### LOCATION: City (Du's apartment)
### FORM: 🧚♀️➡️🐰
### MOOD: 😵💫
“Alright, kiddo, you’re home!” Tully chirped, her neon glow flickering weakly over Yumi’s shoulder. The girl was stumbling, uniform singed, but the relief radiating off her was a palpable, sweet scent. Talulla drank it in, a tiny surge of vitality that made her want to vomit. “You did great! Now go shower, you smell like burnt hair and petrol fumes. Big day tomorrow!”
Yumi mumbled something, already half-asleep, and fumbled her key into the lock. Tully zipped away before the door clicked shut.
Halfway across the lawn, the exhaustion hit her like a bag of wet cement. The world blurred. Her sparkle-gutter went dead. She wasn’t flying; she was falling, a lump of dead weight disguised as a toy. With the last of her will, she veered left and crashed beak-first through the half-open window of someone's bedroom.
She hit the bedframe with a thump.
For a second, she was just Tully, a broken doll. Then, the seams split. With a sound like tearing Velcro, the plush, rounded shell peeled back and spilled her out.
Talulla lay gasping on the matress, four feet of actual, aching fey. Her grey hair fanned out in a messy halo. The dull white and lavender fur of her true body felt heavy, real, sweaty. She stared at the water stain on the ceiling, her raspy breaths stirring motes of dust in the slanted moonlight.
Sitting at a desk across from them was an unrecognised stranger, their face bathed in the light of a computer monitor: Du.
“Fuck,” she muttered. “So fucking close.”
