Loxley is one thousand bats.

The animals embrace each other, nestling in the shape of something semi-human.

The first time Loxley burst into a thousand night creatures in front of me, I laughed and called them Dracula until realizing the one thousand bats tucked into the ceiling’s shadows did not find it funny. Then I got scared, wondering how, exactly, one loved a thousand bats—the type of animal less of a problem than the sheer quantity. If I lost just one bat, how much of Loxley would be gone? Eventually, I’d worried myself to sleep under one thousand sentries and woke to Loxley, human—or, as human as they ever are—and whole.

The bats, Loxley had explained, were their fear-animal. Not that they feared bats, but because bats were good at being scared, able to fly off and tuck themselves away in dark places. When I asked why so many, Loxley had no idea. Their best guess was one bat per bad thought, or fragment of memory that haunts them.

Now a practiced shapechanger, Loxley no longer transforms because of minor emotional fluctuations. The bats signal a magnitude of distress that I struggle to keep up with. Loxley has described how painful it is to slingshot through different forms day after day, relentlessly, sometimes with no end in sight. Once so painful that they tried to cut themselves free of their skin, and they didn’t mean to, God they didn’t mean to, when I screamed at the blood pooling on the tile, but how else could they make it stop when it hurt in a way NSAIDs and SSRIs couldn’t touch?

This time, I make no mention of Dracula.

My own bubbling panic tells me to run to them, hold them close, anything to convince them they’re safe. But the bats are aloof, threatening to erupt into skittish clouds at any sudden movement.

Instead, I sit far enough away not to spook bats-Loxley, and backtrack the conversation in my mind, back to when it grew heated—not toward each other, just from the nature of the topic. I wish I’d noticed sooner and called for a breather, a way to release the electric tension so it wouldn’t short circuit inside of Loxley. But they were already overwhelmed by the time I realized fear had consumed Loxley.

I open a container of mealworms and scatter some around my feet, catching the attention of a few bats. Just as I’m wondering if this, too, would turn out to be offensive, one bat shifts away from the others and cautiously approaches. It’s a tiny thing with a grumpy face and big, cartoonish ears—Loxley said they were eastern red bats, and at the time, I’d nodded like that meant something, then looked them up as soon as Loxley was out of eyeshot.

The most important thing I’d found was that they liked insects, so I’d purchased mealworms and hidden them in the back of the fridge so Loxley wouldn’t ask, because saying I’d bought food for bats-Loxley felt a little absurd, but at least I’d be prepared.

And that much is right. Bats-Loxley—or, one bat—makes it all the way to a mealworm. It looks from me to the worm, downturned mouth seeming to disapprove of this food choice compared to their supposed internet preference of moths.

“I can’t keep moths in the fridge,” is my sorry explanation.

The bat’s wings twitch.

It eats the mealworm all the same, I wonder which bad thought this one is. Loxley had mentioned that adolescence was the worst for changelings—not the swapped-at-birth type from folklore, but the your-30-trillion-cells-are-connected-by-willpower-alone type that go haywire in teenage years, as puberty marks the beginning of a personal hell, punctuated by a body that spontaneously assumes new forms at haphazard intervals until slowly finding some sort of equilibrium.

It’s a blessing and curse of changelings—the ability to experience others just as easily as they can be themselves. Loxley and I still puzzle through the fickle dance of mirroring without merging, empathy without enmeshment. There’s nothing like the deep understanding of someone who can be what they feel, what you feel—the impossible intimacy of Loxley’s physical form responding not only to their emotions, but to mine.

I scatter a few more mealworms.

A flutter in my palm—I look down, and the bat has found my hand. I cup my fingers around it, protecting it in the only way I know how. Soon, another bat finds the courage to sneak closer. 

Then another.

Then another, until I’m covered by maybe hundreds, maybe one thousand bats perched across me. Their quivering forms tickle my skin, and I close my eyes and take in what’s likely the closest I’ll ever feel to how Loxley does, enveloped by bats. Then, stillness. The fragmented sensations of little bat feet have become one solid form in my lap.

I open my eyes.

Loxley blinks back at me, human as they ever are.

* * *

Ⓒ Camsyn Clair