Hormone Resnakement Therapy

by MsJuniper

 

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The nurse calls, “Baker? Flora Baker?”

How on earth Jen managed to get a same day appointment for a dermatologist is beyond Flora’ s understanding, but it’s happened, and Flora is up. She’s dressed head to toe in layers, not one inch of skin that can be hidden left showing.

“Should I come with you?” Jen asks.

“No.”

“Are you-”

Despite herself, despite her every effort to be calm and collected, Flora snaps, “You already forced me to come to this. Be satisfied with that.”

She leaves without a glimpse of Jen’s reaction. How much of Flora’s life has been structured around what Jen asks of her? It’s an ugly thought, an ugly feeling, but there is a certain satisfaction in striking.

God, Flora really is a snake, isn’t she? Or was that already a part of her, that lashing out? Hard to say.

Regardless, she’s following the nurse into an examination room. Surely she can just explain to the doctor once they get a look that this is all a big misunderstanding.

“Okay, Flora, can you do me a favor, and take off some of those jackets?”

“Why?”

“I need to measure your weight and blood pressure,” the nurse says.

Oh, right. Okay. She can make this work. All Flora needs to do is shed a few top layers and use her left arm for the blood pressure measuring. Easy!

“Okay, blood pressure. Here.” The nurse wraps the inflatable tube around Flora’s human arm. It is somehow completely untouched by the internal growth of scales so far. Frankly, even though it is convenient for this situation, she hates that. Humanity cannot be banished from her fast enough; she wants it all gone.

“Your blood pressure is… hmm.”

“What’s ‘hmm’? Is that good?”

The nurse examines the number again.

“It’s… not too high, or low, but it’s weird. Are you on any medication right now?”

“Uhhhh…. Yes.”

Flora swallows a lump in her throat.

“Which ones?” the nurse asks.

“Uh, Estradiol Valerate, Progesterone, Zoloft, umm…”

Moment of truth. Does she admit to being on DIY MHRT? It’s not like telling anyone will get it taken away or anything. She has the pill bottle stashed in a box in her closet! But, still. It would be inviting all sorts of judgment and scrutiny from a total stranger to say it.

But it would also be medically relevant.

“I’m taking morphic hormone replacement therapy, morfol.”

“Oh, you’re one of those furries?”

Flora cannot help but be a little snobby as she says, “Scaly, but yes.”

“I don’t see that on your chart.”
“You wouldn’t. I don’t get it from you guys,” Flora says.

To nobody’s surprise, the nurse doesn’t take that well. She raises an eyebrow at Flora, a scrutinous light to her gaze.

“That’s not safe.”

“I get bloodwork done every month, and I monitor and track changes and symptoms.”

“But you really ought to get it done through a proper doctor. Pills from the internet are suspect.”

Flora sighs, and crosses her arms. This is surely not the last time she’s going to hear that from a medical professional. Such is the wages of DIYing.

“I understand. Can we move on from that?”

“I’ll put it on your chart.”

* * *

The examination room is empty, save for Flora. It gives her time to think, to process the insane day she’s having.

At least, until her phone goes off. It’s Jen. Shit.

So, how’s it looking?

I’m alright, Flora says.

Yeah, but what’s the prognosis?

It wasn’t enough to go to this sham appointment, was it? Does Jen want to see her chart, too? Should Flora cut herself open so Jen can make sure all the organs are where they belong?

Nothing. Doctor’s not here yet.

That will not satisfy her, but Flora hopes it does.

Blood pressure okay?

Can we not talk about this right now?

How come?

Flora takes a deep breath.

It’s my blood pressure. It’s not your problem.

Okay but like…

Before Jen can go on more, Flora cuts in, Can I have just this one scrap of privacy?

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision that stumbling Jen, catching her off guard. Concepts of ‘privacy’ and ‘none of your business’ are unknown to her, it seems.

Why is privacy so important to you? You know me, I’m an open book. You could be, too.

Do I need a reason?

Well… do you have something to hide?

Seriously?

Oh my fucking god, Jen.

Listen! I’m just worried! Jen says.

Yeah, and I’m saying you don’t have to be.

This isn’t working, but Flora cannot think of anything else to say or do.

This could be really bad, though, Flor. Like, awful bad. I’m talking skin cancer bad.

It’s not cancer.

