[Rock]
The next day was calm and relaxing. It was Carmen and I at home, enjoying our life together. Everything felt a lot lighter after we talked the night before.
Both of us struggled with our inadequacies among our people and families. My mother wasn’t like a softie mom, but she wasn’t as hard on me as a troll mom should be, either. Like Carmen’s parents, she coddled me. Seeing my friends with their mothers showed me the ways I was treated differently.
She didn’t mean to do it, but it was difficult for her to stop. I wasn’t a full troll and she couldn’t overlook my softness. I knew it made her worry. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t hard on me, too.
My mother did everything she could to toughen me up so I wouldn’t suffer as much. She tried to make me a troll in every way she could th
