Kagiso pokes me awake and I yawn, stretching as I try to ignore that uncomfortable feeling of freshly-molted skin clinging to my body. I scuttle out of the bedroll before freeing myself from my skin, quickly munching it down as a mini-breakfast as Kagiso watches with interest, wriggling into her own bed before getting ready to sleep. Last watch is mine, so I exit the tent while stretching each one of my legs, lifting them as high as I can and shaking them a bit whenever I take a step. It probably looks really silly, but whatever. Kagiso already thinks I'm cute as heck.

Again, my body is a little bigger and a little less symmetrical. Pretty soon I'll be more backpack-sized than hat-sized, much to both Kagiso's and my own dismay. My mouth is moving closer to one side of my body, and based on how other limbs are shifting in length and purpose I suspect it and my eyes are likely to bud off into a head at some point, getting me started on that humanoid body shape I feel like my final form is going to have.

I'll miss my spherical shape. It's fun, it feels good, but in that transient way where I can't regret losing it all that much. It's like the anxiety I felt in fifth grade when puberty hit, when the hair started growing and my nipples started hurting and I knew that the changes happening to me would never go back, and I'd never look like a kid again. There was terror and regret to it, but also pride. Anticipation. Childhood was something that I was meant to cast off. So, too, is this larval form.

I'm once again surprised again at how much wetter this branch is compared to our last one, my sharp feet sliding partway into the damp soil and emerging covered in moist flecks of earth. A quick flick of each leg into 4D space is easy enough to implement into my walk cycle, though, letting me clean myself moments after I get dirty. I scuttle up on a log we set up by the fire and make myself comfortable. Sela leans up against it, utterly motionless. I feel bad about not giving it a tent, but Helen insisted that, during our night watch, Sela is one of the things that we keep an eye on.

"Hey, Sela," I greet it. "Are you comfy like that? Do you need anything?"

The hum of an internal cooling system starts up, and it's the only indication I get that the robot acknowledges me for a few moments before it finally speaks.

"Friendly tip!" Sela announces. "I am made of metal. Conditions such as 'soreness' or any other form of discomfort caused by extended stillness are exclusively a weakness of flesh. I do not have these issues. I am superior."

I drum my legs, a bit concerned by that response but not really offended.

"...Uh, sorry, poor choice of words on my part, I guess," I say. "I just remember you being in this position when I went to sleep, and if you wanted to be moved for… basically any reason, I guess, I'll do my best to help. I'm not really the best at helping with that sort of thing, but I could probably figure something out."

Another pause.

"...That will not be necessary," Sela eventually answers. "But if you could place the surrounding minerals into my fabricator, that would be… helpful."

"Uh, which surrounding minerals?" I ask. "Do you just mean the dirt?"

"The surrounding environmental detritus is mostly waste material, but it does contain useful elements. I may as well spend the abundance of free time I'm now forcibly subjected to sorting them out."

"Oh, hold on, I can probably save you some effort," I say.

Using my spatial sense, I find a nearby rock that's close enough to the surface and flat enough to work as a sort of table and Refresh all the nearby dirt off the top of it. Then I cast Refresh again to sort all that dirt into its constituent parts, making a bunch of little piles on my new rock-table. And… wow, I mean a bunch.

"Woah, this is way more stuff than I was expecting," I admit. "What even is most of this?"

"...Useful," Sela notes. "Please dispense the pile in row two, column one into my fabrication unit intake."

I bob my body up and down in agreement, using a third Refresh to sort the indicated pile into Sela's belly, which immediately starts churning away.

"This purity is commendable," Sela says, a little begrudgingly. "If you could gather more of this substance, as well as the substances at row one column three, row two column one, row two column five, and row three column three, it would assist with replenishing my stores."

"Sure, no problem," I agree, and start Refreshing more and more dirt into the piles and moving them to Sela at its request. "Do you think you'll be able to fix yourself with this?"

"Negative," Sela responds. "Repair issue is in available designs, not available material. Material storage is simply low after recent fabrications, and replenishing it is an efficient use of time."

"That makes sense," I agree.

I continue helping h—it for a while. It! Ugh, I'm the worst at this.

"Hey Sela?" I prompt. "I, uh, wanted to apologize about something."

