveats without interfering with her explanation. "The Ring you have right there on your finger is the Feminine Ring. It controls all things relating to women and therefore only works on women. Don't worry though, it is far from limited. If you start small and build up, you can change nearly everything about..."

She continued, probably, not that I could spare the attention, there was a faint whistling in my ears and the edges of my vision narrowed until all I could see was the Ring.

Only works on women...

"Yo, Ringmaster!" A faintly translucent hand waved inches from my eyes. "You freeze up at the revelation or something? Don't tell me you're that boring."

I ignored the floating, technically-not-naked woman and instead stared at the faded scar on my left forearm.

Or at least where it used to be.

"Oh? Oohhh. I see what's going on, haven't had one of you since the 1800s, and he was the other way around the poor bastard. Took some doing to fix himself." She crossed her legs and 'sat' down, still two feet in the air as she kept talking, but I couldn't pay much attention.

I had to blink away tears as the other scars melted away like a mirage. The Ring pulsed with an unpleasant but not truly painful warmth with each one. I looked at the genie or 'Spirit of the Ring' or whatever she was and said all that I could have.

"Th-thank you."

Her face had a sad little smile. "You're welcome Master, or would you prefer Mistress?"

I shook my head, "Morgan is fine, but I'd actually prefer Master if you had to use a title. Mistress has some other connotations I don't like."

She nodded and crossed her arms under her breasts, causing my eyes to follow along as the chains she wore exposed then recovered her stiff little nipples with her movement. I shook myself, I needed to focus. Giddy anticipation caused me to run to my bathroom and in front of my mirror.

For the first time in years, I stared back at the man in my reflection without hesitation or flinching.

When people described gender dysphoria, they often said they were disgusted or horrified at how wrong their body looked or felt. That they were trapped in a piece of meat that didn't fit them. A prisoner in a body that didn't fit the mind.

I didn't completely hate my body. I actually liked some of it. I was tall, I built muscle easily. My eyes were a warm hazel and looked out from a passable face with what I'm told was a strong jawline. I tanned instead of burned and girls were outright jealous of my dark brown hair. I kinda liked having a dick and stuff like periods and pregnancy terrified me.

My body was healthy and young. Many would love to have that, kill to have what I had. I was lucky.

It didn't stop me from feeling faintly nauseated every time I saw myself in the mirror or looked down and saw a stranger's hands attached to me. I still cried myself to sleep several times during puberty, confused and scared at the changes **** upon me.

The Ring shouldn't work on me. I didn't deserve it to when so many others were worse off.

Yet when the patchy stubble on my face vanished forever, I fell to my knees and cried.