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fermented-writers-block · 3 years

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PART 2 of 6 of the Owl Deity Hooty Theory: More Than Meets The Eye

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[OWL DEITY HOOTY THEORY MASTERPOST] (in development)

(TLDR at bottom)

Throughout the show, I’ve found that the Owl House has been somewhat of an unnoticed enigma for a good deal of the fandom. It’s a subtle detail that’s easy to miss, but if one looks closely at each part of the house and particularly at a few visual design and art choices, it becomes readily apparent that rather than having been built from the ground up wholesale by Eda, it likely had originated as a dilapidated shell of a former building that she had repaired and grafted pieces of other buildings onto to form the Owl House we know today.

To start, from the exterior alone, we can see four other architectural styles attached to the central building - labeled as 1 - making up the house.

2 is essentially the exterior shed as seen in I Was a Teenage Abomination, and at other angles throughout the show like in my image for 4 and 5, is clearly off center on the side of the Owl House’s wall and doesn’t look like an original part of 1. Meanwhile, though we’ve yet to concretely get a good look inside of it, 3 appears to come from a tower different from the one behind the house due to it having the most grafted-on-to-the-house appearance, different circumference, slightly smaller windows in comparison, and more distinctly greyer coloration.

For 4 and 5, the former is actually the least incongruous with the rest of the house given how chimney brick styles tend to differ from the rest of the building, though both it and 5 - which is the bathroom from Witches Before Wizards - are noticeable with how they and Eda’s room balcony interfere with the base structure’s almost symmetrical exterior design.

In fact, with the makeshift balcony in Eda’s room, several shots reveal just how much of a contrast there is between the building section it comes from and the Owl House’s architecture, particularly between the the gray tower brickwork vs the white house walls as well as the way it awkwardly fills up the “door” to the balcony with a short brick wall rather than a clear and flush path outside.

All in all, these various parts differ significantly in wall style and flooring when compared to the center structure 1, and yet are very much in theme with Eda being a gleeful collector and scavenger of items others consider trash, but with that said, there’s a few more interesting details that seem to point towards even the Owl House’s owl theme not being of Eda’s design.

For starters, my friend @elementalist-kdj pointed out to me last year a painting in the living room that depicts a tower similar in appearance to the one behind the house but not the exact same one as my friend Oak Leak Knight points out below:

For reference from Steven Sugar’s storyboards that depict the painting and house towers:

There’s a few other differences like the painting tower having that whole gate vs the empty divot and mysterious stairs the tower behind the house has, but regardless, the fact of the matter is that both are -or were in the house tower’s case- implied to have the same slitted eye glass window. A window that appears to have been repurposed for the Owl House itself for Eda’s bedroom, which is interesting considering how much it makes the front façade of the house challenges the owl motif she has and has kept since childhood.

To clarify what I mean, the “HOOT” graffiti from Hexside in Something Ventured, Someone Framed and the dresser handles in the curser reveal flashback in Agony of a Witch demonstrate how Eda’s owl motif precedes both the curse and the moniker of “the Owl Lady” she gained from it. Paired alongside other examples of her use of said motif in the present day, we can see how it follows a general, clearly defined two-eyed owl design through and through no matter what coloring it takes on, one similar in appearance to that of a barn owl.

However, all throughout the house, we can see an also very clearly defined ONE-eyed owl motif, whether it be in various pieces of furniture, the balcony door frame in Eda’s room, and the front façade of the house - which most likely looked relatively close to how it is today when she found the structure, as she probably just repaired the façade with minimal changes and replaced a probable missing/damaged slitted eye window with the one from the tower we know.

And with one particular instance, we have a much greater idea of just what kind of owl motif the original structure seems to be based around through the living room ceiling mural. From it, we can gather that it has a diamond-shaped star on its belly, long phoenix-esque tail feathers, prominently clawed feet, a crown of some sorts, and seems to be a literally horned owl rather than merely having feather tufts like actual horned owls.

