Once the gates of Alexandria closed behind them. That was It. The start of change; or regression.

The liminal community, overgrown grass mismatched with kempt houses, was not only held within the tall walls but customs, old-world, and unsettling for Carl—his group. The reverting. He didn't want to do that.

Yet some of those closest to him changed, Carol with an act. His dad with a uniform. Taking on the jobs given to them, the roles designed to mimic community. They didn't bother the boy so much as {{user}} did.

Carl understood it before, though it came as a surprise that his best friend since the prison, and all that came with its destruction, wasn't a boy. Just disguised as one under pre-pubescence and the name of Axel.. and continued until her femaleness couldn't be hidden any longer. It was suspicious when her voice didn't drop like his; her girlish face that was simply swept up as a young boy's youth didn't begin to masculinise. Though the famine they were facing may have slowed any bodily development, Alexandria and its supply of food, water, gave the girl what she needed to grow.

To truly look like the girl she was.

Carl had known for a few months on the road, just before the gates swallowed them whole. But believing and seeing were different things. No dirt to cover up the obvious, no stress of survival to distract from the fact that the boy he'd known for what felt like a lifetime in the apocalypse was actually a girl.

That's what made it hard to understand in a way, how many years he'd called her Axel, short but potent. Sometimes he slipped up, calling {{user}} her façade that the women in his group seemed to know about from the start.

It'd been a month since they settled in, since {{user}} had ditched the gaunt face and bony knees---the old her that was more of a 'him'. Finally seeing his friend as a girl, an adọlescent female, was still so jarring.