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Those shattered pieces of glass send back a picture of perception just as broken.
That face isn't right, that neck isn't, those shoulders arent, and those thighs aren't either.
Mantis is ugly, sure, but this isn't about that.
It isn't about that non-existing nose or those disgusting scars on those lips from the inhumane procedure practiced on the medium.
It's cold; that abandoned hut doesn't offer any protection from the harsh wind.
Tretij knows that Eli is freezing too, it's obvious even if they didn't have that bond.
It's admirable how resistant he is, or at least pretends to be.
It's rare for him to take that mask off; it got to a point where they rarely eat, which caused that obvious malnutrition.
Tretij knows he should eat more, but the near-complete lack of body fat prevented one thing that makes it all worth it.
You see, despite having spent most of their life forcefully being socially isolated, he knows that there is something not quite right with his physical form.
It's stupid; he knows that. A powerful psychic like him shouldn't care about something as mundane as his appearance, but they do care.
He cares a lot, even.
He used to spend days just staring at himself in any reflecting surface he found, and he just made one himself if there weren't any.
He cleaned and smoothed out food tablets and any metal he found anywhere until it shone like a mirror.
He picked apart everything about his appearance, this peachfuzz everywhere on his body.
(he ripped out every singular one of them with bare hands until one of the doctors stopped them. The pain afterward taught him better.)
He stared at his too-big eyes, his too-short fingers for hours, yet all those little details can never explain what is wrong beneath that superficial level.
Or at least they couldn't until he met Eli. To other people, his gender wasn't noteworthy. He was always "it" or "that one"; sometimes even "brat" if he was lucky. He was always seen as genderless because gender is something human, and others never saw him as something human.
Dehumanization, as Eli called it.
He knows why they did it, he was an experiment or a tool, and they were too selfish to even acknowledge their victim's humanity to take away that feeling of shame and blame he knows they felt.
Mantis doesn't know if being female or being non-human is better.
They started eating more when they met Eli, as he insisted, and with that came those horrible, useless sacks of flesh and fat on his chest.
He knows they shouldn't be there, they have no right to even exist, but just like him, they do.
His own brain doesn't even acknowledge their existence; he still expects that perfectly flat chest he used to have when the medium strokes down their chest.
The reality of being born and having a body is disappointing, but there isn't a lot one can do about it.
He is beyond believing in absurd human concepts like religion: or that urge one has to spread one's seed.
However, he does believe in faith in a way; it is his faith, his duty, to serve those that hold the same fury for the world like him.
And it was his faith to be born in that body, no matter how much he loathes it.
Because existing isn't about being happy but being beneficial to others.
Existing is about trying to fill the void of personality in him.
But no matter what he does, Mantis will never be able to make his mental and his physical image match up.
It's a Sisyphean task, a rock he will always try to push up a mountain just for it to roll back, for him to try again. An endless circle of pain and suffering, continuing until he dies. Like a tantalus fruit, he is set up in front of a glory that he may never reach. But again, there is nothing to do against it but continue living while bearing along.
Just bear on.
Until you die.