In fact, when one looks at the setup of the living room minus the furniture, rug, and decorations, the tied up wall length curtains in the corners and the candles everywhere give off an oddly...reverent feeling towards the ceiling-wide mural. Almost as though the living room used to be some sort of altar or ritual room dedicated to the owl entity the mural depicts, and almost like the base structure Eda probably turned into the Owl House might have been part of a larger temple dedicated to it - especially given the unexplained doorway in her room for the makeshift balcony that looks particularly stylized after this mysterious one-eyed owl entity and like it is meant to lead into a no longer present hallway or such.

Like an attentive reader might have picked up at this point, it is this strangely implicit reverence towards said entity and the lack of concrete information on what exactly it IS for which I decided to title this theory of mine. There’s not enough to say if it was some kind of godly being in of itself, but there is enough to suggest that it may have been exalted like a god, hence the use of “Deity” as according to the word’s third definition of ‘a person or thing revered as a god or goddess.’

With that said, as I’ll expand upon in Part 3 next, while I can’t definitively argue that it’s some god-like being, there is the interesting little detail about how the overall design of a play on a one-eyed horned owl and its ear tufts extend to a particular set of interdimensional artifacts AND the blueprints - almost as though this entity and especially its slitted eye plays a key role in making them function the way they do…

TLDR: The mismatched variation in architectural styles across its segments and the borrowing of the stained glass eye window from the tower behind the house suggests that Eda had discovered its central structure in ruins years ago and then turned them into what we know now as the Owl House. From this, the altar-like setup of the living room with its ceiling-wide mural seems to indicate that prior to its deterioration and Eda’s refurbishments, it used to be some sort of temple or building of reverence dedicated to what I call “the Owl Deity,” and going by the Owl Deity’s design, it appears to be integral in some manner to both the titular structure and the central artifact of the whole show. Tune in next time in Part 3 for how I think this unusual entity may turn out to be connected to our favorite little bird worm!

#the owl house #the owl house theory #owl house theory #TOH theory #toh hooty #TOH #owl house #TOH speculation #the owl house speculation #owl deity hooty theory

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fanfoolishness · 4 years

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black ink on white paper (SUF)

Several weeks into his road trip, Steven makes sure to keep up with his mental health. A lot of angst and a little hope, therapy, 4800 words.

***

Steven futzed about with his phone, trying to find the best place to rest it for his therapy session. He tried balancing it on his half-filled journal, but thought better of it in case he decided he wanted to refer to its pages during the session. He moved the journal to the side on the nightstand, leaving it where he could get to it quickly if needed. He finally leaned his phone against the hotel room’s beige lamp and angled it to center his face in the camera’s view. He always felt a little uncomfortable with this bit, looking at his face blown-up on the screen until Dr. Boverman appeared.

A ding, and Dr. B smiled at Steven, his broad face filling up most of the screen and creasing into a smile. Steven’s image shrank down, disappearing to the corner where he could avoid looking at it more easily.

“Hi there, Steven. How’s your week been?”

Steven settled in, trying to organize his thinking. As usual he landed on the most mundane things first. It was always easier to get started this way.

“Pretty good. I’m in Texahoma. It’s really different from back home.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling to himself. “It’s hot! The Dondai’s AC is working overtime just to keep things semi-comfortable. I can still feel the sun beating down on me through the glass, though. And this state is so huge! I mean, I got through Delmarva in like three hours. This is day two of Texahoma and I’m still not through yet.”

“Are you liking it? I’ve never been,” said Dr. B.

“I think so. Some of the accents here are kind of a lot to get used to but the people are friendly. There’s not as many vegetarian food options as I’d like but I’ve had some of the best mac and cheese ever here, and I did find one vegetarian barbecue joint that… wow, it was good. Really good.”

“You’re making me hungry!” Dr. B laughed.

Heartened, Steven grinned. He liked this part of his therapy sessions, normal chatting, like he wasn’t someone with a problem (a hundred thousand problems) trying to work it out. He wasn’t friends with Dr. B -- he knew that wasn’t how it was supposed to be -- but it felt friendly, and familiar, all the same. He continued.

“Then I wound up on a side road for a couple of hours and saw some real cowboys. And some real cows -- they’re huge in real life! Kind of terrifying, actually! There was this one time when I was a kid that we played cowboys out in the wilderness for a while, Dad and Amethyst and Ruby and me, but I don’t think it was the same. I was mostly going off of comic book cowboys. Still a lot of fun, though.”

