**CHEYENNE**
The shift happens quietly, which is how I know it is real.
There is no announcement, no confrontation that ripples outward in obvious ways, just a subtle change in the way the pack holds itself, the way tension settles into corners that used to feel neutral. Smiles disappear first, not all at once, but selectively, like a habit being consciously abandoned, and conversations taper off when I move through shared spaces, voices dropping or cutting short with a politeness that feels deliberate rather than natural.
Support tightens.
What was once proximity framed as care becomes something more rigid, less flexible, the same presence now holding a faint edge of expectation, as if they are no longer just watching me, but waiting. I feel it in the way people stand, in the careful