If I had a nickel for every patient who said that, I’d be able to buy a house.

An instinct makes itself known; Flora feels, for some reason, like striking, as if somehow that will get her out of a complex social problem. Biting one’s enemies or overconcerned friends is not a socially acceptable solution.

Flora says, instead of striking, I’m not your patient.

You’re acting like one; petulant, annoying, childish.

Jen. I need you to back off.

I won’t! This is your health, Flora. You could die.

Why is backing off so hard for Jen? Can’t she just let this be?

If I said I knew what these rashes were, and that I knew for an absolute incontrovertible fact it was not even a little bit cancerous, would you be happy?

I’d ask what it was, then.

I wouldn’t tell you until I was ready.

There’s a pause. Jen is not typing, which means she’s probably fuming. Flora isn’t sure if this is worse, or better, than that option.

I knew you were hiding something! Out with it, Flora, I’m sick of you keeping things from me.

Sorry, doctor’s here, gotta go, talk later.

* * *

Thankfully, the doctor actually did show up, so Flora doesn’t have to think about that conversation any more. She breathes a sigh of relief.

“Hello, Flora Baker, yes?”

“Yeah. Uh… there’s been a bit of a mixup here, I’m afraid.”

That gets a raised eyebrow from the doctor; the gaze of an authority figure on her, splitting Flora into pieces and searching each piece for what’s wrong with her. But the answer, as always, is: the whole thing. The whole of her is more wrong than the sum of her parts.

“A mixup.”

“Well, see, I’m…

“It’s embarrassing, but, see. My roommate doesn’t know this…”

Flora sighs.

“I’m taking Morphic HRT, and my skin is breaking out because I’m growing scales. She thinks… she doesn’t know. And, she saw some of that, and… well. She cajoled me into going to this appointment.”

“Can I see?”

It takes only a second to peel off her gloves and roll up her sleeve; Flora stalls on it, though. She hates having to share this part of her with someone who looks at her like a runaway laboratory experiment.

“Here.”

The doctor clears her throat, and examines them.

“Scales, okay, I see. They seem to be healthy enough.”

“They just fully came in in the shower today. They’re corn snake scales, I think. Anyways, I’m sorry you wasted your time on me.”

“It’s fine.” Flora is sure it is in fact, not fine, but the doctor goes on, “Though, word of advice? Tell your roommate.”

* * *

“What did the doctor say?”

“Nothing much. I’m cleared, and it’s in fact no skin cancer.”

They sit in the car, eating. There’s no balm for a doctor appointment like a drive through meal of chicken nuggets and french fries. She tries to savor it; there’s a chance her changes will leave her an obligate carnivore, and if she loses french fries she will miss them dearly.

“Okay, but what is it?” Jen asks.

“It’s under control.”

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

Flora shifts in the passenger seat. She holds fries in her gloved claws and hopes that Jen doesn’t figure her out from the weird bullshit she’s been up to keep herself hidden. Part of her thinks it would have been easier to not try. Given how clueless people were about her first transition, maybe no one would have noticed this one, either.

“You’re not going to like it, so no.”

“Will I dislike it more than you not telling me?”

“It really doesn’t concern you. It’s between me and myself, you know? Nothing to worry about.”

Jen frowns. Her gaze travels across Flora’s face, like she sees something disturbing there. Perhaps Flora’s face has changed, more than it has from the human HRT, but those changes are old news.

“Flora. What happened to us being friends?”

It takes a great deal of effort for Flora to avoid hissing, and she says, “Do friends need to disclose everything? Do you want to look at my medical chart? Should I strip naked so you can look me up and down?”

“Bitch. I just care.”

“Can you care in a less invasive way? Please?”

Jen exhales, and Flora finds herself despising the sound of it. Being fussed over and demeaned constantly is a nightmare, and she would very much love to wake up from it. That striking impulse occurs to her again, even as Jen starts speaking again.

“It’s not invasive, I just… Flora. What am I going to do with you?”

It’s a long, quiet way back home after that. What is Jen going to ‘do’ with Flora? She’s not going to dignify that with an answer. Perhaps Jen is thinking of taking her behind a shed and shooting her.

* * *

The scales climbing up, down, and across Flora’s neck, torso, and hips are the least of her problems.

Not to say they’re a problem; she runs her claws against it, and there is a satisfaction unparalleled. The problem is that the oncoming change is much harder to hide.

