Robert walked over the bridge, unable to distinguish the rain from the tears streaming down his face. At least he was crying, getting some release. He didn't usually get that. Ordinarily it was just negativity welling up inside him like he was gonna burst. But it's still not like it felt nice, it was still difficult to experience all the anxiety and fear rising to the surface it just gave him some sense of hope that it was coming out, that it had a physical outlet, that something was happening, he wasn't just sitting around moping in his books.

Oh, who the hell was he kidding? He collapsed against the barrier of the bridge, stuffing his face into his hands as he felt snot dribbling from his nose. Crying wasn't doing something. It was a passive physical response to trauma. It wasn't like anything was gonna come from this, he was still gonna just go back to being a little sad boy hiding in his room and letting unfinished drafts pile up without any place to put them, without anyone to talk to them about, just the voices in his head screaming at him.

He hardly had the energy to make food most days how could he turn his life around? The fact that his body was still able to produce the standard physical response to depression, well, it would perhaps make his experience more legible to others if there were others who cared about him, if he could stomach showing his pain to another human in order to get them to see how much he was suffering. Maybe then he could at least get a pat on the back and a, "Go get 'em, girl."

(Though perhaps that comment belonged more to another fantasy, another set of fantasies, the ones with lots of frilly pink things and make-up and dresses and boots, oh so many boots. He looked down sadly at his dumb little "unisex" chelsea boots, the most feminine thing he could find the courage to wear in public.)

Letting his (grotesquely oversized, hairy monkey paws) hands fall over the side of the railing, his face fell after them, blubbering off into the freezing river below. He let out a sigh.

Why couldn't he just kill himself? It would make everything simpler. Totally simple, in fact. He had thought a lot about death, had written three outlines for the same paper, in fact, on the concept of death. Death as nothingness, as absolute simplicity. It seemed clear that the notion of the afterlife or of reincarnation was a myth constructed by the deep parasites inside us to keep us alive so we could keep functioning as hosts for them. The death drive, he supposed, was the authentically human drive, the will to live being something leftover from lower life forms, who were too dumb and horny to know how terrible it was to live.

(Almost as dumb and horny as she would be when she was stuck in that maid dress and brainwashed into an obedient pet for big, strong, hairy men to use and abuse for their pleasure.)

To be one was still too complex for him. Oneness was derivative on nothingness, defined in opposition to it, the negation of negation. There were no positive somethings. To be dead, to be nothing, seemed good.

And yet here he was, hanging his arms over the side of the bridge, not jumping into the icy depths to end it all. Dying alone in freezing water, seemed like the best he could reasonably hope for. His rational brain had done the calculations, he was sure of it, there was no other possible outcome for him that was better than that. And yet this dumb, stupid, hairy, gross body was determined not to jump, refused to do it.

He would have to trick himself, he decided. None of his vague hopes for a better life were at all reasonable, there was no way that he would have the courage to do the things that would make him anything but miserable, that was simple induction, and while there might be philosophical problems with induction in practical life there was no other choice than to depend on it, that was all he had, to doubt the power of induction was already to deny life, he should just deny life the more complete way, just dive in, just jump off, just fall into the river, just let it consume him, just drown.

Drown.

Drown.

Drown.

Drown in the freezing water and let it all go away, all the pain and worry and anxiety, all the struggles and strife and discontinuity of existence, all the doubt and fear, let it stop.

Let it stop.

Let it stop.

Let it stop.

And when the pain ended he would be better than whole, he would be nothing.

And "splash!"

All of a sudden, blinking, tears fading from his eyes, Robert felt the chill around him and felt it filling him up completely. Everything went away for a moment as the cold water soaked into his clothes and left him damp and freezing. He shuddered, tears filling his eyes again, but tears of joy.

He'd finally done it. He was going to die. He was done. Done with the whole awful charade. Done with keeping up the illusion. Done with all the anxiety and tension. Done with all the lies. Done with pretending that she was a boy.

