Chapter Text
Grian was flying back to his base from the Barge, he had much to do before the opening of his newest business venture.
Landing down by his ever-growing chest monster and grabbing and emptying some shulkers, he paused. Something didn't feel right. He squinted at the shulkers as he thought about what had happened previously in the day, which was only a few hours, scrutinizing every detail. He talked with Scar and Mumbo for a bit, then stocked the Barge(and realized he was out of sand), and now he is at his mansion base, looking through shulkers.
What was wrong? Well certainly not something he.. that felt wrong.
"...That might be it." he thought aloud, looking away from the shulker in his hand and moving to the portal so he could get to an area for the sand faster. "but that's a problem for future Grian, I need sAAAnd right now. Whatever that is can wait."
He chuckled to himself as he made his way to a desert.
~~~
Over the course of the next couple of days, Grian talked to other hermits between obtaining materials for, planning, and building his newest quests for the Barge. Today, he was walking through the shopping district, thinking of some new pranks to pull. He could see that Mayor Scar was making steady progress with replacing the mycelium with grass, there were only a few patches of the mushrooms left. He thought that, with time, whatever problem from the other day would go away, alas it had not.
"Hey, G-man!" Rendog called, running over to him. Grian frowned at his words, he hoped Ren didn't notice. Wait, why was he upset? It's not like he didn't want to see Ren, Ren's awesome! fixing his expression, he smiled at Ren as he approached.
"What's up, Ren?" Grian asked.
"I haven't seen you in a bit! How are ya doing?"
"Good, good, I was just thinking of some new pranks to do." He didn't seem to have the same energy about him, and he hoped it wasn't noticable. "How are you?"
"Im good as well, just getting materials for my base." he spoke, "Oh, have you restocked yet?"
"Yea, I did yesterday, so there should still be supplies." Grian responded.
"Alright, thanks dude!" there it was again, a twinge of some sort of upsetness. "See ya later!"
Ren went on his way, and Grian was left to think. Why were these masculine terms just now bothering him. It hadn't been that way before, had it? No.. it had...
He decided that if he were to have another a gender crisis, the shopping district is not the best place, so he flew home.
~~~
As he got to the safety of his hobbit hole, he let himself think freely. Sitting on the ledge of Professor Beak's enclosure, he thought back to how happy he got when he played as Ariana Griande or any other feminine roles. But he also remembered back in highschool, before everything happened, when he would spend hours at night researching about pronouns online because something about he/him wasn't always okay. Grian couldn't remember what he had found, but there were some terms that he liked. Too bad he didn't get the chance to tell anyone before highschool happened, not even Taurtis. Because of the hostile enviroment, he learned to repress the winces and any other outward indicators when he/him didn't feel right.
But, what did he learn going down the rabbit hole before? Grian cant seem to remember...
"Okay," Gri took a breath. "Gonna solve this Sherlock Grian style. What do I know and what tests can I do to verify, then I'll draw a conclusion from that."
Grian sat down at the desk and pulled out a blank notebook and started writing things as he(she?) spoke.
"What do I know? Well, lets see... I seem to like being reffered to with masculine terms sometimes, but not all the time. I enjoy being seen as a woman as well, but its not always. Sometimes I feel as if neither fit right at all either. I also had this problem before in highsc- wait," Grian paused. "I still have some of my highschool stuff!"
Grian dropped down to the floor next to his(their?) bed and grabbed the box of highschool things.
There it was, in between a picture of grian, sam, and taurtis and a blue and red friendship bracelet, was grian's old phone. She(?) picked it up and tried to turn it on. Somehow, it wasnt dead yet??
Grian opened it and found the internet, and looked up one of the things they(?) remembered from researching before. The pronoun dressing room.
Grian opened the page and was taken aback by the amount of pronouns in the generated area, grian had forgotten about neopronouns
Grian inserted his name and put in she/her pronouns in the boxes. That felt right, much better than he/him
She decided to try more, going through the whole list of pronouns on the website and writing down the ones that either felt right or grian would be okay with in seperate areas. As she went through she remembered parts of her previous searches before highschool.
At the end grian was left with 5 sets of pronouns that she loved or remembered loving: They/them, she/her, he/him, voi/void, and chir/chirp
at the moment though, she/they/chirp felt right. After a bit more digging they also found the term genderfluid, meaning that someone's gender identity changes overtime.
She sighed in relief, it was like a weight was lifted off of their chest. After who knows how long, Grian figured themself out somewhat. Chir was excited to tell chirs friends
Wait...
And the weight is back at full force..
How will her friends react? How will she tell them? What if they hate chirp for who chir is? What if- Grian took a deep breath "I'll just tell mumbo, i could send him a letter or text him." chir fidgeted with chirs feathers "yea, ill just ask him to meet me here, yeah thatll work."
Grian started typing, erasing every other word as they went trying to figure out what to say. After about 5 minutes they ended up with "hey, meet me at my hobbit hole please"
With a deep breath, she sent it and then turned off her comm and started thinking of what to say.