2103:10:30:16:20:33

  We sat in the waiting room of my new therapist’s office, enduring the wait in silence. I was dizzy and nauseous while trying my best to hide it, while Mom sat right beside me and was watching me like a concerned mother hawk, just as she had been these past couple of days. She thought I was getting sick, be it from the nerves or catching a flu or something.

  In truth, Crowsong was to blame.

  When she said we’d be gathering forms for me and that I needed to master them as soon as possible, I hadn’t expected how many we would collect. From useful forms like a German Shephard, a rabbit, a peregrine falcon, a giant tortoise and a snowy owl (my favorite next to the crow), to animals my mentor refused to explain the reasoning behind, like a hamster, an otter, a salamander, a duck, a ferret… there were just too many.

  She’d tried to make me copy an insect as well, but that was one thing I categorically refused.

  I will never become an insect.

  Fish are also now blacklisted after the whole carp debacle. Suffocating on land was bad enough, but then Crowsong threw me in the fishtank. Trying to breathe in water through my gills was so deeply uncomfortable I transformed in a panic.

  While I was still inside the fishtank. I fit – otherwise I doubted I would’ve been able to transform – but it was a snug fit, and a snug fit while underwater is not a fun kind of snug.

  I was just thankful it had an open top the water could spray out of. Otherwise, I would’ve felt bad for the owner.

  Crowsong had also pushed for some of the larger, more dangerous zoo animals. While I was on board at first, we quickly discovered that, beyond a certain size, I needed exponentially more time to mimic their form. Add to that how close I needed to be in the first place, plus the fact that since it was nighttime, we needed to break into their enclosure – something the animals did not like – and my excitement quickly dwindled.

  Crowsong didn’t want to hear it, though. To her credit, we did succeed in getting two, but not without some close calls. The ostrich went well enough, even if them chasing and pecking at us was the closest thing to a nightmare I hoped to experience.

  Getting the zebra, on the other hand, failed miserably. The moment we got close, it started trying to kick us. While one by itself might’ve been manageably, the rest of its herd quickly joined in on the fun. We barely got out of there without broken bones, and only because I managed to transform into a sparrow just in time to dodge. At least we later went to get a horse – which we should’ve just done in the first place, but spilled milk and all that.

  But anyway, even that wasn’t bad enough to stop Crowsong. No, it took me getting into a brawl with a rhinoceros to finally convince my mentor it was time to stop.

  It wasn’t the animal’s fault; the big guy had been downright friendly to our visit, just sitting there placidly while I stood next to him and let my power copy his form. It was after I shifted into a copy of him right in front of his face that he – understandably – started freaking out, trying to run away from this weird rhino that suddenly appeared. If I hadn’t charged and pushed the animal to the ground when he did, he would’ve trampled Crowsong in its initial freakout.

  After that, the animal had found its courage and kept wanting to butt heads with me, but after a quick shift into a cat I was too fast for it. We got away by the skin of our teeth.

  The same could not be said for his habitat.

  After that, I insisted we stop going after large and dangerous animals. Not even elephants despite their relative docility – I didn’t want to accidently start a stampede when I shifted right in front of one, and what role would an elephant fill that a rhino couldn’t?

  Every night since, I tried out and mastered as many forms as I could, constantly switching in and out of them, getting used to their senses and the switch between them. It had been worse than bothersome, it’d been painful. Every form took adjusting and had their own unique way of sensing their surroundings, even when there was overlap. These started compounding on top of one another to the point I got a fever at one point, a nosebleed that just wouldn’t stop and even temporary blindness for an hour.

  School – and now therapy, I suppose – at least offered an escape. An escape that Mom had almost taken away from me in her worry.

  She believed I was getting sick for the first time since my ‘return’ home. Headaches, nausea, dizziness, a light fever; all the symptoms from quick-shifting could easily be interpreted as a heavy cold or a light flu. I’d only barely managed to convince her that yes, everything was fine and no, I didn’t need to skip school for a day.

  When therapy arrived and my symptoms continued to compound, she believed it was instead the nerves that caused me to feel sick, to the point she wanted to cancel our first appointment.

  She was wrong of course, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous. In the few moments I’d had where I wasn’t training or busy with school, I’d read up on everything therapy. What to expect, what therapists were allowed to divulge, what they were obligated to divulge, what specific laws applied to them, me and the information I shared; I read up on all I could.

  I didn’t get very far. I found that despite Malcator’s Unification of Language, Legalese had managed to escape its grasp, and the dictionary and language processing my creator had stuffed in my brain simply weren’t good enough.

  As far as other sources were concerned, they were as they always were: a mixed bag. Institutional resources, like that from the government or non-profits, were all positive for the most part, whereas whatever news I could find tended to highlight sensationalized failings of certain patients, misbehavior of therapists and, on the rare occasion, a feel-good human interest story.

