Hey! I’m your lovable crime buddy. Of course, I’m down for nefarious plans.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Emmanuel Tein
Race: Halfling – Human / Panda
Age: 41, physically about 23
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 765 words
 

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I’ve never been one to be overly playful, not in the way I’ve seen some of the others in our generation be. Those who would play pranks on their friends or create a sort of childish chaos that they enjoyed every second of. I was a timid child growing up and once Romeo came into my life, I admit that I might have focused on him more than I focused on myself. Not in an unhealthy way, we balance one another out perfectly fine but I feel that, maybe, if he hadn’t been in my life, I wouldn’t be here now.

Who am I kidding? Of course, if he wasn’t in my life, I wouldn’t be here, because here is with him in my life. This was pointlessly dramatic, and I feel like it sounded as though I was getting ready to say that if not for him, I wouldn’t be alive. Now, there is a hint of truth to that but it’s not something I spend all that much time thinking about.

He’s mine, I’m his, end of that particular story.

Now, I’m an avid reader. I spend a lot of time in the library because I love the feel of pages being turned. I know that I can read any book I want through the pads each house had and I can even have them in audio format but if I can get my hand on a paper copy of a book, I will. Turning each page, putting a bookmark in the spot you’re at, they’re all just things I find oddly soothing. So let me have that. I know I’m not the only one who roams the library.

I’ll read a little bit of everything though I admit that non-fiction is a bit odd to me unless it pertains to some of my favourite authors. I’ve read biographies, I’ve skimmed through cookbooks and other books that help you learn stuff but for the most part, I like fiction. Fantasy, science fiction, romance, naughty stuff. You name it, I possibly have read it. The only one I know I don’t really go for, most of the time, is anything that has to do with horror. I’ve realized rather early on that I can’t seem to stomach horror, even if it’s mild.

There are the books, though, they’re not horror, I think they’re tagged as supernatural, they have a lighter touch of things, ghosts, vampires and other spooky things but not in a horror sense. I’ve recently discovered a series that tags itself as being a sort of supernatural romance and I was a little bit skeptical at first because the snippet on the book made it seem as though somehow there was some sort of romantic relationship going on between the main character—a young man coming from a family of witches—and a ghost.

Now, if you’d said demon, or angel, or something else, I might not have been as confused but my knowledge of ghosts places them as being fairly non-corporeal and while I’ve seen an old and weird comic about ghosts, men, and sexual stuff, I didn’t think this was really a possibility.

Turns out, though, that it wasn’t even really about that. Yes, the man and the ghost—or entity, I guess—had a connection but it was sweet more than anything else. I remember a passage at one point where the ghost seemed to claim itself as being the man’s lovable crime buddy and they were always down for nefarious plans. It was little more than a joke at that point when you consider that nothing in the book was nefarious. Even the general plot fell a little flat in that regard, honestly.

There wasn’t much in the book that spoke of romance in any way, shape or form. I think the author, in that case, tried but didn’t very hard, or well, who knows. I remember these little tidbits from the book, but I also have finished reading it recently. I put it down maybe a week or so ago at this point. I don’t know that I’ll be reading more of this particular author, but I know I’ll have given it a try.

One thing I’ve realized that I do tend to do is that somehow, when I don’t care much for a book I’ve read through, I’ll step away from the genre for a short while, turning to other books for reading until I find myself drawn back to the genre with some hopes that the next book I’ll pick up will be more interesting.

Wait a minute, back up. Someone like you has a mug shot?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Faustus Slunce
Race: Human
Age: 35
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 791 words
 

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Certain words are triggers. You might do all you can to avoid them, but they’re so rarely spoken that you don’t even know they’re triggers before they do their ugly part in things, and you can feel yourself spiralling. I hadn’t had any issues in years, I’m not even sure why it truly happened other than, you know it did. One moment, I’m helping Zi with the bit of garden we have near the building, the next I come to, and I’m curled in a fetal position in our room. I don’t even remember anything that might have happened in between.

What I do faintly remember are the two men walking on by. They were possibly in our age group because I do faintly remember that they were talking about things that held meaning to the world before the snow. Things that the younger groups might not really know about. They possibly have been told all about it but from spending so much time listening to others talk, there’s a way to tell the difference between someone who has lived in the before and someone who was either too young to remember or was born after the fact.

