This isn’t my problem, so I don’t need to fix it.

Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Almost Timeless
Characters: Duke Lagenberg
Race: Human – Meta – Telepathy
Age: 24
Final Word Count: 575 words

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There are some people out there in the world I would certainly like to see maimed. This isn’t even about a personal vendetta or whatever the term anyone these days would like to use, this is about people who, by all means, should be doing their jobs but are not. This is about people who ought to act like they are on top of the world and everyone should bow down to them when it is so clearly not even anywhere close to how the proper situation is happening.

I mean, I’ve come across more than my fair share of stupid people but some are worse than others and while I know I’ve also acted like an entitled asshole now and again, when I did, it was to piss people off more than to avoid doing something that I knew was mine to fix.

The culprit this time?

One particular importer we work with having sent us now not just one but three shipments with defective items. It is his company, his workers, who work on these items to clean them up, to make sure that they are in good enough condition for shipping. We do the fixing up but defective items are things we usually consider being too worn down or in too much distress to fix up without having to pay, out of pocket, more than we know we could get for the item.

Now, if it had just been one item in the whole lot, it could have been easily overlooked but as it stands, in three shipments that all had about fifty items altogether, at least ten have been beyond fixing. So one would imagine that yes, this is a problem, yes, we have to talk to our importer about it and we did. His answer? How was this any of his problem? He just found the pieces and sent them over, it wasn’t his problem if they were beyond fixing, his workers had found them, thought them sturdy enough or manageable enough for transport and had sent them. So that the items were defective was our problem.

These people, they’ve never sat well with me. I wouldn’t even know where to begin on the whole point but I can’t stand them. They rub me wrong in so many ways. When you mess something up, it only makes sense that you admit to what you’ve done, that you make sure, or at least try your hardest, to not do that mistake again but it’s clear that with this one supplier that client satisfaction is very low on their scale of importance so it’s likely we will have to drop them. What else can we do?

It is costing us money to have these items imported and fixed, the ones we can’t fix, we can’t sell and there’s nothing we can do with them, we’ve yet to find a niche for people who would like these almost broken items. It likely exists but we haven’t found it.

Oh sure, though, by fixing up the others and selling them, we likely make enough of a margin of profit that it isn’t a complete loss but that small of a margin of profit tends to get lost in paying our employees and everything else we need to pay for, so all in all, I think we’re going to have to find a new supplier. A shame, because these old pieces they really are something.

I’m not a fool. I’ve been intentionally letting you lead me around.

Timeline/World: Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Xenith Maxima
Race: Halfling – Elf (snow) / Vampire
Age: 170, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 541 words

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Growing up was an interesting experience. I wasn’t ever really on my own, despite my strange bloodline. I was born as I am; a mix of snowbound elf and vampire. Not quite the first of its kind but the only one who did display clearly distinguishable marks of both halves of the very bloodline. People often kept their distances from me, uncertain as to how to act around such a ‘freak of nature’ as I’d often hear them murmur behind my back, thinking I wouldn’t hear them.

The Elven part of my bloodline made feeding me somewhat complicated. While I could digest blood the way most of the others did, I had a somewhat hard time of it if that was my diet for more than a certain amount of time and I preferred real, proper food. That in itself was a problem in a small colony of vampires who had their blood donors and who weren’t used to anything else food-wise.

While ‘freak of nature’ was a common enough term, the other kids my age were crueller, calling me stupid to my face, calling me slow, calling me… well a lot of things. It hurt at first but it forced me to mature up quicker and find ways to not feel the ache the whole deal made me feel.

Often, mostly to make these other kids feel like idiots themselves, I would let them believe that they had my attention, that I was enraptured but whatever they were telling me, I was letting them lead me around, thinking I believed every little word they said but I knew better.

When I was old enough to leave, I did. I think it’s the only good thing that ever happened to me. Sure, I wasn’t quite ready to survive out there in the wild on my own, I had a few seriously close calls but I made it out, I’m alive now, I have a mate, children, grandchildren. I love each and every single one of them, no matter their bloodline and I will never turn my back on any single one of them.

I know I haven’t always been a great example of what to be and not to be but I believe that every parent goes through this, the one part where they’re learning along with their children about what they should and should not do. I was not meant to be a mother, I don’t think, but I’ve cherished every second of that particular adventure.

I would give the world up for my mate if I had to. We haven’t always seen eye to eye but I believe that there is not a single soul out there who do agree on everything all of the time, it wouldn’t make any sense.

Looking back on my life and what it was, I do have a few regrets but nothing that eats away at me, I would not really change any of the decisions I’ve made over time, even if there is some regret attached to it because that’s how anyone learns, that’s how we grow and how we become who we are meant to be in the long run. I’m no fool. I’m done letting others lead me around.