They were peaceful. They were quiet. They had their life solved, or so they thought. Even if they were living someone else's life. Living but waiting for death's release. Is peace and quiet even the goal? Is there a need for a goal? They sometimes still wonder, doubting their decisions.

But they could hide no longer. The pressure was too much, used as they were to show one face in public and another in private (in the deep privacy only loneliness can give). It helped (or didn't) that they saw others coming out. They had to. And so they did.

As they stepped into the public arena, they could hear the crowd screaming in a language they could not understand. Epithets. Bigoted adjectives designed to hurt. To push them back into hiding. Why? They wondered. Why so much hate? Why so much fear? Why did the crowd want to force them into patterns that were not a part of them? Why did the crowd fear them just for not complying with the binary?