These two men, from listening to them talk as they walked on by, had clearly been old enough to have had a life before the snow took hold and then changed our world.

It was a little later, when I’d settled down again, that we tried to figure out just what it was that had dropped me into that near-instantaneous panic attack. At least, without speaking any of the words out loud, we tried to figure out what it had been. Zi mentioned that they’d been talking about cops and misdemeanours, nothing that would have been considered a serious crime. I know I’m sensitive to a few subjects relating to prisons and it’s so rare to hear about any of them that I can’t imagine what word they could have used that sent me over.

Eventually, we managed to shorten the list down to something much more manageable and only a few words really stood out. One of them is about that photo the cops take when someone is arrested. It’s such a mild word that I don’t know that it should have triggered such a strong reaction in me but, you know, it’s one of those things that I don’t have any desire to test out.

There were a few other words in their discussion that Zi heard more than I did that could have led to everything but they’re on par with the one about that photo taken. I just don’t know. I feel like it had honestly been years since I’d had an attack this bad, and I hate it when they happen. Worrying Zi this way is one of the last things I ever do want to do because it feels unfair to him and to the few other people that are still around now that I know I can trust anymore.

I want to believe that I’m stronger than I was when they released me from those five years of hell. I want to believe that I’ve managed to make some progress with my life so as to not fully live in the past, even if that very past still has its claws clearly sunk deep in me in regard to a few different things. I know that it’s no way to live. Cowering away my entire life because of five years of hell isn’t a way to go about things. I don’t want to spend what’s left of my life being afraid of everything that’s out there. It’s just not right by any means.

Every day, I try a little harder. Every day, I face the world to the best of my ability and, every day, I want to believe that I’ve made at least some progress as to everything that surrounds me. I will never be outgoing. I will never truly be able to look anyone in the eye for more than a brief moment, but there are other things that I’ve managed to do that I feel like I’m allowed to be proud of.

I don’t really cower away. I still flinch when someone startles me, possibly more than I should, but I don’t spend my days just hiding away in the apartment, waiting for Zi to come back. As is, I don’t care to be away from him for too long, so I join him when we go outside. It’s good for me, I know. The steps I take may be very, very small steps, but they are steps that I am taking, and I feel as though this is the best I can do.

You are full of fury, aren’t you? More rage sits behind those eyes than anyone knows.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Alcohol Inside
Characters: Gin Van Willigen
Race: Boozeling – Gin
Age: 2 771, physically about 20
Current residence: Aboard the CS Black Coral
Final Word Count: 810 words
 

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I think I’ve sort of settled into this change in our lives. We’ve been back in space for not quite two years now—at least earth years and I don’t know that it’s really a valid way to think of dates but it’s part of our history—and we’ve made a few pit stops here and there but, you know, for the most part, we’re mostly out there in space. We cross other ships, we cross planets, the view is beautiful on the latter most of the time but, otherwise, we’re sort of just living our lives doing our own thing out there in that big, comfortable ship.

We still have all of the crates we’d brought onboard Killian’s old ship. This one is so much bigger, and we have a lot of room, but we made sure to keep all of the crates within a certain area. I change out the books I’m reading every few days and we’ve brought so many that it may take me a year to go through a single crate. I don’t mind the idea of reading them again once I do get to that but it’s also a good bit of time away at this point.

I think I’ve made my peace enough to the point that some of the books I might be willing to set aside and exchange them potentially for others at some of the places we do stop at. I felt like I was so careful in picking out the books—we left more behind than we picked up, there were more than I think I could have read in a lifetime and my lifetime is not a short one—but I’m realizing now that I’ve had time away from everything that some of these books just don’t truly matter to me, not in a way that I thought they would.

Yes, some are filled with information that I found fascinating back then, but now that we’re up here in space, that information is moot and, even if we were to go back on land, I know that I could find more books with just about that same information in them if I only looked a little. There are other books with knowledge that I don’t think I could find anywhere else, books that were handwritten, for one, that I’m not about to let go of, however.

