I don’t think any of you should be listening to what I have to say. My ideas are always terrible.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: June 29, 2024

Character: Shadei Morgan
Race: Human
Age: 36
Current residence: Prescott, Arizona
 

---

I don’t understand people who seem to love their little pity parties. As someone with severe PTSD, though it is now being handled in a better way than when I first came back, the last thing I want from anyone is pity. I know that it’s not because I have PTSD that I don’t care for the idea of pity parties, I think that even before I went off overseas while I was enlisted, I wanted nothing to do with that.

I mean, what’s the point? Woe is me, please pat me on the back and tell me it’s not so bad but I’m still going to tack on some more woe is me because I need to indulge in being sorry for myself. Maybe it’s just the way I was raised, maybe it’s something else.

There haven’t been all that many people I’ve met in my life, especially since coming back home, who seemed to allow themselves to fall into the whole thing of feeling sorry for themselves and all. Maybe I’ve just been lucky. I don’t know what else it could really be.

We had one hire last summer—not quite an intern, though it wasn’t far from, and they were being paid to work with us—who had themselves a pity party at least once a week. When it was time to review their summer with us and they asked us if they could come back the following year, we told them it depended on our government grants. That wasn’t a full truth but, also, not a lie.

We didn’t hire them again this summer.

Dirt under their fingernails? Woe is them. What will they ever do? This was a slightly messy job, they were helping in the enclosures though always while supervised.

Couldn’t get one of the big cats to do what they were asking? Woe is them, the big cats hate them and they’ll never get the animal’s love. Those animals weren’t around for them to go gaga over. They were, and still are with us because we’re a sanctuary. We’re here to give these animals a second chance at life and we release the ones we manage to rehab to the best of our abilities.

At one point, near the end of the summer, the not-quite-intern was telling the person they’d been paired with for the summer—a sweet young woman who’s been with us for a couple of years at that point—that she shouldn’t have been listening to what they—the intern—had to say. Their ideas were always terrible. We didn’t witness that one ourselves, but it was on the camera feed and Serafina handled the situation with grace.

I wish I could understand what goes through the mind of particular people, I really do. Not that I think it would do me a whole lot of good.

Now, other than the pity party they had going on, the intern wasn’t a bad person. They were a fairly hard worker, but even with guests around, they would say things that seemed to come right out of left field and that the guests didn’t really need to hear. It didn’t look great for us in a general sense and made it seem as though we weren’t treating said not-quite intern right.

Unlike with some of the other summer programs we’ve worked with, this particular soul came up to us out of the blue. We’d posted the offer for the open job on a few different sites because we hadn’t had any contact with the usual programs at that point. It made me think that they hadn’t had anyone register for anything that would have been helpful for us, in the long run. So, by the end, there was no one for me to reach out to, to fill in a sort of report card.

The programs seem to appreciate being able to know whether or not the people to send out to places like ours—and other places, I’m sure—are fit for the jobs. We hadn’t really had issues with interns from programs before but seeing as this one had come to us due to the open job offer, I suppose it’s just one of those things.

They weren’t the first candidate we’d seen or spoken to, either. We’d had a handful and yet, during the interview process, they were the one who seemed to best fit what we needed. Mostly due to their student status. We weren’t looking to fill a full-time spot, this was just a summer job with no chances of longer-term sticking around. At least, not unless someone walked out or retired but that hasn’t happened in the years since we’ve turned the sanctuary into what it is and our oldest worker is only in his early fifties, so not quite ready to retire just quite yet.

I don’t know that we’re going to hire someone for this summer, I still need to talk to Shaile about it.

Final Word Count: 831

I don’t know how or why, but you turned three of the school’s most popular students into werewolves. Care to explain yourself?

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Shifting Sands
Current Date: June 28, 2024

Character: Orpheus Rose
Race: Halfling – Demon / Fox
Age: 25
Current residence: Los Angeles, California
 

---

Years have passed but there still are plenty of things that make little to no sense to him. Things on the television—that he finds boring more often than not, there is enough going on with his own vision most of the time that he has no need to watch these things. Movies, he believes they’re called. It hardly seems important to remember that information for how little it changes his life.