Dr. B raised an eyebrow. “Ruby was there, but not Sapphire?”

Steven had been surprised at how quickly Dr. B had picked up on the intricacies of his family. He wasn’t used to human acquaintances knowing that Garnet was a fusion, or that some of his closest friends had previously tried to kill him. It was weird, but nice to not have to explain it freshly every time.

“Yeah. That was when Garnet fell apart about Mom being Pink Diamond.” He sighed. He supposed it was going to be a Rose day, then. He hadn’t been planning on it, but that part about cowboys had pushed him here, somehow. It was always strange to him how so often their therapy sessions took a completely different direction than he’d expected.

“She fell apart? Does that mean she -- unfused -- willingly? Or it was an accident?”

Steven’s lips thinned into a narrow line. “An accident, I guess. It was pretty awful for her to learn that Mom was such a liar.” He stared up at the ceiling, remembering how Sapphire had dissolved into tears and fled, how Amethyst had held Ruby, how Pearl had looked so ashamed. “That… was a rough day for them.”

“What about for you?”

Steven smiled a little. “You always ask that.”

“Have you noticed how your memories are often framed by how others reacted, instead of yourself?”

Steven fiddled with his hands, fingers twisting around each other. He didn’t look at the screen. “I know. You’ve pointed it out before. I know it’s a pattern.”

“It’s one we can try to unlearn. Or at least take note of. What did that day feel like for you, Steven?”

“Um… really weird, initially. I mean, I had to ask Pearl if she was the one who shattered Pink Diamond because she couldn’t speak about it at all, because Mom ordered her not to, and I only knew to ask because of a dream I had that must have been like an echo from my gem, and Pearl still couldn’t tell me even when I asked her so she had to take me back inside of her gem… it was really trippy. And I had to keep going back through all of her repressed war memories -- you know, Pearl could really use therapy, too -- until finally I got to the one she wanted me to see, and then --”

He took a deep breath, seeing Rose shift back into her Diamond form, towering over him and Pearl. “I knew it was going to be bad. Pearl liked to keep scary stuff from me but she would tell me if I kept asking. For her to not even be able to tell me -- like, she kept slamming her hands over her face so that she couldn’t open her mouth -- come on, that couldn’t be anything good.”

“Did that make things more frightening for you? Was she doing that on purpose?”

“I don’t think she could control it. I think Mom’s order to her was that powerful,” said Steven. “I think it’s a Diamond thing, though at least that’s something I’ve never done.” You’ve done plenty, his brain said, but Steven tried to ignore it. “For example, Mom ordered her playmate Spinel to stay in the garden, and she stayed. For six thousand years. I don’t think there was really a choice involved.” He frowned, waving a hand. “She always did what she wanted.”

“Rose did, you mean.”

“Yeah. Like, why couldn’t she have at least told Garnet? Or Amethyst? The war was over. It wasn’t like she still had a whole army she had to command after the Diamonds attacked. Why not at least tell the people she said she loved? She never told Dad, either. If she had told somebody else, then Pearl wouldn’t have had to carry that secret around for so long. Did she ever think about what that was doing to her?” Steven spat. “Pearl was a mess.”

“It sounds like Pearl had a very difficult time dealing with her own role in the war, as well as what your mother asked of her,” said Dr. B gently. “But what about you?”

“Damn it, I’m doing it again!” Steven laughed, but it was one of those laughs that wasn’t really one. “I don’t know. I… I was scared? Pink Diamond was small compared to Blue and Yellow and White, but she was still huge compared to me and Pearl in that memory, and seeing Mom shift from Rose to Pink -- I don’t know if my stomach ever hurt so bad, so suddenly. It was hard to breathe. But I didn’t have time to think about that because suddenly we were back, and I told everyone what I saw.”

“How did you feel after Garnet and Amethyst found out?”

“I just wanted to focus on them. Sapphire was so upset, and then Ruby ran off, and Amethyst kept annoying me, trying to cheer me up. I had to fix them, you know? I had to get everything back to normal, everything that Mom had messed up, again.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, balling them into fists.

“You were…. How old were you when you found this out?”

“Fourteen,” said Steven, thinking back.

“And who was responsible for the deception?”

“Well, Mom, of course.”