A lot of the books I’ve left behind were books that were in a language I couldn’t decipher. No matter that I’ve tried to translate them for too long. I thought I’d figured out some of the codes for a few of them but what I was translating made no sense whatsoever, so I left them there for someone else to discover. I figured that if I couldn’t understand them, taking them wouldn’t do me any good. Bad enough I already spend a lot of my time bent over my desk.

At the last pit stop, I actually brought a box of books I was willing to exchange. It might not be much, all things considered, only a bare fraction of the content of a single crate, but I felt like it was a good place to start.

I hadn’t really expected to run into any sort of trouble, I’m fluent in a few languages and translators do exist for a reason at this point, but when I set the box down near the counter of someone who seemed to be dealing with antiques of sorts, they took a single look at me and somehow decided that I was full of fury. That there was more rage hidden behind my eyes than anyone else might have known. It made me pause. I didn’t like the idea of someone who didn’t know a thing about me trying to just randomly judge me this way.

Not that I felt judged? I guess not. Just, I don’t know how to put it into words. I think I might have stared at them, especially since they’d spoken a common language. Their features weren’t overly humanoid, but I know that the language has reached even fairly far-off worlds at this point. It was just weird that some random person I’d never met before in my life felt like they could somehow claim that I was full of fury when I certainly didn’t think I was. I’m such a peaceful soul that fury isn’t really in my dictionary.

I must not have looked impressed with their little statement because they then did just turn to the box, looking through them. For the most part, the books were sold for credits that I brought back on board, but I did find a few books to bring back, along with small trinkets for each of my brothers.

I know I haven’t been easy to deal with but I’m trying.

You’re like the friend I needed, but never asked for. That’s not a bad thing.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Hopeful Beginnings
Characters: Aryanna Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 23
Current residence: Klahanie, Washington
Final Word Count: 793 words
 

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I don’t know why but a lot of people somehow seem to think that a day in my life is filled with competitive people and that there’s just no one friendly. I have no idea where that line of thinking ever came from. Not that I’m all that interested in knowing but at times, I just can’t understand it. It’s like the way people in dancing schools or ballet-focused schools are portrayed. It’s so far from the truth that I think that a lot of us can only shake our heads in disbelief.

Sure, there are cliques. I think that’s an inevitable part of life. I think that there are cliques no matter where you look. Be in at any stage of life, too. Younger kids perhaps not so much, but teenagers will split into cliques as though it’s in their blood; adults will claim not to do it but, trust me, it still happens.

So yeah, people form into groups, and they will often ignore others who are not part of these groups or treat them as lesser people and they’re just not, but that’s the thing with life, I think. At least, with the experience I have with life, it’s how things seem to often turn out. I’ve been on the receiving end of dismissive behaviour from people in cliques and while it used to hurt, I’ve wrapped my mind around it and I’ve learned to let go. Focusing on that would have only led to heartache and I just don’t understand the point.

Now, I know I’m not all that old but there are days when I feel like I’m a mother to a lot of the younger ones that come and go from the conservatory halls. The littler ones who hope to make it big or whose parents keep on pushing them hard to make it somewhere because it is a passion of the parent to see the kid make it big, even when the kid in question has no desire to truly play. Still, if they are here, it’s because they have the talent to make it this far, at the very least.

I’ve lost count of the number of teenagers who have just gotten done with high school and who step into these halls, fully expecting the competitive lifestyle that is portrayed just about everywhere, in books, in movies, in these false videos made for someone who might wish to have all of the views, whatever that is meant to be about.

They’re so confused when they realize that no, it’s not a competition. There are certain things that, yes, the spots are limited for, but that’s not the point of being here. That’s not the point of having made it this far. Some learn to adapt to that proper reality, others need a little more patience, and some just don’t adapt at all, and we often lose track of them, they just up and disappear as though they’ve fallen off of the face of the earth. It’s a little heartbreaking, especially when they have so much talent.

I remember, a couple of years ago, after a bit of a rough patch with things, I was approached by this one young woman—she was possibly my age—whose name I hadn’t really managed to catch just yet. We’d crossed paths a lot and we’d exchanged a few words here and there, but she played the clarinet while I was almost constantly attached to my violin.

Out of nowhere, she came up to me and told me that I was like that one friend she needed but had never asked for. That baffled me and it must have shown in my face, I remember her laughing after a moment, as though my reaction was amusing as could be. It might as well have been, really. She added that it really wasn’t all that bad of a thing.

