I don’t feel like listening to you, so I probably won’t. At least not right now.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Terraphim – Happily Ever After
Characters: Alexander Daishi
Race: Halfling – Celestian / Human (meta – fire)
Age: 26
Current residence: Xiang Po, Terraphim
Final Word Count: 829 words
 

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I don’t know that I ever was a disobedient child. I’d have to ask my parents. I had to grow up so quickly that this is just one of those things. I’m not sure how many years, or not, I’ve grown up, in the span of just a short few. I was curious about that knowledge, at first, but now that we’ve settled here and we’ve been here for a few years, I don’t really see the point in knowing these small things.

They happened too fast and what feels like too long ago—though I know that’s not really the case—to be something I truly need to know. I grew up. We moved away from the other place because people were realizing I was growing too quickly, and they were afraid. We moved because it was safer. In a way, there are times when I wish that weren’t the case because I feel as though the life we had in that village could have been interesting, but not if people were afraid of me.

When I look at a reflective surface, I don’t think I look frightening, but I’m used to the way my face looks. I’m used to being who I am, and I know that I don’t know how other people might see me or understand how I think and how I might act. I don’t have the kind of gifts necessary to be able to get into the minds of others and from what I’ve understood of that particular gift from listening to Sakori talk, it’s not fun and games.

Some months ago, I’d found a little thing out in the woods. It hadn’t been a deer—I know what deer looks like—it hadn’t been a fox or even a wolf pup. Even now, I’m not sure as to what it was. It didn’t look like anything that we’d crossed before, but it was clearly young and hungry, so I took it in. I didn’t bring it into the house, though. There’s a little sort of other building not far from the big stone building that we call home with my room at the very top in one of the towers, it’s a bit like a sort of shed and that’s where I took the little thing.

I didn’t really know what to do about it, at that point. I’d brought it with me because it had looked like it needed the help, but I hadn’t thought much further than that, I mean, I suppose it’s okay, in a way, things turned out all right but yeah, not my smartest move. I had made sure that there had been nothing in its surroundings that showed a parent of sorts had been around recently, at the very least.

It’s through the others that I realized that I could try feeding it and it refused a lot of the food I tried to bring to it until we found out just what it was it latched on and ate with much more appetite than I expected of something so small.

Over the course of the week that followed that, it clearly got stronger and more playful. We made time for it every day and I think we even managed to teach it some tricks and it made me feel a little like a parent for a little bit. Not that I was taking care of it alone but still.

After about two weeks, it started refusing again the food I was bringing it. We tried a few different options, going for what we’d already tried before, and nothing really worked. I felt like it was sulking me more than anything else and, honestly, any time I tried to approach it, it would emit this sort of growling sound at me. It liked Tempo just fine still, so I mostly let it be.

One morning, though, as I brought in an offering of food since it had been a couple of days since it had last eaten—the food we’d been trying to feed it in any case—it latched not so much onto the food as it did onto my finger. I was so startled that my temperature sort of went right up, and it released me. I think that if it hadn’t been for my heat, it would have taken off with my finger. The only thing I feel that I can be grateful for is the fact that I ended up cauterizing the wound as it released me.

It scampered off after it had released me and I just watched it go, feeling slightly dumbfounded at the behaviour but I didn’t chase after it and that was probably for the best. I still have scars around my finger from the encounter and they might take some time to heal if they’ll finish fading at all. That’s okay, though. I still have my finger and I can still mostly bend it. So, I’ll take it.

Are you… all right? Why are you lying down in the middle of the living room? The couch is more comfortable.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Christopher Storme
Race: Halfling – Angel / Human
Age: 99, physically about 24
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 793 words
 

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I adore my sibling, I do. There are days, however, when I think I could roll my eyes at him so hard they’d pop out of their sockets and where would I be then? Exasperated with my sibling and no eyes to see the world with. All right, all right bear with me, the imagery is morbid but at our age, I want to believe that we’ve amassed enough wisdom to be able to deal with the little things in life but yesterday was just not the case.

Not that I can blame him. If he felt as fuzzy around the edges as he did—which still should have been his first clue—he possibly didn’t even really focus on those other things that surrounded him, like the fact that he felt fuzzy was a bad thing and maybe he needed to let one of us know.

But no, no, I walked into the living room after dropping things off in the kitchen from a trip to the market and I find him flopped down on his back in the middle of the living room. When I asked him why he was on the floor as the couch was just so much more comfortable, it took him a moment to answer but he eventually told me that he’d needed to cool down and this had seemed the best of options.

Well, all right, I suppose I can give him that much except for the fact that the day had honestly been chilly and overcast a bit and when I asked him what he’d been doing to get overheated, he couldn’t really recall. I started to worry a bit more at this point since that wasn’t exactly his usual behaviour.

Before too long, especially after Spence had gotten back as well since Nate has this thing where he’ll usually fuss and argue with me when he’s under the weather, but he’ll do anything Spence asks him, we had him actually settled in a cool water bath. He was warm to the touch but not burning hot. It was a little weird considering that up until this point, fevers had left him chilled and huddling under a blanket. I’m the same when it comes to that.

We’ve been keeping an eye on him at this point, but after his bath and a quick nap, he seemed to be right back up on his feet and feeling as good as he should have been. I suppose it might not be all that unexpected that we’d have brief downs like this. They’re just fairly rare for either one of us, especially after we had that ink added to our backs. The ink that changed our lives forever.

Looking at it from a slightly further angle, I suppose that I can’t say I’m all that surprised that I found him there. I might get on his case for not letting one of us know he wasn’t feeling great, but at the moment when it seemed to hit him hardest, neither one of us had actually been home with him, so it’s one of these things. I must have gotten home not very long after he’d flopped on the floor because he’d been shifting some still when I walked into that living room.

We’ve all flopped on the floor once or twice—or possibly more—since we’ve lived here. There is the rare day when the air system won’t honestly be able to keep up with the unexpectedly hot days that summer might throw our ways and, you know what, the floor usually always is the colder option for all of us. The living room floor is comfortable, but it really is the bathroom floor that’s the coolest of everywhere in the house, and I know that I was flopped out in there at one point last year but it was during the heat wave.

At this point, I guess that it’s all right. There seems to have been no harm done; Spence walked him into the clinic just so he’d get a once-over to be sure. It was nothing drastic, but you know, I want to believe that for as rarely sick as we do end up being, I’d much rather make sure that if we do get sick, whatever bug we might have is just that, a bug and possibly not something worse.

In this particular way, I think it’s mostly because I worry that due to our bloodline, we’re resilient to a lot of things, but if something that we’re not made to handle slips through, I want it taken care of as soon as possible.

The results came out clear for Nate and we’re still just keeping a partial eye on him to be sure.