#borrowerkin

I tried archetropy, but I think this label is the way it's heading. So I'm gonna talk about it.

First I talk about myself. I have my own understanding of who I am that mimics the story of Borrowers everywhere. Beyond my current stature, my life seems to follow a Borrower's existence.

I found myself coming to front in the middle of a breakdown, as we hid in a closet, and I felt safe. Behind walls, peeking in at a house we never felt fully safe in. I've always been on the outskirts and underfoot, even going so far as to imagine what would happen if I suddenly was the size I hoped. I'd run and hide. I often felt that I would be safer with a stranger, with a chosen giant, than my own family.

"Be good to them and they won't squish you."

I am a vulnerable creature, sensitive and shy, suffice it to say I adopted this role wholeheartedly. Fawning and caring for everyone so I wasn't hurt. Hiding in the shadows and the corners, borrowing the smallest favours so I wasn't noticed for taking too much. Constantly stifled in a place I was supposed to grow, until now I take up such little space.

I look human, but I'm not on the inside.

As a child we loved fairies, used to write notes to them wishing for wings to fly away. Now I return to the depiction of a typical fairy and I wonder about how I look to them. I've been grounded, living inside a house for so long, crazed and wild as a feral mouse. How they welcome me into lush forests and calm grasses. Tell me that it's okay, that I'm safe now. That I've survived, and I'm still alive.

And then, well, I met my giant. And he reminds me I'm not all typical borrower. He reminds me that, just like Arietty, I haven't developed a distrust for all giants. I don't have the "sense". Like Sho, we met in greenery and I learnt to trust him. Because he is the one who manages to make me feel safe, comfortable, and loved.

I am a tiny, my size is incredibly important to me. It is affirming and lovely and spreads like vines to make me a bug, a borrower, and maybe even a fairy too. It's born from suffering, but now it is my choice to return to a giant's house. Running underfoot becomes a game, a happy and delightful game, as I re-enact my trauma and reconnect to my own heritage. Because as much as the borrower lifestyle is pain, it is who I am. I can no longer pretend I am human, and I embrace the good, and the bad.

Now it comes to folklore, how others see me. Borrowers as a species seem to share a strong resemblance and connection to brownies or broonies, which are household spirits from Scottish folklore. However, there seems a split between the two kinds in general view. Brownies are associated with Fae, goblins, gnomes, etc. while Borrowers are typically viewed as "tiny people" without any specified powers. Joining the ranks of Lilliputians and tinies everywhere. The depictions of both range vastly online and in literature, from insectoid to rodentish, and magical to mundane.

For me, the line between what I am and what I see depicted of my kind is blurred.

To what extent am I mystical? I don't have magic, but when I get really excited I feel wings buzzing behind me as if I was Fae. Scientifically, I can't exist at my size, so there must be something else inside me. I also don't find it alarming that I am a Borrower who is therian identifying, a lot of my nonhuman-ness feels very in line with being a tiny creature forced to survive on the outskirts of society.

To what extent am I human? I have written stories myself, of a giant meeting a borrower and coming to realise they are the same levels of intelligence and sophistication. I sometimes look it, but inside I don't feel it. I've lived inside a human dwelling and adopted their customs but I'm not a human. And I think my fellow literary Borrowers would agree.

So I am left with a bit of a puzzle to fill, but pieces are coming into place slowly. All I know is that I'm a Borrower, whatever that even means, and folcintera as a term seems to acknowledge all the points I mentioned above.