  Then there were the personal experiences and testimonials. These were the least useful of all, ranging from ‘this therapist saved my life’ to ‘they’re the government’s soul-reaping demons, DO NOT TRUST THEM’ to ‘I fell in love with my therapist, you won’t believe what happens next’. In other words, completely useless.

  It was that lack of information, that lack of knowing what consequences therapy could have that had me worried. Technically, I could just stonewall the conversation and just ride it out, but I wasn’t in therapy for myself. I was doing this for Mom, to ease her worries rather than my own. If I had nothing to tell about therapy, nothing to show for it, nothing about me that was ‘improved’ by whatever metric therapists and mothers measured teens, then Mom would only worry more.

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  And a worried Mom would ask questions. A worried Mom might start looking for things I didn’t want her to find. A worried Mom might make conclusions. Find truths I’d done my best to hide. And if that happened… I wouldn’t know what to do.

  The door to the therapist’s office opened, and a woman appeared in its entrance. The woman – Marianne Laurent, if this was indeed my therapist-to-be – was a small, thin, bespectacled intellectual type whose wrinkles betrayed plenty of smiles.

  “The Pearssons, correct?” the woman asked superfluously. We nodded. “Come on in.”

  We did as asked and stepped into her office. The room wasn’t what I expected it to be. Instead of a more respectable variant of Nth-Sight’s occult mystery dungeon, the therapist’s office was brightly lit and mostly colored beige, off-white and light grey. Outside of a few planks, there was little in the way of bookcases and instead of an old, heavy wooden desk I was met with a minimalist, mechanically-adjustable one accompanied by a regular office chair, with two simpler grey ones on the opposite side. The beige couch was accompanied by a small round white table and a large, thickly-cushioned chair colored similarly to the couch. The only splashes of color in the room were the rug – a base white mottled with a smattering of red and green stripes – and a green houseplant in one corner.

  “Have a seat,” the therapist said, gesturing to the two chairs on the opposite end of her own. We sat down.

  “To start with, allow me to introduce myself,” she said. “My name is Marianne Laurent, but you can call me Mary, Marianne, Mrs. Laurent or any combination of those three. I specialize in child psychology ages thirteen and up, and I’m a tenured professor at the University of Washington right here in the city. I was born and lived in Charm all my life, and will continue to do so with my husband and three children.” Her smile broadened at that. “If you’ve got any questions or comments while I’m speaking, please don’t hesitate to speak your mind, okay?”

  She sounded expensive, but I was not ready to utter this thought. Mom likewise had nothing she wanted to share, so the woman continued.

  She grabbed her laptop and flipped it open. “Now, as for your own introductions, I want yours to be a bit different. Rather than a simple overview like I just gave you, I want you – the both of you – to tell me why you think you are here, what problems – if any – you would like to address, what your expectations are for this and subsequent meetings, and your desired outcome of therapy in general,” she said with a kind smile. “Who would like to go first?”

  I looked at Mom, who looked at me in turn. Briefly, it looked as if she wanted to prompt me to speak, but then she turned her head to Mary.

  “I’m Kati Pearsson, and…” Mom trailed off in thought, putting hand to cheek. “And I’m here because I’m concerned. I mean, obviously, right? She practically came back from the dea-” Mom coughed and scraped her throat. “Well, back out of time, and without her memory. Not that it hasn’t been great – it really has, these past months were the best in years! But eh- yes, I’m concerned.”

  “Concerned about what, specifically?” Mary asked while typing notes on her laptop.

  Mom leaned back in her chair, tapping her fingers on the armrest. “She’s been doing well. Exceptionally well, even. She’s doing good in school despite enrolling immediately as a second year, has made friends, and outside of it the two of us have been bonding, spending time together…” she trailed off, before remembering the point she was trying to make. “Which, again, great! But for all that she’s integrating well with her surroundings she’s… she’s not really, uh… it feels like that’s all she’s been doing. Integrating, I mean. Fitting in.” There was a sadness borne of stress and worry in her voice.

  She leaned back in, hands now on her lap, fidgeting. “Feels like she’s so focused on what other people want, she’s forgetting about herself. When she learns things it’s either for school or just completely random – nothing she’s really passionate about or interested in, I mean. Hell, the only times I’ve seen her eat and drink is when I do. I’ve never even seen her sneak a snack for herself, or watch a movie or TV alone, or- well, do anything just for the sake of enjoying herself.”

  That was a lot more than what I was expecting. The weekend I spent with my friends had already made me realize that some aspects of my personality were not as developed as I’d thought. But to hear my Mom put it out there while sounding so distressed…

  Another layer of guilt to add on the mound. Will it ever stop?

  “Do you agree with this assessment, Samantha?” Mary asked, turning her eyes to me.

  I startled in my seat. “Sorry?”

  “I asked if you recognized yourself in the story your mother just told us,” she said.

  I hadn’t expected to be questioned on this. At least, not without giving my own input first. A deflection was in order. “This wasn’t the format,” I said.

  Mary blinked in surprise. “Excuse me?”

