busy"Some journeys take you farther from where you come from, but closer to where you belong."
-- Ron Franscell
(These links are kinky.)
A pony girl is a female submissive who takes the equine role in pony play kink. This typically involves dressing up as a pony, and many people wear hoof-shaped boots and gloves. A particular issue for Winnie is that she actually has hooves instead of hands, and her owner found the helplessness attractive. She's currently struggling to figure out ways to do things for herself, because she hates the suggestion of cutting off her hooves to facilitate manual prostheses. There are lots of assistive devices, but it will take time to explore those.
(These links are distressing.)
Human trafficking is a serious problem in Terramagne, more in some countries than others, and especially for certain kinds of soups who have interesting abilities that don't lend themselves well to self-defense. Primal soups in particular are popular in the sex trade. Trafficking often impairs access to care. Know how to help stop human trafficking.
Early explorers and traders often took native wives, sometimes buying one, other times falling in love together. This has left a fraught history.
(These links are controversial.)
A roadside attraction is a feature beside a highway or other road intended to attract tourists, such as a roadside zoo. A freak show is a display of animal and/or human oddities. Put them together and you get a roadside freak show.
Carnivals have often employed unusual persons for their appearance and/or skill in sideshows. This has led to some obnoxious practices and ferocious fights over exploitation vs. employment. It covers the entire spectrum from human trafficking to positions of respect and even leadership for Very Special People in some carnivals. In Terramagne, the VSPs have included a number of superpowers and precursor traits (frex, vitiligo is a precursor for Chameleon Skin). Genius displays used to be quite popular with "math-along" or "read-along" performances where the audience could try to figure out what the performer was doing and how; they're less common today but still appear occasionally. The performers in T-America soundly won their right to take whatever jobs they damn well pleased, even if some other people found that demeaning.
T-Gibson Town (compare with local-Gibsonton) is a place where many carnival workers spend the off-season or retire. Due to the extreme diversity of body types and abilities, it was the first place that really pushed accommodations into the public sphere, and many ideas like low counters for little people or wheelchair users spread from there. The sideshow win for right to hold a job later evolved into the heavy employment of disabled people in health care and as disability consultants for cities or companies, as well as show soups.
Bent or broken feathers are straightforward to fix if mature. Injured blood feathers are more serious.
(Some of these links are distressing.)
Refusal to speak can be framed as selective mutism or stonewalling, and people aren't always careful about distinguishing that. It's a common avoidance behavior in survivors of sexual violence.
Many therapies are available for treating sexual assault survivors. If talk therapy doesn't appeal, consider expressive therapy instead, particularly for sex trade survivors. Never pressure or force anyone to talk, because that tends to make matters worse.
Cleansing and refreshing herbs include sage and mint. They often appear together in soap or smudge sticks.
Feeling like you don't belong can happen for many reasons, especially sexual assault. There are ways to cope with the feeling and cultivate belonging. This can prove extra challenging in diverse settings.
Admitting you were wrong is difficult, but a necessary life skill. Learn how to do it. Warshirt really struggles with this because of historic trauma; he was quite attached to his traditionalist and rather isolationist stance until the spirits finally found a big enough hammer.