This is for a Valentine's event and the prompt was to write about people reassuring Mona about her stretch marks! So there are mentions of things like stretch marks, feeling uncertain about your body being seen by other people, and the ways that white people interact with natural hair.
About half of this (cause I flew so close to the sun of the deadline on wings of not being inspired and having an unexpectedly busy week) was beta'ed by alittlefellowinawideworld on tumblr, and the accompanying art was drawn by kodeless on tumblr! Thanks all!
Farah slips her keys into her jacket pocket as she steps into the detective agency, eyes automatically scanning the room for Mona. Dirk keeps a fruit bowl on the counter despite the fact he never eats fruit; today there's a small soapstone mouse tucked between an apple and a banana. Farah sighs. Her heels click on the hardwood as she strides into the back room. She picks up a pen, adding another tally to the growing collection of tallies on the fridge notepad. It's been forty-seven days now since Mona was last seen in human form. Farah doesn't know much about Mona, but whenever Dirk looks at the notepad, furrows grow between his eyebrows and he adds more cream to his tea, taking time to fully incorporate the swirls of white with his favorite tiny spoon. (It's one of those tourist spoons, a piece of junk Todd picked up for Dirk in Bergsberg, but in true Dirk fashion the spoon has become a treasured friend and coffee-making assistant.)
Farah shakes her head to clear the memories of Dirk and the spoon. Time for tea. While she waits for it to steep, she fills the coffee pot with water, reorganises the tea cupboard, and arranges the fridge magnets to spell STOP EATING MY YOGURT. She doesn't have the letters to add DIRK to the end, but he'll know the message is for him anyway. Todd doesn't like yogurt. Farah cradles her mug of tea between her hands and heads for her desk as quickly as possible without spilling it. Even though it's early, the day is already shaping up to be a hot one; she regrets not making it an iced tea. She sips it slowly as she waits for her computer to turn on.
The office comes to life even more slowly than her computer. It's not so much that Farah likes early mornings. She's used to them, sure, from her various trainings and from her work as a bodyguard. More and more, however, she's discovering that she likes the quiet before Todd comes in with his grumblings and rumblings and Dirk clatters in with his perpetual energy machine of a brain. She savors her two solitary hours by sipping her tea as she goes through the expense reports. Dirk's most recent report is rendered in crayon on a napkin. It says simply "egg sandwich $5 and tea $3 oh bother" followed by some illegible scribbles and a stick figure. Farah enters it in the spreadsheet and tucks the napkin inside her files before picking up Todd's latest effort. It's at least on a sheet of paper ripped from a legal pad. "$50 gas, like $10 lunch?, $5 lottery ticket cause Dirk was feeling lucky, $5 for balloons-Dirk again, $5 coffee." Farah sighs and puts it in the spreadsheet too. She's tried time and time again to get them to fill out their expense reports better. She's long since learned she'd rather spend her breath on less futile pursuits, like kissing her girlfriends. Farah can't help but smile as she thinks about Tina and Amanda, sending them each a good morning text.
There's a blast of hot, cologne-scented air into the front room as Dirk enters. "Farah!" he exclaims, as he does every morning. He exuberantly slams the door and bounds farther into the room. His eyes dart to the fruit bowl, and his shoulders fall faster than Galileo's cannonball. He crosses to the counter and leans forward, hands planted on either side of the innocent fruit bowl.
"Mona," he says. Farah's very familiar with that tone, the one that's stern and gentle and admonishing all at the same time. "Look, goodness knows humans are complicated. But it's not good for you to be a mouse for this long! You're going to forget how to be a human!" He lowers his voice, reaches forward to stroke the little mouse's head between its ears. "I know it's hard, but would you think about being Mona for a few hours for us?"
Farah looks down at her desk as Dirk speaks, tipping her pen cup out onto the desk and re-organizing the pens by color. Dirk's patronizing tone makes her squirm. She looks over at them again just as Mona becomes a little Bluetooth speaker.
"Just Farah, okay?" Mona's voice comes drifting out of the speaker, a little crackly. It makes her sound all the more vulnerable.
Dirk looks over at Farah, eyebrows furrowed. Farah stands up, scoops up speaker Mona, and goes into the back room.
"What is it, Mona?" Farah sets her on the table and sits down across from her.
The thing about Mona's transformations is that there is no in between, no puff of smoke. They still boggle Farah's mind. There was a speaker, and now there is a young woman, just as though she'd been perched on the table all along. Farah tries not to flinch.
Mona's wearing a cardigan over a sundress despite the heat. The cardigan is pale gray like the mouse she'd been a minute before. Its soft folds drape around her tiny frame and make her look all too human. She moves a little closer to Farah and clutches her sleeves close to her torso. Her eyes lock onto Farah's, then dart away. Farah makes the instinctive motion of checking her watch, and seeing it, the mouse appears on the table.
"Oh no, sorry. Habit." Farah flushes.
