Part 9: The Real You

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Da-hwinn's performance hall wasn't a venue to kill for by any stretch. No bright lights. No decorative plant life. Just plain as day seating for the smallest crowd of the tour. For Mae, however, it was a place of renewal. Where enthusiasm once waned, passion thrived. Mae hardly slowed down or stopped for breath. She was in front of a crowd again, and she intended to make the most of it. Her and her inventive playful partner reminded the whole town why Sixth Eye was a two piece. Separately, they were nothing. Together, they were unstoppable.

“Thank you, Da-hwinn!" She yelled to the crowd, who responded in turn with a standing ovation.

She always did the sign off. It was only natural. She was the front woman, the face and voice. the one who soaked up the attention, while her best friend remained an afterthought. It nauseated her. They were meant to be equal, yet he always played to non-human crowds while she could never do the same. And thus his voice remained unheard.

As she picked him up and carried him off backstage, she knew nothing had changed. Their time in the settlements had taught her nothing would unless they acted themselves. Toby deserved a microphone, a song to sing, and a crowd of his people to sing to. It had to happen one day, but those ideas could wait. The backstage area, metallic and skeletal as it was, had a pleasant surprise in store. Endi welcomed them back, with her charge studiously held in her hands. It was gratifying to her, but her partner thought it was comedy gold.

“Copycat!" Toby yelled to Cass.

“Now you piss off. I was taking hand rides before you could walk!" Cass shot back, but he quickly softened when Endi moved to pet him. “Though I did miss it a great deal."

Endi giggled and stroked Cass's yellow hair. To her amazement, both parties seemed so much more comfortable with each other. Something gave the other night. “I missed it, too. Somebody has to fill the drought of human affection here."

Mae wouldn't just take that lying down. She brought Toby to roost near her chest with impish inspiration. “If that's a challenge, then you're going to lose."

To prove her point, Mae hit Toby with a deadly combo of cheek nuzzling and back stroking. He practically liquified, stammering and radiating heat. Mae purred as much at the feeling of his little body pressed to her cheek as she did at his searing red blush.

“We've been bested, Cass. Thoroughly." Endi bowed her head with a little smirk on her face.

Cass played along with his guardian, bowing to Mae and Toby in mock acquiescence. “You win, gingersnap. But we'll be coming back with snuggles beyond your wildest reckonings!"

The comment was so ridiculous that Mae had to laugh, but she wasn't blind to what it meant for his friendship with Toby. Grief didn't heal easily, but she was sure both humans preferred snuggle wars to the bitter breakdown that was in store for them otherwise. Endi returned her hands to an immaculate guardian hold. Mae wasn't surprised that Cass spoke so highly of her. She was a professional, even with how compelled she must have been to bathe him in pets.

Though, inevitably, every moment of levity had to come to an end. All four of their yutris buzzed for attention, puncturing the atmosphere like claws through a balloon. There was only one person who would have had all their numbers, let alone feel the need to call them simultaneously. With a knowing sulk, Mae's yutri met the open air. A bright yellow asishi flickered to life in the holographic display. Inevitably.

“Everybody's here? Good, it's best you all hear this at the same time."

Saos's aloof perkiness was entirely absent, which immediately tipped them off that something was wrong. If even Saos was in a bad mood, then they must have really been in for it.

“What is it, Saos?" Mae asked the AI with folding ears and a slouch in her stance.

Toby scratched at her fur, and Mae released a breath she didn't even realize she was holding. He was far too good at this. With empathy like his, part of her swore he was a lupari in a past life. Though, she was more than happy with the version of him she knew. Saos sighed through digital lungs, head down as if in mourning. She certainly didn't make Toby's job any easier.

“Cal-Gea is letting you go. I'm sorry, kids."

In that instant, time slowed to a trudge. Mae's heart sank into her stomach. She knew this would happen, but that only made things worse. It was her fault, well and truly her fault.

“The higher ups know what you did in Da-hwinn." Saos continued once the sting of the announcement set in. “I tried to tell them to keep you on anyway, but they didn't care what I had to say. I wish it hadn't come to this, kids. I really do."

None of them could hide their distress. But the way Toby's hands left her palm cut deepest of all. Her friends were hurting because of her, and she felt she deserved every drop of blame. Toby, ever the negotiator, fought his feelings to speak up. Mae so dearly wished he didn't have to. “We knew the risks, Saos. You did what you could." He forced out.

