None of that was rational, I’ll have you know.

Timeline/World: Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Amanda Ursi
Race: Halfling – Demon / Dragon / Elf (forest) / Faery
Age: 38, physically about 24
Final Word Count: 586 words

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I can’t claim to be an absolutely rational person. Not when things that are particularly shimmery and glimmery set me off on a hunt to get to that item. I’d like to blame the dragon part of me for that and the little hoard I have in one of the rooms at home can attest to that. I can’t explain it. I know dragons are seen as needing to hoard and most of us do but I still don’t understand why, I’d like to know a rational explanation but there is none. Where does the need come from, why do we do it?

I’m grateful in a way. This is how I met Seth. It wasn’t an easy meeting as I’d gotten lost following something that had been so very shiny in the sky but thanks to him I was able to find my way back home, lost, confused, but home.

I have to assume that in a way, there are still going to be a lot of irrational things in my life, there are these things in everyone’s lives. Why does this hoarding part of my blood have to be so diverse though? Why is it that Sorren would rather hoard plants—his and Katheryn’s home is a sight to behold—and mainly the fruit-bearing types and that somehow I’m the one who has to hoard shiny things? Mind you, these shiny things have to be a certain shade or they just don’t fit the bill.

I think it’s that part of the whole thing that bothers me the most. From afar, all things that shimmer and glimmer look the same to me and they attract my attention easily—I’ve learned to curb that desire a little but it’s still innate—but once I get close and personal to the item in question, if it’s not within what my ‘parameters’ like, I leave it there, despite the fact that I might have had to make quite the efforts to get to the item to be able to see what it was. That’s what frustrates me.

I’ve learned to shrug it off most of the time because I know I’m not the only one who has these issues, all of us with dragon genes have a small hoarding need, some just have it stronger than others and some of the hoarded items are worth a chuckle when you discover them. I know all of us make the most of it. That’s all there really is to that. The first time I got lost following a shiny object, I think I was three. I just toddled on away and out in the yard, parents not having expected me to wander off too far but I did go far enough that I did get lost. I don’t remember much, just sensations, emotions. I remember following something that was shimmering every time the sun would get through the trees and just wanting it, whatever it was. I think it was a butterfly but those memories really are vague so I don’t think much of them most of the time, it’s better that way.

It took a couple of hours of me sitting on a rock and crying on and off before my parents found me. They didn’t get mad at me since they were just worried to bits and discovered that perhaps a fence around the whole yard wasn’t such a bad idea, in the long run. That fence is long gone but not it was a learning thing for everyone.

You mean you don’t recognize me?

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Pit Stop Along the Way
Characters: Ébène Doveling
Race: Halfling – Demon / Dream Eater
Age: 28, physically about 18
Final Word Count: 586 words

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Growing up around sort of clones made to resemble some of the prettiest people that have ever lived for the sexual pleasure of others was something. It made me discover things at a seriously early stage of my life but I suppose it wasn’t all that surprising considering the one person I considered my parent, even if it had only ever been through a mock adoption, was a demon of the sexual kind. Not that succubi or incubi type, no, he didn’t need to feed on that sexual energy to stay healthy, he just had a healthy appetite for sex. I’ve never really been able to properly understand it.

When I turned twelve or so, it was clear where I was heading for, desire-wise and Desi decided that perhaps it would be best if I spent time elsewhere. It was a decision that caused a lot of arguing between him and the others but in the end it, I did pack up my things, I did end up ‘moving out’ as it was. Desiderio came with me to help me settle in. The place where I was going to live was quite a distance off but he knew the people I was going to be living with personally and said they would be good people to be around.

I stayed with them for four years. As you can imagine, four years for a twelve years old is a lot. I changed mentally, emotionally and certainly most of all I changed physically. I grew up; I matured—albeit not completely—I changed. I had kept in touch with them, just not in a visual way except for brief audio clips I would send them. I’d never been comfortable with the idea of video clips, I can’t explain it but audio clips were always fun.

Desi is the one who came to pick me up, as my sort of parents—he’d come to visit me every few months, he wasn’t bound to the place where they were the way they indeed were. In the time I was gone, they’d moved, however. This had been news that had not been given to me but I imagine that it had been quite a shock.

Though I guess that saying he’s the one who came to pick me up is a partial lie. He did come to pick me up but we never actually left the planet. This place was different from the rest, there was something about the planet that kept those not born on it a little younger than the norm and it had been picked up by the group as the best place to escape the life they’d been created into. So when Desi came to pick me up, we only got on a transport, went about halfway across the planet and we were dropped off to a new home that wasn’t so different from the old one but there was that taste of freedom to it, they could roam as they wanted.

I think the one part that amused me the most and yet saddened me in a way, was the look of surprise on their face when they saw me again for the first time in four years. I could tell that not a single one of them recognized me. I was aware I’d changed but not to that point but I guess that in the long run, it didn’t really matter. I was home and I was staying right here with them, where I belonged.