Current Date: June 21, 2024
Character: Air aka Samir
Race: Elemental – Air
Age: 35, physically about 22
Current residence: Moss Beach, California
I wonder if it comes as any surprise to anyone who might know the truth about us that we’ve never really met anything that could be considered a mythical creature. Aspen himself aside, that is. I mean, we’ve asked him a tiny little bit about his past, I know he doesn’t care to talk about it, but we do know that he’s the last of his particular species.
As we were growing up on the island and coming into our powers, though, things were different. None of us could create animals, Chrys is as close as it gets on the creation front and he’s all things flowers. It’s different than creating living, breathing things. Though if you were to ask him, flowers are living, breathing things and he’d argue his point vehemently, pouting all the while. I’m not interested in seeing him pout or argue his point.
When Remy first came to the island, we discovered a whole world of things from him. He brought in with him so many things that I don’t think any of us would have ever experienced or learned about if not for him. Story books, fantasy settings, creatures from far and wide that might or might not really exist and, coming from a guy whose body and soul came from another plane of existence, that feels like it’s saying a lot.
I remember learning about unicorns, dragons, gryphons and plenty of other things. I remember watching Llyr make these figures out of water; they took a lot of energy out of him when we were young, and they never lasted long, but they always made us smile. Lan was pretty good at creating all things strange and unusual out of the earth. They were sculpted beautifully as though they had taken hours, but they never took that long for him. They certainly looked more polished the longer he spent on them, but I suppose that this is a given.
There was a game we played for about a year or two until most of us got bored with make-believe mythical creatures. We would scribble out the animals we wanted to on that particular day, and we’d just play invade-the-house. I don’t even remember how we got started, I just remember holding on to my own drawing of what I thought this half-lion, half-eagle creature looked like. I would be snagging pillows and playfully throwing them at my brothers.
Someone would eventually huff tiredly, claiming that we had to stop letting all the creatures into the house because they were destroying all the pillows and from there, we would sort of just stop playing and start picking up the mess we’d done. Not that the house was ever completely thrown into chaos, but we did make plenty of messes that we learned to clean up.
I mean, we were kids, after all. We were young and playful, we were learning about life and we just wanted to have fun.
I feel like our childhood is forever ago now. Not that I mind it being forever ago. It would probably be for the best that it is, anyway. There were a lot of bad days before Remy came into our lives. I know Aspen was doing his absolute best, but he had no real idea what to do with the lot of us. All of us together learned how to be a family and I don’t regret any of what happened.
I don’t regret Remy coming into our lives, even though he was ripped from said lives with very little warning. Without him, we wouldn’t be the people we are now. However, like all of my brothers, I’ve moved on from what used to be, not that I ever spent that much time living in the past, but I guess that it was a little easier for me and some of my brothers than others. Most of us had partners early on. We just matched in a way that felt natural with the other half of our elemental pairs, but it was different for some.
I feel as though all of us have come such a long way. We adapted to life here, we adapted to loss, but on that front, we adapted to newcomers into our lives. We’ve allowed our family to get bigger than it already was, and this has opened our eyes to just so many other things. I wouldn’t change a single thing. All of the emotions we’ve gone through from the moment we were old enough to understand them all the way up until now were just one more piece to help make us into the people we are now.
We are just as we were meant to be.
Works of JD Beckett 