It's difficult for us to trace memories of anything about us changing. Of things being different then, in specific ways, to how they are now

I don't know. Most of the ways we've changed have been very gradual. Even after heavier/bigger events

Mid-2021, man. Three years. I can't understand that

Mid-2021?

Yeah, when uh, bad stuff with [a specific person].
Also when we started work, loosely.

Stuff changed then. Just hard to place how and when and what.

Having a moment of going “wait, oh yeah, gender, right”

Sharing a brain with Whisper sort of. Makes the abstraction of “woman” or “feminine” just slip away. So that whatever lies beneath the abstraction is tangible instead

I think it has to do with her being very much not-human but I’m honestly not sure. It’s not that identity, it’s the way of thinking

I knew we were taking that walk together but I guess I didn’t realize how present she was, even early on it

It’s like,

Again, I knew she that was there—that we were walking together. There was a second early on where it was like,

I got the sense that Tangle had something to express. So I paid attention to that feeling and suddenly I was slowing down both in walking and, like, breathing/thinking, and my hearing pinned on a tree full of singing birds not too far away

And it clicked - I was like, oh. Tangle was telling me Whisper was trying to show me something

So, I mean, after that we walked together. That was all Tangle was poking me about so she fell back and it was just us two

But like, twenty minutes later — I don’t know exactly when or where, but I think it was towards the end of the walk — I just had this thought

I was thinking about the ways humans take the environment for granted. I thought I felt frustrated but in retrospect I’m not sure.

It’s just, that’s such a weird thing for me to latch onto, but I didn’t even realize it in the moment. It was just a completely natural, “Wow, it’s sure mighty weird that the humans relate to the planet in this way, huh?”

I’m not human, no, but it’s not such a part of my experience like it is with her, or at least I didn’t think it was

It’s just it’s like. I can’t tell, but I feel like I was just... bearing witness to a sentiment from Whisper and accidentally making my own spin on it, without realizing it started from her

It doesn’t feel like a mistake. It feels like that was her intent, to give me something to relate to and spring off of

But it happened completely subconsciously. Like, entirely escaping my circle of awareness.

I feel weird about that

It’s the same thing as the gender thing earlier.

I don’t think that was “deliberate” on her part though. If anything can be deliberate when it’s subconscious

That’s just, I was in her proximity, and I started peeling back gender abstractions thanks to her mode of thinking without even realizing it, until the idea of “gender” floated in my head and felt almost entirely alien

Like “Gender? No no, I know what that is, but why? Why do you think gender would be part of me right now?”

I don’t think like that! Not normally anyway. But even though it’s a feeling she’s familiar with - it was a feeling I was feeling, in the context of me, a sentiment I was applying to myself. Or at least considering, temporarily believing, for myself

I don’t know if musing over gender was part of her masterplan to cause me shenanigans but she did notice I felt that right away and

It’s like, we exchanged glances, and I’m like, Whisper, what the hell?? And she just chuckled

I dunno.

I feel more complete around her and I don’t know how to explain how weird that is, without making myself sound ridiculous. Or what it means to me, without making myself sound like a mushball.

None of this should be foreign — it’s what being plural has always been like for any of us — but, just, grasping it, and seeing it happen and myself being part of it, and actually sharing the basic experience of existing with someone else, is… It definitely feels foreign