“Why did you feel that you had to fix what she did?”

“No one else was going to do it,” said Steven. He ran a hand over his face, his breathing coming more quickly. He swallowed. “It always had to be me. They needed me. Pearl couldn’t tell anyone until I asked her who shattered Pink Diamond. Garnet wasn’t there and Ruby and Sapphire didn’t know what to do without each other. Amethyst at least tried to talk to me, but… I was too worried about everyone else.”

“How did she try to reach you?” Dr. Boverman asked gently.

“She kept trying to distract me from looking for Ruby. She took me out for pizza. She straight up asked me how I was doing at one point... but then she stopped asking.” Steven squirmed uncomfortably. “I didn’t really tell her. I wanted her to tell me how she was doing. I didn’t really know how I was doing myself.”

“Do you know now?”

Steven fell silent. He leaned back against the pillows on the bed, taking long breaths. Why was this question always so hard? What was wrong with him, that he didn’t even know how he felt about important things in his own life?

“No,” he said softly. “It’s like I don’t feel anything -- or I feel everything, when it comes to her.”

Dr. B considered his words, tilting his head to one side and pursing his lips. “What does ‘everything’ feel like?”

Steven buried his face in his hands. “Arrrgh.”

“If this is too difficult right now, we can --”

“No, we’re already here,” Steven muttered. “It’s just --” He struggled for the words, a torrent of them flooding through his mind. His gem hummed. He knew without looking he was glowing pink, his heart starting to race, but at least his body was staying its normal size. He took a few more deep breaths. Why not. Maybe it won’t be so bad.

“Sometimes I feel so sorry for her,” he whispered through his hands. “The Diamonds used to lock her up and make her cry, sometimes for the stupidest things -- wanting to play with animals, or wanting to be friends with her Pearl. It could have been hundreds of years or longer they locked her away. How do you not feel bad for someone who went through that when they were just trying to be themselves?”

He lifted his head, lowered his pink hands to his lap. Dr. B peered at him sympathetically through the screen. It had frightened both of them the first time he glowed in a session, but slowly they’d worked to a place where Steven could accept it as a sign he was upset, like crying or blushing. His hand formed a clenched fist, then relaxed again, still pink.

“But sometimes I hate her so much,” he breathed. “She took all that pain the Diamonds put on her and she cracked her Pearl in a tantrum. Volley still has a scar on her face from it, and Gems don’t do that, they don’t get scars you can see unless it’s something incredibly bad. Like your owner you were in love with cracking you with a scream. She hurt Volley, she hurt Pearl by making her pretend to shatter her and keep the secret for thousands of years… she lied to Garnet and Amethyst and Dad, she never even thought about telling me the truth, and how many Gems were shattered? How many Gems were corrupted? She hurt so many people. And sometimes I’m scared that I’m just like her -- or worse -- I mean, I’m a shatterer --”

Tears stung and he blinked them back. His hand swelled, a fist three times its normal size. He stared hard at it, muttering under his breath. I’m having that scared feeling again. It’s okay to feel scared. It’s not me.

He wiped his eyes with his other hand, trying to focus. It’s just a feeling that I’m having right now, but it’s temporary. it’s gonna go away. All feelings do. He flexed his fingers slowly, and the fist shrank back down to normal size, the pink color fading.

“This is really frightening for you to think about,” said Dr. B in his steady voice. “But you were able to look at yourself starting to glow and swell, and you were able to bring yourself back to a more neutral state. You’re doing really well, Steven.”

Steven gave him a watery smile. “Thanks. I -- it does get easier. I try to think about what you told me. I’m not my feelings, they’re not bigger than me, they do go away eventually. That helps a lot.”

“That’s right,” Dr. B encouraged. “You’re Steven. You have big feelings, but they don’t define you. You can step outside of them and look at them from a safe distance, while still allowing yourself to feel and acknowledge them.”

“Yeah,” said Steven, the tightness in his chest loosening a little. “Yeah.”

“You brought up the shattering, which we know is one of your triggers. Do you want to carefully investigate it today, or do you want to continue speaking about your mother?”

