It’s not that I don’t enjoy your company, it’s that sometimes it’s better enjoyed in small doses.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Ambrose Storm-Daii
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human / Strife
Age: 43, physically about 27
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 801 words
 

---

I wasn’t an easy person to spend time around when I was healing. It’s been years now, but I still think back on it. I think back on the patience my parents had—a given, at times I feel like, because they’re my parents—I think on the patience Silver had. I think about Emma who was a little too young, it feels like, to really be much of a bother the way my brother and parents felt like.

Now, the thing is, I know that none of them were bothers. The issue with this is that I was being a big grump and I know it. I’d like to think that I had valid excuses for being a grump to, like, you know, the fact that I’d had my leg caught in a bear trap and nearly completely ripped off. My genes made it so that time in the regen chamber was pretty much moot, so I was on painkillers, and I had to take things so.

I’m not going to lie, I know that I wasn’t easy to deal with at first. It wasn’t so much that I was in constant pain—though the painkillers only helped so much—but it was the fact that I couldn’t really go anywhere. I was stuck on bed rest and, once I was strong enough, I was stuck in a chair and none of that helped me in feeling like I could at least spend time on my own.

Several times, I know that I looked at my parents, I looked at my brother, and I told them that I didn’t want them around. I did manage, at some point, to tell them that it wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy their company, but that it was best enjoyed in small doses and, as I was healing up, it was the best way to look at things. I was miserable and I didn’t want them near me, trying to help me feel better about things. That’s just not how it all should have been happening; at least not as far as my brain was concerned.

Emma was different. Emma, I did all I could to not snap at her. She was just way too young to really know any better, but I know that Silver and our parents did all they could to make sure she didn’t bother me too often. When she did come to see me and when she stayed too long for my liking, I just endured it. She didn’t deserve my being snarky to her, she wouldn’t have understood it.

Not that it made it any better that I was snarky to the rest of my family, but it is all in the past. I feel as though we’ve managed to overcome this particular issue, and no one seems to hold it against me anymore. If they did, I’d let it go, honestly. I know how shitty of a person I was back then. I know that I don’t really deserve any of their forgiveness though if I were to say that out loud, I’m sure that a certain someone I’m sharing my life with and have given my heart to would roll her eyes at me. I don’t think I need her rolling her beautiful eyes at me at any point so it’s all right.

Healing, in any way, shape or form, is just a process that needs to be handled as it comes. You can’t really hold people responsible for things they might have said during that time. I was a miserable one while I was healing up and I acted that way towards others. As I did get better—though there was that slip back into hell after the issues downtown—I did start to be able to behave better.

In a way, though, I really do think it sort of took her asking me to move in with her to start the final healing process. I’m not going to lie, there’s a good bit of healing that happens physically but there’s a lot of healing that was needed mentally and emotionally too and I hadn’t made it to that step yet. I’ve learned a lot while I was healing up and I’ve learned even more after I moved in with her. A change of pace and space was pretty much what I needed, in the long run.

Looking back, I’m not ready yet to not feel a good bit of shame at the way I treated everyone around me during that time, even though they were only trying to be there for me and be a comforting presence. I know that I might eventually be able to laugh at it, but that hasn’t happened yet, and I don’t know when it will.

Time will tell.

I want to say I’m not in charge and anything terrible that happens will not be my fault.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Earl Lagenberg
Race: Vampire
Age: 398, physically about 24
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 821 words
 

---

Memories come and go. So many are blurry and never truly come back; the rest are dormant and through some trigger or whatever other reason there might be, they come back.

They don’t come back for long periods of time. Normally, they crop up in the rare dream I have, I recall them for a few hours or a day and then they’re gone again. It used to make me wonder at first. I know that I do dream, but the dreams I have are uncommon—or if they are common, remembering them when I wake up is uncommon. Does that possibly mean that since the dreams I do remember are usually memory-based, that all of my dreams, even the ones I don’t remember, are held together by memories?

Luisa is the one who came to haunt my memories during my last sleeping hours. I don’t know how long it had been since I’ve last even given her any thought. Duke was more familiar with her, she was his age. We might have been only a decade or so older but the way we grew up was very, very different. She seemed far more interested in spending time with him than with me and I suppose that this is plenty fine in its own way, I didn’t have much interest in her, and I know that Duke only allowed her around out of a sort of duty more than anything else. I never asked him, but I could see it in his face, how she never noticed is beyond me.

That memory takes place not very long before we left, a few weeks at the most if I’m remembering it right. Duke had brought her to spend more time with me for some reason that even now I still don’t fully understand. I do know that he was tired of having to deal with her and maybe it just made sense to him to try and give her something else—someone else—to focus on for a little while.

Luisa was a handful, that, I do remember. She was worse than either one of us. Constantly edging around the shadows near the light whenever she could, sneaking out when told not to, she was constantly getting in trouble and that’s one of the reasons I know that Duke was keeping a bit of an eye on her. Something about how he’d been asked to do it.

At one point—at the time of that memory happening—I recall that the first thing she told either one of us when we’d all gotten together, was that she was in no way, shape or form, in charge—and she wasn’t, that really was more Duke’s thing—and that anything terrible happening wouldn’t be her fault. That one made me pause, I might have been young, but I wasn’t stupid, and I could feel that whatever it was she was doing, it wasn’t going to end well for any of us, especially if she was trying to remove herself from the potential spot in charge so as to not be blamed for anything.

Duke stuck to her like glue on that day, mostly leaving me alone though I kept up with them to a point, at a distance, at least. She tried more times than I can count to sneak between two pillars of pre-sunset light to sneak into other places we technically weren’t allowed to and more than once, only Duke’s reflexes kept her from burning into a crisp. We were all so young that we were even more sensitive to the sun than any of the others. We grow into that particular part of our lives as we grow older.

Not to the point of even really being able to be out in the sun, but it takes more than a quickly passing bit of sunlight to leave third-degree burns. We were at that stage when we came here. Old enough to do quick passing through sunlight with only mild blisters to show for it but even then, neither one of us was fond of being out in the sun.

Learning to be did take some time and, even now, I don’t care to spend hours with my face tipped up to the sun though I do enjoy lazing in dimmed light. The warmth is something I’d never felt before and I do cherish it.

As far as Luisa is concerned, well once we left, I have no idea what happened to her. I suppose it might not be all that surprising to anyone. I mean, no real reason to care in a way, right? She was never concerned with me, she tended to ignore me more often than not in the end. It’s been so long at this point, I don’t even know that it matters. Like most of my older memories that pop up with dreams. It comes, it goes.