The Weight of Armor

The bathroom mirror was now a liar, offering a reflection that seemed too large for the small, tiled space. Kylie leaned in, tracing the new, hard topography of her collarbones and the way her deltoids pushed her sleeveless shirt into a series of tight, radiating creases. There was a density to her presence now, a gravitational pull that hadn't existed a year ago. She stepped onto the scale, not because she cared about the number, but because she wanted to quantify the transformation. As the dial settled, she did some quick mental math, accounting for the density of her new frame and the sheer volume of her legs. She guessed she was pushing close to two hundred pounds now—not the soft, sprawling weight her mother had feared, but a lean, engineered mass of muscle that felt like armor beneath her skin.