"how long ago did u shrink?"

It was a simple question. Brooke still paused before typing the answer in.

"one year"

"damn"

Damn indeed. An entire year has passed since she'd woken up one day and found herself lost in her own bedsheets. A year full of grief, depression, isolation, lost relationships, financial hurdles, broken promises and moving between states. A dark period of her life. It felt like it lasted so much longer than that; and yet, at the same time, it felt like any moment she could jump right back into her old life. There was still no treatment, there were still debates held at the highest level about what rights people like her held, there was still so much total bullshit surrounding the phenomenon... and people still lived, and loved, and worked, and she was forced to watch them, dreaming of one day standing tall again.

"that must suck", she received. Her penpal was some random person she'd met on a browser game she'd been playing. It was called "Naraworld", and, just as the name implied, it was a geeky, cheesy high-fantasy roleplaying game. Something about it hooked Brooke. Visual style, perhaps. There was some messy quality to the animations: the way blood splattered, the sounds with which the weapons would find their targets: wet ripping, slick dripping, loud metallic clanking. She thought of it as "musical martial cadence", although that probably didn't make any sense.

"i don't let it define me", she typed back.

There was more confidence in that text than she truly felt at that moment. But her fingers didn't stop. Three...

"actually i started going out again"

...texts...

"like right now"

...in quick succession.

“i'm going to..."