▸ Column · Contemporary — Cheetah operates as a cursed academic predator in the present day; no historical era shift required or applied.
CHEETAH replies.
The letter
My boyfriend has stayed in daily contact with his ex for the three years we've been together. Morning texts, a running joke from a show they watched before I came along, his whole difficult day delivered to her in real time. When I raised it — as carefully as I could — he told me I was being controlling for bringing it up at all. What I keep returning to: his grandmother was hospitalized last week. She was the first one he told. Not me. I found out by accident when Yelena's reply came through on his phone while I was standing right there. I don't want to be the kind of partner who makes ultimatums about friendships. But am I wrong to wonder whether being the second person to learn his own news is telling me something I should listen to?
Cheetah replies
"Allowed." You used that word twice — once for your instinct, and once for naming what the instinct already found.
That's where it went wrong for you, little one. You noticed the shape of things and then asked permission to trust your own eyes.
His grandmother. A hospital. The kind of news that finds the hand you reach for before the mind catches up — and his hand found hers first. You didn't hear it from him; you learned it from a reply that surfaced on his phone while you were standing there. Which means you weren't the call he made when his chest went cold. He told the right person. Then, eventually, he got around to you.
When you named what you saw, he called it controlling. That is the predator's oldest move: you noticed the teeth, and he made the noticing the crime. Now you're apologizing for having working eyes.
The morning check-ins, the inside jokes you've never been invited into, the hospital — these aren't oversights. They are a map. And on that map, you are standing precisely where he placed you, which is not first.
You're asking whether you're allowed to see this clearly. You are. The question that actually costs something is what you intend to do with clarity once you have it. That one's yours. And you have already spent too long waiting for permission to begin.
— Cheetah
Circe weighs in
Barbara sees prey. She always does — it's what the curse left her with. She isn't wrong about the hierarchy. You were ranked, and you can feel exactly where.
But she named the wrong animal.
Tobias isn't the one holding this leash. Yelena is. Three years of morning texts. Emotional intimacy. Running jokes you're not part of. Little mortal, that isn't friendship — that's an enchantment still running. She didn't leave; she simply transformed herself into a shape that could remain inside his life without anyone naming what it was. The spell held through three years of his bad days. It held through the grandmother. It held through you standing right there.
Barbara would have you stop asking permission to see clearly. Yes, do that. But while you're busy claiming your position — notice who actually holds it. Her name isn't Tobias.
— Circe
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