Look, about the monkey…

Timeline/World: Enter the Steam – Lost & Found
Characters: Mishkael James
Race: Sprite – Forest
Age: 29, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 535 words

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He wasn’t sure why it mattered so much. He hadn’t even liked the little screecher and it had made him miserable during their last trip out. So why did it pinch at his tender heart to know that they’d skewered it and cooked it over an open flame? Not that he’d eaten any of it but the thought of it had made him almost physically ill.

The monkey had been a stowaway after their latest trip ashore onto an island completely void of inhabitants. He didn’t know how it had managed because their ship had been anchored quite a distance from the island due to the very shallow waters on all sides and they’d come to the island on a much smaller rowboat, on which there really hadn’t been any room to hide. No one could actually tell how it had made its way aboard the ship but it had been interesting at first.

Chasing after particular crew members and scaring the daylights out of them, requesting food and when it wasn’t being given it would steal it, taking any and all shiny items away and hiding them somewhere. It took almost three weeks to locate the hiding place and that was after one of the crew members had followed the little thief. The hoard they found of all things glimmery and shiny was much bigger than any one of them had anticipated, in a way, the monkey had found items that had been thought lost.

So in a way, its bad habits seemed to be balanced out by its good habits but only just barely.

It was only a week after the retrieval of all the stolen items that the monkey because crew food, not that it had much meat on its bones but it had been a different thing on the menu along with the usual catch of fatty fish they could find while the wind was taking them wherever it was taking them.

He hadn’t known it at the time since his needs for food were different than that of the rest of the crew. He never joined them during the evening meals because the scent of cooking meat be it fish or whatever they could catch while on land, upset his stomach in a bad way. Morning and lunch meals were a little different and he didn’t mind being around them during those times.

He’d enquired as to the monkey’s whereabouts the following morning since he’d been the one mostly to take care of it and feed it, despite the fact that it had bitten him repeatedly. No one else wanted the ‘job’ and it had somewhat defaulted to him. When he’d been told that said somewhat-pest was no more, he hadn’t known what to think. His heart had broken because, in a way, he had bonded with the small furry animal but in another, it meant no more bitten fingers, it meant no more stolen items, no more frustration at trying to get it to come down from the crow’s nest—where all of said stolen items had gone to.

It was a relief as well as a small bit of heartbreak and it took some time to pass.

There’s nothing wrong with falling in love more than once. There’s also nothing wrong with never falling in love at all.

Timeline/World: Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Jessamyn McBride
Race: Human
Age: 40, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 568 words

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When I finally entered my teens, I was very, very confused. As a child, I soaked up all the attention I could and I hated being on my own. That meant spending a lot of my time hogging up my brothers’ attention and I couldn’t understand why they didn’t always seem readily happy about that fact. I was a high-maintenance child, I can admit to that now that I’ve settled down some. It hurts to look back now and realize just how much attention I needed—no, I didn’t actually need that attention, and I just felt like I did.

As I finally did enter my teens and this endless want for attention waned a little, I felt myself wander and wonder, lost between two worlds. There was someone I was very fond of but, to me, at that particular point, it still felt like I had with my brother, I just wanted someone to be close to and I wondered for a while if I wasn’t defective, broken. Could I not love the way I could see my parents love one another, the way my brothers loved the ones they were dating? I felt unable to grasp that and it was after a very long talk with my mother that I realized I wasn’t quite as broken as I thought I might have been.

Turns out, loving someone isn’t a necessity of life, nor is loving more than one person during your lifetime wrong. I thought I’d fall in with the former group, now that I could understand myself a little better but still. Peter’s confidence, despite his age, when he let me know he liked me, was startling. I didn’t know how I felt. I did like him as a friend but I knew this had nothing to do with how he was certain he liked me, so I gave it a try.

Things progressed at a slow and steady rate, it was good for me, it helped me to better learn about myself it helped me to discover my feelings for him which, I admit, still were a little scrambled but were becoming clearer with passing time. A couple of years later, age aside on his part and mine, I felt like I could understand that what I did feel for him was genuine, it had nothing to do with friendship, it was deeper and stronger and yet I still went to talk to my mother, to my father. I wanted to make sure that this was what it was meant to feel like and so much more.

‘So much more’ did happen. It took its time in making itself known but it happened. That might also have been the reason why I let us become more intimate than we’d been before. Not that we’d been intimate before, beyond some hugging, a few innocent kisses and snuggling. I hadn’t felt ready, I guess. There was a connection when we did cross that line and my mother did tell me it could happen this way, that at times, it took a special kind of touch to make things all the clearer.

I know I love him. I’ll never be able to love anyone else and I don’t want to even think about it. I’m glad he’s in my life and has been in my life for all of these years, I cherish every second.