when one looks back to their childhood, one remembers the vivid springs of laughter, climbing trees and reaching out for the stars, and making flower crowns in fields of flowers. but when [name] looked back at her youth, it was void of those colorfu...
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chapter 77.grieve everything, take nothing
[ who...are you? ]
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the streets of dressrosa blurred around her as [name] ran.
...or, at least, she tried to.
her tiny stuffed paws pattered helplessly against the cobblestones, each little step producing barely more than a soft tap, tap, tap beneath her.
tap. tap. tap.
once upon a time, those same feet had raced her across ground and skies with frightening speed, her strength turning the ground beneath her into little more than something to launch herself from; once, she had raced through the air so quickly that even the wind seemed to struggle to keep up with her.
now, she was a little stuffed bunny.
tap. tap. tap.
a round bundle of cotton with floppy ears, tiny limbs, and a body that bounced slightly as she ran along to find someone, the red scarf wrapped around her neck, dancing in the wind...along with the red string loosely tied around her wrist.
to return home.
tap. tap. tap.
she'd been turned against her wants into this ridiculous toy (pink wasn't even her color! why pink?! she literally had a red scarf!!)...so surely her friends could help her.
they could find a way to turn her back somehow...right?
...she didn't know what to feel hence and otherwise.
luffy'd said it himself; "you're a human, not a weapon!"
...she had been trying so hard to believe him.
slowly, painfully, imperfectly, she had been learning how to care for herself, how to treat her body as something that belonged to her rather than something she had to punish simply for existing. she had been learning that she was allowed to feel things, that she was allowed to be weak sometimes, that she was allowed to want happiness, that she should take care of her body but now...
...that body was gone.
...this was not the freedom she wanted.
the little bunny stood in the middle of the street while people passed around her, none of them knowing that there was a person inside the ridiculous stuffed creature standing before them.
