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losing my balance on the tight rope
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<3
The youth appeared to take Alacrity's bizarre appearance in stride, a fact for which she was extremely grateful. Conversations tended to get awkward quickly when perfect strangers asked, wide-eyed and aghast, "What are you?" as if she belonged in a menagerie or circus show. Alacrity was perfectly willing to let conversation develop normally, and so she plunged ahead as blindly as her carefully-studied English would allow. "AniWaya?" the odd word rolled slowly off her tongue. "How strange. Does it mean anything, I wonder?" The last was vocalized, but the question was meant, mostly, to be rhetoric.
The youngster stood, and Alacrity's tail began to wag in a friendly manner. She'd grown up with a gaggle of younger (and older) siblings, and was at least comfortable in the presence of children. "What are you doing all alone out here? Don't you have sisters or brothers to play with?" At home, one was followed by her siblings all the time, and it was difficult to get a moment's peace. But Alacrity was fairly certain of the sadness she'd seen, and this was the only thing she could think of asking.
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