See, Flora has dozens of photos of her face, stretching back to the day she started human HRT. She did it to track the additions and changes it brought, to the shape and fat distribution to it. Her face changed, subtly but significantly, and each photo is testament to this fact.

And now, looking at her face today, she can see that it’s shifted. Her teeth feel ill-fitting and tight inside, and the beginnings of a snout are there. It’s just enough that Flora can see her nose wider and reaching further out, and her chin shifted upwards.

“Woah…”

This is all well and good, but how is she going to hide this?

To someone who doesn’t know her, this could be passed off. But Jen will definitely notice, and given the silent cold war between them since the incident with the dermatology apointment…

Okay. Flora can’t hide forever.

Maybe the Morphic club will have some ideas.

Hey everyone, she says, hate to ask for advice yet again but I really need some input.

Oh? Sqrlgrl asks.

What’s up? Noneagator says.

It takes a good three minutes to finally settle on what she’s going to send in. She types, deletes, rephrases, deletes again, and so on and so forth. Flora doesn’t want to make Jen sound bad! It’s important to be charitable. She doesn’t want all her internet friends thinking poorly of Jen, or of Flora for being friends with her.

Short version is I gotta tell my roommate I’m on MHRT. The scales keep coming and my face is getting a little more-snout shaped and she’s bound to notice soon. She’s already pissed at me because she knows I’m keeping secrets, but the longer I wait the worse it’s gonna get. What could I say/do?

This is the same roommate who made you go to the dermatologist and said all kinds of bullshit, yeah? Noneagator asks.

Yep.

Several people are typing, and that makes Flora extremely fucking nervous. Are they going to berate her for being stupid? For not having already left the situation she’s in? She probably deserves.

My condolences, Caninehowl puts in.

Sqrlgrl says. Okay, so, before I give you advice, I need to ask: what’s the risk factor here? Are you worried about being kicked out or evicted or otherwise have your housing access threatened?

I don’t think so? She wouldn’t do that, Flora says.

You’d be surprised, but we can put a pin in that. Has she ever felt like an unsafe person to be around before, regarding you being trans?

She thinks back, all the way to university. Did Jen react strangely to having a trans Dormmate? Not to Flora’s face, at least.

Uh… not in regards to being trans. She’s fine.

You’ve mentioned in passing her habit of not knocking before entering your personal space and a general disregard for your privacy. How often is this?

Flora lets out a hiss at the question. Her heart feels hot and heavy inside her chest.

Well, it’s my fault for not telling her it bugs me, she says.

More typing from the Discord commentariot; everyone eventually stops when Noneagator says her piece.

That doesn’t sound right, she says, pretty sure you’ve told us you’ve drawn boundaries before and they’ve been ignored.

If I was less angry and petulant, she’d listen.

Slitherflower. Flower. Honey. If you’ve repeatedly reacted poorly to her invasive behaviour, that is still on her even if you don’t react in the most mature and constructive manner. Like, sure, when you’re less upset and heated it’s a good idea to talk to her about it, but also… that shit isn’t okay. If you want her to knock, she should knock. If you want her out of your business regarding medical stuff, she needs to respect that.

Flora says, I don’t know about that, but okay.

That’s when Sqrlgrl cuts in.

If I may say my piece?

Sorry, Sqrl, go ahead, Noneagator says.

More typing. How is Sqrlgrl so confident? She barely takes any time at all to type. Flora, in the months of knowing her, has never figured that out.

No problem! I think I was getting a little off-track before. Here’s the question: what response would you like your roommate to have to learning you’re on MHRT?

I’d like her to be happy for me. But she is prone to judgment and like, talking about ‘weird people’ she sees on the bus. I think, for her, people not being human or not wanting to be human is like, ‘creating more work’ for her gig at the hospital, Flora says.

Right, okay. So. Give me a sec to type this all out.

By ‘a sec’, she means, ‘one minute’. Maybe even less than that.

I think above all else, you need to asses the situation before telling her anything. Test the waters, if you can. You’ve said she knows you’re hiding something, and also you’re not on speaking terms. See if you can smooth things over. From there, you need to make some choices. Do you need to tell her? Or is moving out a better choice? I know that’s kind of a severe thing to think about, but your safety, privacy, and autonomy is always going to matter more than her personal feelings. It sucks to say! But if you are given a binary choice between ‘appease her to your own detriment’ and ‘hurt her feelings but end up in a better situation’, always take option B.

