“I haunt this forest, Sir”

I once knew a girl so soft.
She was so soft, her skin was breaking at the edges. When this girl walked the earth, she forgot about herself so easily. She felt the traces the world had left within her skin. The lines uneven drawn by branches and their thorns. The holes left by hands once reaching out, but never to return.
When this girl walked the earth, she forgot about her softness. She shut the thought away, and began to paint herself a second skin. A skin that was stronger than the one she was wrapped into. A skin that could face the sun more easily. A skin that had been touched already, and wasn’t waiting for the pain to hit.
She kept in walking with her new skin painted on, and the world around believed her. Thea believed her so completely, that she forgot herself which parts were real and which were not. Not branches tried to tickle her, no hands reached out for her. The world knew she’d been through it all!
Until one night, her demon found her. He tracked her down in the darkest part of the forest, where she used to hide from nightmares by turning into one herself.
“Aren’t you scared?”, the demon asked, and she shook her head.
“I haunt this forest, sir”, was her response, and she continued haunting, howling, through the night.
Hiding in a willow tree, the demon reached out for her, and tickled her cheek until it was bleeding. The soft girl sighed in enjoyment, as he disappeared, leaving her with nothing but the memory.
She remembers it every time she puts on her white shoes, making the skin on her ankles grow in softness, before her skirt covers that part of her once more.