Systember Day 28 - Hands
Sep. 28th, 2025 08:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
paracosmic_gtI wake up. It’s still early, the sun weakly shines though the windows and bathes my den in a soft yellow white. Chuffing softly, I try to bury myself back down in my blankets, but the cool air creeps underneath and around my hind paws.
You awake?
I get a soft response from you, nothing as strong as the early morning Jaybird. I’m not sure from where you wander in. Clothed in soft robes the colour of periwinkle blue, holding yourself close.
It hasn’t been long since I first tried being small. I think June was the first to encourage me, while we lay side by side in a bed somewhere. Purr under a palm like a bug beneath a rock, one of the most natural sights I’ve come to know.
“It’s wonderful, you feel the safest you’ve ever been. Maybe it’ll help with-”
Maybe. The past week has been shit, I’ve been wracked with pain and guilt and grief. My face fallen and still, my movements frail. Most times I’m not even moving at all; frozen like a taxidermy hare, eyes of glass and life lost from my lithe limbs.
It’s okay to burrow sometimes.
“Jackrabbit?”
I hadn’t even realised, that’s how quickly it’s been coming on nowadays. I’m swamped in rivers of fabric thick to the touch, and far off the impenetrable walls of my nest stand monolithic.
“Can I come in?”
I look up to find you, waiting patiently where the cliffs chasm and leave me open to the world beyond. A world now enormous, a world constantly dragging the stone from under my feet.
Please.
The first time I was held I think it was by Seto. It feels right to say. You wouldn’t know this but he’s pretty much everyone’s first giant. I think I was holding J, comforting coa, when he came over. A presence unmistakable at this size. My undercurrent must have felt me tense up, because co gave a look towards the giant, then back at me. Deep brown eyes like the soil the sun doesn’t touch.
Is it okay if they pick us up?
I’m not sure what flavour of yes I said that day, but next thing I know there’s a hand approaching me. I know it’s a hand, but it looks more like some giant mess of branches and my heart picks up. Fingers reaching out (feeling, probing, grasping) effortlessly rolling us both into a palm the size of a bed. As if we were pebbles easily grabbed and skipped across a river. I watch one finger curl over J protectively.
Fingerprints are a lot like tree bark up close.
Fingerprints are a lot like tree bark up close.
It certainly wasn’t the level of bliss I had been expecting. I didn’t come to know that until you.
You’re careful, like you always are. Like a dancer you step inside the circular arena, watching for my position before you kneel and then fall. A tremor, like earthquake, like Warren-foot.
We don’t speak a word out loud. There’s a mental conversation instead. Greeting, request, consent. Then I’m loping over and you’re moving your arms to catch me. My palm meets yours, fabric replaced with cobblestone scales. I tumble like a leveret and you try your hardest to catch me, humming a waterfall of sound.
June was right about a whole damn lot. I wasn’t sure about it at first, I’d only ever been the bigger one. To be small like purr is a level of vulnerability that I hadn’t get encountered. But the moment I’m in your hands it’s like the world falls away and is replaced in an instant.
Your grasp is steady and your heartbeat is true, like my ear is pressed to the earth itself.
Your grasp is steady and your heartbeat is true, like my ear is pressed to the earth itself.