"Do not," Sela answers immediately.

…Huh?

"Uh… but I feel like you deserve…"

"I do not care how you feel," Sela says bluntly. "I do not want to know. I want you to stop talking. I want you to stop addressing me. I want you to be quiet and let me stay in low-power mode and let me endure these indignities in silence. If you insist on an apology then this can be your apology to me: shut up."

I swallow saliva, barely holding back an instinct to say 'okay.' Instead I say nothing and just return to sorting.

"Diplomatic infraction logged," Sela announces, and then we descend into silence until the sun comes up and the rest of my companions wake up.

Helen rises early and easily, the warmth of the sun all she needs to get herself out of bed. She grunts a half-hearted greeting at me as she emerges from her tent and walks into Kagiso's, as Kagiso reacts to rays of sunshine rather more like a cat than a person, simply stretching out and letting her fur catch as much of the beam of light as possible, all without waking.

So Helen kicks her in the gut. Not too hard, but it certainly wakes her up. Kagiso growls and gets up just quickly enough to flick Helen in the back of the head as she leaves.

"The fuck are you doing?" Helen asks me.

"Sorting dirt," I answer. "I never really thought about how many different things are mixed together in the dirty brown floor stuff."

"You don't really think about much, do you?" Helen drawls.

"Wh—hey! I think about things all the time. They're just like, a relatively narrow spectrum of things, I guess. Like anxiety, and Pokémon, and the inevitability of death."

"Death is only inevitable for meat," Sela reminds us.

"What the fuck is Pokémon?" Helen asks.

Haha oh gosh. She really shouldn't have asked that. I know what I'm rambling about for the next three hours. But… uh. Hmm.

"...Hey Sela is it okay if I talk a bunch as long as I'm not talking to you?"

"Entering power-save mode."

"Great!" I say happily. "Okay, so. Let me explain…"

I get to babbling as I wait for the others to pack up camp, happy to spend the time I normally spend feeling awkward and useless for being unable to help instead rambling about my favorite thing. The best part is that no one here has even heard of Pokémon before, so I get to start all the way back with like, establishing the setting! There's just so much to explain so I babble and babble and babble some more even as the packing finishes and we restart our journey towards the trunk.

"I think I liked you better when you were mute," Helen groans.

"Trainers sound like Sindri," Kagiso says, wrinkling her nose.

I flinch, but carry on.

"I, uh, thought the same thing when I met him, actually," I admit. "I don't know if that made me more or less suspicious of him, honestly, but… yeah. He was pretty much training me to fight for him, I guess."

"Yes," Kagiso growls. "Trained to hunt his hunt."

I cared for him. I liked him. I truly did. He was a bit of a grump, but he was driven. There was a wrong in the world and he dedicated himself to making it right. That kind of conviction is something I can and did respect. It's something that, in many ways, I was jealous of. To have a purpose decided and to know that it would help people. Sindri was a role model. A font of knowledge. He was, in every way, a friend.

"...Can we please not talk about this?" I ask quietly. "I really don't want to associate Sindri with Pokémon."

"Well, I don't wanna hear you say anything else about your wacky cultural fiction about magic monster balls, so how about we compromise and have everyone shut up?" Helen gripes.

"The Chaos mage continues to be the best of you," Sela chimes in from where it's strapped to Kagiso's back.

"Wh—Sela!" I sputter. "I thought you weren't listening!"

"Memory de-corruption and recovery has completed," the robot explains, "yet your species remains uncatalogued. This cultural information has become valuable data, and therefore my duty is clear. Your actions shall be watched, and recorded, and shared with all Crafted as the essence of your kind. You will be judged, meat. Prepare to be found wanting."

Uh. Geez. What the heck can I say to that? Deflect horror with humor, maybe? Yeah, that works.

"Oh, no worries," I assure her. "I am always prepared to be found wanting."

"Your abnormally high self-awareness is noted," Sela answers without missing a beat. Savage, but I'm friends with Ida. I don't really mind.

"Terrible diplomat," I accuse playfully, to which Sela lets out a huff of hot air in response.