She winced, feeling her mind empty. Fuck. But there was truly no point denying it anymore was there? She was slipping under the water, sputtering and coughing up and finding her lungs always filling up more and more with vital icky city water, drowning her from the inside, violating the intimacy of her body while the weight of reality collapsed in on her.

But at the door of emptiness lay release. Nothing was left in her to resist the feminine yearning. It had all been drained away, emptied out by depression and by the purifying water, purifying because it was filthy not in spite of it, because anything cleaner and purer would have repelled her sinful flesh and be repelled by it. No, she had to recognize that she was filth in order to become clean. This was the inner truth of all religions.

And in the back of her mind she knew that she was rambling, her mind and body spasming in jolts of untapped energy as death overtook her, and she was not simply taken over by death but relished in it, her screams of ecstacy coming out as strange warblings as she welcomed her own demise and enjoyed the freedom of death, the freedom of having no obligations or responsibilities, the freedom of authenticity in the face of her own iminent demise. If nothing mattered, if it was all pointless anyway, if she was always already dying, always already dead, there was no point to denying it, no point to being anything but a girl.

She just wished she could've gotten to experience getting fucked. That was probably a simpler way to experience the glories of being annihilated. Without, y'know, actually dying.

Not that she didn't enjoy drowning. Free from illusions, she had to admit it was kinda hot.

And so she reached down into her jeans, wrangling a hand under the waistband, and, in what for all she knew was her final moment of existence, started playing with herself.

The very next moment from her subjective standpoint was a fleshy appendage in her mouth, air being pumped into her, chest heaving, eyes fluttering, before something vaguely slimy touched her back and forcibly turned her over, leaving her to sputter, water pouring out of her and leaving her throat feeling like it was burning. Another pat on the back and her nose burned, too, as she saw all the filthy grey-green fluid pouring out of her, back into its dirty river mother, feeling some kinship with the fluid, for she, too, had been born from the river.

A kind of mystical ecstacy hung over the air as she turned groggily around to await her savior, who she imagined in that moment as a hoodie-wearing nihilistic gutterpunk with a bad attitude, who had saved her just to use her as a fucktoy for his own pleasure, and so weary and worn out by her near death experience she was ready to accept him as her Master and do what she could to please Him. This felt like the least she could do for saving her, but this thought she knew was only a rationalization, since if she was "saved" only to have to return to her old life she would punch the person who grabbed her from the water with all her might, whereas to be plucked into a life of being treated like garbage by a cute boy who doesn't shower was a wonder she had not allowed herself to dream of except when masturbating.

Oh, he would slave away at his low-paying job, just barely enough to put food on the table for both of them (and when it wasn't, she would simply starve, leaving her mentally and physically weak and at his mercy), building up rage and resentment at his boss, the customers, his coworkers, society itself, which would then feed into her. Gosh, she could be such a good little punching bag for his aggressions!

Her legs twitched, knees pressing together as she imagined her fictional doomer boy savior just screaming at her, beating her with a stick until she was just a puddle under his foot, embodying the water from which she had been reborn and which he had saved her from…

Blinking, worrying that she had been absentmindedly touching herself (she hadn't–phew!), this new entity that had been carried out from the depths (born in filth as all things are) looked up at her actual savior and was surprised to see a large, blue-green creature, its hide shining in the light from the street lamps above them (the two seemed to be sat on a small concrete outcropping along the side of the river). The creature, fleshy and bulbous, held her with one webbed hand while the other slowly stroked her face, as though wiping tears away, though she was no longer crying.

Giddy excitement filled her as the absurdity of her situation became clear. It was almost certain now that this was a dream, a strange concoction of her unconscious in the final moments before the end (was then everything else a dream? But this was too horrific to consider, even if a part of her, violently reasserting itself with the recognition that life might go on, seemed to insist that it was–she relished the contradiction that this put her internal self-defense mechanisms in, since if this was all a dream then she was truly dying and there was no reason to keep trying to protect her from herself, but if it was not a dream then she was truly exposed to all the dangers of being trans–fuck she hadn't actually thought that specific word before in this context but she knew that's what she was. She was trans. She was a trans girl; a trans woman, even–and perhaps her self-defense mechanisms did have some rationale in trying to keep her safe by suppressing this, even if the slow, inevitable death of repression was clearly worse than the real but navigable dangers of transness in a world that was more death than death itself).

