Spring

“I saw a faerie fox in the abandoned lot, glowing pale blue. It's ears and tail were like moth antennae, bundles of sensitive toothbrush filament.”

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It was spindly little thing, looking like so much sharp slices of the afterglow of a street-lamp that’s shut itself off just as you approached, a ghost of an image that sticks to the inside of your eyelids.

She looked at it, face softening into a warm, indulgent smile as she scooped it up to nestle against her chest. Despite how her hand was held half a foot away, to give it space, it filled all it was given. Something seemed right-wrong-right about taking what it was owed.

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It had crawled up on her head, where it proceeded to delicately cling to her hair like a particularly gruesome hair-clip. The kind of thing you wore to scandalize and horrify your parents, knowing all your friends would love it.

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She’s learned a sense of exploration, but her curiosity and drive feel like lesser than it was when she first hatched. First looked out at the world through cracks in a shell, saw her brother hatch too. She’s lesser now.

Lesser than what?

To be lesser, she had to have been more, at some point. More curious? More likely to take point, to strike out with wings flared, curling her neck back to make sure her agemates were keeping pace. Initiative. Protection. Guidance. Now she slinks out alone. Returns with new bloodied bandages already in place, hiding evidence like the hopes that it would keep her brother from asking.

She is lesser, now. She is less than herself.

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Fluttery fears, creeping paranoias crawling up inside the back of your skull

Shushing and grey, like the lapping waves of some insidious shore