[private] hiding in plain sight; adna

[Velkan]

I catch sight of her fangs, but it’s so brief of a glimpse that I wonder if I have hallucinated it. Could someone else out there really be a horse with a set of fangs? My tongue gently touches the edges of the shiny black teeth that my own mouth houses, teeth made for flesh, not flowers. I want to ask her about them, but how do you even go and bring that up? I’m sure I’ll blurt it out with no tact later on. “Right back at you.” I smile, though it’s small and sad. “But…” I don’t have the right words to say exactly what I’m feeling right now. It’s strangely comforting to know that this scaled mare is also of a similar mind to me. I’m not alone in not embracing the so-called gifts that I was born with. I wonder if she’s embraced hers more than I have, or if she simply uses them out of necessity like me as well. “Well, it’s nice to meet another monster.” The word is gentle on my tongue with an almost-joking turn to it. I would never in a million years use that term to describe a friend (and, like it or not, this snake-girl is now a friend). Still, it echoes so often in my mind when I think about myself. About the parts of me that I shove deep down and ignore whenever I make a new friend. My smile widens a little more, hoping to show her that I really don’t mean anything cruel by my word choice. This time, my own fangs show a little – gleaming and midnight-black like everything else about me. As if they could say ‘see? Me too.’ “I’m Velkan. What’s your name?”

photo from unsplash

@[adna]