Cute.

It might have been nice only in a certain tone and delivery with others it remmebered but long since gone. Otherwise it was part of the wave it swam in. The same wave that crashed each time someone was startled by seeing it. The same tide that regarded it as not a man. The same cold chill of a current that pulled one direction or the other the moment a hand reached to touch a tail or its ears and explained with delight how soft it was. Like it was a neutered cat. Harmless and devoid of any complex emotions or ideologies.

It all clung together like a loose fishing line trailing in the waves catching more and more as it went. Cute. It. Touch. Stare.

To train. To clip. To wear down into a smooth stone. Weather and worn until the grit and sand wore away to gemstone.

To wolframite.

If it had felt a drolive to turn and snap, it could easily do so. Tell them it was a man, and that touching without a word wasn't something they would have done to others. It had always been short, true, but his appearance was too close to what others tried to associate with their domesticated pet that they didn't second guess their actions. Face too soft to every think it had every felt the give of a snapped neck. The taste of blood on a serrated blade. How mirror glisted with the refracted image of sinew and intestine.

It was their pet. It has no sentience, no right to turn and bite the hand that ruffled its head in the hallways without warning or brushed its tail too close to the base as it knelt to change bedsheets in the Infirmary. Its existence was to serve the others and shouldn't it be happy they liked it so much? Did it not delight in the safety of ownership? Did not the dog learn tricks to appease every family member?

Vitriol stared back, water dripping from its hair as it stared in the bathroom mirror. A towel sat loose about its slender hips, body worn from that days bootcamp. It stared there and considered the instances it tried to rememeber being before mirrors regarding itself. But those were gone. The other hims of a human life we're gone and all the times a boy to a man might have stared in a mirror in the mornings and night were gone with it. All the considerations to features. All brief moments it anchored presence and body. The human lifelines were all snapped teathered floating off and sank in the waves into the abyss.

Would it be considered differently if it had walked naked through the halls proclaiming the other side of the coin of humanity that mingled in its blood? Would a pronoun be given upon glancing between its legs? Or had it absolved itself of these things as a kind of payment when it knelt before the Queen for monsterhood?

Too much was different now that confirming its thoughts to previous expectations felt flawed and yet it felt a turning sickness flare up before a pressing, assuring numbness came to rescue it in those moments. There was no need to alienate itself by others when the appearance made it more well received and put the rest at ease. Barking and biting at every touch came off as being hostile and untrained.

Instead, it could swallow bile and doubt like mucas and let it settled inside, polluting until it could tolerate all poisons. Where nothing could reach. Not like those emotions that destroyed it before. Humiliation was a part of humbling. To destroy all semblances of pride and smile as pieces off you disintegrated into the waves with each motion.

And then what was left could swim and take everything with ease. It could become the soldier.

And yet it ached with the remembrence of its real name. The desire of recognition. Selfishly like it ever was. It wanted and despite self-deprecation, it wished for just one word to assign its person hood back.

Covering it's mouth it whispered the 3 syllables with enough of a soft space of silence. Savored. Then let it melt into its being before the numb obscurred it again.

Sedated on it's secret morsel, it went to dry itself and head to bed.