And She Begins To Bloom

It's a good feeling, despite everything. She smoothes her dress over her hips and smiles at her reflection experimentally and realizes that next time a girl chats Will up in the hall and he blushes and stammers and puffs out his chest she should just keep walking, because really here's only so much that a girl should want to swallow.

When she was little, despite what she told Will, he wasn't her best friend.

The world was.

Beneath her feet and fingers hums a deep, richly green light that glows softly along her skin, and sometimes she thinks she could just bury herself in the dirt and the vines and let them wrap around her arms and legs and fill her with the scent of damp earth and sap. She could stay twined in green and brown for her life, breathing something no one else will ever understand, only this inexplicable thrill that aches in her bones and belly.

It gives her more than Will can ever understand, whether he can bend solid steel pipes or not. It makes her part of something her human brain can barely understand; it gives her a place, and fills her with golden knowledge.

She is a young woman that is part of a greater thing. Sometimes she dreams she's slipped her girlskin and becomes something of leaves and petals and deep sweet roots, a dreaming entity that cannot be contained in pale skin and red hair and shy smiles.

Her hair is braided and her face is largely devoid of makeup, but in the light filtering through the window she looks like a growing thing. Something blooming, cautiously unfurling in the hints of morning sunshine, and she realizes she doesn't have to be afraid.

She'll be what she is for a while longer, before she decides to slip her chrysalis.

She likes it this way; a slow anticipation of the choice.