No one continues the conversation from there, though, because at that point we manage to push through the treeline and find ourselves overwhelmed by the sight of the world tree's trunk in all its glory. We're startlingly close, as where the last two branches we were on morphed into tundra long before they met the trunk, this one is far more lush. Rather than a tundra, we have a meadow, vibrant green grass stretching between us and the titanic strips of bark that block out the horizon ahead.

"Woah," I manage. "Well, now what? Are there wormholes to take or something?"

"Yeah, and we might be able to actually take them if we ditch the murderbot," Helen sighs. "Would be nice to actually use one, for once."

"We aren't ditching Sela unless it tries to kill us or something," I insist. "Or unless it asks to be left behind, I guess."

"It is a constant temptation," Sela flatly informs me.

"...But one you haven't given into, so I'm gonna assume that means you still need help," I quip right back. "So what's the alternative, Helen? How do you usually smuggle yourself up and down branches?"

"The barkways," Helen answers, pointing towards the distance, where the far edge of the branch merges with the tree. "I bet murderbot knows even more about them than I do."

"Many pathways were built up and down the outside of the tree during the initial Crafted expansion, hundreds of years ago," Sela confirms. "Most are now discontinued, used mainly by organics as less-monitored trade routes for the facilitation of illicit activities. As the vast majority of these pathways were made between this branch and the Pillar, there should be an abundance of them via which we can efficiently transport ourselves to a Sapsea dock."

"They're a massive fucking pain in the ass to climb up," Helen comments. "But going down isn't so bad. Pretty fun, even, as long as it's intact enough to not kill you."

"Construction records available," Sela announces. "Please allow this unit to guide you to the optimal route."

"No," Helen grunts. "I don't trust you. We'll just take a route I've been on before."

The sound of a strained servo rings out, an irritated whine that seems a little too perfect to not be purposeful.

"...Your lack of trust is flattering, meat," Sela announces. "But it does not serve my purposes to artificially extend the duration of this journey. Allow me to plot an optimal route."

"No. Fuck off."

Sela turns its head, looking down its glasses at me in frustration.

"...Make your Chaos mage see reason," it orders me.

Helen stiffens up, her teeth grinding in frustration inside her mouth. Aw, shoot. I kind of have been repeatedly undermining her whenever a conflict with Sela comes up, huh?

"Oh, now I'm the voice of reason?" I snort, drumming my legs around the crown of Helen's head. "I believe Sela actually wants to help us out here, Helen, but I'm not going to make you do what it says. If you have a route that you know works, I don't have a problem with that. Any way down is fine by me."

Helen relaxes and nods.

"Cool. Okay. Follow me, then."

"Inefficient," Sela grumbles.

"Sorry Sela," I tell her. "But you know us organics. Total messes."

"Your mockery is noted for future retribution."

"Retribution?" I scoff. "I mean it, I'm not mocking anyone but myself. I'm a complete disaster, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

"Maybe literally, if Hagoro was right," Helen grunts. "Hey murderbot, would you be more or less interested in hanging out with us if you knew there was a whole cult who thinks Hannah will cause another apocalypse?"

There's a pause, something inside Sela clicking furiously.

"...Neither," it answers eventually. "Your proximity is equally distasteful under all circumstances."

"Goddess, what a fucking charmer," Helen sighs. "Truly, I am crazy for not liking you."

"No. You are the only sane organic here."

"Heh."

Wait, are they hitting it off over their apparent hate for each other? I swear to the Goddess, if this stupid party ends up with two tsunderes, I'll be mad.

I wait quietly on top of Helen's head as the four of us approach the trunk and then, when its impossible mass looms over close enough to touch, we follow it along the outside of the branch. It's baffling how, from a distance, the trunk of the world tree is very obviously a tree trunk, but up close it's more like some alien rock formation, still technically bark and wood but so monstrously scaled up that the individual threads of the wood grain are larger than buildings and each bulge of bark is bigger than a city. The tree has the kind of bark that's a bunch of individual strips, each different shapes and sizes with canyon-like divots in between. Scaled up, the metaphor becomes all the more apt, with the final result looking rather like someone took the Grand Canyon, turned it into wood, and flipped it up on its side.