A hot knife of shame stabs Flora in the stomach. When Sqrlgrl puts it like that, it almost sounds like Jen is…

Okay, maybe she’s not been the most sensitive of friends. But Jen is still good to her, in her ways. She would never hurt Flora on purpose.

Okay. But… we’ve been friends for years. If I lost her friendship, I dunno what I’d do. I mean, maybe if worse come to worse, I could be human for her.

Flower. No. Listen. Someone who needs you to be human for them when you’re, you know, not human? That’s not a good situation, Noneagator says.

I mean, it wouldn’t be fun, but she’s worth it.

Everyone is typing once more.

:/ Is she? Asks Noneagator.

Doubtful, Caninehowl says, I’ve been in your shoes and it sucks.

Okay, everyone, let’s lay off for a second. Slitherflower, say your piece, Sqrlgrl adds.

Flora says, Look, I’ve always been kind of a failure of a human being, but I could try. I could cover up the scales and live a normal life. I mean… I guess it’s kind of bad, really, for me as a trans woman to give up on being human. So many trans people fight so long and so hard to be recognized as human beings, and I’m pissing all their effort away. I don’t know why I thought I could do this.

Noneagator butts in.

SlitherFlower. Honey. No. Come on. Listen.

What?

Speaking as a fellow nonhuman trans woman, here’s my thing. I came up as an autistic girlthing through the american public school system, and I know for me? Humanity always felt like an impossible standard just as much as being a man did. Even when I joined the football team and dated straight girls and binge drank with my bros and grew a beard, they knew. All I ever was to them was a fag who binge drank and played football and dated straight girls, she says.

It was the same for being a person. My earliest school memories are of spending recess pretending to be a (girl) dinosaur. Even when I stopped doing that (because people bullied the hell out of me), they knew I wasn’t doing it right. The demands of being human were too much for me. For some people, lots even, ‘I am human’ is a powerful statement of claiming personhood and autonomy in a shitty world, but for me, ‘You are human, so stop being Like That’ was the message about humanity I got. Fuck that and fuck the people who said that to me, I’ll warp myself and twist my DNA into a grotesque parody of God’s creation all day and there’s nothing they can do about it.

After a pause, she adds, Okay, I made that about me more than I meant, sorry :(. I really hope that at least makes sense. If you really want to be human for her, no one can stop you, but I’ve been down that road, and it sucks.

Well, shit.

I need to think for a bit. It’s no worry, Nonea, I just. It’s a lot. See you all tomorrow for movie night.

* * *

What does it mean to be a human?

Okay, that’s too broad. What does it mean for Flora Baker, age 25-going-on-26, to be a human?

She’s laying in bed, totally nude but for a bit of underwear, with the heat cranked all the way up. Her claws trace lines against hardened orange and gold of her scales, up to her shoulder and around her clavicle, down the irritation around her breasts where scales will soon bloom.

Scales aren’t sensitive the way skin is. They have their own language of touch, a grammar and syntax unique to them. She wishes she had someone who could touch them, just to know how it feels when someone else runs their claws across them.

Flora knows that humanity can be just about anything, when it comes down to it. Any definition of it cannot just be ‘the species homo sapiens sapiens’. Thousands of years, tens of thousands, have gone by, and in that time empires have risen and fallen, in that time gods have birthed and died.

But okay, she’s getting off track.

Humanity: is she a yes or no on that? What does she make of it? Flora needs to sort that out.

She’s thinking ‘no’, but she hasn’t had to think about it much. Being human has been the only option for so long, at least in the physical anatomical sense, and it’s a hard thing to divorce herself from. There’s a gravity to it, a pull like the pull from the end of one measure of music to the next. There isn’t a blueprint for being anything else! There are so many models of how to exist as human, so many kinds of human to be, and taking the option ‘none of the above’ sounds incorrect, wrong, morally bad.

What else is there to be?

Well, the option ‘anthropomorphic corn snake’ is there for her. All she has to do is do what she was already up to.

But what if Jen finds out, and doesn’t like it? If Flora is Jen’s rock, Jen is Flora’s anchor. She exists, on some level, in relation to her. They are entangled, enmeshed.