The creature patted her softly on the cheek, like a dog trying to get her attention. She blinked again, looking into its eyes, piercing blue and staring down at her curiously, almost like a dog would, though the face they were set in was strangely human. The cover art of God Emperor of Dune came to mind and she decided this was where her mind had gathered this image from.

"You're not a very good transcendental idealist, are you?" the creature muttered.

The newly reborn girl's mouth dropped.

The creature just raised her up, setting her head in the groove of its neck, patting her back again as she lay there in its squishy embrace. "There, there…" it said.

"What the fuck?" came the squeak back, about an octave higher than her normal speaking voice but still distressingly male to her ears.

"All I mean," the creature continued calmly, voice seeming to come from somewhere in the girl's belly instead of from its face, "Is that you shouldn't be surprised that your mind applies its own forms and structures to what it cannot comprehend, so as to form a livable world-consciousness. Even if these are not innate structures of consciousness but images learned from a life as a being that exists only in and through its cultural context."

She nodded nervously. "I guess that makes sense… but it's the kind of meaningless arcane bullshit that I would say? Which leads me to think you aren't real. And if you aren't real, well, then I'm dead."

"Are you dead?" the creature asked.

The girl tried flexing her muscles, clenching her fists, feeling the chill around her, the flood of life in her. She thought about what else she could do to test if she was truly alive and felt herself blushing.

The creature rubbed her back. "I won't mind…" it said.

"Um… okay…" Legs clenching together, she put one hand down into her pants, surprised to find them mostly dry (like she had been sitting in a light rain instead of having just drowned herself). She tugged on her dick, found it felt good and was satisfied. "So…" she muttered, "I am alive…"

"Modus tollens," the creature said simply.

The girl looked back up into its face, which now seemed smoother and more feminine. It seemed right to call the thing "she" even though her shape was only vaguely humanoid (and that obviously complicated distinguishing between the two of them, since she still lacked a name and if the creature had one she did not know it, and without names the two of them threatened to flow into each other, the girl's sense of self still being very much in flux).

"So you are real and I am alive," the girl concluded. She winced at this.

The creature frowned, grabbing her on the shoulder. "What's wrong?"

The girl buried her head in the creature's flesh. "I still think the same. A web of logic with painfully discrete elements."

She nodded. "You wanted to be reborn as a brainless whore."

Hearing it said out loud and knowing it was true made her squirm. "How did you…?"

"It is the nature of water to reflect, albeit perhaps in a murky way. It is my nature to reflect those who look into my depths, to reflect that which is not visible by the light of day but only out of the corner of the eye, in shadows and moonlight."

"Okay, wait…" Gears turned in the girl's head. "What? That's just dumb."

"What? You think being rescued from drowning by a merbeast is any less absurb than being rescued by the river itself? I already saved you once, you know. I suppose in a sense I've saved you from yourself twice tonight already."

"I certainly owe you something for that…" the girl mumbled, before turning bright pink. "Oh, gosh…" She mewled in need.

"I am simply a reflection of your desires," the river noted, "A dirty, scummy reflection of what you are too scared to show."

The girl found herself hacking and coughing again. "Oh, no, um, I mean, well, gosh, yes, I don't know what…"

The river slapped her, releasing her from its grip, letting her fall to the concrete with a "thud!"

"I cannot be the Master you desire," the river continued, "But I can at least prepare you for Him."

The girl shook on the ground. "Y- yes, please… yes, please… mmm…"

The river towered over her, a pillar of water taking it ten feet off the ground, it now being clear how her fleshy form smoothly melted into the muddy water such that there was no clean cut off between water and meat, speaking calmly and gently from inside her, "You should worship me for what I've done. I've freed you from yourself. There is no greater gift one entity can give to another."

The girl spasmed and cleared her throat. "Oh, yes, please, great river spirit… you can bet I'll singlehandedly revive animism for you as a live option for the religiously-inclined."