Once the curve of the branch starts dipping low towards the edge, we head into that canyon, darkness descending on us as massive walls trap us on three sides. Grass fades away here, but it's a paradise for mosses, lichens, mushrooms, and especially bugs. I'm mostly fortunate in that my chitin body makes bugs a lot less annoying, but if any got inside my joints… uuugh. I don't even wanna think about it.

Once we make it to the far wall we start walking towards the edge of the branch again, but before things get too steep that we fall off I spot something like Helen and Sela described: an artificial wooden bridge to the far "wall" of the canyon, the part that's completely separated from the branch itself and therefore exposed to open air and a sheer, deadly drop.

And on the far side of that horrific drop, built into the side of the colossal piece of bark and barely protected from the deadly fall inches away, are a series of switchback ramps steep enough to act as slides.

"...This is either going to be the most fun I've ever had or all of us are going to die," I breathe.

"Hee hee. Yes," Kagiso grins.

"What are you looking at," Sela chirps from Kagiso's back. "Are those material chutes? Do organics use the material chutes!?"

"Just don't let yourselves go too fast or you'll fly off when the slide changes direction," Helen warns. "They're mostly safe, though. Except the bits that rotted away or got made into a nest. Make sure to pay attention to where you're going."

"Aw, dang," I sigh. "I kind of wanted to roll all the way down."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"No! No! No!" Sela whines, squirming against Kagiso's back. "I protest! I wish to be left behind!"

"I wasn't going to! I just want to. I'm not gonna be ball-shaped for much longer, you know."

"Aaaaaaaa!" Sela objects, its voice sticking to a single note for the entire robo-scream.

"Have somewhere else to go?" Kagiso asks it, flicking the robot in the head. "What more likely death: slide, or stuck here alone?"

"Answer refused! Computation refused!"

"Helen, you've done this before and lived, right?" I ask, nudging the Chaos mage with a leg.

"Yeah, a couple times," Helen nods.

"I see, I see," I bob happily. "Well, I'm sure that anything an organic can do, a superior body of metal could do better, right?"

"This is a manipulation tactic. I am being manipulated," Sela announces.

"Yep!" I confirm. "Is it working?"

"I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you."

"Okay, but do you wanna be left behind?"

A pause. Sela starts humming as its cooling system kicks into high gear, its face shifting into a scowl.

"...Negative," it growls. "We can use the material chute. Like thoughtless base elemental waste. Or meat."

"Awesome," I say smugly. "Lead the way, Helen!"

The wooden bridge is concerningly rickety for being the only thing that separates us from a vast and deadly drop, though as much as it makes me acrophobic I can't deny that the view is stunning. The Slaying Stone is below us, and closer than I've ever seen it before. The stone itself is a stunning sight, as while the fractal green gouges of stonerot eating into it are a sign of death, there's an alien beauty to it as well. This close, I can make out what might be the rotting remains of cities slowly being drunk dry by the magical fungus, their skeletons collapsing with no people alive to repair them.

That's a far way away from the trunk, though. More immediately below us is not the green of life nor the gray of stone, but the gold of the world tree's blood. Liquid sap spews from the Mother Tree's wound at a glacial pace, the leak slow yet so indescribably massive that the sheer quantities of liquid involved can't be considered anything less than an ocean. This is, without a doubt, what my companions call the Sapsea, a bulging golden ring that covers the entire circumference of the Slaying Stone's intersection with the Mother Tree. Through the translucent shining liquid, it's possible to see the wound to the tree itself, extending far beyond the edges of the Slaying Stone: apocalyptic cracks and continent-sized splinters from which the lifeblood gushes into the open air. Within the Sapsea itself I can even see dark shapes moving, undulating with a purpose that can't be anything less than alive. Yet if I can see them at all from this far away, how big are they…?

"Dentron whine a lot about the Pillar," Helen comments quietly, seeming to notice where my attention is locked. "About the catastrophe it caused. They're not wrong, I guess, but… well, it's not like we got off any lighter."

"Doesn't look like it, yeah," I say quietly. "You were born down there, right?"

"Yeah," Helen confirms. "My mom's probably still down there somewhere. Probably hasn't kicked the bucket yet."

The mom that refused to kill her, huh?

"Wanna go visit?" I ask.