The missions have become less common, he spends more time at home with His Carlos than not anymore and while it leaves him feeling restless at times—exercise in the form of running has been picked up—he refuses to complain about how quiet things have been. He knows that they are still watching him through his eyes. He knows that they still keep track of everything he says and does.

There has not been a single other unauthorized kill since the one that took him away for a full year. The longer missions have all but stopped, which means that the nightmares have done the same. The nightmares only came to him following missions that took him away for more than a day from His Carlos. The mental and emotional torture from years ago now still has left deep claw marks in him and being apart from the man he suffered through it all for, for more than just a few hours, does him no good.

He remembers one of the men asking him, back then, what he thought about when he was just… there. Sitting, staring off, seemingly disconnected from the world. The question had come long before he had met His Carlos and Orpheus had found that he had no answer for the man in the white lab coat. He didn’t know what his mind did when it wasn’t thinking about all of the things that were necessary to his daily activities, at least back then.

It really was a little bit like a computer just being turned off. He still breathed, he functioned just fine, at least, so it seemed, but if he wasn’t interacted with, he just sat and stared off. Mind empty, or so it seemed. Even now, Orpheus wouldn’t be able to tell what goes on in his mind when his eyes go out of focus, and his body simply settles.

There are high chances that his body merely settles into a sort of meditative trance, it certainly wouldn’t have been the first time, and it keeps the nanites in a calm state; there seems to be no need to change something that works out for everyone, in the long run.

Of the things he has tried to do during quieter times—though closing his eyes and merely sitting pretty, so to speak works well for him—is book-reading. Being able to read and write is something that was taught to him for his job, far more than anything else. Orpheus knows that, back at the bunker, the lab, and everywhere else that he hopes to stay as far away from for the rest of his life, they had no need for him to keep entertained during quiet times. Like a robot, he was expected to just sit and be.

The few books he’s tried reading up until this point have been lacking in ways he isn’t sure how to put into words. They held his attention for a few pages—a few chapters for some but rarely more than a few pages—and then they just were not. The books were closed and set down somewhere before he even realized what he’d done. As though his mind had, well, a mind of its own and refused to read more of the garbage—or so it felt for some of them—that he was trying to read.

The only book he made it a few chapters in, turned into a farce in the fourth chapter and lost his attention. Even now, he still remembers what made him close it and put it away. This was the only book he remembers actually closing and setting down. The only one. The rest is still a mystery to him. There he was reading the first few pages and one single blink later, the book was on the low table next to him as though he’d never even picked it up.

At times it makes him wonder if he did indeed just not pick it up and imagined those first few pages and the feel of the paper between his fingers. He feels no need to look through his own memory vaults, it feels like a complete waste of energy.

That one book, however. It did have something good going for it until it just didn’t. Up until the point where things turned strange, it had been strange and mysterious, something a little noir more than anything else and then, out of the blue, someone being blamed for turning the school’s three most people students into werewolves.

It made him pause in his reading abruptly and even now, Orpheus has no idea where that came from at all.

There hadn’t been any schools mentioned so far. No magic, nothing that would bring out that sort of sentence as being necessary in the book at all and yet, there it was. It still makes him wrinkle his nose in mild confusion when he does stop to think about it.

No more books for a while. It’s for the best.

Final Word Count: 913

Everyone seems to think I have all the answers, but I’m just as lost as you are.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: June 27, 2059

Character: Shiyuri Hastur
Race: Shifter – Panda
Age: 79, physically about 24
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

Being a mother was a challenge. Let’s not lie to ourselves, I never imagined myself being a mother, but I have no regrets. Three beautiful children who have grown up into wonderful adults and who know that my door is always open to them. They visit often, of that I am very pleased, and when they visit, it is rarely because they do need this door of mine—ours—to be open for them out of necessity.

All the while with my stomach getting bigger and my thoughts going round and round, especially that first time, I often thought about all the women—the mothers, especially—I had crossed while I spent more time at the hospital than I did at home. I met more than my fair share of them and while all of them were wildly different from one another, quite a few of them had the same worries I found myself dealing with.