Mona the human is there again. She wordlessly extends her arm towards Farah, trembling slightly, and tugs the sleeve of her cardigan farther up her arm. Farah has to stop herself from gasping in surprise: Mona's arm is criss-crossed with silvery lines. Some are thick, some thin; some are tiny little things while others wrap almost all the way around her arm. Farah puts on a neutral face before looking up at Mona. Now that she's seen the ones on Mona's arm, she recognizes stretch marks on her face and neck as well.
"So you have stretch marks," she says gently. "Everyone does."
"They do?"
"Yeah." Farah takes a moment to remember where hers are. Breasts, thighs, stomach: she doesn't really want to take off her clothes in her office just to show them to Mona.
"As many as me?" Mona whispers.
"Welllll," Farah says, looking at Mona's arm, "no, not usually…" She winces and searches for something comforting to say, but Mona yanks her sleeve back down her arm and turns into a mouse before Farah can blink.
"Oh, no, Mona, that's not a bad thing," she says desperately. "It just makes you different, but we're all different!" She looks down at the mouse in despair and frustration. This really is a job for Tina; the self-declared empath always makes Farah feel better about herself, even when she's in the throes of an anxiety attack.
Farah purses her lips and looks down at the mouse. "I'm going to call Tina, okay?" She searches for words. "It sucks that you feel bad, and I think Tina can help. Can I pick you up?" Farah approaches the mouse slowly, to give Mona time to object, and scoops it into her pocket. She takes out her phone and calls Tina.
Tina declares that Farah needs to take the day off and come to her apartment. "Bring Mona," Tina says, though she won't let Farah in on her plans. "This is gonna be fun."
Farah walks out into the front office. "I'm going to be out for a few hours," she tells Dirk. "Nothing to worry about."
"Okay!" he says, looking up from his work. It's a massive map of Seattle that he's sticking pins into, seemingly at random. "Have fun!" Farah privately thinks that if anyone told her that they were going out and not to worry, she would a) worry and b) follow them, but that's Dirk. She has to love his trusting personality. She's split between wanting it for herself and not wanting it for herself in a million years.
Farah puts Mona on the passenger seat of her car and buckles her in, despite the fact that the mouse statuette is about as wide as the seat belt. It's a relatively short drive to Tina's place, in the opposite direction from downtown, so the roads are clear. Farah hums to herself and taps her fingers on the steering wheel. Normally she doesn't like taking off work, but it's a beautiful day and she's on her way to Tina's house-she can live a little!
Tina answers the door almost immediately after Farah's knock. She's wearing shorts and a shirt Dirk gave her emblazoned with the slogan BABY BI BI BI. "Come in, come in!" she says, going on tiptoes to kiss Farah. "Where's Mona?"
Farah takes the mouse out of her pocket. Tina leans forward and kisses its tiny forehead. "Hey Mona!"
As Farah takes the mouse back from Tina, it falls out of her hand and tumbles towards the ground. Human Mona appears before it would have hit the ground. Tina throws her arms around her. "Hello hello!"
"Hi, Tina," Mona says, smiling. "I like your shirt."
"Oh, thanks!" Tina says, looking down at it and pulling the hem away from her body. "I love that song."
"It's a song?" Mona asks, and Farah listens to them talk as they move into the kitchen.
"Coffee? Pop? Weed gummies?"
Farah moves around Tina to start making herself tea, as she usually does. She likes coffee, but it makes her too jittery, so she's trying to ease off it.
"I'll have water," Mona says.
"Suit yourself." Tina fills a glass with water for Mona and grabs a soda for herself. They settle into the living room, Tina on the couch, Farah and Mona on cushions on the floor. Mona slurps her water. Farah taps her fingers on her leg.
"What exactly are we doing?" Farah asks. She glances at Mona.
"We're gonna party, dude!" Tina says, holding up her soda. "Sort of." She sets the soda on the floor and goes into her room, coming out with an armful of clothes and random pieces of fabric.
"It's a party in your living room, so you empty out your entire wardrobe?" Farah asks. She sips her tea.
"We're gonna do makeovers!" Tina grins. "No makeup this time though, we don't need that shit. Or we could do really dramatic makeup."
Mona sets down her glass and curiously pokes through the pile. She holds up a gauzy lavender dress.
"I wore that to my sister's wedding," Tina says. "She picked the dresses for us. You should try it on!"
Mona smiles and makes her way to the door, dress in hand.
"You can change in here if you like! Don't have to be shy!" Tina smiles encouragingly before beginning to look through the pile herself. Mona looks down at herself, frowning, before turning her back to Tina and Farah and changing quickly, huddled in on herself.
Farah joins Tina in looking at the mountain of clothes. She's intimately familiar with Tina's wardrobe, but many of these pieces are new to her. There are a lot more dresses than Tina normally wears, along with what seem to be costumes and random thrift store finds. Farah eventually holds up a vest covered in drawings of brightly-colored hot air balloons. Tina looks at it and laughs.
