How’d you manage to get a talking dragon? All mine does is sleep.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Chiera: Autumn
Characters: Allaithe Vertus
Race: Chieran
Age: 31
Current residence: Eldine, Nualari
Final Word Count: 791 words
 

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Rumours of animals talking when animals should not talk have started to flow within the walls of our village. I know that certain birds can mimic sounds and are believed to be able to talk. I don’t know that I would call this talking so much as it is really just mimicking. I’ve been around some of these birds while the sun had begun to set and it was disquieting, to say the least.

The current rumours are about other flying animals that don’t truly get much bigger than a newborn child, at least not the ones that are usually kept in captivity. I’m fairly certain that there might be bigger ones out there in the wild but I’ve never seen them and I’m in no rush to see them. Elotes are usually fairly small, scaled creatures with wings. Some of them breathe fire but the vast majority are merely companions without fire. The ones who do breathe fire have been usually kept with those of us who might need help starting a fire.

I’ve thought about the potential of an elote before but with Ida, I don’t know that I would dare. He is so used to our routine that adding in an extra to it would possibly unsettle him and, well, elotes do need some patience, love and care and the ones that do breathe fire are known to prefer living in a heated environment. While the ovens are hot when the bread is being baked, the rest of our house is comfortably cool most of the time. The area where we mill our flour is kept as cool and as dry as we can manage and having an elote around that area wouldn’t do me any good. To make a long story short, I think that fire-breathing elotes are better kept for blacksmiths and others who work near forges.

When I first heard the rumour, however, I didn’t really know what to think. We only know so much about the elote and its habits that there is plenty out there that remain a mystery to us. The elders might know more but, somehow, I don’t know that they do. Studies on the elote are still ongoing as I don’t think the whole captivity thing is that old. A few decades at the most. I know that while my parents still were alive, the presence of domesticated elotes was only just beginning to be a thing.

Someone has been going around recently, claiming that they had an elote that could talk. I have a hard time believing that kind of idea and I haven’t given it much thought. I know that Ida has heard the stories too but I don’t know that it has stayed much with him. He’s often enough lost in his own world and a lot of what goes around him goes in one of his ears and right back out the other and, you know, I think this is for the best. There’s so much out there that I don’t know would sit well with him that I think it’s best if he doesn’t really pay all that much attention to it.

Ida being happy is one of those things that matter the most to me and that’s how I want that to keep on being. It’s been a really long time since anything has set him off and I want to keep it that way. I know that he’s not too hard to calm down once something does go wrong but the less often that happens, the better it is. It’s one of the reasons why I make sure to avoid certain wooded paths after dark if I’m with him. I still remember how unsettled I was when those birds talked at me—not that they were truly talking—and I don’t want that for him.

So that someone is claiming to have an elote that can talk is one of those things I will take with a grain of salt. I don’t want to believe it, and even if I do, I’m not one to want a domesticated one. Even if it were one of the ones that are without fire. There are plenty of animals out there that we’ve domesticated but I’m still not completely sure of how I feel about the elotes. I know that they can be useful. I know that people seem to love having them—the ones that do—but like most other things, there are downsides to it all and I have my hands full living my life as I do and that’s all I need. I don’t need something else to possibly worry about and that’s all there really is to it in the long run.

Wait… we’re both undercover? But… Oh. Oh no. Then who are we supposed to be investigating if not each other?

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Beyond Eternity
Characters: Ébène Doveling
Race: Halfling – Demon / Dream Eater
Age: 33, physically about 18
Current residence: Perseus, Borealis Continent, Inera
Final Word Count: 792 words
 

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The past year has been quiet. Getting them psychiatric help was hard and trying to convince them that they needed that help was harder. The look of complete betrayal in their eyes as they were signed in was hard to accept. I was the one who’d put that look in their eyes, I was the one they’d blame through it all but it was for their own good. They couldn’t keep on living this way.

The week of claiming they were dying of four different things was the last straw in my letting them just live their life away filled with lies. Lies they couldn’t help themselves but tell. I don’t know whether they were a pathological liar or a compulsive one. I know that the two are very similar with only a thin line separating them and, honestly, I don’t know enough about that kind of thing to want to even really think about it at all or try to figure things out. I just know that they seemed to lie constantly about everything and most of the time seemed to even believe their own lies.

On the day before they were due to head into the ward—I can’t even begin to tell about all of what went into trying to convince them before I had to involve other people—they came to me, told me that they’d finally realized that I’d been undercover and that was why I was trying to expose them. They claimed to have been undercover too—stating this was why they had acted the way they had from the start—but now that they understood that I was undercover too, they were confused. Who were they supposed to investigate at this point?

Thinking back, I don’t know that I even bothered letting them think that I took the bait on that particular lie. They weren’t undercover. I wasn’t undercover—I would never be—and this final attempt at changing my mind and that of the others that had stepped in to help get them help wasn’t doing them any good.

I mean, we even had to get their parents involved and that took a lot of digging for information since we could never really find anything. If there was one thing they were good at, it was hiding the truth and splitting fragments of that truth into hundreds of little lies. It took months before we found their parents and got them involved. It wasn’t a pretty thing,

I let go before too long, though I was there as they were being brought in since I was the only one near enough to confirm everything and the one who’d known them longest other than their parents and they were too far to make the trip.

To make a long story short, however, it turns out that they’d run away as soon as they’d been able to and their parents had lost track of them more than twenty years ago. They’d been worried, of course, but even back then, the lies had been piled mile high and hadn’t shown any signs of stopping. It’s just no healthy way to live, even if you possibly can’t help it.

I wanted to be kept at least a little up to date on things but that look of absolute betrayal in their eyes let me know that it was best I just let it all go and I did. I had no real reason to want to be kept in the loop. Yes, they’d been my somewhat friend for a little while but they hadn’t been good for me and their constant lying had even kept me from being able to just feed myself. Food and sleep are the only two things I know I truly need, I could manage in some ways without the rest, but without these two, I wouldn’t be able to function and if you can’t function, well, the rest is rather history, isn’t it?

So yeah, the last year has been quiet. No liar coming in to wake me in the middle of the night to tell me they’re dying. No one knocking at my door at all hours of the day—when I finally learned to lock it even when I was home—to tell me something I didn’t need to know or care to want to know. It’s been a learning process to be able to live my life in the way I’ve been wanting to without having to constantly look over my shoulder so, you know what, yeah, the look of betrayal hurt, but I’ve seen that on the face of some of my partners when I reminded them that what we had was short-lived so, you know, it’s fine.