Heron Lake Plateau Dude, you were hallucinating sheep on the road.

Raven did her best to remain calm in the face of Towhee's distress -- because truthfully, this whole thing disturbed her as well. After all, while Towhee was Raven's sister, she was also her child in a way. Those possessive maternal feelings would never go away, no matter how old Towhee got. The red-tinged girl had nursed from Raven's own body, had learned and grown under her loving tutelage and watchful eye. The responsibility had been shared with Finley, sure, but that didn't diminish the relationship between them, at least not from the medic's perspective. And it was never easy for a mother to be faced with such an aberrant, identity-disrupting development in one of her children.

-"You are absolutely, 100% female,"- Raven responded, nodding to emphasize the words as she signed. Truly, Towhee could be whatever she wanted to be. She could let this influence her identity as much as she wanted. But she felt like Towhee really needed the reassurance of absolutes right now, so that was what she gave her. Besides, the female bits were the ones she'd actually been born with. -"It may or may not go away, but it doesn't change who you are. Honestly, it's not even that noticeable. It's pretty well-hidden in all your thick butt fuzz."- Things like that didn't just appear overnight, and Raven had never noticed it before now despite her frequent interactions with the beta.