Moonspear ^______________^

“You’ve not been yourself.”

Pie couldn’t say why these words hit her right in the feels. She went very still, offering no resistance to Killdeer’s display of affection. But dismay spread, slow and insidious, within her.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell him, Treepie just didn’t know what to say. She had never been able to make sense of her struggles with agoraphobia, much less explain them to someone else.

As for her more recent issues, Tiuttuk felt a stirring of shame. Nature has bestowed her with a unique gift. At least that’s how she’d felt about it, once upon a time. Now, she began to resent the half of her anatomy that didn’t agree with her identity.

I guess I’m still figuring myself out, she said quietly, those four words still on repeat in her head, now joined by four more: Who even am I?