Holographic ears stood upright once again. Saos even managed a smile, baring no teeth like they taught aspiring guardians. Hiding digital teeth. Out of touch and condescending, definitely, yet still a real enough show of sympathy that Mae accepted it. “Look. This is some textbook small comfort, but I like you two. You're good kids. Have a lot of heart. I can't get you your jobs back. But me? I'll try and keep you afloat however I can. This won't be the last you see of me."

With one last nod, Saos disappeared into the stuffy backstage air, and left them to their own devices. Mae and her friends were stuck in an over lit, bland venue that no longer welcomed them.

“What are we going to do, guys?" Endi whimpered.

Mae couldn't answer her. She and Toby were fully prepared for the consequences of a contract breach, but their former techs certainly weren't. She'd left Endi and Cass with an uncertain future. A forceful separation may have been lined up for them, for all she knew. The thought of it had her in agony.

“Why don't we pack up one last time, girl?" Cass instructed his guardian, playing on his rarely seen tender side.

Once his guardian settled down, Cass lent Toby a cordial nod and urged Endi to take him to his mech. And like that, their only company was gone. Off to perform their duties one last time. Any pretensions of calm Mae held onto shattered. She had no idea where to go, what to do, or even what would happen to Toby. She was lost.

“What do we do, Toby?" She didn't have a drop of hope in her body. Toby's fingers married her fur and pleasurably scratched with strength unbecoming of his species. Mae trilled at the sensation, always eager to be calmed by it.

“We stick together. Contract or no contract, there's no way in hell I'm leaving you behind."

That comment nearly had Mae confess on the spot. Her mouth slid open, ready to do so, but the grating buzzing of her yutri nipped her plans in the bud. She groaned in disgust and pulled the accursed thing out again. Mercifully, it wasn't some awful addendum to their lay-off, but rather a message from Rij herself. Things had already started to look up.

“Rij is in the green room. She says she has the proxy tester with her." She let Toby know, hands closed around him.

Toby made himself comfortable, and without further ado Mae began her march towards the green room. Doors blurred around her, each with a purpose Mae couldn't bring herself to care about. She heard rumblings behind a door to her left. Rij's voice, undeniably.

She collected Toby in one hand and ripped her way into the green room with the other. The place wasn't much to look at. Walls the blandest shade of cream. A round, fake-wood table in the center, and a coven of red sofas surrounding it. Aside from a few shelves lining the walls. The only point of interest was the lonesome pregnant woman with her bare paws kicked up on the table beneath her.

“Mae, Toby, you're here!"

Taking a few tense steps towards the other ra'lai, Mae slid Toby onto the table below. Rij at least showed the common curtesy to bring her paws to the floor, but the lack of any proxy tester drastically thinned Mae's patience. “Where's Jane Doe? I didn't just lose my job for you to-" Mae began to growl when a very large hand gripped her shoulder.

Her anger faded the minute she turned around. Nothing could have prepared he for what she saw. A ra'lai woman, built for the snow much like herself. With thick fur, oversized appendages, and a tail nearly as long as she was tall. Yet she was enormous. Mae barely reached her collarbone. And her fur, with the proper gray spots that Mae lacked, was burned a bright orange. Mae couldn't believe what she was seeing. It was her.

“Ko!"

Mae embraced her long-lost sister for the first time in years. Arms wrapped around their backs, desperately grasping to make sure the other was real.

“Mae." Ko whispered in her new, much deeper voice. “I missed you so much."

Necks rolled across shoulders. Long, overjoyed tongues bathed any fur they could find. There was so much to talk about. From her career, to the peculiar mix of her scent and Rij's that filled her nostrils. Loathe she was to do so, Mae broke off their embrace. There was nothing stranger that making eye contact with her sister after so long.

“Me and my wife have a lot to tell you. Don't we, Rij'ishe?" She purred, shifting her eyes from Rij to Toby.

Smug as can be, she turned her translator off for him and looked him straight on. “And I hope you've been treating my sister well, Toby Waugh!" Ko playfully chided, speaking to him in English on par with Mae's.

Clearly Toby's mind was blown to smithereens. It was anyone's guess whether the family ties or hearing his native tongue shocked him more, but Mae couldn't have been happier. Her sister was alive, married, and helping human integration more than she ever could. But in any case, Ko'eliis Delphin had a lot of explaining to do.