Flora exhales, and without thinking, sticks out her tongue. The air smells like dust and linen.

“Wait a second,” Flora says. The sibilant comes out strangely, not quite a hiss, but…

It feels warm inside of her, whenever she finds a new change. Would a human, someone who is human in the place that identity is stored, in the heart or the soul or the prefrontal lobe or in the dialectic between people, would they find joy and warmth in these changes? Maybe. Any emotional response could be felt by anybody, but for her, she wants that response to mean something.

What it means, though, is hard to wrap her coils around. It’s on the tip of her scent-sensitive tongue. But it won’t come out, not yet.

* * *

She really could keep the secret and simply move out. That would be safer, but also the guilt would kill her. For herself, she has to do it.

Flora comes into the living room, where Jen is camped out, silently frowning at something on the television. She draws in a great breath, and speaks up, “Alright, I’ll tell you what’s been happening.”

At that, Jen shuts off the TV. All her attention is on Flora, now. Showtime.

“Fucking finally! Let’s here it.”

Oh, Flora doesn’t like that smile. Another breath keeps her anchored, though.

“Jen, listen. Remember how you were talking shit about Mallory for being an alligator woman?”

“Yeah, of course. I still stand by it.”

That was going to be Flora’s next question, so that simplifies things. Sadly, that is the worst case scenario.

It’s fine. Flora can make this work, somehow.

“I… you’ve seen my accounts online. You know I post a lot of furry art and such.”

“Yes?” Jen says, “Go on...”

“Well, here’s the thing. I’ve been taking MHRT, like Mallory is.”

The truth breaks like a window, a previous vase, a grand piano down the stairs. The glass shards are everywhere, the yellow carnations are strewn across the floor, the music has stopped. Jen looks at Flora, and that sharp gaze cuts.

“What? When?”

“Half a year ago. The day your dad moved out. Remember that package that showed up? Yeah. That was it.”

Jen’s eyes grow wide. “You bought random pills from the internet from some country I haven’t even heard of?”

Okay, Flora has to draw a line here.

“Hey, just because the package came from a country you don’t know doesn’t mean it’s shady. There’s a lady who orders the exact medicine doctors prescribe from wholesalers and then ships it out worldwide. I did my homework, and it’s not shady.”

Jen’s face does not seem to register this set of facts. Instead, she asks a question whose answer is self-evident to the point of comedy.

“Do they work?”

Flora rolls up the long sleeve over her right arm. That does the trick.

“Oh my fucking god. What the hell!”

“Yeah, scales. Corn snake scales, I think. Though I could be another snake with a similar morph pattern, I guess.”

“Your tongue… it’s forked. What the fuck. Flora, how could you do this to yourself?”

There is a petulant feeling arising in her. All she has to do is not completely fuck everything up, but that is harder than she expected. As it turns out, being looked at like a monster and freak can do a number on one’s patience!

“Do what to myself, exactly?” Flora asks.

“You know what I mean.”

Flora simply shrugs. A wicked idea occurs to her, too, so when she speaks she lets some of that sibilant hiss enter into the her voice.

“I’d prefer if you said it, though. Ssssay it.”

“Stop that!”

“Ssstop what?”

This gets a reaction out of Jen, but not a positive one. There is disgust in her mouth and terror in her eyes. Flora was afraid of that, to tell the truth. That part of her that insists she could still be human if she tried gives her a shot of guilt to the system.

“You’re not funny.”

“Okay, fine. But I still want you to say it. Come on, out with it. What am I doing to myself?”

Jen shakes her head.

“Something wrong. Something… terrible. You’re hurting yourself. This is not okay,” she says.

“Why?”

“Why? I don’t know why you’re doing it, that’s on you.”

Now, it’s Flora’s turn to shake her head. If Jen is going to be like this, she wants no ambiguity. Let the worst come out! Nothing can be fixed if it can’t be smashed, first.

“Not why that. Why is it wrong? Out with it,” Flora says.

“I don’t have to answer that.”

She doesn’t need a win on everything. Maybe what Flora needs is a different approach. Or, perhaps, this one isn’t going to be a win no matter what she does.

Whatever the case, she still wants to try. The attempt is worthwhile, even if the execution is lacking and leads nowhere. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a path forward that will take more time! People need to adjust when someone comes out.

