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<<linkreplace "My back">>It's fine<</linkreplace>>
<<linkreplace "My head">>It hurts<</linkreplace>>
<<linkreplace "My horn">>[[It's bleeding]]<</linkreplace>>Two pieces of it lie on the ground [[next to me]]Big pieces. It was a clean break. I gather them into [[my hand]] and regard them like deciduous teeth.[[I don't have a lot of use for teeth anyway]]The blood from where the fragments fit complementarily to my horn's base is pooling in. The break was conveniently located enough to have made a small divet for it to collect in so that it wouldn't immediately spill down [[onto my face and into my hair]].Was that something I was worried about? I could wash my face. I could wash my hair. I could cut my hair. It could [[grow back]]. I could break my horn. It could [[grow back]].[[Right?]]I rotate the bigger piece between my fingers, [[examining]] the grooves along the jagged site of the break. The pieces slide back and forth over the friction ridges and furrows in my fingers.
Complementarily, again.[[Just feeling]]My horn is pulsating where the wound is. Blood vessels constricting. Platelets aggregating. Promoting [[healing]] And then there's the [[hurting]]The pain is like a sharp throbbing to me, but instead of making me cry it's just making me contemplative. It's funny, because I know that's not how it's supposed to be, but I can't even force myself to cry. The syncline-like divet is the place where most of the pain is concentrated. Some trolls' horns are big enough that they don't even feel them breaking off at the ends. I don't have any overly sensitive protrusions where clumps of neurons extend through. I never even felt or regarded this bone until I'm feeling it now in my hand. Maybe I took it for granted or something. But this is just a different way to experience it, like a different angle. I felt it before but I didn't notice or consider it. Now I do, now that it's in my hand and not on my head where it was supposed to be. Before tonight, I just thought, it'll always be there. [[I should be fine?]]I don't know how I [[should be]] feeling.But I probably shouldn't be feeling like [[this feeling]] is so abstruse.I didn't really think my horn would always be intact, I just didn't think about its absence. Forgetting something can go wrong isn't even close to the same as just being fine forever. How many times a day do you think about anything that goes on inside you? You don't even notice the processes happening in your own organs, that's just stupid to say after all. This is all stupid and excessive of me. When other trolls get hurt, they don't question how it feels. Right? They don't analyze it. It just hurts. They probably feel some kind of pain every day, even if it's something small. They can't turn it off or save it for later or prepare for it. For now, I won't either. Until the blood reaches my hair and it feels [[wet]].[[What if I bled out?]][[...Wouldn't that be kinda bad?]]The pieces of my horn [[meet the ground]].The blood [[goes dry]][[Not quite dry]][[Just goes...]][[It's just gone]]The sensation. My wound isn't producing fresh blood. And I [[can't feel it hurting anymore]][[I actually can't feel much of anything now]]As I get up, I stare at the shards of bone on the ground. They're just bones now. Not officially part of my horn anymore. They won't ever be part of it again either. Some incompleteness. [[I have to leave them]] if I don't want to bleed the whole way back to my hive. And I don't, not really. [[Can't carry them]]I don't know if it's supposed to feel weird but it does feel weird, at least to me, leaving [[a piece of myself]] that was perfectly intact just ten minutes earlier alone on the forest floor.A piece of me that will grow back, though. I mean, ostensibly. It'll take me a [[long time]]. And shutting everything down just to walk home and tape myself up will prolong that, even if it's just by a little. I know I can wait, though.[[I'm good at waiting.]]But fuck, I still want longer hair so bad. It doesn't grow when I keep my body in this stasis, and I know I shouldn't lock it up all the time, but it's so controlled that everything unusual or painful becomes a sensation worth remembering. And what about my horn anyway? I think in a few days time, I'll still remember that it broke where others would forget. For others you get the obsession of the difference of parts, maybe the new fixation of running your fingers along the edge, but it always passes. It's not the kind of thing you dwell on unless it's serious, sometimes you remember in ephemeral bursts or if someone points it out to you but then you just forget all over again. Right? Maybe it's not what anyone else would do, but to me it feels like I'm curating a collection.