Or, more aptly on that front when I was pregnant with Katheryn, worries that I found myself going over again and again and again even before I had to deal with any of them.

Would I hold her right? Would I know when to feed her? How to burp her? When to change her? Would it be easy for me to tell when she needed to sleep and when I had to stop trying to mother her because she had to learn to sleep through her nights? A lot of the questions were some that I shouldn’t even have worried about. It came easily. Changing her when it was time, feeding her when it was time, holding her just so, to burp her. Little things, simple things.

That didn’t stop me from thinking about everything else and worrying that I would do it all absolutely wrong. Thankfully, Dominick was more than patient and I’d like to believe that we learned most of it together. Though to be fair, I was probably a little on the naive side of things back then too and I wouldn’t have been surprised that certain things I learned along the way were things he was already well aware of.

I don’t remember my own parents, maybe it has to do with my mindset back then. Not that it matters much at this point, I’d like to think we were good parents, and we did our very best for these kids of ours. I still don’t have the answers to everything. I don’t think I ever will. On that note, I’ve come to understand that believing that anyone has all the answers is foolish, no matter who they might have been.

Be that a mother of multiple kids or a new mother who is bringing her first child into the world, neither one of them will have all the answers and no one should think that they do. It feels as though it would put a certain amount of unpleasant stress on a person. This doesn’t only apply to mothers, parents, or anyone else in a family setting.

I’ve seen a lot while I was spending all that time in the hospital. It wasn’t just veteran mothers—so to speak—who were looked upon as though they had all the answers, some of them were just as lost as everyone else. But nurses that had been around a while, doctors with specific knowledge of things, people at times seemed to assume that these people would have all the answers as far as certain situations were concerned and while it could have been true at times, more often than not, it just wasn’t.

Stressed family members and friends of someone in an emergency situation turning to the first nurse that comes their way, demanding to know what’s going on when that nurse has no idea as to what anything is about because that very nurse is not the one overseeing the patient. I’ve seen that a lot back then. People who seemed to think that repeating themselves to a new person they were seeing in the hospital was moot because, clearly, all they’d already talked about had to have been told to them, right?

Not fully, notes are taken, sent in, and added to files but you’ll always have to repeat yourself a few times, at least, that was my experience and maybe it was just me. Maybe I was just the ditz who didn’t know any better, but I doubt it. Not that there are any hospitals left to check except ours and I know how ours works, since I do volunteer now and again.

There might be hospitals left out there, but I very much so doubt that they’re anything like what they used to be just before the world went dark.

Final Word Count: 793

The kindness I show is a facade. In reality, I’m just trying to get you to do my bidding.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: June 26, 2024

Character: Kyrie Reed
Race: Human
Age: 22
Current residence: Warwick, New York
 

---

After I had first started talking to Agathe, I think I had started to prepare myself for everything around me to fall to pieces. I’d like to claim that I was blind to the way Carlotta was manipulating me all of those years, but I’d be lying. I was blind to most of it, I’d like to blame my naiveté on that. After talking to the cops a little more over the last week, more things have come to the surface and I’m surprised I’m not more in shock of sorts about it all.

Everything—almost everything, I want to believe, but probably everything—was a facade for her. She played the sweet darling for years and by the time she had managed to cut me off from all of my friends and family—something I believed was their doing and just bad timing—she had no need to truly play the part anymore. She had me wrapped around her little finger and I was willing to do just about everything she wanted. Almost everything.

Did she truly love me? I don’t know. Agathe tells me that Carlotta shows all signs of being a narcissist and I’m beginning to see it now. Maybe she only loved herself and she just needed a minion to do her bidding. That’s what it feels like at this point.

There were cameras everywhere in the apartment, I didn’t know this. I suppose that I wasn’t exactly supposed to know. In every single room. The only room that had none was her own bedroom—we had separate bedrooms—but there was a camera in the bathroom, my bedroom, my little office, the open-plan living-room-slash-dining-room-slash-kitchen area.