"Bitch." The river reached down and slapped her again, hand falling apart back into water as it hit her, cold water which stung her flesh and soaked her dirty button-up. "You are escaping from the immediacy of your annihilation into the comfort of the social. Remember that in yourself you are nothing, that it is only by My will and grace that you are something. And it is entirely within My power to make you nothing again."

She looked over into the murky depths, seeing now their horror and beauty in full force, as if they were rushing down her throat again. Thinking back to drowning, she moaned, then squeezed into herself, flooded with shame as the part of her brain devoted to thinking of everything that would risk social exclusion recognized that she was turned on by the memory of her own suicide attempt. Fuck, she was such a pervert.

At least, placed in any reasonable social context she was a pervert. Here, she was simply a devout worshipper of the Goddess, totally owned by the divine spirit of the river, a good girl. She was a good girl.

"Say it," the river said through clenched teeth.

Shoulders slackening, eyes glazing over, head lolling forward slightly, hand reaching down to rub her crotch, the girl began to chant, "I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good girl for the river spirit,

I am a good little girly girl for the…"

"Stop!" the river shouted.

The world returned slowly to the girl, who now knew that not only was she a girl, but a good girl, too, a good girl for the river spirit, a good girl for the river spirit, a good girl for the river spirit, a good girl for the…

The river slapped her again. "Pay attention!"

The girl nodded. After all, she was a good girl for the river spirit, she was a good girl for the river spirit, she was a good girl for the river spirit, she was a good girl for the river spirit, she was… But this time she kept her eyes trained on the spirit's while the mantra spun around in her head, like a whirling dervish clearing her of thoughts, leaving her empty and ready and accepting of the spirit's commands. And she knew now that no matter what happened, no matter where she was in life, she was never again going to be far from recognizing that she was nothing, that she was a good girl for the river spirit, that she lived to obey and knowing that filled her with immense joy and satisfaction. For though the river spirit may tower above her now, she would never forget being held in her arms, being loved and cared for by her, being saved by her and she knew that whatever she did for the rest of her days would be done in service of the river spirit.

"Thank you, great spirit of the river," the girl squealed, eyes watering with joy. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

The river covered her face with one massive flipper as she let out a little giggle. "Oh, you're so very welcome, my devoted servant." Reaching down, her arms now the size of the girl's torso, she reached down and pulled the girl up with her, cradling her in her arms. "You truly are such a good girl for me."

The girl let out a little squeak. "Yes, thank you, mommy river spirit." Then she giggled, too.

A flipper moved out from under her, shifting into a delicate greenish-blue hand as it approached the girl's face. Touching her forehead softly, something burned and though she could not see it (knew, in fact, that no one could see it), the girl was left with the awareness of a coppery mark left there in the shape of a crescent. The girl squirmed again, head rolling back, feeling so safe and supported there on the giant flipper hanging a good dozen feet over the rolling river. She moaned something that sounded vaguely like, "Thank you."

"Any time, my faithful servant."

And as the river let her back down on the concrete, its long, spindly finger traced around her neck, leaving behind a dark blue band with a silver crescent hanging down from it. The girl felt it. It was vital and real.

"You own me," she said simply.

The river nodded. "You are Brooke now, a small stream, an outflowing from the mighty river that I am."

Brooke nodded back, chills running down her spine as her new name became easily and effortlessly integrated into her psyche. To think of herself differently was impossible. She simply was Brooke. In a deeply unproblematic way that was her name, without qualification or anything.

"Who are you?" the river asked.

"I am Brooke," Brooke answered, "A good girl for the river spirit. An outflowing of her power."

"Good girl."

Brooke's knees buckled and she fell to the ground as she moaned, pleasure filling her body.

"Now," the river said, pointing up to a set of stairs that led back up to the bridge, "Go home and find a job so you can afford to buy pretty dresses and pump yourself fill of estrogen."

"Yes, mommy."

And so Brooke ran off up the stairs, taking them two at a time, turning left away from the bridge and heading back home, head filled with thoughts of hormones and the glory of the mighty river mother who she owed her life to.