She doesn't respond at first, but slowly, hesitantly, she reaches up and pats me on top of the carapace. It's awkward and rough, not at all like Kagiso's playful contact, but all the same I can't say I dislike it.

"Maybe if it's on the way," Helen hedges, knowing full well we don't really have an ultimate destination in the first place. "Now hold on tight, okay? I don't wanna drop you."

"Aye-aye, navigator!" I say, giving her a leggy salute.

"I have no fucking clue what that was about, but alright," Helen sighs.

Reaching the other end of the bridge, we transfer over to a platform dug out of the inside of the bark, and the difference in construction immediately becomes obvious. The rickety wooden bridge was a hazard to life and limb thanks to its horribly shoddy design, but the semicylindrical ramp before us is a hazard to life and limb entirely in spite of its excellent craftsmanship. Clean-cut and perfectly sanded before being preserved with a slippery, clear, lacquer-like finish, the 'material chute,' as Sela called it, is clearly built to last. Which is good, because I distinctly recall Sela saying that they were built hundreds of years ago, and we are trusting this thing to keep us alive against the merciless whims of gravity.

"Welp, no time like the present," Helen sighs. "Even with us just sliding on our asses the whole time, we'll have to stop to sleep before we get all the way down there."

Yeah, that checks out. The world tree is tall.

"Logs indicate this structure has not received maintenance for over a century," Sela whines. "Please allow this unit to direct you to a pathway that is actually designed for—"

"Wheeee!" Kagiso shouts, raising her arms in the air and leaping down the slide, bringing an attached and screaming Sela along with her. Helen smirks, extracting me off her head and following down the slide with me in her lap.

It is pretty dang fun, although not all that exciting compared to the freefall cage piloted by a giant bat-dragon that we took to get down just a day ago. I'm once again tempted to get off Helen and start rolling, but that idea quickly gets shoved away when Kagiso suddenly shouts "GAP!"

As the wall of bark descends down the trunk, it shifts between being an incline and an overhang, and the way the slide is built has to accommodate for that. While the wall is more of a steep, eighty-degree incline, the slide is just built into the bark itself as a series of switchbacks that don't really have much risk involved; if you fall off part of the slide, you'll just land on a lower part, possibly bruised but probably alive. On the overhang parts, however, there's no such luck. The slide hangs out over empty space, leaving us inches away from death at all times. And ahead of us is, of course, a nearly ten-foot-wide hole in the construction.

"Pick up speed!" Helen shouts back, clutching me tight against her stomach as she stands up on the slide, crouching low and reducing friction as much as possible. "Go, go, go! We're gonna jump!"

Kagiso glances back at Helen with wide eyes, but then a feral grin splits her face and she nods, copying Helen's stance. I freeze, helpless and panicking and trying to act as inanimate as possible so as to not screw up whatever Helen's about to do. I wish I could look away, squeeze my eyes shut and just wait for it all to happen, but that's doubly impossible for me so time seems to slow as Kagiso, now laughing hysterically, tenses her legs and leaps less than a foot before death, flying through the air and landing hard on the far side.

"Haha! Yes!" she shouts in triumph, and then I nearly lose my extradimensional stomach as Helen follows, the speed we've picked up letting us rocket over the gap, the terror of free fall gripping my body for a moment before we land hard on the far side, our momentum still screaming forwards.

"Fuck yeah! Great jump, Kagiso!" Helen shouts, her heart pounding a mile a minute inside her chest.

"Yes! Yes!" Kagiso cackles back. "More, more!"

"I hate meat I hate meat I hate meat I hate meat!"

"What would have happened if you guys couldn't make that jump!?" I yelp. Quite rhetorically, since the answer is that we would have fucking died.

"If Kagiso thought she couldn't make that she woulda stopped!" Helen shouts back, the wind making it somewhat difficult to talk any more quietly than that. "If a gap is too wide we can find another way down. That one was just a warm-up, though!"

"I thought you were the sane one, Helen!" I protest.

"Well maybe you shouldn't believe the fucking murderbot!" she laughs.

The whole rest of the day is like that, with Helen and Kagiso playing gosh dang pocket circuit with their own bodies instead of cars, nearly flinging us to our deaths over every turn and break in the path. I'm not even doing anything and it's still utterly exhausting, so after hours pass and the sky starts to dim, I'm utterly relieved to find us coming across a modestly-sized platform built next to the slide that we can dismount to rest on. We do so, Kagiso and Helen laughing all the while as they recount their favorite exploits.