I didn’t stand a chance after I invited Sierra in. I’d ignored the signs while we were in school, I figured there just weren’t great sparks going on between them, but I shouldn’t have been so blind. She was more than glad when he’d gone. I wasn’t as glad when I lost access to my email address, and then that email was gone altogether.

There are many details that I don’t have, but I have enough that my skin crawls any time her name is mentioned. I just don’t know how I made it this long. There were a lot of accidents—incidents, she would say—over the last week of my stay with her before I was somehow swept away. That night remains foggy in my brain, and it is probably for the best.

The bruises scattered only where clothing would cover speak volumes about how things turned out for me. I don’t care for the idea of looking at my reflection currently. The cut on the back of my shoulder is another reminder of all that happened. It is healing up, slowly but surely, like the rest of me, at least, physically.

My first appointment since the whole ordeal with Agathe was just two days ago. She was willing to accommodate, and she came to the house. I don’t feel safe going outside and every time someone knocks at the door—which is rare, but it has happened—I find myself flinching and my brain just goes into overdrive because it thinks I have to get away. It’s been hard to calm that side of me, no matter that the cops have told me that the woman behind my terror is on house arrest for a while.

I don’t think that will stop her.

The joint bank account is empty. I don’t even have access to it anymore as is, but when I did check it on the fateful night, there wasn’t even twenty dollars left in there. I don’t know what’s going to happen to all the money I ever put on there that she took out for her own personal use.

Sierra helped me set up a new account under just my own name and after making a few calls that were more stressful than they should have ever been, I was able to ensure that everything that was linked to the joint account was moved back to my own. I was waiting on a payment for a recent commission, and I think I just got lucky on that front because it was deposited into my account a day after it had been created. I know the person who had commissioned me had paid almost a week earlier but the issues with the joint account had probably frozen that somewhere in the ether until those issues were fixed.

I still have nightmares, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have them for a fairly long time to come, there’s no helping it. I think everything started unravelling when I managed to convince her to let me drop by to see Silvius because the ends of my hair were in slightly dire need of cutting and the last time I’d asked her to help me, she’d chopped off nearly a foot of hair. Silvius dropped that card in my hand… I started talking to Agathe… Sierra cropped back up seemingly out of nowhere and the rest, well it just happened.

Do I wish none of what happened over the last few years had? A bit, because I know it changed me in ways that will be hard to change back. I know that my father doesn’t want me around anymore though Mom seems more than willing to welcome me back with wide open arms. If nothing else, I’ll invite her out to lunch at one point, and catch up on things with her then. Maybe Dad will come back around eventually. I’m not holding my breath though. He’s stubborn.

Final Word Count: 939

You failed to mention that there’s a mage in my kitchen and they think I’m the chosen one.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Current Date: June 25, 2059

Character: Micaiah Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Fire
Age: 38, physically about 24
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

I don’t read much, and if this is a surprise to anyone in my very slight friend group, then I suppose I might need better friends.

I’m kidding on that front, of course. I have so few proper friends—my own doing, and I’m fine with that—that I don’t think I’d care to replace them if they didn’t know that I don’t care much for the idea of reading. As is, even if they do, or don’t know that I have no lost love for most books, it’s not even anything near the end of the world.

I mean, in the long run, this is me issue. A thing where I don’t read because I need visualization if I want to be able to remember anything of what I have indeed just read. It’s how I managed to finish getting through all this fun-fun-fun learning we did in school. They got me glasses, it made things more visual in a way that’s hard to explain but worked for me, the rest is history.

Once I got out of school, I still kept the glasses but I haven’t really worn them, I bring them in every few years just for them to get their hardware updates as needed, I know the software updates on its own, but I think I’ve worn them maybe five times since I got out of school and that was close to twenty years ago.

As I took them in this year, I got into a bit of a killing-time conversation with Einn as he made sure everything was still as it should have been with the glasses. It’s not much, what’s in there, but it’s still there and it needs to be kept up to date. He told me that one of the more recent updates to the glasses had been a bit like what augmented reality would have been like if it had had time to get off the ground before the world crumbled. It’s still just only visible to me, but it now has its own limited AI attached that will bring books at least partially to life when you read them.

