Fourteen and alone, sometimes even in the hood and alongside the street if her caretaker is stupid enough.

Tory Flotilla spent years - years!! - providing solace to ignorant humans. The poems and singing she endured .. awful. Loneliness and poor vittles .. awful. Those she was assigned to were flaky and flitty yet she understood contracts, made before incarnation, that brought her to the test of those flakes and flits. She could stare steadily and knew she was the face-to-face of the day for humans incapable of this with their own.

Truth be told she could’ve napped her way into the next life. And was resigned to doing just so.

Alas, fate.

What did fate wish her to collide with?

Perhaps her body wasn’t sturdy enough, but the engine was.

Like a wreck she comes, but little, big, or any in between old ladies can’t be held accountable. The fibers of restraint fray. The aches were made by someone. And the ‘light touch’, isolation, ‘privacy’, and most of all lies don’t tickle anymore. I’ll transmit code with my teeth, she says, shelter have a translator for ya?

- Name changed to protect the innocent.