Who said you were going into that spooky place alone? I’ll go with you. All you had to do was ask.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Jayson Freeborn
Race: Human
Age: 36, physically about 26
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 758 words
 

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I’m not a fan of scary places. I don’t know that I ever will. I’ve lived in something of a scary nightmare most of my life—something I’ve come to accept a few years back, especially after opening up to Eli about the truth finally. I don’t need to go to scary places and haunted houses to enjoy myself. I’d honestly feel better if I never had to go at all.

Eli knows this and I’m grateful that he hasn’t asked me to go, I don’t know that I’d be able to or that I’d want to. Though, I know that I’d eventually give in to whatever he might want, there’s just so little that I refuse when it comes to him. He’s my everything, I want to see him smile. Every morning, the relief still fills my face and my eyes when recognition comes to his own gaze, and I don’t think I can ever stop doing that, but the fear has lessened so much in the last few years. That being, more or less since I’ve told him.

At this point, I don’t know that it’s so much relief that fills me, as blissful happiness that his own gaze softens just so when he first wakes up and sees me. I’ve also managed to convince myself to stop being such a hermit. I know it probably wasn’t exactly easy for our lives when I acted this way and now, I let myself be swept out of the house for simpler things. I go with him to the market, I just square my shoulders if we cross someone, I go with him everywhere he wants me to go unless I’m practising for something that needs more time because I’m on a schedule for Maximillian.

When I first started spending more time out there, I came back home completely exhausted, I didn’t know how to handle things and I slept a whole lot. I ended up taking a lot of naps during the day, which, thankfully and not so thankfully, Eli let me have. I had a lot of strange dreams and some nightmares during these naps and most of them I still somewhat remember to a point.

One of them was about visiting a spooky place that had nothing to do with the haunted house I know is kept running in the amusement park we have. I don’t think that I’ve ever been to the amusement park, honestly. Which I’m sure is a big shame according to some people but I’m not really all that interested in these things though I suppose I could give it a look and see if it could be interesting.

Anyway. I don’t know where that haunted house was. I’m not even sure who was talking about going into it alone; I remember the general idea of the whole bad dream—I don’t know that I could call it a nightmare—and the fact that I offered to go with them because I didn’t want them to go alone. There was something of a moral to this bad dream, I think. Something about how all I have to do in life is ask for things and I know I can do that but at times, it’s hard.

At times, I don’t want to bother anyone. At times, even though I know it’s not bothering him in the least, I just don’t want to disturb Eli in whatever it is he might be doing at the time because I feel like I might need something. It’s in little things that are just hard to put into words, I guess.

I don’t really remember much of the rest of that dream. Just that I agreed to join whoever it was that was there with me on this stupid, spooky-place visit and that we possibly went. The rest is lost on me. I remember waking up not that long after I’d agreed to go so, I guess it doesn’t matter.

I’m still calling it a bad dream because I know I was stressed out in that dream. I know that I don’t want to say no to people. It’s in my nature. Just as it’s in my nature to worry about someone forgetting me because, well, that’s something else entirely, I know. I didn’t want to go into whatever spooky place that was supposed to be, but I still went because, in the long run, I’m a bit of a goodie-two-shoe and that’s all there really is to it and, you know what, that’s fine.

None of you are giving me the credit I deserve, especially after I bailed you all out of trouble.

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Shifting Sands
Characters: Tebryn Abaeir
Race: Drow
Age: 30
Current residence: Outside Atheria, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 958 words
 

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When your students are on break, you tend to try and give them all the space they might need. I don’t want to be that guy that hovers over their shoulders while they’re taking that fifteen-minute break in the middle of the class to be able to either have a snack or a whole lot of water. The beginner’s class isn’t so bad, most of the class isn’t even spent anywhere near the poles. I’m teaching them stretches and basic information they need to even be able to keep hold of that pole. If you knew just how many beginners I’ve had that thought that all they had to do was grab on and they’d magically manage everything, you’d probably laugh.

During those first few classes with the beginners, about three-quarters are spent in a different room where I teach them the things they need to know to even get going. So many of them complain and huff about how I’m being boring and how they want to be around the poles and how they want to do all of those moves they’ve seen in movies. It makes me shake my head some but eventually when we do move to the other room and I set each to their pole, their complaints fade into nothing.

Sure, plenty of them tries some silly stripper-move the moment we change rooms and while perhaps one or two manage not so terribly, the rest can’t even grasp onto the pole without sliding or even just losing their balance. So many people think they’re in for an easy class but it’s not and while I like all of my students equally, my love goes for the advanced classes. I only have two steady students, and a third who comes now and again. I have about six or seven in my intermediate class and even now, years later, it mostly is my beginner’s class that brings in more people and, you know what, it’s all right.

But really. I do try to give them their space when they’re on breaks. I don’t really want to hear the women giggling away between themselves about this guy or that one. I don’t want to have to walk by the lonesome one or two guys—that the women seem to not want to mingle with and I find that to be completely stupid all things considered—and listen to them talk about how the curves on the women in the class are mouth-watering.

Everyone here is an adult unless otherwise stated and the underage ones, the rare times I have any, are grouped together with parents’ signatures so that it is understood that they’re not placed with the adults and that if something happens, I’m legally safe. I have all of the cameras anyway so I’m not even all that worried.

Now, as I’ve already mentioned, I try not to listen in on my students while they’re on break unless they actively try to draw me into their conversation. I’ve had that happen every now and again but it’s not all that common. Most of them enrolled because they thought they’d learn things that I don’t teach and while they can drop out at any moment, peer pressure is a thing, even amongst adults.

A few weeks back, I found myself teaching a day class that turned out to be a bit of a mess. These day classes are different from everything else I’ve ever offered. I talked it out with one of my advanced students, someone I’d like to consider a friend who manages to make cruddy days better when he comes around—though nothing beats cuddling up to Maro once the day is over—and we figured out that offering one-day-classes now and again could have been interesting.

So, people can register either here or online for a day class, the class itself is usually on Saturdays. It starts at eight and ends at five. There are two, fifteen-minute breaks and a one-hour lunch break. It is a class that is paid in advance and if you don’t want to stay through, there are no refunds. It is a complete beginners’ class, though if others want to come who already have some knowledge, they certainly can.

Through that day, I cover what I essentially teach through the first two or so months of my beginner’s class within the span of those eight hours. It’s a much faster learning process and only gives so much time to practice but it seems to give people a sense of what’s being taught, and I’ve had people return for full-length classes after taking the day class, so I can’t complain.

On that day, I actually had a pretty mixed class. Ten people in all and, honestly, I’m still pretty sure that six of them came together. Five women and one man who settled together for their breaks, left for their lunch hours and never actually came back to finish the day. That’s on them, though.

It’s just that while on their break, I was walking on by, just past them, and I heard the man of the group mutter at the women that they weren’t giving him the credit he deserved. That he’d bailed them all out of trouble by bringing them here and that they were all being rather ungrateful. It confused me, I’m not going to lie, and the fact that they didn’t come back after the lunch hour seemed to speak plenty but, you know what, they paid, they came, they tried, they left without finishing the day and that’s all there is to it.

I finished the class with the other four and two actually registered for the full class, so I consider that a win.