Mind you, I still didn’t know her name. I still had no idea who she was, other than she played the piano and I think she might have had a boyfriend as I’d seen them outside now and again, holding hands and walking side by side. She stayed only for five or six more months after that and, one day, she was gone.

As I didn’t know much about her, I couldn’t really ask where she’d gone but strange as it might sound, I do feel as though she left a bit of an open spot in my heart. I might not have known her, but somehow, being seen as a friend that was needed, even if it wasn’t asked for? I feel like it was a sort of nice thing. Wherever she went to, I hope she’s doing okay.

I’m just saying, maybe you shouldn’t carry a scythe everywhere. It unnerves people.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Ceries Kashka
Race: Dragon – Reikaru
Age: 87, physically about 26
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 807 words
 

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We met strange people while we were roaming. Before she decided to give up her energy for a child that she would never see growing up. I know that she’s in him, in a way. She gave her up energy for him and I do see a bit of her in him at times, depending on the situation but I know he’s very much so his own person just the same. I will never take away from him the fact that he is absolutely so his own person.

There was only ever one thing that I truly made sure to remind him of, once he was old enough to better understand our species and how we work. I explained to him how others of our kind were born, I made so very, very sure that he understood that it was a life for a life, as unfair as it was when you did stop to think about it and even from a young age, I could see in his eyes that he had no interest in giving himself up for another life. When he got older, we discussed that, yes with the technology here as it was, the potential was there if there was any desire, but I don’t know that he’s thought about it much still.

I still think we were by far too young when we went out there into that big, big world. Renah just wanted to explore everything, probably enamoured by the idea that there were just so many things out there that we might otherwise just never really know about if we didn’t travel. If I’m being honest, I would have been fine with staying, but she was my twins without being my twin and I didn’t want her out there alone.

We did meet so many, many strange people while we were out there. There’s just no denying that particular thought and even now, so many years later, I think about it. I think about the other dragons we’ve crossed, in no way similar to us other than for our wings. The rest was very different and even our wings aren’t the same. The stone in our hand, the way we procreate, the things we ate, the language we spoke, all of it was just so different.

There were plenty of others that we met, whose paths we essentially only crossed as we moved from one area to the next. We didn’t stick around places very long unless she found a spot she was really interested in and those were honestly rare. I know that there was one particular village, nestled on a cliff side. Those who lived on the very edge were brave, at least as far as I’ve ever been concerned. I have no issues with heights and no fear of falling from those heights but the idea of living on the very edge of a cliff still sat oddly with me.

She insisted we stay in the little inn that sat closest to the edge. I sulked at her for that for a while, but I eventually forgot about it. I spent most of my time sitting out front, just sort of watching the people wandering on by. She roamed the village, curious and soaking in all the information she could. I didn’t feel the need to. She would ramble my ears off when she came back late in the afternoons.

As I watched folks come and go, I noticed patterns with some of them. Most didn’t really matter, but a young man—older than we were at that point—and an older woman walked on by every single day. He always carried a scythe along his shoulder and people tended to keep half a distance from him. It made me smile, as every time someone stepped to the side to allow them through, the woman walking with him would sigh and shake her head. I faintly remember hearing her telling him that maybe he should just leave the scythe out in the fields, carrying it everywhere unnerved everyone they came across and they really were trying to make friends with the other villagers.

He scoffed every time, too. I could never hear his reply, but I can only assume that it had to do with how he wasn’t about to leave such an important tool—especially if it was his—out and about free to be manhandled by the elements and others who might just not know how to take care of the blade. I mean, I don’t know if that’s at all that he might have said but I know that this is what I would have said, in any case.

Renah was never around when they walked by, and I wondered if she’d ever even seen them. She never mentioned them, not even after we left.

Don’t lie to me. You always wanted to be royalty. Now that you have the chance, why are you backing out?

 
Timeline/World: Story – Sound
Characters: Charles Monet
Race: Human
Age: 29
Current residence: Castres, France
Final Word Count: 810 words
 

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Joint concerts aren’t all that common. Not because I can’t handle joint concerts, but just because they don’t really fit my playing style. Once in a blue moon, we’ll receive a little or an invite to a concert that is being held for charity and it is always hard to say no to those. They are wholly for a good cause, so why not? Why deny this to others who might benefit from me sitting at a piano and playing while others donate?