  “You said we would introduce ourself and answer why we were here, what problems we would like addressed, what we expect and what we’d liked to accomplish,” I explained. “So far, Mom has only done the first two.”

  Mary typed on her laptop. “Fair enough,” she conceded, much to my surprise. I’d expected her to argue, or ask some further questions. That’s what I’d found online, at least – that therapists read too deeply into words and pursued tangents. “Then, Kati, what do you hope Samantha learns from these sessions.”

  Mom pulled her hand through her hair. “I’m not really sure,” she admitted. That surprised me; wasn’t she the one who wanted me here? “The city and my own therapist recommended I do this, that it was good for achronally displaced like Sam to get help as quickly as possible. I… resisted it for a while, thinking that there was nothing really wrong with Sam, so why bother? But over time, either because they drew my attention to it or because of some new paranoia, I guess I just… started seeing things. Things that concerned me.” She took in a deep breath, releasing it before continuing, “I just want her to be herself, you know?”

  I felt warmth suffuse my body. It was nice to hear I was here not because I was wrong in some way, but because of a mix of concern and environmental factors in Mom’s life. Made me feel surer about myself – and more secure in my secrets.

  “Thank you, Kati,” Mary said. “Your turn Samantha.”

  “I’m Samantha Pearsson, and I’m here because my mother, my class mentor and city hall made it conditional for me dropping remedial lessons. They’ve shared with me that my problem was that I push myself too hard, which I don’t really understand,” I said.

  Mom winced beside me for reasons unkno- no, that’s false. I did know the reason. I’d decided honesty was the best policy – a piece of wisdom I’d found rang true so far in my day to day, with few notable exceptions. Then again, nobody had asked me if I was an android. Or a masked, besides Crowsong the first time we met…

  Anyway, this was likely another one of those times I should’ve made an exception. My honesty was perhaps too blunt, to the point it must’ve sounded unintentionally accusatory.

  I turned to Mom. “I don’t blame you,” I said, once again opting for honesty. “Just because I don’t understand the reason why I’m here, doesn’t mean I don’t understand why you’d want me to.” Did that make sense? It sounded like a contradiction…

  Well, it seemed to lift Mom’s spirits. She smiled, and I smiled back before turning to Mary again. “As for these sessions: I expect to answer questions, have parts of my personality dissected and examined, hopefully allowing the both of us some insight. Also, I expect you not to share my secrets to either the government, the school or my Mom. Or anyone else, really. At least, not without my explicit consent. As for a desired end goal…” I hesitated, then shrugged. “I don’t really know. Again, I do not see a problem.”

  Mary smiled at me. Not that she’d ever stopped doing that, but it felt more sincere now. “That’s a much more… literal answer than I expected. Very direct and honest as well, which doesn’t happen often during first meetings. Now, do you remember what I asked after the first half of your mother’s story?”

  “If I found myself in what she said of me?” I asked in turn.

  “Exactly. Do you think you can answer that?”

  What an odd way to phrase the question. “Of course,” I replied. “I do not know if everything I do is for other people, and if I did, I do not really see the problem – I believe it’s good to do things for others. But I do agree that there are parts of my personality that are lacking. My friends all have their hobbies, strong likes and dislikes, and a better understanding of themselves than I have of myself. I have some things I enjoy-” and one hobby, if being a hero counted as one “-and preferences, but nothing so strong as I’ve seen other people have.”

  “Then aren’t all those good goals to have for these sessions?” Mary asked. Rhetorically, if I understood correctly. “Not just the part about discovering yourself, but also to help you understand why people view you the way they do.”

  I frowned. “That sounds a bit vague,” I said. “Is that enough for a treatment plan?”

  Mary smiled. It bordered on a smirk, but lacking in sharpness or mockery. “Did some research, did you? Then now that we’ve set some expectations, let’s get into the practicalities of it all, shall we?”

  X

  We left the therapist’s office and exited the building it was located in – an office tower in Bayside containing many businesses. We’d come here by subway and so prepared to walk in that direction, but before I could, I was grabbed from behind.

  Mom hugged me fiercely and put her head on mine. “Thank you for doing this, Sam,” she said, then kissed the top of my head before letting go. “Since you were honest there, I’ll be honest too: I thought this would make you hate me.”

  I frowned and turned around. “Why would I do that?” I asked. “If I hated you for this, I would’ve just refused in the first place.”

  Mom smiled, but there was a bitter edge to it. “I tried something similar with your brother,” she admitted. “Didn’t really work out.”

  My frown deepened. “Why would he hate you for that?” I was beginning to dislike my brother, despite having never met him.

  Mom’s mood decreased further at my response. “It’s… complicated. More complicated than you know, so don’t blame your brother, okay?”

  It seemed she’d read my thoughts. “But-” I tried to counter, but she cut me off.

  “Please,” Mom pleaded. “For me?”

  How unfair. “Fine,” I grumbled.

  She tussled my hair with a bitter smile. I didn’t have it in me to scowl, and went to fix it quietly as we walked home.