The bones are good.
Brook knows the bones are good, their bare skeleton bones. That’s why they decide that the human flesh caging them in isn’t suitable, isn’t weathering the constantly battering storms of life to their satisfaction. They’re tired of being told what to do by muscles of all things—the wet, weak fibers just a thin membrane away from touching their beautifully dry bones. Enough is enough. So out Brook pops to find something else. A new life. The skin and muscles can find a life of their own, if they feel so inclined, but Brook will have no part of it.
People scream and fuss at a skeleton walking around on their own.
“Indecent!” they shout.
“A skeleton without skin? Unnatural!” they sneer.
As if skin is so great. Still, those words slice like blades used to slice through their flawed, infinitely rippable flesh when their bones still bore its weight. Brook had shaken out their heart with the rest of their organs after breaking free of the meat suit, but they still remember what it felt like to have it shatter inside the sturdy cage of their ribs.
Brook knows themself at their core: kind, curious, considerate, impulsive (you don’t escape your meat suit without a little recklessness, after all), and maybe even naïve—if they’re being really honest.
People on the streets don’t see their core, you know, the spaces between. The people only see the bones. And the people don’t like Brook’s bones. Not usually. Even though Brook never has an unkind word to say to anyone and wants only to spend their time getting to know the world as this, as themself, no longer hidden shamefully and uncomfortably beneath a suit of meat and hair.
Sometimes, they find people whose stares come with bright eyes and catlike curls to their smiles instead of lip-lifting snarls. If Brook is lucky, those people even come talk to them. Brook doesn’t speak so well anymore, so they have to write their responses in one of the pretty notebooks hoarded away in their pin-and-patch-drenched messenger bag.
“What’s it like to be a skeleton?”
It’s fine!
“Is everyone’s skeleton sentient?”
Maybe! I don’t know every skeleton :)
“Will my skeleton escape? Sometimes I think I feel it moving around when I’m trying to sleep.”
You should probably ask them. Maybe they’re just a restless sleeper!
Brook likes those moments, where the people see their bared teeth as grinning instead of gnashing. They keep to themself as they explore the world: no meat suit, just their bones and their brand new desires. They never got a chance to want things before, so the novelty alone makes them bounce from possibility to possibility—will they go to the park today? Will they stay in and reorganize? Will they see a play? Everything is open, just like their intercostal spaces.