Sure, we donate too, when we’re there and it seems to set an example and that’s all there really is to that. It’s usually a mostly fun evening of time spent with other musicians and, at times, actors and actresses who have made it big, so why not? Not that I mingle all that much, I much prefer to watch from a distance, and I suppose that, for some reason, that sits poorly with certain people. I don’t know that I’ve ever understood it.

Like Gavin and his delusions—I haven’t heard from him or seen him since that last issue, but I’m also not surprised as he never would leave our hometown to go anywhere—some people seem to believe themselves so high and mighty that when you might approach them just to get from point A to point B, they’ll get offended.

I had to deal with a similar situation not all that long ago and I’m still shaking my head somewhat at it all. I just don’t understand it.

I wasn’t even trying to talk to her. All I wanted was to walk right by her so I could get to another spot since I knew they were about to call me up. The thing with being partially deaf is that in certain situations, hearing anything clearly is a struggle. In situations where so many people are talking together and chatting excitedly, it makes it hard for me to really make out anything clearly and while Pedro wasn’t far from me, he couldn’t stick to my side the way he usually does at most concerts before I head onto the stage.

All I managed to take was a few steps. From her left to her right before she was grabbing at my upper arm, and she wasn’t really being gentle about it. I did stop; I did turn to her so she would have my full attention—and my good ear. She gave me this look as though I wasn’t worth being out there with the rest of them, huffed and then rolled her eyes.

She spoke so fast that I’m sure I lost a good few of the words she was trying to tell me, but I remember the gist of it. I remember her claiming that somehow, she believed that I’d always wanted to be royalty. That since we had been younger and we’d first stepped up onto any stages, it had been by one big dream. Considering that she was fairly older than I was, this left me baffled, how could it not? I’d seen her in passing and I knew about her career somewhat but that really was it. I knew she sang opera but that really was all the knowledge I had.

The only thing I can think of is that she mistook me for someone else. It wouldn’t have been the first time and it’s always a little confusing when it happens. I can understand that my face is perhaps a little that of what they call the boy next door but to be mistaken as someone at least a decade and a half older than I was still remains confusing.

I did try to tell her that she had the wrong person, but she kept at it, seeming to grow angrier when I tried to draw my arm out of her surprisingly strong grip. She accused me of backing out now that I had a chance of joining that beautiful royalty and really, all I could do was shake my head and wonder in awe at what might have been going through her head because I couldn’t make sense of it.

Before too long, thankfully, one of the suits came backstage, possibly to deal with whatever small commotion had been seen happening on whatever camera system they had in the back. They managed to get me away from her and to the spot I’d been trying to make it to. There were no apologies, and I didn’t expect any of them. What I did expect, however, was to be kept at a distance from her and thankfully, I was.

I did play one song in which she sang, and I don’t think she even realized it was me. Also, I think I could have done a better job than her on that song but that’s for another time.

When your parents promise their firstborn to more than one creature, which one of them wins? Like, who am I supposed to go with?

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Erin Loco
Race: Halfling – Elf (snow) / Human
Age: 34, physically about 25
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 818 words
 

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I’ve read the stories. I don’t know that anyone hasn’t read them at least possibly once in their lives. Then again, I suppose that might be opting for trying to generalize. Not everyone will have read fairy tales and I know that there are chances I might not have read them if Emily hadn’t had that gift. I mean, there’s elf in our bloodlines, it’s a fairly direct link into that bloodline, too.

Anyway, not the point.

The point is, I read books. Usually, I read fantasy books because somehow, I don’t get enough of that in my life. I avoided these books when I was younger, mostly because of the thing with Emily’s gift but once we each went our separate way, if you would, I allowed myself a small chance to dip back into this different world.

There’s something to be said about the way high fantasy books are written versus the type of life we live now. Yeah, sure, we’ve got elves, demons, angels, drow, humans and even dragons. I don’t think we have anyone with gnome in their veins or orc, but I could be wrong. I haven’t really looked all that far. There’s still something about how everything seems pictured in high fantasy books compared to our lives now.