And that includes most of the books in the archives. He told me that it wasn’t identical to how VR works but it would pop up a put-together visual of character looks, their locations, and it could even offer some audio feedback on the potential way that the characters in the books would speak if I asked for that.

So, sure, I let myself be swept into the idea of reading a book. The first I read since I actually got out of school. Yes, yes, I’m probably the most boring person ever, I know. Probably not, but anyway.

I sort of picked at random. I put several tags into the filter and picked the first book on top. Fantasy, some magic, not too much drama and no horror whatsoever. It’s a boot about some magicians, or mages I guess is the term, they’re learning about their power and all. It’s that series of books with the wizards, though. I recall hearing about that a little when I was younger, but this has nothing to do with it.

Now, at the start, the glasses actually offered a neat sort of extra interface. It did show me a mock-up of what the characters that were described looked like. I had glimpses into what the areas—again, when described—looked like, it made following along the book fairly well until I’m pretty sure I ran into a bug.

About a third of the way in, we’re at a scene where the main character comes across one of the mages and the glasses popped up the image of the mage, a reminder of what they looked like, except that the image didn’t pop off after a few moments, the way it’s been happening from the start. So now, whenever I do put the glasses on to try and read some more, I have this mage just there, not quite in the corner of my vision. A mage more than ready to tell the main character that they’re the chosen one.

I figured I’d give it a bit of time, and just let it sit if you would. I turned them off, and I even reset them to the factory default. Not that it changed much since I hadn’t changed anything about them or in the system after that particular update.

It didn’t fix the issue. I still have a mage sitting just there whenever I put them on and turn them on. I was feeling fairly interested in the book but only because of the visuals, now that this bug has settled in properly, I don’t know that I’ll be able to get back to it without having to start over from the beginning since I know I have to drop these off to Einn for him to check them over.

I tried, I guess, and that’s all there really is to it.

Final Word Count: 838

Leave it to you to mess up an easy mission. Didn’t I tell you to stay in the car?

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Unspoken Promises
Current Date: June 24, 2024

Character: Agathe Constantinides
Race: Human
Age: 29
Current residence: Urbana, Iowa
 

---

I saw a car today and I’m not sure what to make of it. Now, saying it like that, it probably makes me sound like I’ve never seen a car before in my life. Considering I grew up in Greece, flew here, then back to Greece, and then finally back here, I can safely say that I’ve seen cars, trucks, buses, trains, and planes.

Since the fog, however, the only cars that had still been running had been the electric ones and there were only a handful of those in the community. They weren’t exactly common and, just the same, not fully necessary. Everything was mostly close enough that we could walk from point A to point B and that would have been that. The warehouse had these little camping carts that a lot of people took home near the beginning, it helped with moving stuff around. There were a few regular gas-powered cars around—most of the vehicles in the community were gas-powered, but, well yeah, gas runs out and with no gas left to speak of to fill in, the rest is history.

Just a few hours ago, a car drove right through the community. From the looks of it, it had been a gas car at some point, but as they drove through—they didn’t even really stop other than by the far edge, or so I heard—but they’d put some solar panel on the roof and on the sides, and through the sunroof, there was a long pole with what looked like a sail tied down to it.

There, there, is the part that baffles me. I mean, it’s clear that they modified that car themselves, but just looked like a strange sort of contraption. The more I think about it, the more it makes some sort of sense, if you have wind, you can navigate that way, but wind strong enough to move a car seems like it wouldn’t be all that common.

From what little I’ve heard of the people who saw them on the far edge of the community where they supposedly stopped, is that they were arguing. Something about how they’d messed up an easy mission, how one of them had been supposed to stay in the car and all I can do is listen to it all and just, you know, here’s a little sprinkle of salt onto the whole thing because I don’t know how true or not any of that is.

For all I know, they didn’t even stop and some of the slightly more recluse ones have just been gossiping away with nothing else to do with their time but do that. Though, I suppose I can’t call them recluse if they’re gossiping but there are people who live on the edges—some more than others—who seem to love to gossip at any chance they get; I just don’t understand people like that.

