i'll build a city that dreams for two. [ au ! ]

It starts happening two years after you win.

We were always so sure of ourselves. Who we were. So proud. Unashamed. We didn't care. I suppose I should've been more cautious. Whispering in your ears 'Don't do that' or 'We shouldn't' or 'We'll get in trouble' - but we loved the thrill, didn't we? I felt it. You felt it. We felt it.

And then you killed them, and we wept at the sides of the corpses, and I trembled at the sight of what their souls became. Nothing but dust - gone with the wind. I didn't want us to be that. I didn't want to leave you. And you didn't want to leave me.

But we were so sure of that. You and I. Fox-souls, always. Even as children, we hardly ever changed - save for when we needed to climb higher and higher and higher. A bird sometimes, but a fox almost always. We simply were.

And now-

It starts happening when you stop talking and they force you into children's clothes. When you turn sixteen and they put you on an over-sized set and into a bib and pastels. It starts happening when you scream and shout and throw your toys and I don't know who you are anymore. When I try and speak for you and you beg me not to with no words at all. When I get so frustrated, and you get so quiet, and you stare at the wall for days on end and I think I go a little crazy.

I start to change again. So much, every thing, all at once. It's agony, to change. It never hurt when were were small, did it? We just preferred to be ourselves. But now we don't know who we are. We're eighteen, we're eight. We're fourteen, we're twenty-two. We're a child, and we're a grown up, and we're no longer a fox. We might as well be dust. You might as well be Lucy and Ewe and Eye and Dad. I might as well be...

It starts happening and you can't stop it. I change once a day, once an hour. It hurts at our hearts and you have to freeze every time it happens, hold your breath, put a hand on Mace's shoulder. It's everywhere. But we get used to it. I don't love him as much as you. I get mad that he can ease your pain and I can't. I get mad that I hurt you, and you get mad that you hurt me, and we just weep on your bedroom floor and shiver each time I change.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, we heal. Then-

Myara and Emberly and Clementa

- and it happens again and again and again, but you know who you are. You come out of that hole. We go up and up and up - I'm a bird fluttering at the ceiling dragging you out of bed. I become what perhaps I should have been before: a voice of reason. When you look at a blade and I say 'Don't do that', when you pick something up and go to throw it and I say 'We shouldn't'. 

I don't need to tell you that you're going to get in trouble when Quinn comes along. She does that for you. And we love her. We love her so much, as much as she terrifies us both - we heal. With her. With Mace. With our family. We heal, and the first face you daughter's soul sees is mine. I'm a fox, you're a fox, we're foxes. 

Quinn and Luca.
Saffron and Sunny.

We don't change, but we watch them do so.