"I think I got that at a clothes swap one time. I don't remember why I picked it. You should wear it with this!" She holds up a short twirly skirt that incorporates some of the colors on the vest. Farah laughs and accepts the skirt from Tina. She's about to stand up and get changed when Mona turns around.
The dress suits her to a tee. Mona normally looks doll-like, and the dress only increases the effect. Her silvery stretch marks make her look iridescent.
"Oh," Farah breathes.
"Look at you! You look like a fairy princess!" Tina exclaims. She digs through the pile, emerging triumphantly with a tiara and a feather boa, which she hands to Mona. Mona puts them on and twirls in a circle, chiffon and feathers twirling with her. Tina clasps her hands to her chest. "Perfect."
Tina turns to Farah. "Did you wanna find something like that?"
Farah looks at Mona, still spinning. "I'm okay with this," she says, and takes off her work clothes, laying them in a neat stack on the coffee table. She puts on the vest and skirt, then twirls, watching the skirt swirl beneath her.
"Leave the vest open!" Tina says, wolf-whistling, so Farah undoes the buttons, blushing. She has the toned sort of body that she knows is in vogue, but she's still a little shy. It's helped to be with Tina and Amanda, who both make her feel like a queen. Tina comes over and kisses her sweetly, hands on Farah's hips, and Farah smiles as she kisses her back.
"What are you going to wear?" Farah says, pulling away.
Tina looks down at the pile of clothes. "Dunno. Wanna help me look?"
Mona and Farah dig through the piles with Tina, proposing several different outfits before they find The One. Tina pairs a top hat with a pair of bedazzled bell bottom jeans, leaving her torso bare except for her bralette. At her suggestion, the three of them take turns strutting down the middle of the living room as though they're on a catwalk. Then they do it again with new outfits. This time Mona chooses a little black dress and pairs it with a fuzzy scarf that dwarfs her small frame. Farah layers an oversized cable knit sweater over a maxi skirt, and Tina models a brightly coloured sarong.
"Where did you find all this stuff?" Farah asks, after she's completed her twirl at the end of the "catwalk" and posed with hands on hips.
"My sister, my mom, clothes swaps with my friends…" Tina says, shrugging. She runs her fingers through the fringe on her sarong. "This is from my dad. He went on a business trip somewhere and brought me and my sister sarongs." She stands up and claps her hands. "Wanna paint on each other?"
Farah and Mona look at each other doubtfully. "Maybe later," Farah says.
Tina makes them all another round of hot drinks, and they settle onto the couch, still wearing their fashion show outfits. Mona drapes her scarf over as much of her bare neck and arms as she can.
"Look, Mona." Tina pulls the edge of the sarong up over her pale thighs. She has long, thin stretch marks on both thighs. "It's totally normal, you know?"
Farah reaches up to touch her hair. It's in thick braids today that feel smooth and knobbly against her fingers. "Sometimes people stare at me when I have my hair out. Or they ask to touch it. I'm still getting used to having my hair natural." She shrugs, unsure how to communicate what she means. "It's not hair like I see in magazines, but that doesn't mean it isn't real, and okay, and beautiful."
"Yeah, they want you to think everyone is skinny with no stretch marks or cellulite, but that's not true! Don't let them make you hide."
Mona rubs her fingers across the stretch marks on her arms. "These are all from when I'm different things. When I'm different things all the time, I don't know which thing is actually me. With all these new marks...this body doesn't feel so much like home."
Tina hums in acknowledgement and puts a hand on Mona's knee. "Let's make good memories in this body, okay?"
They go to a park and walk around, looking at all the different-looking people there. When a flash mob breaks out, the three of them join in, jumping and twisting with abandon. They go to the swimming pool in the park and dip their feet in the water, talking about what their ideal swimming suit would look like. They get ice cream and eat it messily before they roll down a long hill, shrieking like little kids. Exhausted, they walk back to Tina's place together, hand in hand. They're careful to walk inside the building still holding hands and do a mini conga line through the house, ending up back in the living room. They collapse into a pile of bodies together, giggling.
"Wow," Tina says. She puffs out a breath of warm air that tickles Farah's neck. "We should do that again!"
"I'm way too tired for that," Farah replies. "Try again in a billion years."
Mona adjusts her arms to encircle the other women's shoulders before giving them a squeeze. "Thank you."
"Anytime!" Tina exclaims. She tousles Mona's hair with one hand. "We're all just human, you know?"
"I'm not just human!" Mona says, flashing through a variety of forms before coming back to her human body.
"No, not just human," Tina agrees. "Way cooler than us normal, lame humans. But do you feel a little better?"
"Yes," Mona says, and she hugs them again. Farah thinks about the Mona of this morning, who had never given a hug as far as Farah had seen. "Yes, I do." They all stay for hours in that gently breathing, gently warm pile, feeling vividly alive and ready to take on the whole world one step at a time.