"Hey, um, can we talk? The gang is worried about you."
I half ass roll my head just far enough to see Zane at my door. I can just make out the rest of the housemates in the common area, trying not to look like their craning their necks at me.
I make a non-commital grunt and roll back over.
Zane wavers for a moment before coming in, half closing the door behind him.
He sits down at the foot of the bed.
There's a half hour chunk of my life where memories of hundreds of points of view overlap like the universe's most fucked up kaleidoscope.
There's the awareness that I was torn appart and violently reassembled. It didn't hurt exactly, the same way dental work under novicaine doesn't hurt.
And... there's the obvious.
With great effort, I bring myself up to sit. Bringing my knees to my chest and... ow... I reach behind me and pull my tail around so that it's not pinched up against the headboard.
Zane can't help but stare at the tail.
It's the most visible of the physical changes, but there are others, hidden under my pajama pants and my oversized hoodie.
My insurance won't cover the cursebreaking to turn me fully human again.
"You... want to come out and eat something?"
I don't know how to explain that I can now smell everything in the apartment, down to every ingredient of the lasagna dinner they made to try and coax me out of my depression cave.
I don't know how to explain to him that I can remember a mad violent fight over a discarded pizza crust under a bench from multiple perspectives.
Worry creases his forehead.
The fucked up rat stuff is enough, but it's something else that's left me feeling hollowed out.
Words spill out of my mouth before I can stop them.
"I... keep thinking about that moment when... when you guys put me back together and the very first thought I had was... it was this crushing disappointment that I was... I mean, I was different, but I was still... still..."
I take a deep shuddering breath. The word, the truth of it, burns like acid in my throat. I can stop now, I can swallow the acid and let it burn me from the inside out like it has for the past ten years of my life.
"You know that story a few months ago? About the guy who got cursed by a drunk wizard in a park and turned into a catgirl? Why couldn't it have been like that?"
Fuck. When did I start crying?
"Oh..." Zane says after a moment.
Then to my utter shock, he's hugging me.
"You know me and the gang still care about you if you're a girl, right? And we still care you if you're a ratgirl... I mean, if that's what you want."
"Come on," he says, "we got your back. Let's work on starting to figure it out together over dinner, yeah?"
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