--

A near eighty-foot, orange snow leopard would have caught Toby's attention any day of the week, but the kind of tales Mae's sister spun for them boggled his mind. Everything from rich foster parents to an engineering scholarship, and all the way to having spent time on Earth. More dazzling still was seeing Mae so utterly and unabashedly happy about something. He could scarcely imagine what she felt. He was just glad she was given the chance to feel it.

“When did you and Rij marry?" Mae probed her further, innocent and adorably curious.

Sat opposite her sister, Ko was more than happy to provide the answers. There was a certain kindness to her. He saw it in Mae every day, and he saw it just as much in her sister. He'd have called it a family trait if he hadn't heard what their mother had done to the poor girls. He was surely blessed to have only known this generation of the family.

“We met on Terra a few days after humanity's liberation. She was a medic back in the invasion. All of the things she's seen? Sha'ra'lai, it's a wonder that you can sleep at night, my love." Ko sighed, beginning to tremble before her beloved wife put a hand on hers.

A tried and true move to calm down the Delphin sisters, it seemed. “Only because I sleep next to you." Rij's slick tones rumbled in the best English he'd ever heard an alien speak.

Saos could only outmatch her with the language directly installed onto her systems, so Toby considered it a real feat on Rij's part. She continued in place of Ko after that, more than willing to flex her language skills for a stretch. “Anyway, we kept talking over the years. One thing led to another, and eventually…"

Rij happily tapped her stomach, recoiling a little when an unborn infant kicked from within. Strange as it was to think a fetus outsized him, that child's origins must have been stranger still. He would have figured a past love or artificial insemination, but Mae's own biology led him towards a different conclusion. “So that's your kid, Ko?"

Mae explained her hermaphroditism quite early on, so two women having biological children wasn't the strangest idea space had exposed him to. Though being met with a real example for the first time was quite the case of culture shock. Ever patient with ignorant primitives like himself, Ko nodded and held her wife's hand close.

“Of course! Three healthy baby girls. We'll raise them with love. Show them what Mother never showed us, and they'll make their auntie Mae proud."

Ko's oath was a joy to hear, but, still, the whole situation left him in a strange place. Mae had missed her sister for so long. This wasn't a moment he had any right to share, much less so when his own family reunion was still on the back burner. The itch to put off change and ignore his own needs still pervaded him, but he was above those impulses. Mae taught him that. “Hey guys?" He called out, catching their attention with rare ease for the vertically challenged. “Can one of you take me to the corner or something? I need to make a call."

Murmurs of agreement came from the apartment sized women around him, and a well groomed black hand lay at his feet. Stepping into a hand that wasn't Mae's was always odd. However, Rij was nothing short of exceptional. She walked slowly and gently, and gave him one of the smoothest hand rides he'd ever taken part in. From table to shelf, Rij glided across the room with incalculable grace, releasing her human cargo without a hair out of place.

“There, nice and safe from their earshot." Rij chirped, pleasant and indelibly humble. “I think I'll head off, too. You were right to let those two catch up on their own."

Mae's sister was one thing, but Rij was in a whole other ballpark in terms of developments he didn't expect. He'd written her off as a scatterbrain, yet, not only was she Mae's relative, she was practically a war hero. She may well have saved dozens of lives, human and non. He couldn't give her a medal, so his thanks would have to do.

“Rij?" Toby blushed like a schoolboy, while he tried to break out something decent. “Thanks. I didn't think much of you at first, but, my god, Mae couldn't ask for a better sister in law."

His messy attempt at congratulating her brought a smile to Rij's face. There was a mischievous glint in her eye, the same that Mae had during their private moments. It must have been a giant cat thing.

“D'aww, is my future-brother-in-law trying to butter me up?" Rij cackled with self-satisfied laughter, yet something told him she wasn't entirely joking.

Rij slipped away, before he could fully process what she left him with. 'Future-brother-in-law' didn't sound too bad. Regardless, Toby still had a call to make before he took that emotional deep dive. He gathered up some extra willpower and dialed the number Saos had given him. Images of a quaint little bedroom filled his yutri's screen. To him, its every nook and cranny was gut wrenchingly familiar. A bed with white silk sheets. A dark wooden cross on the door to his right. A tacky wallpaper depicting birds and spiraling branches. The webcam was even on the crooked old desk they'd held onto since his childhood. Typical. Even after the Rynar set the world on fire, some things never changed.