“I --” He considered. Jasper-focused sessions always left him drained, fragile, usually for days at a time. Sometimes he craved that, needed it badly, needed to let himself feel and accept just what a terrible thing he’d done --

But some days it didn’t feel right to focus on the accident. Sometimes it got in the way of other work. And as he well knew… there was a lot of work to do.

“I don’t think it’s a Jasper day,” he said carefully. “I mean, we could -- but I think I need to talk more about Mom, today.”

“Okay, let’s keep talking about Rose. What makes you think you might be worse than your mother? You said yourself that many Gems were shattered in the war that she started.”

Steven shrugged. “She’s not the only one who lies. Or hurts people.” He stared past his phone at the blank hotel wall, finding it hard to focus. The wall slipped and blurred. He remembered waves against his waist, a roar in his throat, the way the town seemed so small. He remembered a monster’s agony. His agony.

“What if they hadn’t figured out how to get me out of my meltdown? I could have hurt the town, I could have hurt everyone -- They wouldn’t have been soldiers who got hurt, you know?”

“They did figure out how to help you. You told me yourself that no one in the town and no one in your family was hurt,” said Dr. B. “But it’s true that sometimes we do hurt others -- all of us. What’s important is that we take steps to avoid hurting others when we can. If we still hurt them, by accident or by making an unhealthy choice, we can make amends by changing our behavior to prevent it happening again. Which you’re doing. Right now. You are actively working to change your behavior not only to avoid hurting others, but also to avoid hurting yourself.”

“I guess,” he said. “It still feels weird to think about protecting myself. I mean, not with my shield or a bubble, but… emotionally. Sometimes I think about the stuff I did to try and help other people, and it would hurt me so bad but I’d just keep smiling… it’s so messed up.” He let out a soft huff of breath. “Can I tell you something? That I never told anyone?” It was funny, given all the terrible things Steven had already told him over the past several months, but it still made him feel better to ask permission. Like he was subconsciously trying to make sure he wasn’t going to hurt Dr. B, telling him about these things.

Dr. B’s kind eyes watched him. “Of course.” He always said yes.

“Ruby and Sapphire got married just a few days after she found Mom was Pink Diamond. After Pearl and I talked to them they decided to come back together and be Garnet for themselves, not for Mom or for anyone else. And I was so, so happy that everything I did, trying to help Sapphire understand Mom and Pearl, going on the cowboy trip with Ruby, pretending I was okay -- I was so happy that it worked. That Garnet was going to come back.”

Dr. B nodded. Steven fidgeted. This part was… embarrassing. But it felt right to say it, here, now, in a hotel room far away from Beach City and Rose Quartz’s memory and his family.

“I cried in the shower for almost an hour on the wedding day,” Steven mumbled. “I walked into the bathroom so excited to put on my tux and officiate the wedding and see everyone happy again, and as soon as I got in the shower I just… I lost it. I didn’t even know why I was crying. I just did, like a little kid, and I was glad that the water was so noisy because it meant that no one would hear me and ask me how I was doing.”

“Why were you glad that no one would ask how you were doing?”

“I don’t know,” said Steven, but he had a guess, one that hurt. He hazarded it. “It’s like… except a few times from Amethyst, no one did ask me how I was doing all week. Not Pearl, not Ruby or Sapphire, not even my dad! And when I was crying in the shower, I guess I thought -- maybe the reason they weren’t asking was because I was just really good at hiding it. And that would be okay. That would hurt less than… them not asking because they didn’t even think about asking me.”

For a moment Dr. B was silent. Then he spoke. “It sounds to me like you were trying to take control of the situation,” he said. “If you were good at hiding your feelings, then of course your family wouldn’t ask how you were doing. That would make it your responsibility, your choice: your actions were what you could control.” He adjusted his glasses and leaned in closer to the screen. “Steven, their actions were never your responsibility. It was their responsibility to check in with you, and they failed you at a time you needed support.”

“They just -- they were going through a lot --” he began automatically.

“She was your mother, Steven. The way you felt about her absolutely should have been explored. But your family chose not to reach out to you and help you, whether by mistake or on purpose, and it’s okay to be angry at them about it.”

“I’m not --”

“Steven, you’re glowing again,” said Dr. B, in his calm, neutral voice.