I grew up surrounded by other girls who loved to gossip, and it always just felt ridiculously wrong to me, maybe I’m just not seeing it from the right angle, or maybe gossiping is just one of those things that shouldn’t happen. I know how quickly these things can grow out of control and the end result is never good.

So, I’ll just focus on the fact that a strange car drove right on through the community today. There weren’t a lot of people outside and I wonder if they kept going because they saw nothing of interest. I suppose I should be grateful that the warehouse was built a little further back from the road. Unless you know where it is, you’ll walk right by it and not even know it’s there. I feel like this has saved us from having to deal with things that could have just turned out badly.

Or maybe I’m just a worrywart and I like that things are mostly quiet anymore. We do get the rare newcomer, and it’s nice when they’re nice and they do settle in, but otherwise, I think that the life we have now is just about what it’s going to be like for the foreseeable future. We grow what we can, some people have taken to hunting, some have taken to fishing though the latter doesn’t seem to have great results most of the time—that or I’m just not paying enough attention to know better—and we just do what we can to live to the best of our abilities in this strange new world of ours.

Maybe, years down the road yet, we’ll have set up some sort of bargaining or exchange system with some of the other communities, if they’re not too far away.

Final Word Count: 786

Blaming me for things I may or may not have actually done. Have you no shame?

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Crafted
Current Date: June 23, 2024

Character: Regret aka Drystan
Race: Emotion – Regret
Age: 35, physically about 22
Current residence: Moss Beach, California
 

---

One of the very first things we learned was control over our own make. While we had no sway over our own siblings, which makes more sense than anything else. I can’t even imagine what things would have been like if we’d somehow been able to influence one another; it would have been absolute chaos, but to what level?

I can’t speak for my brothers, but I am not a fan of using my make on others, as is. Even in dire situations, there is rarely any need for it and while I can’t count on the fingers of a single hand the times that I’ve essentially brought regret to the surface in others since we’ve been here, I can still count it on both hands and possibly a few toes. It feels like one time too many, but the situations called for it.

In some of these situations, it was a slip more than anything else. I was highly emotional myself—I know I might not look the part, but I can lose myself to my own emotions once in a blue moon, we all can—and the parties in which I forced regret, so to speak, needed to calm down as well. Only twice did I do the opposite. The person—the same person twice but on two separate occasions—was filled with so much unnecessary regret that they were being suicidal about it. I know I saved their lives on both occasions but, again, I spend too little time thinking about that. It serves me no purpose.

One of the few things I care for even less than making use of my ability to draw regret into people is people playing the blame game when there is just absolutely no need for it whatsoever.

What does it matter, or change, that you might be able to point the fingers at someone for breaking a glass, dropping a pile of papers, or forgetting to put in the filter in the coffee maker? I’m not saying that figuring out who might have put the wrong dosage in things or forgotten to change bandages in a medical field or other places where things require to be done just quite so isn’t a necessity, but I don’t need to know who made the oopsie when it comes to simpler things in life.

Let’s just fix the problem and move on. What good does pointing fingers do? It often makes the person feel shame for something that was an accident, and it fixes nothing. Sure, understanding who might have caused the issue is good so that they can be spoken to, to ensure that they know the correct way to do things, but otherwise, I just fail to see the point.

Someone dropped a tray full of drinks at a small coffee shop where one of our own works, I was there when it actually happened. I was picking up a few pastries to take back home. Right as it happened, the one that had the trouble with their tray turned defensive, even before anyone had approached them about anything.

They stated it was an accident and that blaming them for it wasn’t fair, that it was shameful anyone would do that. No one had said anything yet, one of the other baristas had barely rounded their way from behind the counter to help.

The whole scene made it clear that this was either not the first time incidents like these happened, or the person that had had the incident was used to being on the receiving end of blames that they might not even have deserved. This is the thing with forcing blame on people and doing it just to point fingers. People end up not unlike this barista who then snapped at the one who had come to help. Told them that they were fine, they could pick up their own messes and to just not bother.

