Shape Shifting
Apr. 15th, 2020 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
writer_melWhen it started, the change was out of pure fear. Elise had always been teased as a child. Her parents were different from everyone else's parents: they spoke strange words in place of the ones they couldn't remember in English and they smelled of exotic spices. Never mind they were hard working and loving. They were other. Demise looked and sounded like all of her classmates, but she still was singled out. Her and the black boy. Only them.
He got angry, very angry, and fought back. Nothing was going to make it better, he said to her once, so he might as well get his licks in. Denise wanted to disappear. She wanted to be someone else, someone who wouldn't draw the attention. She wished she was blonde like Sally or that she had blue eyes like Brenda.
There was a bunny like that, white with blue eyes, at the little pet shop in town and Elise would beg to go visit it when they went shopping on the weekends. She would stand over the open top case, set up to encourage petting, and stare at the little rabbit. She watched how it moved, tentatively around the edged for a while, then bounding across the open middle to reach a treat. Then back along the edges. It's fur was the purest white, all the way down to it's fluffy toes. And it's eyes, unlike most white bunnies, were blue. She dreamed sometimes of petting it, of getting lost in that fur.
If she could get lost enough, maybe she wouldn't hear the jibes any more. Maybe she'd be able to feel like one of them, with their regular features and easy laughter. She'd be able to bounce right into the middle of things to get what she wanted. She'd be the same as everyone else. Just like that bunny, who moved over to sit with the other, darker bunnies and was instantly accepted into the huddle.
It would be so nice to be a bunny, wouldn't it?
He got angry, very angry, and fought back. Nothing was going to make it better, he said to her once, so he might as well get his licks in. Denise wanted to disappear. She wanted to be someone else, someone who wouldn't draw the attention. She wished she was blonde like Sally or that she had blue eyes like Brenda.
There was a bunny like that, white with blue eyes, at the little pet shop in town and Elise would beg to go visit it when they went shopping on the weekends. She would stand over the open top case, set up to encourage petting, and stare at the little rabbit. She watched how it moved, tentatively around the edged for a while, then bounding across the open middle to reach a treat. Then back along the edges. It's fur was the purest white, all the way down to it's fluffy toes. And it's eyes, unlike most white bunnies, were blue. She dreamed sometimes of petting it, of getting lost in that fur.
If she could get lost enough, maybe she wouldn't hear the jibes any more. Maybe she'd be able to feel like one of them, with their regular features and easy laughter. She'd be able to bounce right into the middle of things to get what she wanted. She'd be the same as everyone else. Just like that bunny, who moved over to sit with the other, darker bunnies and was instantly accepted into the huddle.
It would be so nice to be a bunny, wouldn't it?