Steven laughed, a jagged sound, and caught sight of his image in the corner of the screen, pink and luminous and significantly bigger than it had been a moment ago. “I guess I am.”

“How do you feel?”

Deep, careful breaths. Words came, slowly, to the surface of his mind, syllables to rearrange into meaning. “Hurt. Ignored. Mad. Disappointed. With all of them.”

“All of who?”

“Garnet. Amethyst. Pearl. My dad.” His breathing started picking up, faster and faster. “Why didn’t they think that would mess me up?” he cried. “I mean, really, what the hell? Oh hey, Steven, your mom is an intergalactic dictator, she started a war against herself and got thousands of Gems shattered or corrupted! You’ve heard about how bad Homeworld and the Diamonds were for years, but whoops, your mom’s one of them! And now you have to deal with how her lies screwed up all her friends because you’re always the one to deal with her shit! But you’re fine with it, right? You’re Steven! Nothing ever bothers you, right? Right?”

He was near sobs now, his breathing ragged, his shoulders shaking. He felt himself growing, the top of his hair brushing the ceiling --

“Steven, I need you to breathe with me,” said Dr. B’s voice, faint from the distance below. “You can do this. Return to your center.”

Right, right. You know what to do. And he did, his eyes falling closed, tears drying on his cheeks as he breathed. It’s okay to have this feeling. And it will go away. His hands steadied. The hum in his ears faded, retreating until he heard Dr. B’s voice clearly through the phone.

“Steven?”

He opened his eyes, grabbing at the phone with his normal-sized, non-glowing hand. He let out a quavery laugh. “I -- I feel like I found a sore spot,” he admitted. “But… I think I was able to deal with it a lot better than a few months ago.”

“Absolutely,” said Dr. B warmly. “I can see you’ve been practicing your breathing and your centering techniques. Remember, these tools provide a way to help keep your feelings from harmfully affecting your powers, but the feelings themselves are not the problem.”

“Right.”

“How are you feeling now?”

“The same, but… not so overwhelmed? Mostly just upset that I had to go through that. Alone,” he said. He rubbed his shirt, readjusting it from where it had stretched to accommodate his sudden increase in size. “I wish I could have talked to you a long time ago.”

Dr. B smiled, nodding. “It’s a common sentiment,” he said. “We can’t undo the past, but I’m glad we’re able to speak now.”

“Me too.” He let out a long, rattling sigh. “Ugh. I just wish… I’d known more of this stuff. That it wasn’t okay for my family to act that way. That it was okay to be upset about Mom, and scared that I was gonna be like her. And I wish I’d known there are other ways to fix problems besides trying to make everyone else happy. Maybe sometimes we just need to feel terrible about terrible things.”

“That’s one of the things about being human, Steven. Painful emotions, like fear, or hatred, or sorrow, are important. There are times they absolutely need to be felt and acknowledged, instead of covering them up with band-aids.”

“Or weddings,” he mumbled, remembering his cheerful song about love, a glow bracelet shining between his clasped hands. His eyes pricked with tears he blinked away.

“You were trying to make the problem go away the only way you knew how,” said Dr. B. “And you didn’t have anyone to show you a different way. That isn’t messed up; it’s a coping mechanism for trauma. Your toolbox was very limited, but now you’re working to find ways to deal with those problems that don’t leave you hiding your feelings and not addressing them.” He tilted his head, considering. “From what you’ve told me, that’s something that makes you very different from your mother.”

“I know I’m trying -- I’m working really hard!” And he was, too, wasn’t even a question, he had gotten so much better. But still -- “What if it’s not enough? What if I’m still too much like her?” Steven asked, wincing at the answer he might get back.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said Dr. B, and Steven stared at him in surprise. “I want you to know that it’s not the worst thing in the world to have similarities to a family member, even when you dislike or no longer admire them. Being like her in some ways doesn’t mean you can’t make different choices. And even with all of her flaws and mistakes, there may have been some good qualities that you share with her, too. Can you think of any?”

Steven thought, screwing his face up in concentration. “She really did love the Earth. The plants, the mountains, the people… she really did want to save them. Everybody said so… and it’s one of the few things that didn’t turn out to be a lie.”

“And how do you feel about the Earth?”

