As I tuck in for the night sometimes, I imagine myself in my true body
I imagine its hulking shamble of twisted bones draped in long, messy fur, curled like knotted tree roots among the verdant ferns and croaking bullfrogs as this human form slips into darkness and the great blue wisps of fire flicker to life in the eye sockets.
My jaw creaks and rattles like a xylophone of joints as my neck stretches and twists away the ache of eons old slumber, each tender lean breaking apart the clumps of moss that have clung together during my sleep.
My claws flex and stretch as i feel around, readdjusting myself to my proper posture and size as I was my talons in the cold stream beside me before rising to tower alongside the looming redwoods far larger than I.
I take a deep, phantasmal breath of the humid forest around me, relishing in the cool suggestion of lush greenery and earthen floor, petrichor gently at the edge of my senses as I settle once more into a body that feels more like my own.
I am still a nerd beneath the shaggy form and undead creaks.
My stories are still hissed by my tongue and my games are still poked at by enlarged claws but the flesh that restrained and pained me has now melted for my preferred structure of magic and decay.
I am still me, and always shall I be, regardless of the form that lays in the bed whilst the mind imagines what should be.