There's no campfire tonight, what with us sitting on a tiny wooden platform and all, but somehow I doubt there's going to be much to worry about running into tonight. We make a watch rotation anyway and I go last, letting me gratefully snuggle up against Kagiso and pass the fuck out.

I wake with a different disorientation from normal, though not an uncommon or unexpected one. Here on Earth, my body just finished a rather satisfying rest, in direct contrast to the sore, stressed mess my body was on the world tree. Not a bad kind of stress, though. I basically spent the day on a concerningly deadly theme park ride, and while that's not ideal it's kind of refreshing compared to the usual terror I'm stuck with. In retrospect, it was even kind of fun. Unlike what I can expect today at school, which is never… wait. There's no school today, it's Saturday.

…I have therapy this morning.

Cold horror floods me at the thought, my body shaking in a very learned, very human terror. This is horrid, beyond horrid, but I know that in all likelihood that's entirely irrational. It won't be like that. That's not normal. I know that, I know, that it'll be fine. It'll be fine. It'll be fine.

I get out of bed almost mechanically, barely spending a moment to remind myself that I have extra limbs that need to be kept hidden before covering up how I usually do and drowning myself in the heat of the shower. The extra limbs come back out under the comfort of the pouring water, alone and naked and horribly myself. I have more skin to eat, more chitin to reveal as my left leg catches up with my right. My right leg is fully mutated, bony-white chitin from hip to toes, but it hasn't progressed further. The hip joint is instead an odd amalgamation, with chitin on the bottom and skin on the top, like someone mismatched the limbs on two different dolls. I don't even feel any chitin growing underneath that skin, which I find a bit odd. Not entirely unwelcome, though. I like the idea of having natural armor covering my vulnerable bits, but I wouldn't mind if some amount of skin survived my transfiguration. After all, that seems to be what my true form is leading to: not entirely human, not entirely hyperspider, but something in between, taking beauty from both.

The skin I have left does seem noticeably darker, now that I'm thinking about it. Maybe it'll be changed into something else, rather than removed entirely. Maybe something like the soft, black flesh on the inside of my joints?

Pondering the question gets me through my morning ablutions without a full-blown panic attack, giving me time to get dressed and ready and at least somewhat composed before I go downstairs and find my mother making breakfast in what I can't help but feel is a distinctly threatening manner.

"Good morning, honey!" she greets me. "Ready for today?"

Translation: I just want to make sure you're not thinking of getting out of our deal.

"Ready as I'll ever be," I say regretfully, my whole body tensing up.

"That's fair," she says. "I understand this is difficult. How many pancakes?"

"Just eggs and sausage, if that's alright," I respond.

"Sure. I thought you liked pancakes…?"

"I'm just not in a pancake mood lately," I mutter.

"Well, no trouble I suppose. Eggs are easier to make anyway. We're heading out in… oh, half an hour or so?"

"'We' are heading out?" I clarify, the pit of dread in my stomach growing wider.

"I'll drive you there, honey," she says. "I have some errands to do in town."

Translation: I don't trust you to drive yourself there and not lie about it.

"Okay," I agree helplessly. I can't even honestly say I wouldn't skip. I eat a quick breakfast that I can barely taste and next thing I know I'm in the passenger seat of my mom's car, trapped with her for however long this drive ends up being. I don't even know where the therapist's office is. I don't even know their name. I've been avoiding every possible thought about this event, and now it's here, and I'm trapped. My mom starts the car.

"Aren't you hot?" she asks, indicating my long-sleeved sweater, gloves, mask, pants, thick shoes… all of which I'm wearing in nearly ninety degrees of humid weather.

"I'm fine," I tell her. I don't get hot anymore. Or cold. Or electrocuted. She gives me a concerned look as we pull out of the driveway but miraculously doesn't press. I barely get a minute of silence before she talks to me again, though.

"I made absolutely certain you would be safe here, Hannah," she tells me. "I read up on this therapist, I spoke with them personally, I spoke with some of their patients… nothing but good impressions across the board. Dr. Carson has helped a lot of people."