“Let me answer it, Glad." Insisted a posh, masculine voice from elsewhere.

A tall man huffed and puffed, as he plunged into the seat before the desk. Seeing him was like looking into a wrinkly mirror, with his red hair, brown eyes, and his compulsion to feel up every other part of the wooden chair below him. And just like Toby, the virtual reunion left the man dumbstruck.

“Dad?"

Toby hardly knew how to continue after that. Part of him even considered hanging up and stewing in self-pity, until his father took the reins.

“Gladys! It's Toby! Toby's calling us, Gladys!" He shouted to his left, his voice cracking like a teenager.

Footsteps louder than any giant could manage thundered up the stairs. The bedroom door nearly flew off its hinges when a small, greying woman breached the enclosed space. She scrunched up next to her husband, unable to dry her tears. “My baby boy!"

Gladys slapped her hands over her mouth. She very nearly hyperventilated from the emotional weight. Guilt kicked Toby right in his gut. He wanted to face them head on, look them dead in the eye, and tell them what he did was wrong. Yet his head founds its way into his hands all the same. “I'm so sorry mum." Came Toby's cry, muffled through his palms. “I couldn't stay after all the stuff about faith, and I knew how much I disappointed you. And I just wanted to- I just wanted to run away."

Toby expected some derision at least. Some scoffing or satisfaction on his father's part. None came. What followed wasn't some callous dismissal of his feelings, but an honest declaration of regret. “No, son." Declan stopped him. “We're the ones who should apologize."

Gladys dried her eyes on her husband's shoulder. She looked utterly ashamed of herself. “We never stopped loving you, Toby, but we didn't show it. If there's anything we can do to make things right, you name it."

Hearing his mother's confession was enough of a shock to pull Toby out of his funk. He'd started to see things clearer now. His parents had changed for the better, and he had too. That alone was worth celebrating. “Thank you."

With the way his parents' faces lit up, it was safe to assume that was all he needed to say. It was then that he finally noticed the gaudy sign that hung above their bed: 'Dec & Glad's Christianity Call-In'. All he could do was laugh. He'd completely forgot about what Saos said they'd been doing all this time. It was a funny idea, and it begged for elaboration. “Maybe you can start by telling me about this call-in service?" Toby suggested, about as amused as he was curious.

Gladys shuffled off her husband with a childlike enthusiasm. He knew that look. His mother always had uncommon energy for someone her age, but it only ever shone through when she either talked about her son or talked about God. Seeing it here was something else.

“Oh, it's a wonderful story son! We were preparing for mass one day when this enormous lion man walked up to our church! We were awfully frightened, but then he asked us how he could become a Christian! He was so sweet! Who were we to turn him down after that?"

Declan offered a wry smile at the memory. Neither of them seemed very happy to have once feared that ralai. Toby almost began to think that it ran in the family. “It's true." Declan admitted, “After his baptism, he became a devout believer, and a good friend. He's the one who convinced us to start the service, in fact. 'Show others the light you showed me!' Insatiable, he was."

Declan laughed softly, though he soon brought himself back to the present. Toby stiffened up a bit. The time for him to explain himself was coming. “Now if you don't mind, we'd love to know what our son has been doing all these years."

Toby groaned. Keen as his parents were to know, he barely had an idea of where to start. There was nothing to say about his time in construction. Sixth Eye had been an adventure, but perhaps too short of one to really carry a conversation. Thinking it over, he realized that none of it mattered. Something else, or rather someone else, had too great a grip on his thoughts. He didn't care how he spent that time anymore. All he truly cared about was the woman he spent it with. “I met someone." Toby breathed in deep. “An alien girl, ralai, like your friend. Her name is Mae. We've been friends for a while now, and something's come up. Something big, and-“

Toby rubbed his face to stem his agitation. He got frustrated even thinking about it, let alone saying it, but the sunk cost fallacy was a pesky thing. It snuck up on people when they least expected it. Made them say things they otherwise wouldn't have. He was in too deep. He needed to take that train of thought to its proper destination, lest he stay silent forever. “I love her. I might've done from the day I met her. She's smart, she's caring, and, god, I owe her so much. But I still can't say it cause I'm too scared of fu-messing things up. I'm a coward, aren't I?"