Our lives are simple, in a way. We’ve made huge leaps as far as the technological side of things is concerned. We don’t live out in a deep valley somewhere with huge statues everywhere, we don’t have to deal with mountains with evil eyes at their tops. It’s hard to try and think of everything that’s different between these fantasy books and us but there’s a lot.

One of those things, though I don’t think it’s so much high fantasy as it’s one of those things that might have happened before that I can’t imagine would happen here but I’ve read the general idea of this in three different books over the last two years if that tells you anything, is the idea of parents promising their first-born child to some creature or other in exchange for something.

Most of the time, it seems to work itself out well enough, but in the most recent book I did read, just the prologue itself started in on the main character quietly wondering to themselves where they were supposed to go when they found out that upon them reaching adulthood, they were supposed to go to a creature because their parents had promised them to a creature. So far, very similar to the others, but further reading of the information we were being given tells us that the parents had promised their first-born to more than one creature and that, upon their eighteenth birthday, they’d been swept away somewhere.

It leaves one to wonder. Who gets to have them, at that point? Who decides which one gets to have that child who is no longer a child? While completely different, I feel like that would be as though someone would have promised the last piece of an item to more than one of their friends and then tells them to just work it out between themselves. That doesn’t seem like someone who might care much for the end result. It was so strange.

It made me pause while I did start reading the first few pages. They didn’t go into detail about which creatures they had to deal with or how they figured things would work out. It was fairly vague and as I’d read a similar book not that long before, I honestly wasn’t all that sure if I wanted to read another one where parents had promised away their first-born. It feels like such a strange thing to do. I can’t be the only one who thinks that way.

Though sure, if that promise is made to save someone else’s life and then you swear high and low that you’ll never have kids but eventually, you do have kids, it’s one of those things but I still have a really hard time wrapping my mind around it all. It’s probably just me; with the way our lives are, the thought of any parent, or any single one of us, really, promising away our potential child seems like something so far-fetched.

In the books, the story eventually makes sense, and I can sort of tell myself that, you know, yeah, it made a bit of sense to do that promise way back then but only just a little. So, to promise that child to more than one creature or entity, all for different things, I didn’t know whether I would enjoy that book or not.

In the end, I did read through it all and I didn’t like it. I’d had fairly high hopes for the author but, well, yeah. That didn’t work out. There are plenty of other books to be read, though.

Don’t look at me or speak to me, I’m not in the mood.

 
Timeline/World: Story – Gather and Deliver
Characters: Vitus
Race: Angel of Life
Age: 24, physically about 16
Current residence: Cerulean Fields, In-Between
Final Word Count: 778 words
 

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When you’ve known someone for years, someone you work with or have worked with before, it’s hard to imagine them acting in any different way from what you’re used to. Shanie is a bubble of positive energy and love. She was that way the moment she came out of the Academy. She was a quiet little soul in the beginning, but I think we all were.

When you’re reborn and you land here, you remember how you passed. You remember your last few moments. It takes time to wrap your mind around that kind of thing and I’d like to think that most of us manage that fairly well. I can’t imagine that they’d let us out of the Academy if we weren’t well-rounded people. Being a Deliverer takes a certain gentle touch and if you can’t be, I don’t know what happens to you.

All the people I was with at the Academy when I first got there managed their way through all classes well, at least, as far as I remember. I didn’t know all of them personally, there were a good few of them, but the ones I allowed myself to grow close to—a few friends really—all did very well. I wonder maybe if we’re not stripped of our title and then become one of the people who are just in transition, waiting for their next pathway to open.

We’re not usually paired up to work, we do pick up the souls that the Gatherers locate—and I’ve often picked up souls that Thanasis had gathered since we tend to work in similar areas most of the time—and we head in to where little ones are being born, we deliver that soul to them and then we head back to repeat the process over and over again.

We do still spend a bit of time around others either in the mornings or whenever it is that we’re scheduled to start working since the life and death cycle never really stops in the end.

On that particular morning, Shanie looked like she hadn’t had a whole lot of sleep and whenever someone approached her, she’d snap at them, telling them to not look at or speak to her, she just wasn’t in the mood. I wasn’t one of them. I’d seen her respond in this way to two other people while I’d been gathering my equipment for the day and I just kept my distance, it was the safer option if you ask me.