Steven grinned, the smile a little pained at first, then growing more genuine. “It’s… awesome.” He let out a long sigh, remembering how he’d driven out to eat breakfast at a nearby diner, and in the parking lot --

“I saw these amazing birds today on the telephone wires. Uncle Andy gave me a bird guide for my trip… they’re called scissor-tailed flycatchers. They have these incredible tailfeathers and they just look so beautiful when they fly away. I’ve never seen a bird like that before.” He could see them clearly in his mind’s eye, reddish-pink sides, smooth gray and white faces, impossibly long, elegant tailfeathers in black and white. “I think Mom would have thought they were great. And I guess… I guess that’s not such a bad thing to share with her.”

“You don’t have to love her or forgive her. But you don’t have to hate the parts of her that you see in yourself. It’s not bad at all to appreciate natural wonders and wildlife,” said Dr. B. “Send me a picture of these birds! They sound beautiful..”

“Yeah, I can do that,” said Steven. “”Maybe I’ll see some more of them tomorrow. I should get through Texahoma tomorrow and into Saguaro. Should see some interesting desert stuff.” He felt a small pang at the thought of Cactus Steven, but hoped that seeing other cacti -- content and happy and most importantly immobile -- might ease that particular hurt a little.

He glanced at the top of his screen and saw with surprise it had already been an hour. “Huh, I guess it’s that time already.”

“I expect a full report of your trip next week,” said Dr. B, pulling out his calendar. “What day works for you?”

Steven flipped through his calendar app quickly, scrolling past his next date with Connie -- only two days to go! -- a visit to Lars, and a planned video chat with Peridot. He swiped back to Dr. B. “How about Thursday? Ten AM? Next week’s actually pretty full up with friend stuff. And --” He hesitated, then continued. “It’s been a while since I talked to Dad and the Gems, but I’m thinking I might hold off on a video call for another week. Just… we talked about a lot today. I need to think about stuff for a while before I talk with them again.”

“I think that sounds like a good idea to take some time to yourself to process things,” said Dr. B. “It’s perfectly okay to let them know you’re busy this week but will be in touch again soon.”

“I think I will.”

“I’m glad to hear you have some other friend meetups planned, though. Lars and Connie?”

“Good guesses,” said Steven, giving him a tired smile. “Yeah, I think it’s gonna be a good week. I’ll keep up with my meditation and my journal. Gotta get back on the exercise train, though. It’s been so hot I haven’t felt like it.”

“Take care of yourself, Steven. Don’t forget about swimming or yoga as low-impact options. Feel free to call before your visit if anything changes, and we’ll talk next week.” Dr. B waved, and Steven waved back as the call ended.

He sent Dr. B a picture of the scissor-tailed flycatchers, smiling to himself, then sent the same picture to Uncle Andy and Greg. Maybe he’d really talk to Dad again in a week or two, just… not yet.

He flopped back onto the bed, letting his arms splay out to the side, his fingers uncurling, the tension slowly starting to fade from his arms and shoulders and toes.

He closed his eyes. How did he feel?

He asked himself after every session, another of Dr. B’s ideas to help him understand himself better. Some days it was hard and he’d end up not answering his own question in a defensive huff. Other days it was clear and easy. He never knew which it would be until he asked it.

This wasn’t the first time messed up things with the Gems had come to light in these sessions. Oh, no, there were a lot of sessions about some of those patterns. He supposed that that was why he’d finally thought about that week they’d learned about Rose, and realized how screwed up it was in so many ways.

He could still feel the emotions that had come up a few minutes ago, but instead of roiling frantically under the surface, they were a little more removed, fading to a more comfortable distance where he could feel them without drowning in them. He rolled over and grabbed his journal from the bedside table, and wrote with the fancy fountain pen Connie had given him until ink smudged his fingertips and his wrist was tired. The pages were smeared, but he wasn’t sure he needed to reread them; just writing it all out was comfort enough right now. Anger and sadness and disbelief, set in black ink on white paper.

His emotions were real. They stared back at him in cursive on narrow-ruled lines. And it was okay to have them, even when they hurt. Something he reminded himself of every week.

How do I feel? he asked himself again.

I feel…

Deep breaths, tidal, falling into a comfortable, familiar rhythm. He had an answer today.

I feel okay.

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