I was always afraid, but lately, I can’t help feeling like I’m losing you.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Casual Lifestyles
Characters: Vanna Liao
Race: Mineralite – Jade
Age: 2 944, physically about 24
Final Word Count: 599 words

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He never thought he’d hear those words from anyone. He always had felt like he was one of the most insecure souls on the whole planet, so to hear his companion speak of his recent fears of losing him had unsettled something in him in an uncomfortable way.

Having been on the run when he’d been so much younger, trying to escape from those who had used and abused him, he’d found his way to Ruby. The mineralite had helped him change, helped him become less ‘Jade’ and more beautifully golden, he’d become Vanna. Of course, it hadn’t been quite enough to throw every one of his hunters off his track but it had done a good job and the ones who still came too close, Ruby helped to deal with. He’d had peace.

Peace or not, travelling or not, Vanna had always been skittish and wary of entering in any sort of relationship, so when his current one had slowly crept up on him, he hadn’t really known what to make of it. He never settled somewhere overly long and he’d now been in this place for what did feel like a year too long but he was comfortable, happy, he felt safe for one of the first times in his life.

So his companion telling him that he felt he was losing him was a blow. Certainly, he’d always been a little on edge but since the appearance of his companion, Vanna had been sure he’d mellowed down, settled. He was aware that the ones who had abused and used him for a good part of his life were gone, either dead or now too far out of reach to do him any harm but it was hard to let go of a fear that had been a constant in his life forever.

They’d talked, then. Vanna had been honest, had spoken about his past, his fears and worries, had spoken about his heritage and how it would keep him looking as he did, so long as he had his renewable sources of energy at hand and he always did in this place. There had been a lot of highs and lows following the discussion but things had settled again and he couldn’t really see or sense any fears in his companion, his partner. It had helped soothe down any still unsettled feeling and things had mostly gone back to how they’d been before.

That was, until one morning and he woke to find himself alone. The little house was quiet but he could tell there were things missing, the house felt different to him. It had felt different when his companion had moved in because the air no longer was the same, the rooms had more items to them but the house, that morning, had felt the way it had been before he’d had someone to wake up next to every morning, someone to share tender moments with, soft, tender little words.

He was on his own.

Vanna didn’t go looking. He knew there was most likely a very valid reason to this disappearance and from the fact that every item of clothing owned by the other had been packed up—meticulously, he could tell because none of his things were disturbed—he could tell that it hadn’t just happened. It hadn’t been a rushed job and he had this feeling that the packing up had most likely happened over the course of a few days. How he hadn’t noticed it, he didn’t know but it didn’t matter.

He would get used to being alone again.

Can you imagine how boring an endless slide would be after the thirty minute mark?

Timeline/World: Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Francisco Lorence
Race: Halfling – Elf (tinker) / Human
Age: 37, physically about 27
Final Word Count: 539 words

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My mind has always gone to strange places. Not bad, strange places but odd, strange places. Like, what would it be like to fly on my own? That one in itself is not very strange considering we have dragons and angels and demons and other beings with wings among us. Other strange places would be perhaps closer to what would it be like to be on an endless slide?

That one hadn’t come to me before, despite all the comic books I’d read and you’d think there are no correlations between the two but let me tell you, there are. I’ve discovered so many strange things from comic books and I’ve read from all types. From the classic superhero ones to the stuff they’d have called ‘yaoi’ back there and even some of its feminine counterpart. I’ve read horror comic books, gag ones, all sorts.

The idea of being on an endless slide though, it’s been stuck with me for a little while and I’m not sure why. It’s like both sides of my brain are arguing about it because they want too; this is also something that isn’t all that unusual, I have a hard time deciding on things at times. Pizza for dinner, cheese or with bacon bits? It might seem like a mindless sort of thing for the average person but it happens to me a lot. I don’t think I’m indecisive; I’m just always weighing both sides of everything, maybe just a little too much.

Take the slide, for example: if you love slides, you’ve probably been on every slide imaginable we have at the water park and I admit I have, often. I didn’t at first because the sensation of free-falling was making me sick—literally!—but I’ve overcome that. If you’re in it just for the thrill of the fall, you might not have tried all the slides though, just the ones that have a fast drop rate. We have a few of those too but my favourite is the one that has pocket dimensions attached to it.

The idea behind it makes sense; you get to decide when you have enough of sliding. You get in there, slide on down and you’ll be sliding through these little portals that are partial magic, partial technology and so long as your conscious mind doesn’t go ‘enough!’ you’ll keep on sliding down. Of course, there are several fail-safe bits and pieces just in case but still. The longest I’ve ever been in there was about ten minutes, despite that all the loops and ups and downs were different, ten minutes was enough for it to become boring for me.

So to think of someone being stuck on an endless slide makes me wonder if they wouldn’t go inside from the lack of proper stimuli. If a slide gets boring to me after ten minutes, I’m sure it’s bound to get boring for the vast majority of people after a while and being stuck in a slide with no way out until the very end of time would be boring in a bad way. At least that’s what I think about it and I don’t know that I’ll really change my mind about it.