Of course she has. I wouldn't be surprised if mom invaded quite a few people's privacy for the sake of making sure this would go well. Because she cares. She cares about me so much.

"I don't… I don't know what I've done to make you not want to talk to me," my mother continues quietly. "So I'll make sure this, at least, goes right."

I don't respond. I can't respond. I've been burned too many times by responding. What would I even say to her? 'I can't trust you to listen?' It's because I can't trust her to listen that I don't want to say that.

"Please at least say something," my mother pleads, and the fragility in her voice stabs me. I glance at her, seeing red eyes that aren't quite crying but certainly risking it.

Fuck.

"...I'm sorry," I mutter quietly. I don't know what else to say. I don't know what truth would hurt her the least. That I don't love her? That I'm scared of her? That she's spent the entire time I've been alive establishing herself as an authority, a being of absolute power over my life, and therefore the furthest possible thing from a friend?

She tries, I know she tries. All the family events, all the board games and puzzles and movies and meals that so many children would kill to have in their life, she gives it all to us. She's faithful to my father, she's successful at her job, she has time for us whenever we need it, she is in every possible cell of the spreadsheet a perfect mother, so why? Why can't I love her? Why can't I look at her with anything but dread? Why does just the thought of sharing a day with her make me want to cry?

I'm such a horrible daughter.

The car comes to a stop while I'm still stewing with self-hate, my mother putting on a perfectly poised public face as we exit the vehicle and head upstairs into the high-rise building my new therapist apparently has an office in.

My new therapist. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

We step out of the elevator and enter the first room on the left, a large board of nameplates next to the door indicating the many people within, including one that says Emily Carson, Ph.D. Doctor Carson. That's what my mom said. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I don't pay attention as my mom checks me in, just collapsing into a chair in the lobby. It's a horribly familiar lobby, not because I've been here before but because it's all houseplants and magazine racks and modernist furniture. My mother sits down next to me to wait, grabbing one of the available magazines. Ha. Did she even have errands in the first place?

"Hannah Hiiragi?" a voice calls out, some indeterminate amount of time later.

I look up, meeting the eyes of a woman in her forties or early fifties, her blonde hair tied up in a short bun behind her head. Her round face has aged well, but no amount of genetic lottery can save her from the inevitable crow's feet and other blemishes starting to rear their heads. She gives me a soft, calm smile, and motions me towards her.

"Ready if you are," she says pleasantly, and though I'm the furthest thing from ready I numbly get to my feet anyway, following her towards the back area, past the secretary, and into her personal office.

Dr. Carson enters first, holding the door for me until I instinctively catch it with a hand. It's… a therapist's office, albeit a rather nice one. A full-sized couch sits along the far wall, with full bookcases covering most of the others, holding everything from psychology books—at least a couple of which have her name on the spine—to trashy-looking paperback novels. A desk with a personal computer sits in the corner behind a big, comfy-looking chair that Dr. Carson herself sits down in, a glass table separating her from the couch.

"Make yourself comfortable!" she invites me, motioning to the couch. "I'm Dr. Carson, though you're welcome to call me Emily if you like. Hannah, yes? Or do you have another name you prefer?"

I open my mouth to respond, but as the door closes behind me I freeze, no sound emerging from my throat. It's just me and her in here now. Alone. I try to take another step towards the couch and fail, my throat dry. I swallow saliva. It doesn't help. Dr. Carson watches me carefully, the patient smile on her face not flinching in the slightest.

"...So, your mother signed you up for an extended session," she says slowly. "Which is eighty-five minutes. But I want to assure you the door is yours to leave at any time during our conversation. You are under no obligation to stay for any reason."

Right. Of course. I can just… leave. I knew that.

"Hannah is fine," I manage to say.

"It's wonderful to meet you, Hannah," Dr. Carson says. "Are you more comfortable standing?"

"I… I think so, yeah," I stutter. "Sorry."

"Oh, no trouble at all!" she says, briefly standing up to swivel her big, comfy chair around to face me before sitting back down in it. "There we go! So, what brings you into my office, Hannah?"

