Cryptid Counseling | Session Intake: The Naga
(Meilan)
Penny walked in carrying a humidifier. I glanced up at her and sighed. “Why do you always just…know what people need?”
She gave me a Patented Penny Look(™). “Because I do all the paperwork?” she snorted. “I have to get insurance information before you can see clients, Kit. CryptiCaid only kicks in if the client applies for it. I have an entire stack of insurance forms in my desk.” She shrugged and crawled under my desk, plugging in the humidifier and turning it on high.
“She’ll be more comfortable this way. I’ll send her in in about fifteen.” Penny looked at me skeptically. “Eat a fruit cup, you’re peaky.” And she left.
I frowned.
And ate a fruit cup while I waited.
I looked over the intake paperwork and sighed. Penny was probably right, of course. I didn’t know much about the Naga. My countries of study were more European than Middle Eastern and Indian, though that was an assumption. Maybe she was from Jersey.
She slid into the room, taking care not to disrupt the plants, her scales shimmering delicately in the low light of my office. They were green and not green - a veritable rainbow of colors that felt more verdant than they were.
“Ah, thank you!” she said cheerfully. She slithered over next to the aquarium and sat down on a pillow, holding a recyclable plastic cup of water. “How are you?”
I raised a brow. “Fine, thank you very much for asking,” I said. “My name is–”
“Kit,” she supplied. “You–and your leggings, and your Penny–are becoming famous in our community. The lady who helps monsters. I mean…”
“What would you like me to call you?” I said after a pause when she finally breathed for a moment.
She dipped her fingertips in the water, making her own fidget. She sighed. “Meilan,” she said.
I waited. Sometimes therapy was about silence more than anything else.
“I…walked away from my family.” She snorted. “Okay. I, uh, slithered away from my family. I left my faith.” The last sentence was an afterthought, as if she didn’t care.
“What does that look like to you?” I said, folding my hands over my dinosaur leggings. She wouldn’t have said it if it didn’t matter.
Her eyes slid downwards into the cup of water. “You’re supposed to stay with your river, you know?” she said. Her voice was conversational. Atonal. As if it was a matter of course.
“Okay…”
“And I didn’t,” she continued. “I left. And every time something goes wrong–which it always does–I wonder if they’re right.”
“Who? And right about what?” I picked up my fountain pen slowly, twirling it between my fingers.
“My family. That I’m cursed. That the gods are punishing me.” Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine.
“What are they punishing you for?”
She closed her rose-gold eyes and took a deep breath. “I was supposed to be the goddess of the river,” she said. Her voice was soft, unlike the hyperverbal attack she’d given earlier. “But…I believe differently. I want to…”
I waited. “Yes?”
She smiled shyly. “Be a lifeguard. Save people. Learn how to do medical things. I know I probably can’t be a doctor…”
I glanced around the office at the rainbow signs, the glitter pillows, and the humidifier. “Do you think that’s the strangest dream I’ve ever heard? Who told you that you can’t be a doctor?”
Meilan frowned. Thought about it. And stared at me. “There are monsters in hospitals? Not as patients?”
I smiled. “You’re not a monster,” I said gently. “Technically, the law calls nonhumans ‘cryptids.’ It means humans have difficulty believing. But I don’t. I know of a basilisk who works in a morgue.”
And they had an appointment in a few weeks.
“So…I can be a doctor? Go to school?” she whispered. “But what about the gods?”
I looked at her levelly. “Everyone’s beliefs are different, Meilan. But the gods and goddesses I’m familiar with want what’s best for the people who believe in them. And that’s all a cryptid is–a person who has some differences. What are you going to make of your differences?”
She bit her lip once, and nodded. “Can we…do the application together?”
“And we can talk about what you do want to believe,” I said gently. “My job isn’t to tell you what to believe. My job is to help you figure out what beliefs help you become the person you want to be.”
“What do you believe?” The bubble-gum cheer was back.
I hesitated. “Well…”
Ethical code. Right.
“If I tell you what I think, there’s a chance you’ll spend the rest of the session deciding whether to agree with me. I’d rather spend it figuring out what you think.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Occupational hazard,” I said mildly. “Graduate school was expensive. Had to teach me something. Let’s talk about you…” I leaned back in my chair. “Tell me about the first time you imagined a different life.”