The school counselor looked up curiously when her door opened; this was a quieter part of the day, normally, and she didn't recall any of the students being scheduled to come in. Seeing that it was Tiffany Saunders, however, was explanation enough. She hadn't gotten all of the details from the girl's teacher, but she'd heard enough to guess that she would probably wind up in here at some point. She took a breath and tried to clear her mind; she knew what Mary had to say, and Mary wasn't the kind of person to make things up, but she could be a little...absolutist. It would be best to approach this on Tiffany's terms.
"Hello, Tiffany," she said. The girl was obviously a mess; her eyes were red, starkly highlighted against her pale skin, and the robes she was wearing were rather crumpled, as if she'd just thrown them on moments ago. "Something you'd like to talk about?"
Tiffany stared blearily at the Gorgon for a moment, then weakly slumped into a chair. "I...I d-don't even know," she said. "They...they took it all away, and now I...I can't even remember...if it was what I thought it was...I don't know!"
The counselor frowned. "Who took what away, Tiffany?" she asked, her hair-snakes inching forward as she looked her patient over. "Why don't you explain this to me from the beginning."
Tiffany sighed. "When I changed," she said. "I was...I had it all. I had looks, I had power, I had the knowledge of where I stood compared to...to humans." She'd gotten in a habit of saying that with a sneer in her voice, and she wondered why she was suddenly bothered by it. "And then that bitch came in and ruined it."
"Who's that, now?"
"Ms. Summers," Tiffany hissed. "My teacher. My dad invited her over because he was getting scared, and...and I..." She couldn't keep from choking up as she thought about that evening. Where were all these conflicting feelings coming from? She was angry at Ms. Summers, she was angry at her dad for inviting her; but she felt sorry for her dad for what he'd been through, and she regretted her actions; but she wished she'd done something to him to get back for inviting her teacher over, but...augh! She didn't even know what she felt!
"She...she took it away," she said at last. "The thing that...that changed me, that made me...everything I was." She winced. "My...my dad let her in...into my mind...and...she took it away, and...and then I became this..." She started to cry again.
"Easy," the counselor said. Her head-snakes made a soft not-quite-hiss; oddly enough, it was a bit reassuring. "We can take this as you're ready to discuss it."
Tiffany sighed as she laid there on the sofa, the flat of her horn pressed into the armrest by her head. "I...I don't know what to think," she said. "I thought...I thought I knew what I was when I first changed, but my dad didn't think so but wouldn't say as much, and Sarah said...everything she said...and...I didn't think that was true, but now the idea won't go away...and my teacher says it was all necessary, but of course she would, she's the one that did it, and...I don't know!"
"You mean that you're still bothered by the idea that maybe it wasn't all that you thought it was?" the counselor asked.
"I...I don't know!" she huffed. "I knew I had it good, but as soon as I changed again everybody started saying how awful it was, or not saying it and I could read it in their faces, and now that's gotten into my brain and it won't get out!"
"I see." The Gorgon woman sighed. "Tiffany, if it's really something you can't stop thinking about, then you must have already considered whether it has any basis in fact, right?"
The horned girl frowned. "I...I guess." She didn't need another person telling her that she should be grateful to be this freak-thing, but the older woman didn't seem like she was going there, at least not yet. It was a fair question...
"Right," the counselor said. "So: this thing, or this essence, that you said was taken from you...can you tell me what it did for you?"
Tiffany frowned. "I told you already."
She nodded. "Right. So when you say, 'I had looks,' you mean that it made you more attractive?"
An emphatic nod. "Yeah. But everybody else couldn't see it, or something...and Sarah said..."
"Let's just forget for a moment about what Sarah said, Tiffany." She took a sip from a glass of water on the table next to her chair. "Obviously you don't feel that she was right, and the question is how you feel about it. So, do you feel that your initial changed form was more attractive?"
Tiffany opened her mouth to answer, but the answer got caught in processing before it actually made it to her tongue. Was she? She...had she ever really looked at herself in that form? She didn't think she had; why would she need to stop and appreciate her body, when she knew it was superior? Self-admiration was one of those things like eating or sleeping that had just fallen by the wayside, unnecessary trivialities that a being like herself needn't bother with.
Was she attractive? She recalled a remarkable figure...or rather, remarkable individual components of a figure: large, gravity-defying breasts, a compact torso on long legs, and so on and so forth. But...how did it all come together? It turned out that she didn't really know; she hadn't been paying attention. And in the absence of an opinion of her own, she kept going back to what other people had said...
"I...I don't know," she said.
"I see," the counselor said. "Then how about this 'power' that you referred to? Were there abilities that you had then that you don't now?"
Tiffany nodded slowly. She had...she had had some kind of power, that she'd never really understood and never learned to put to any use, except for that one time when she was pissed off and took it out on the wall...then the three-eyed girl, whatsername, had seen her, and run off to tell teacher, and stupid Ms. Summers had shown up...but she didn't exactly want to tell the counselor about that. Even she was uncomfortable thinking about it now...the way it had felt like Things were peering back at her from the gashes... "I...um, I...didn't have to...to sleep or eat..." she murmured. That sounded somewhat less earth-shattering than she'd known her powers to be...
"And did you enjoy that?"
She blinked. What kind of question was that? "Wh-what?"
"Did you enjoy not having those needs?"
"...no..." She didn't want to admit that, it just kind of slipped out. Of course she didn't enjoy it...how could you derive pleasure from not doing something? She thought that it must have made her more efficient, except that she really couldn't think of anything she'd done with the extra time other than stalk around her house making sure her dad didn't leave her...and she couldn't stop thinking about how wonderful the sensations were when she'd taken up the burdens of food and sleep again...
"Hmm." Tiffany didn't like that sound. It was a "sounding puzzled, but clearly driving at a point" kind of sound. The counselor pulled herself back up into the chair she'd been sliding a little ways out of and leaned forward, her hair-snakes peering curiously at her. "I'm curious, Tiffany. Was there anything about that first change that you actually enjoyed?"
She couldn't stand it. She couldn't stand this...this dissection of everything she thought she'd felt before! She had to...she had to find something to prove her point, no matter what...she didn't even care. "I...I had power," she said. "People listened to me! And...and I could get them to stay away...leave me alone...leave me alone, dammit!"
She winced, regretting she'd said it. Already there was a knowing look on the counselor's stupid snakey face. And she could feel tears stinging at her eyes again...she didn't want to start crying, not here, not in front of this...this thing that would study her for any weakness...
Yet...there didn't seem to be the smug superiority she'd expected in the counselor's expression. "I won't ask you to talk about anything you're not comfortable talking about, Tiffany," she said. "But you did come to me, wanting to talk, because you were upset. It's possible that in order to really address what's bothering you, we might have to talk about things that make you uncomfortable."
There was a moment of silence. Tiffany said nothing, but her expression softened a bit. The counselor nodded.
"You've talked about this 'essence,' or whatever we want to call it, that you say was taken from you, almost like it was a living being," she said. "If you think that's the case, Tiffany, do you think it's possible that these feelings that you had, but that you can't support based on your own experiences, were a sort of excuse that you internalized?"
Tiffany frowned. "You...you think that...?"
The Gorgon shrugged. "I think that that may be the way you perceive it," she said, "and that means it's worth putting some thought into. Because what you've been saying sounds rather like you've been making excuses that you don't really believe for a thing that you didn't really want or like. Even the one reason that you've stuck with thus far sounds like it comes primarily out of some deeper issues rather than anything you really enjoyed for its own sake."
She let Tiffany think on that for a moment while she looked over some of the notes she'd been making.