He certainly felt like one, and he expected his parents to say the same. Though much to his relief, dear old dad seemed proud of him. “Listen to yourself, son. You love her, so go ahead and tell her. We're behind you every step of the way."

Gladys pushed herself to the forefront, taking up most of the camera's vision. If Declan was proud, then Gladys was overjoyed. “And you love an alien too, that's beautiful! And a ralai? You couldn't be in better hands, son. Literally!" Gladys giggled, turning Toby into a blushing mess.

His mother wasn't wrong. He trusted Mae more than anybody he'd ever met. There was no need for excuses. They were so empty compared to the thought of having a life with her. “You're right. I have nothing to fear. Next time I see her? I'll tell her how I feel. I won't let you down!"

Saying it aloud made him feel like a new man. He almost felt stupid for trying to do otherwise, but there was no time for that. He needed to think of his future. His future with the woman he loved.

“Now that's the boy we raised. Call us again after you've told her. We'd love to speak to this girl ourselves." Gladys cooed at the thought.

It was strange to see her so invested in a relationship that hadn't begun yet, but he doubted many people supported tiny monkeys shacking up with giant cats, or vice versa. He lucked out. Hard. “And if it goes well, then do the honest thing and marry her! If she can love a man the size of her hand, then she's the kind of young lady you don't want to let pass you by." Declan reached over to the keyboard, and he and his wife waved at Toby.

“Talk to you soon, pet. Goodbye!" His mother promised him, and then faded into nothing.

From there, all Toby could do was sit back and watch the sisters talk. They'd gone off on some conversation in their native tongue, which was fortunate. It felt less like eavesdropping if he couldn't understand them. He loved her. He wouldn't have said as much to his parents if he didn't mean it. He would tell her today, and nothing could stop him.

--

“Fired? Over something like that?" Her sister gasped in a mix of horror and indignation.

Reliving the story for her sister hadn't been easy for Mae, nor was thinking about the sorry state that their future was in. No contract. No proxies. No plan. But none of that could diminish the fact that she had her sister back. A brilliant, inquisitive sister whose attentiveness and problem-solving skills hadn't faded since she disappeared. “And you never even used a proxy, did you?" Ko crossed her arms while she took the information in.

Mae nodded. Her ears folded, heavy with grief of what could have been, but she owed her much lauded proxy tester an explanation. “I wanted to show the humans the steps we were taking. So many things separate us, no matter how hard we try. Walking amongst them? Seeing the same world that they do? It sounds incredible, but it's too late for that."

A hoarse, humorless laugh scraped out of Mae's throat. It all sounded like a ridiculous pipe dream at that point. Ko didn't seem to think the same.

“Don't be so sure." Ko flashed Mae a cheeky grin, the kind that a smug teen had when showing off one of their new toys.

Oversized orange hands heaved a heavy bag onto the table between them, filling the room with a resounding thud. She rummaged through its clanking contents, and came out with a pair of neural jacks, a visor, and an ankle-high metal replica of a ra'lai's body. The little android came complete with taped-on plastic scraps where its ears would have been. There was a scrappy charm to it, like the unpolished civilian mech prototypes she'd seen on the extranet years ago.

“You'd best bring Toby over." Ko commanded, brimming with knowledge and unspoken sympathy. “If your first time in the proxy is anything like mine, then you'll need any comfort he can bring you."

Mae felt a chill run down her back. Her sister was never one to play with the truth, much less so with a full career behind her. Mae heeded her warning and found Toby again, an easy task with senses like hers. Mae made sure to give the little man a quick rub with her cheek, when she held him once again. After a quick journey, she left him side by side with the proxy prototype. Seeing them together was quite a contrast. The robot's sulking head didn't so much as reach his eye-line. It might have been funny to somebody else, but not to her. Not when she was about to become that thing.

“Kind of ratty, isn't it?" Asked Toby, circling the robot to take in its every imperfection. “And those jack things? Not a fan."

“We'll smooth out the chassis when they hit mass production." Ko was clearly unperturbed by Toby's comments. “We're also thinking of splitting the control scheme into tiers, so don't expect people to be shoving jacks in their temples everywhere they go."

Ko picked up the helmet, and fit it onto Mae's waiting skull, having brushed some grime from its dome as she went.

“Remember what I said, sis. You're going to panic." Ko reminded her, as she adorned her sister in the other components.

“I always do."

