I don’t want you to ever feel like that again.

Timeline/World: Story: Hold my hand / Alternate Earth – Home
Characters: Edgar York
Race: Human
Age: 21
Final Word Count: 547 words

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My life has been a series of ups and downs where my ups were very high and my downs were very low. Even while on medication, those highs and lows rarely were controlled, at least until he came to be in my life in a permanent way and on some days I’m still needing to pinch myself to make sure it is all real and I’m not just hallucinating some of it because that’s what it feels like.

Leslie has been in my life from the start of it. We were more or less raised together, in a way and I don’t know that I would have made it as far in life as I did. I think it was inevitable that I fall in love with him but with my highs and lows, even with medication, I didn’t feel worthy of his life, so I watched him love others, pinning after him and longings for the nights he’d spend with me. Then I’d just feel even lower because I was glad he was with me when he should have been with his girlfriend, see a pattern?

I certainly saw one but what could I do about it? A life without Leslie wasn’t a life I wanted to live. I’m glad we worked things out, I’m glad we have a family of sorts right now with four mock-adopted kids. One properly adopted, two fosters, one we house because of his parents but they’re all our kids, despite the fact that they’re only a few years younger than us and it’s a wonderful feeling to be able to give back to others in the way Leslie has given to me. I wanted to offer someone else a chance in this big, bad world and Osiris almost came to us on a very tarnished but once silver platter. It’s been a charm to watch him flourish.

Just as it’s been an absolute charm to watch Shaw and Zander flourish in the same way.

I was in a dark place before my family came together this way and I’m grateful for every single one of them. They make me feel like I’ll never be in that dark pit of despair ever again and it is one of the most beautiful feelings that there ever has been. I never want to go back to the dark, to the sharp highs and lows. No amount of medicine ever regulated these moods and I have scars to prove just how desperate I was for it all to end.

I haven’t had any of these thoughts in a really, really long while and I keep Leslie updated on my moods, even if it might just be a minimal thing because I know that it’s better that way. I don’t mind telling him that I feel a little grumpy because I’m tired, he always has ways to make me feel better and I try to reciprocate as much as I can, though it doesn’t always seem easy.

We’re a healthy family, we have cats, we laugh, we hug, and we share happy moments and sad ones together, what more could I ask of this life that is now mine? Nothing, it feels like. Health until I’m old and wrinkled, I can make anything out of that.

All I want is to be appreciated. I deserve it.

Timeline/World: Birds of a Feather – Scattered Throughout
Characters: Ha-Neul Song
Race: Human
Age: 29
Final Word Count: 537 words

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I don’t understand some of the other models I’ve worked with, some of the ones I’ve come across. Demanding that they be appreciated because they deserve it. What have they really done on this planet to deserve to be appreciated? Being pretty and posing is hardly a good enough answer. I’m aware that modelling isn’t only about that but it’s the short version at this point.

Simply being a model does not entitle you to be appreciated; unless all you desire is to be appreciated for looking good and strutting around in, at times, absolutely hideous clothes.

Then again, I suppose I could be wrong. I’ve only been in this so different world for the last ten years. I grew up in a small village lost in the middle of nowhere, we were on no maps, and we were not meant to be found, just as we were not meant to ever escape the village. There were ‘beasts’ roaming the edges of the village and anyone who ever dared to leave was found mangled and dead; or well… we found pieces of them and we were told they had been taken by the beasts.

I ran away, for reasons that are now foolish but I could not go back, even if I wanted to. I wouldn’t even really know how to find it. I did run away, however, and a pair in their car—something I had never seen before in my life and it frightened me—had been lost on a road just a distance away from the edge of our village, past the forest. Finding this photographer and his contact in our country was a stroke of luck and while I was uncomfortable with it, I went with, what else could I do otherwise? Stay on this road, walk and starve?

They made me discover things that scared the wits out of me. Moving boxes, hot, running water, delivered food, there was so much to discover that I didn’t know where to start and to essentially pay them back for them, all I had to do was sit and pose in front of the clicking box. I was happy to. I really was.

That’s how my career as a model did get started though.

So in a way, I come from really humble beginnings—no running water, no electricity, they said that by my description it seemed as though perhaps we were a bit like the Middle Ages and reading up on it makes me want to agree—and I don’t understand how anyone can feel like they deserve to be appreciated for being a model, I really don’t.

I’ve decided to dedicate a good bit of the money I make to those who need it more, I like that it makes me feel like I’m doing something good for the world, even if it’s just a little bit of a something. Does that make me entitled to feel appreciated? I don’t think so and I don’t ask that of anyone. If they like me, they like me and that’s the end of that particular road. I’m not looking for fame or fans; I just want to help the world run a little better, that’s all.