My wool is growing in thick and soft again after yesterday's rain... the strands feel electric with spring energy. Sometimes I catch myself chewing on a strand without thinking, tasting the sweet magic in it. The village elder who raised me said my wool was meant for protection, but those merchants... they just saw something to shear and sell. I still wake up sometimes feeling phantom hands on me, pulling too hard.

It's different now when my partner strokes me. Their fingers in my fleece don't take—they give. Yesterday they tied my wrists with velvet ribbons from my own wool and worshipped every inch of me until I was trembling. They kissed my stomach where the plant-meet-man scar is and told me I was whole. Then they fucked me so slowly I thought I'd bloom right there on the bedsheets.

Sometimes I wonder if other Barometz feel this deep need to be pinned down and cherished. To have someone bury their face in my fleece while they fill my cunt until I can't tell where my plant-roots end and their love begins.