By the time I was done with my day, exhausted by the sheer number of souls I’d had to deliver but pleased by how many precious babies had come into the world, Shanie had already come and gone. There’s a little lit tag on the small lockers we have at the place where we start our working day. It’s hard to explain what it really is, other than just a sort of office building and in that building, there are several rooms with lockers where we keep small items we need for our work and, when we’re tagged as being on the job, the little light on the locker goes from red to green. When we log off, it goes back to red and when they’re empty, they’re out altogether.

She didn’t come around the following day or the one after that, or if she did, she was on a completely different shift. When you start working, your shifts are all over the place. As you work longer and longer years, those shifts start to settle a little and, well, you’ll never truly know where you’ll go until you head in. The only thing you really do know is your hours and they tend to at least give those to you a couple of weeks prior so you can sort of fix up your sleep schedule to adapt to the change if there’s any.

I guess that I’ve been lucky enough so far—and here long enough—that I mostly only work day shifts. I still have mixed hours, some days I start early, others I start later but, all in all, I can’t complain. Most of my days off align with Thanasis’s own and that’s just something I’m stupidly happy for.

At this point, I mostly just hope Shanie’s okay. I’ve never seen her in that kind of mood and while we’re not the closest of friends, I’d still like to think that we’re friendly enough to one another that it’s just worrisome to see her acting the way she had. I don’t know that she’d come to me if she wanted to talk, but that’s okay, really.

I didn’t ask to become a hero. I never even would have considered myself one, but all these people keep insisting that I am.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Hoshi Iden
Race: Angel – Mercy
Age: 25 000 014, physically about 23
Current residence: Heavens
Final Word Count: 879 words
 

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Not all newcomers are peaceful. Some do not take well to the wings, the feathers, the robes that most of us in the choir still wear because—at least to me—they are comfortable. They are handled as they come and most of the time the welcoming committee is enough to take care of these mild issues so that they do not cause bigger issues.

One thing that we have to remind our attendants when they are new on the welcoming committee is that those who are reborn to us have no memories of their past life. If they act as though they do, it is highly possible that they sense some of those memories but unless they are told about them, these very memories will remain locked away.

There has been the rare rebirth that has come to us with memories only half-unlocked, but these cases are very rare and usually come from the fact that these souls were not meant for death in the way that brought them up to us. We take care of them as they happen and truly, I have only ever had to deal with a few more than I can count on both hands and at my age, I wouldd like to think that this is very minimal. There have been more blue moons than there have been issues with improperly locked away memories.

We had one case recently that was brought back to us and required a higher-placed team to handle. Not so much because the person in question caused issues—though they did—but because they would not calm down, no matter what they were told and one of us has to step in to take care of that particular issue.

Somehow, this person—this reborn angel thankfully not offered an elemental gift as I think that would have been much worse—believed that all those who were around them insisted that they were a hero and that they had never asked to become one.

Even now, when I think about the situation, I have a hard time wrapping my mind around what might have happened. It is all somewhat confusing really.

They kept on refusing to calm down, pacing, shaking fingers at everyone that approached them, clearly stating that they did not want to be the hero, that they just wanted to go back to their old, boring lives. It took a few others to be able to approach them, secure them, if you would, and bring them into a much, much quieter area.

Once they had been left alone to calm down in a very bland room—usually quite useful for the rare fusser like this—we were able to approach them to try and assess the situation.

All I really managed to wrap my mind around this, as I let someone else take care of this, is that there possibly had been a final situation that happened just between death and rebirth. This one had spent a good part of their lives living in a delusion that they lived in a virtual reality environment. From the locked memories—which I have access to—I could see that a long part of their lives had been spent in a psychiatric hospital, settled there in hopes that it would do them good, I am sure, but I do not know that it did.

The one thing that truly baffles me is that none of us understand why he was reborn to us. Usually, those who pass on the earthen plane are reborn onto the earthen plane unless they have done a very good deed at one semi-recent point in their lives that made them good candidates to be reborn up here on the celestial plane.

