Editing The Tragedy of Thing-tan (section)

== Part 1 ==

One of the things Danika taught me is how to navigate the backroads of this town. She learned the secret passages and hidden cul de sacs through bitter experience, running messages for the local gangs. It was her part time job, something to do after work for a bit of extra coin. A barmaid could escape the town watch's notice in ways that the more infamous gangers couldn't. It wasn't her full time job, but it was enough to earn the money for her mother's treatment: Pelor's faithful can cure disease with a touch - or with the contents of a bottle - but the Gods' favors didn't come cheap. For a peasant girl's family, sickness can kill, and the cure can seem as unattainable as a dragon's hoard.

I have the cure in my pouch now. I'm running through these backroads towards my - no, Danika's home. One last stop before I leave town. They've come for me again. The crew of adventurers; the Paladin and the Wizard, and the Druid that I thought I could have formed a real connection with. They killed my friends when they found out what I was. They called me an abomination. They said I murdered the last girl, the one whose name I wore like my own, but am already starting to forget. My name is Danika now. It has been since I consumed her to hide from them. When I embraced her flesh into my own I took her memories too; her love for the busboy that works late at the bar, her fear of spiders, her duty towards her sick mother that led her to flaunt the law. In the months that I wore her skin, I finished the work she began. I saved up the money for mother's cure. It's my kindness to honor the memory of the woman I've become. 

I come to the end of the alleyway and there's my - Danika's - house. They're already there, waiting for me. The Paladin is consoling my mother, telling her that I - Danika - is dead. That I - the monster - consumed me and has been pretending to be me. Mother is crying. I stare in silence for a long time.

I hate them. I HATE them! They ruined everything again! I could have been happy here, and mother would never have known. I've gotten better at being the people I embrace into myself. The tics and mannerisms from the others stop bleeding through. I could have actually had a life - a real life. I could have been a person!

I feel my skin peeling away as my anger rises. My tendrils burst out from ripping flesh. My teeth sharpen. My eyes narrow into insectile slits. I want to do what I did last time - when I killed the Fighter from their damned party. I want to let the monster out and destroy everything. Maybe then they'll just leave me alone!

But Mother would be hurt if I did that. I can't let mother be hurt. So I pull the monster back and wrap myself in Danika again and do my best to grow calm. Instead I sneak up to my - her - doorstep - I'm very quiet, and nobody can see me if I don't want them to - and leave the cure and the note - the one apologizing and explaining that Danika lives on within me, that she isn't lonely, that she is surrounded by a legion of loving sisters - at the door. And then, using Danika's knowledge of the city's backroads, which she so graciously taught me, I leave.

The next town awaits a day's journey away. A new identity. A second chance. Maybe this time I'll get it right. I'm trying. I'm trying so hard to be good. Why won't they let me?