“Okay, don’t then. But I was worried it would be like this. You’re my friend, and I care about you, but this judgmental streak of yours fucking hurts.”

Jen repeats that, as if it’s hard to believe, “Hurts. It hurts?”

All Flora can do is nod. Jen is exhaling and inhaling audibly and with much dramatics.

“You know what hurts? Knowing that you’ve become so weird and alien under my nose. I asked you to promise.”

Oh, not this again. Flora stops to take in a full breath, also audibly, and draws herself up with as much pose as she can manage. There’s only so much a snake can do.

“And I didn’t. I told you I couldn’t then, and I stick by that,” she says.

“Why not? Why can’t you stay the same?”

Well, there’s entropy, there’s the passage of time, there’s so many reasons. But all of that is a distraction from the real truth; she wanted this, she wanted the change, and she made it happen. Everything else, excuses and external factors all, fall away.

“Because being human sucks for me! I don’t like it! I have a way of changing myself, and I took it, and I’m way happier.”

“Yeah, of course being human sucks. It’s supposed to hurt. Do you think growing some scales will ease your suffering?”

Flora can only answer with the plan, unvarnished truth, “It already has.”

A simple, indisputable fact. The burden of existence is lighter, the warmth within is wonderful. She is becoming what she is. If only there was some way to transmit the euphoric joy of that first moment the scales came through, back in the shower. If the qualia of each time she found a new way she changed and felt closer to herself could be communicated…

Alas.

Jen doesn’t grasp it. Is there any way she could, while still being herself? She says, “But you’ll still feel sad. You’ll still lose your parents one day, you’ll still get broken up with and get injured and get sick and one day die! It won’t save you!”

“Okay, sure. But I still want to do this, so I’m doing it. Am I hurting anyone?”

Jen says, “Yes. Yourself.

“It’s… it’s just weird, okay? Making yourself weird is a good way to attract attention you don’t want. What if someone treats you like a real snake and kills you?”

“Jen, I was weird long before I grew scales. I could try and be human, but… if I did, I would just be a snake in human guise, and everyone would know it.”

Something breaks inside Jen. Her gaze shifts away from Flora, and it doesn’t come back. The shame is searing inside, but Flora doesn’t beg. She wants to, but there’s no point to it.

“I think you should move in with your mom,” Jen says.

“Hm?”

“Flora. This is a betrayal I can’t stomach. I… I needed you to stay the same. This is… I can’t look at you. Get out.”

And then, after a moment she adds, “Have a nice life.”

It’s said so kindly it makes Flora bleed. After all that? That’s it?

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. It’s not like you’re gonna be homeless or whatever. Get out. As soon as possible.”

“Okay, Jen. I get it. You have my number if you want to talk.”

* * *

Not once has Flora moved since leaving the university dorms, and today the streak is broken. She sits in her room with the blinds open, basking naked in the sun. This will be the last time she gets to feel the sun from this particular window, the last time she lays in this bed.

There will be other windows, and more days under the sun. She –

Oh, there’s a text on her phone.

:) coming on up, Mallory says.

Sweet, be there in a sec.

With a deep-held grudge, Flora throws clothing on. The grudge isn’t towards Mallory, it is to the fact that she has to cover her beautiful scales up.

When Mallory is at the door, and Flora opens it up for her, she says, “Hey there, stranger!”

Her grin is full of bladed teeth; Flora couldn’t be happier to see that smile. She ushers Mal into the apartment, into the afternoon sun of the windows.

“Long time no see!” Flora says, as they both come into her room.

“Yeah, last time I saw you, you didn’t have any scales! You ready to get the hell out of there?”

No, Flora isn’t, but it’s time.

“Let’s do it,” she says.

“Works for me. Come on. Are we moving any big furniture?”

Flora shakes her head.

“No. The biggest thing is going to be the boxes of clothes and then the box of model kits.”

“Cool, cool.”

They clear out the boxes as vultures pick out a corpse. It is a disservice to the space, to the place Flora has called home since graduation. How many dates has she had in here? Long nights and dark mornings on voice calls with friends?

She wanted change, she wants change, but this was the one thing she wanted to stay the same. There were more dates to have over in here, more long nights.

Not that it matters now. The room is dead and bare, necrosis has set in, and it is time for her to leave.

“To your mom’s place?” Mallory asks.

Flora just nods. She doesn’t find any words to say, anything she can do beyond that.

