Page 16 of Falling in Love with A Tiny Bat

Xios: No, of course not.

My gaze drifts skyward, to that bleak window once more. I can feel Zahra’s presence beyond the thick curtain. Her emotions are a knotted mess that she’s working to straightenwhile she cradles the ent boy in her arms. She’s fragile on the inside, as beautiful and delicate as blown glass.

I wish I were playing with the frail pieces, caressing and kissing each until they were whole and full again.

It stands to reason, I am not upset because she outsmarted me and ruined all my plans and banished me from her side to lament in a still-chilly spring night.

I am upset because I woke up this morning with an idea of my soulmate, consumed by the vague sensation of what having one meant.

Now?

Now I’m smitten. Enamored. Helpless. Hopeless.

And so displaced from the beautiful creature meant to bemineit physically hurts.

My phone buzzes in my hands, regaining my attention.

Willow: Sooo…what’s the problem?

What’s the problem, indeed. Sighing, I respond:

Xios: I am very much in love with her.

And I was very much not expecting this attack on my heart to come near as violently as it has. Nor as swiftly as it seems to.

I have barely gotten used toexistingwithorgans.

Literally how dare she upset them further…

My heart is beating too fast. My stomach is swirling and fluttering. My lungs…they’ve gone and forgotten their singular directive. It’s like I can’tbreathewhen I’m around her. Yet not being around her is worse. Pretending that I’m operating as though my insides aren’t committing constant mutiny in her presence when everything about her is a marvelous distraction wears my too many nerves thin.

Wetting my lips, I valiantly attempt to ignore the uncomfortable burn flushing my face. “Fornication,” I whisper, spiteful. How absurd. And insulting. I barely tolerate touch.

And her?

Sheflinchesat the prospect of it.

I worry that learning the origin of her reaction will make me violent, so I turn my phone off after Willow sends me a degrading gif, set it in a dry place beneath a patio awning with my enchanted cuff links, and shift into a tiny Honduran White Bat.

When I’m not wearing the enchanted cuff links Pollux made to help dampen sounds and scents for me, being in my bat form is the only tolerable way to experience the world.

For one reason or another, it’s more grounding to have so much excess stimuli when my feet are not on the ground.

For one reason or another, when I perch beneath Zahra’s window and hear her quiet sobs, I wish some of the excess stimuli were the result of my arms wrapped tight around her quivering shoulders…

Perhaps I went too far…

Alternatively, perhaps I have not yet gone far enough.

As with most things, only time will tell, and onlysleepcan make the waiting more bearable.

Chapter 5

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Expectations and obligations can turn to ash.

Bleary-eyed and exhausted, I stare down at my name—scrawled majestically—across the elegant eggshell envelope at my feet.

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