Ko and Toby both got a cheap laugh out of that. Better to focus on that than the deaf sightless void her world became when the earbuds went in. Garish white text punched through the sensory deprivation, asking one very simple question.

Ready? Nod = Yes. Shake = No.

Mae nodded slowly, as not to damage the equipment. A tick flashed across the screen. Followed by a short countdown count down and a rather disconcerting follow up message.

You will go limp. Be seated.

Taking the warning as gospel, Mae found herself on the sofa just before a white flash knocked her cold. Mae's true body lay prone and useless. When her vision returned, muting and flickering as it was, all she saw was an infinite expanse of wood. The will to move was there, but her metal statuette of a body was slow to catch up. A finger would scrape at her new thigh. Then the new thigh would scrape at the floor. Followed by a restless forearm and an aching shoulder. Soon she took her first step, balled her first fist, did everything and anything except move her neck.

Not a shred of scent could guide her way. Her ears begged for range and fidelity that they couldn't attain. But she had to move her neck. She wouldn't let this machine defeat her. Mechanical sinew crackled and creaked. Bolts and tendons strained under their own weight, bringing a dull throb where pain should have been. A crackling, shrill cry quaked from her voice box, its horrifying substitute for the groan of effort she tried to make. Slowly but surely, the endless wood lifted. This was it. Toby's world.

What a horrible world it was. Cream colored walls towered inescapably. A knee height table became fatal to fall from. Shelves and armrests stretched on and on like city streets. Chairs became skyscrapers, and the ceiling stood so elusively high that a ship would be needed to reach it. She was stranded.

“Can you hear me, Mae?"

Her head shot to her sister's voice, its fretful timbre much louder than it had any right to be. The woman herself was nightmarishly huge. Looming, overbearing, and terrifying as the giant monsters from fiction. Dense logs of fingers reached out for her, easily strong enough to snap her in twain. Eyes that dwarfed her head bore down on her with frightful focus. Her spine wanted to shiver. Her skin pleaded to tremble and shake. But she had no skin. Her spine was rigid. She was tiny. Senseless. Powerless. There was only one thing she could do.

Scream.

The immense fingers shrunk back to plug their owner's ears. Garbled, bit-crunched wailing drowned the room, threatening to burst eardrums and crack glass. She couldn't hear the others. She couldn't even hear herself think. She was tiny, ever so tiny. But as two strong, furless hands wrapped around her substitute biceps, it became clear that she was the furthest thing from alone.

“Mae!"

He called her name in a panic. Far less faint than normal, even through the fuzzing and buzzing that swamped her hearing. Her metal shell barely felt him, but his mere presence was enough for her anxieties to fizzle away. He was tall. Taller than she was by a good margin. She could see his every pore, each tiny scar and indent from brawls long since won. A tiny tuft of orange hair became a full-blown mane, just the shade of the color she loved on men of her species. And his eyes. Brown, alien little droplets they were before, now became great pales of concern and affection.

“Toby?" Her voice cracked, fraught as she tried to take it all in.

An artificial hand cupped his cheek, able to catch the minutiae of his bones and muscle for the first time. This was him. The real Toby. A Toby that she could only see in this machine.

“You're incredible."

A hand drifted behind his neck, wrapped his back and held him closer than her real body ever could. That was the tragedy of it all. This was a pretension. A mere taste of the world she wished they lived in. He and his race deserved so much more than to be stuck at her ankles for eternity, but it simply wasn't meant to be. She would always have to agonize over accidentally hurting him, and he would have to brave this awful world of giants to be with her. It wasn't fair. It simply wasn't fair. “I wish this didn't have to end, Toby." She whispered, instincts begging for tears in a body that couldn't shed them.

Mae gasped as Toby lay a long, sublime kiss between her plastic ears. His arms enveloped her back, chin rested at the crook of her neck. He was holding her. Her little light was holding her. She never thought she'd see the day. “I do. I want the real you, Mae. I want the Mae I know."

“Why?" Mae shrieked, as she broke off from him.

Her mechanical body's unsung strength made him stumble back a bit. “The real me can't see you like this. The real me can't hold your hand, or meet your eyes, or walk alongside you. I can offer you nothing at my true size! So why? Why would you want the real me?"

Toby cupped her outstretched hands in his. Skin met metal where fur should have been. With half lidded eyes and a tender touch, out came the four words that changed their lives forever.

“Because I love you."