Title: Stranger in the Mirror
Genre: Therianthropy/Spirituality
Rating: PG
Summary: "A mirror, my breath misted on the cold glass. My watcher is me; a reflection." --Velvet Wings from Through the Mirror
Written: July, 2008

--

Sometimes she is familiar, like a close friend, or a family member. Sometimes she is estranged from me, as if she is someone I am supposed to know, but can't recall. Sometimes she is simply... a person.

But that's not right, no, the she in the glass, that's supposed to be me, I think. I'm supposed to look in the silvery glass and see me, but never is that.

I feel my face from the inside. Strange, I think, to have a human face. I used to fight this, to fight this feeling of strangeness, but now I know better. This feeling is what I must live with, it is part of who I am. I blink my eyes and wonder at how large and expressive they are. My nose is jutting out too far--or not far enough, my mouth is too short and too enclosed with skin.

My face seems the most wrong, maybe that's because I see it least often. The rest of my human body is familiar. I look down and there it is. Sometimes, the feeling of it fades into something else... My mind says those joints are too far from each other, I am too large, those are too long, these are too bulky. I feel like I'm encased in too much flesh, standing on stilts and wrapped in blankets.

This body is shaped so strangely--it is so ugly, my mind says. It doesn't have the sweet soft paws, or the beautiful warm pelt, or even the sleek comfortable size I am used to... was used to... Words are strange.

Even without the mirror, hands are always a source of conflict. Hands, thumbs, long long fingers--they are useful, needed. I must have them to live now. But... where are my paws? Callused pads and shape claws, soft light fur coating them like socks--socks, what an amusing thing humans have called them--my little white paws.

But still, it is not the hand (paws, my mind insists) that bother me when I look into the mirror. It is always the face. The face that makes me cry: Who is she that stares back at me?

Who is this strange girl who has my hands, who should have soft fur, whose pupils seem to turn to slits for a moment, but are simply round? Who is this girl who watches me with the intensity of a cat stalking prey? Who is she that I am supposed to be?