“I don’t mean to overstep, so tell me off if I am, but you seem like you could use a hug.”

“God, please.”

Mallory wraps her arms around Flora, and Flora squeezes in tight. Scales against scales is a feeling she has never felt before; Mallory’s rough peaks and valleys of armor against Flora’s smooth diamonds are a sensation she must savor.

“This is so hard, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s not the end of the world,” Flora says, a dismissal, a prayer.

“It’s the end of a lot of things, but yeah, that’s true.”

They leave the apartment, that lonely carcass, and pile into the truck. Mallory, being a seven foot tall alligator woman, has to settle into the driver’s seat and have her tail curl its way across to Flora’s lap, and then into the space under the passenger seat.
“Sorry about this, they don’t build pickups with alligators in mind.”

Flora is just fine with this, actually, but she just nods. They’ve only met twice. Better to leave certain thoughts and emotions unvoiced.

“Yeah. Once your tail comes in, you’ll see.”

“Wait… how’s that going to work? Being a snake and all,” Flora says, “shit. Wait. I could get pretty long.”

“Yeah, that’s gonna be a factor,” Mallory chuckles.

“Do you know any other snakes? What do they do?”

“Oh, depending how long they turn out, a van will do, like uh… whatsit, a voyager? One of those six-seaters.”

Flora laughs, for one simple reason.

“I can’t drive,” she says.

“Hey, that’s fair. If you’re good with that, that’s cool, and if not, you can change that.”

The conversation lapses into silence; there is only the sound of the engine to fill the silence. This stretches on for miles. Flora doesn’t mind it, not at all. There’s a tune and a rhythm to the drive, to the space left full of words unsaid.

Eventually, though, Mallory speaks up, “Hey, uh, I know we swapped numbers, but…”

She clears her throat. It comes out as a rumble.

“I was thinking, you mentioned you had a discord, last time we saw each other?”

“Oh yeah. I joined a server, I mentioned.”

“Well, I also have discord, and I figured it would be a good idea to have each others’.”

Oh, Flora hadn’t even considered that. The idea that someone she knows in real life could also be someone she knows on the internet is a surprise to her. After all, her being a furry is no secret online; it was a secret in the flesh until recently.

“Sure. Mine’s slitherflower,” Flora rattles it off.

Mallory pulls over, to the nearest safe curb, and says, “Wait. Stop and say that again.”

Flora raises and eyebrow, and shrugs. Sure, she can say it again, no problem. What’s the surprise over? Why the theatrics?

“Slitherflower. Like, slither like a snake, and flower like Flora. Kind of obvious, I know, but it fits. Actually, I think I’ve had that username since before I was called Flora. Huh.”

“No, the thing is, I know a slitherflower on discord. She’s…”

Mallory stops, and thinks for a moment. Her deep eyes pass over and through Flora, and her mouth snaps open and shut. This gives a unique front row seat to the lines of teeth, sharp and beautiful, that Mallory has.

“I think we already have each other’s. See, mine is Noneagator, like none-a-gator, or nonea gator, like ‘nine’, because nine is my favorite number.”

Flora echoes, “Noneagator.”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

Noneagator. The girl who she’s friends with online, who calls Flora ‘honey’. Noneagator, one of the people who talked her out of doing something stupid like trying to be human for the sake of someone who would never appreciate how hard that was.

She wants to say, thank you so much, you gave me a future. I owe you my life, what could I do to repay your words of kindness? She also wants to ask, Mallory, Noneagator, did I make the right choice? I feel like I did, but it hurts to know it’s cost me someone important. Do you think she’ll ever talk to me again? Is it worth even trying to talk to her again?

Instead, because of that is a bit intense for a first time meeting in person, “Small world!”

“Shit, no kidding. Uh. So… do you want to hang out next week?”

Flora says, “Yeah. Lunch?”

She can’t help but smile. She lets sunlight from the windows of the truck warm her scales, and Flora lets the sensations and emotions hit her. There is more sun, and more windows, and more everything.

“Funny,” Flora says, “I didn’t know I could still cry.”

“Changing is full of surprises,” Mallory says, “Are you gonna be okay?”
“Not today, and not tomorrow, but I think so.”

Mallory smiles once more. Flora can’t quite match it, but it still helps.

“Good. Let’s get you home.”

FIN