<p>The Woman has always been The Woman. This is the way of the world.</p>
<p>The Woman was born Michelle Rachel Hadje in 2086. On a January night, she was born. Anna Judith Hadje screamed and screamed and breathed and breathed and breathed and, with a gasp or sigh or groan or moan, Michelle took a breath and, after a scant few seconds, wailed.</p>
<p>The Woman does not remember this, for how many of us remember our first breath, our first wail? She does not remember, but the fact is unassailable. From that point, she <em>was</em>. </p>
<p>The Woman was, for all intents and purposes, a normal, healthy child. She was wholly herself, and her parents loved her and her teachers teachers loved her and they all found her to be kind and empathetic, though prone to moodiness. “She is anxious,” they said. “She is a people pleaser. She is autistic. She is bright and quick to laugh.” And she was all of these things.</p>
<p>The Woman went to school, yes, as all unremarkable children do. Kindergarten came and went, and then grade school, where she sang and she dance and she acted in the little plays that grade-schoolers put on. High school then came, and it was there that she met RJ, and they fell in love, but it was not the love that leads to romance, though they at one point tried. They did what high schoolers who fall in love do and kissed behind the bleachers and held hands even at one point had a sleepover, where RJ’s mom peeked in on them at midnight to make sure that they did little else beyond kissing and holding hands, but it had never been RJ’s wont to do aught else. Even romance was beyond em, and it was not the fit for the two of them. They were instead in love that took the form of a superlative friendship. Perhaps they were soul mates, should such a thing exist, but if so, it was not the arrangement that led to romance.</p>
<p>The Woman, like so many other anxious and autistic and quick children, like so many people pleasers who are quick to laugh, spent much of her time online. Her parents, when she was fifteen, as soon as such was allowed by law, paid for the procedure to get her the implants that allowed her to delve in to the shared immersion that was a reality separate from the world. They paid for this because she sat them down and made the argument that she had found friends online, too, online where people glommed together into heterogeneous groups surrounding shared interests.</p>
<p>The Woman, you see, had picked up on furry as a subculture, for when you are a child with an active imagination that loves to play pretend, it is only natural to pretend to be an animal, yes? She pretended to be a cat, for she loved the way they moved, and she loved especially the way their shoulder blades would stick up above their spine as they prowled along, low to the ground. A house cat at first for one breezy year, and then a panther. Something larger, something sleeker, something with big, soft-padded paws that </p>