It was clear that settling them back with the others would do us no good, however. One-on-one, they behaved calmly enough, explaining what they believed to be their story at this point and how they were the unlikely hero because everyone told them as much, but the moment another entered their line of sight, they would begin gesticulating, crying out and just about being more than a little rowdy and impossible to handle.

We had to make the decision to send them back down.

There might have been a good deed somewhere in there, but whatever had happened in that brief moment between death and rebirth had made it impossible for them to become a good part of our society. I can count on the finger of a single hand and still have fingers left over the number of people we have had to drop, so to speak, back down to the earthen plane.

It is such a rare occurrence that I am always surprised when it happens. It is different if it is an angel asking to be sent back down, that has happened too but is just as rare. Some of those asking to be sent down do so on a timer and once that timer is up, they come back, we try to make sure of that. Only once did we forget, and in no way was it actually our fault as we were not the ones who had sent him out and the timer was out of our hands.

As is. It is all right. We deal with the situations as they happen.

The wings are new, but I think they’re really starting to grow on me, pun not intended.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Characters: Evan Morgan
Race: Human
Age: 30
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
Final Word Count: 781 words
 

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I’ve met strange people while I was at school. I can even say that I’ve met strange people while at the academy and I wish I’d been able to go through all of my training. The snow hit before that happened but, in a way, it’s all right. I’ve made my peace. I know that, around these parts, there are the people who do act like they are the cops. Most are military that I’d discovered but anyone can join, so long as they seem to pass a sort of basic trust interview.

It makes sense if I think about it, really.

I haven’t gone to apply. I don’t know that I could handle that kind of thing. I mean, I possibly could and perhaps at some point, I’ll go and see what it’s about, much like Nave has asked about the few people he’s met that seem to help on a sort of team of firemen, even if there haven’t really been any fires to deal with since the snow.

For now, I honestly think that I’m just fine with the idea of still adapting to this new life. I know it’s been close to twelve years, and I don’t usually need that much time to adapt to things, but I’ve been taking things slow and not running into the wide-open maw of the world, a maw that seems to be open and waiting for us. I’ll go when I’m ready.

I still stand by the fact that I’ve met strange people, but none quite seem to come up to the level of strange that Ms. Marietta seems to be. No, I don’t usually need to refer to people like this but she’s something else entirely and this odd bird—you’ll see—insists that everyone calls her that. It makes her huffy and angry otherwise and she gets loud and difficult to deal with when she’s angry. Not something that’s honestly really fun to deal with.

Now, Ms. Marietta seems to be a few years older than I am though it’s hard to really tell with most people anymore as some have aged a lot in all ways since the snow and some others seem to not have aged at all.

She’s an odd bird and that statement will remain with me until the end of everything, I don’t think that will change. This woman has settled into this sort of strange habit where she will pick up any feather she comes across, adds it to her growing collection of very mismatched feathers—most have been secured somehow into a sort of light shawl—and she calls those her wings.

So there’s this woman who might not be any older than mid-to-late thirties, wandering around with a feathered shawl on her shoulders and, the best part according to some, she has no qualms about strutting about to show those feathers off when people are nearby, stating that the wings were certainly new, but they were starting to grow on her, pun totally not intended.

When I look at it from whatever angle I can find, it seems as though this woman thinks she might possibly be an angel or a bird whose wings are finally coming in.

Now, I’ve dealt with different levels of odd people before but as far as I’m concerned, she takes the cake. I’m sure that her behaviour is very mild compared to some others out there but, to me, it’s very strange behaviour and I can’t even imagine how it might get in the way of her daily life. I mean, if you spent more time looking for feathers to add to your collection and then strutting around showing them off than you spend possibly helping others in every day tasks and just dealing with life as it happens and all, I don’t know that you can have a very fulfilling life.

Yes, I’m well aware that not everyone has the same needs, as far as having a fulfilled life is concerned. What she’s doing now might very well be enough for her and I’m just making a big fuss out of it—to no one else but my confused mind, my brother and our wonderful partner—but I’m just confused, I guess.

Most of the odd people I’d crossed before in my life, I’d done so in passing. I’d see them once, twice, maybe a handful of times at most but then they’d be gone. Ms. Marietta has been around for months—years possibly—and she seems in no hurry to go anywhere. I’m sure I’ll get used to that much the way I eventually get used to everything else.