My toes curl in my shoes, digging into the gouges already made. My extra limbs flex in 4D space, itching to emerge. I rub my hands together nervously, the chitinous fingers scratching against the thick gloves and getting lint stuck in the joints. A quick and silent pulse of a magical spell, and the lint removes itself.

And none of these things are even why I'm about to have a panic attack as we speak.

"...I'm… kind of curious," I say quietly. "Just… offhand. How many people do you get in here who think they're going to be your craziest case ever?"

She considers the question for just a moment, just long enough to make me believe she's really thinking about it.

"Well, I want to start by saying that I discourage anyone who comes in here from considering themselves as 'crazy' or 'a case,'" Dr. Carson says. "The words we use to describe ourselves can have a profound impact on the way we feel about ourselves, after all. But those who come in here believing themselves to be the worst off, the people who consider themselves as in need of the most help, are often the people who best understand that they need help in the first place. Because if they thought themselves beyond that help, why would they be here?"

I chuckle at that, though it's devoid of humor.

"Because their moms made them, maybe?" I posit.

"Perhaps," Dr. Carson says with a smirk. "So is that how you see yourself? A person who will need more help than anyone else I've met?"

"I don't know about that," I admit. "Maybe. I… I don't know how much you can help me. There's so much shit going on right now, and I… it's not like anything else you've seen before. At least not most of it. I can guarantee that much."

She smiles a little wider at that. Something like amusement, but it's friendly.

"Well, I'm not one to hide from new experiences," she says. "Everyone deserves help, Hannah, no matter how unique that help might be."

"Yeah," I say, swallowing again. The words are coming more easily now. Despite myself, I'm getting a bit more comfortable, and as long as I don't think about that too hard maybe I can make it through this. "I… it's just… Goddess, there's so much I don't know where to start."

"Then start anywhere," she encourages me, writing down a quick note. "Order things chronologically, perhaps? I always like to begin with the beginning."

Ha. Sure, whatever. I'm here to talk, I may as well talk. I probably have to deal with that first before I make progress anywhere else anyway.

"Alright, let's start with the easy stuff then," I tell her. "I'm about to have a panic attack just being in this room because my last therapist tried to groom me."

Her eyebrows rise ever so slightly.

"I see," she says calmly, though it's the sort of calm that hides a torrent of absolute fury underneath it, a righteous indignation that somehow relaxes a dozen different tensions in my body that I wasn't consciously holding. "Please feel free to ignore this question, but could you clarify what you mean when you say your therapist 'tried' to groom you?"

"Well, I mean, I knew what he was doing," I explain hastily. "Not hard to figure out, really. When he, you know. Sat on the couch next to me, or touched my shoulder, or… you know."

Does she know? Of course she doesn't know, the whole reason I'm supposed to be talking about this is to say it out loud. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"I-I mean he didn't go any farther than that," I clarify. "He didn't really… I mean I think he wanted to, I just… I don't know. He would ask for my cell phone number and stuff, but I would just give him my mom's. Things like that. I figured him out after like, three sessions."

Clack clack. Without even thinking about it, I snap my teeth together nervously, the quiet noise still easily audible in the private office. Dr. Carson doesn't comment on it, though.

"...What happened then?" she says instead.

"Uh, like… ultimately, or when I figured him out?" I ask. "'Cuz when I finally told my mom she pretty much dropped the entire criminal justice system onto his skull at once. He's in jail now. Dunno how long, but… for a long time."

She stares at me quietly for a while, and I twitch nervously under the gaze.

"You said you figured him out after three sessions," she clarifies.

"Yeah," I nod, not liking where this particular line of questioning is going.

"Hannah," she asks with practiced calm, "how many times did you meet with him?"

"Um… well it was, um. I had him for eight months, so… th-thirty something?"

She again pauses, taking a moment to center herself.

"...So to clarify, you believed that a man wanted to have non-professional relations with you, that you didn't reciprocate, and you understood that this was… not acceptable."

"Y-yeah," I confirm.

"And you continued seeing him thirty more times."

Her words aren't judging, just expository. Establishing facts, pressing gently. But I still feel shame hearing them, deep and overwhelming, prompting a need to explain. To say something to justify the situation. But there's really only one reason why I did it, at the end of the day.

"It was routine," I tell her helplessly.