All in all, not a great moment in the little coffee shop; at the very least, it was quiet with just a handful of people inside, but it was clear that emotions ran high at that point. I didn’t get involved, I didn’t want to, and it wasn’t my place, anyway. I gathered my pastries, thanked the barista who had gone back behind the counter since their help hadn’t been wanted, and I was on my way.

Could I have pushed a little regret forward? Possibly, but while I can do that, it doesn’t always turn out the way it could. I might be well-meaning, push in a little regret so that some apologies happen from the one who dropped the tray for their hasty behaviours but, on that same note, that regret could latch onto any other thing that might have been on that person’s mind and not necessarily the issue at hand.

Emotions aren’t a perfect science, not really. So, I’ll just mind my business.

Final Word Count: 824

You’re the one cultivating evil plants. I’m just here to make sure they don’t turn on you.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Current Date: June 22, 2059

Character: Tiberius Daishi
Race: Halfling – Celestian / Demon / Human
Age: 44, physically about 22
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

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I don’t know what it is about plants, but I’ve never been comfortable around them. It’s not like I’ve ever killed any—not that I’ve been around that many—and as far as decorative plants are concerned, any that I’ve brought inside have been fake. They look so real, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Live plants? I leave those to Bast. If there are any in the house—I know there are a few—they’re his to take care of. I just don’t want to touch them.

It’s not a life-or-death fear that I might do something that will ruin any of those plants, it’s just a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach that makes me uneasy about caring for anything of the sort.

I still tend to the garden. What little of it needs to be tended to because most of the garden is slow-growing shrubs and flowering trees. At most, I have to trim the shrubs just barely and even that is only once every other year or three. I don’t mind cutting the grass as need be and we do have a patch of the yard that is just growing wildflowers, but I also leave it alone. The flowers do their own thing year after year, though we do throw some seeds in now and again if it does look a little patchy but that’s about it.

That patch attracts all sorts of beautiful birds, butterflies and pollinating friends. It’s the one reason I don’t mind the presence of that patch in the yard.

When I stop to think about it, I don’t even really know why I don’t care about the idea of taking care of plants. I do remember watching a movie when I was a kid about this murdering alien-like singing plant that needed to be constantly fed but I don’t know that this is why I’m the way I am. It’s not like I’ve ever been around anyone cultivating things like evil plants if evil plants could even be a thing. I know I don’t have to keep an eye on anyone or ensure that said evil plants don’t turn on that person.

So, I just don’t know.

It’s one of my many quirks, I don’t think Bast minds that much, and if he did, he probably would have told me at this point; I’d try to change for him. I know that’s probably not a healthy thing to say but it’s true enough. I know that left and right everyone says that the person you love more than you love life itself should love you as you are, quirks and all, but I still would be willing to try and overcome this issue with plants if it was a problem for him.

I’m not saying that if it was an all-encompassing fear, say I’d be terrified of heights and it made me so sick to my stomach that it made me physically ill to just be a couple of feet off the ground—which, not the case, I like being high up, I’m just being hypothetical—and it bothered him to the point where we couldn’t be together, then I’d just sort of let us go, if we had to, but I know that won’t happen.

This discomfort around plants isn’t something that’s life-changing for me, I can be around them, I just don’t care for the idea of having to water them and take care of them as they might need. Taking care of myself and Bast as he might need it; it’s plenty on my plate and plants don’t need to be added on to that.

I don’t care what anyone else might say; I mean, I am the way I am, I’m not going to judge someone for wanting to surround themselves with so many plants that green is the dominating colour in their surroundings. They’re free to do what they want and I’m the same. I feel like I’m a pretty simple guy, you could ask Bast.

Let’s be real, I’m more about making sure he’s happy with all he has in life than anything else, so what does it matter that I leave the care of green things to him?

I still remember the first time we really met, it nearly got me in trouble at home; he’d been kept back at school because his tail was being a problem, I walked him home, and walked myself back home after that—several streets down in the opposite direction—and I promptly told my parents that I wanted to sit by him in class because I was sure his tail was misbehaving because he was being kept apart from all the others.

Dad cautioned me against the idea; if I got in trouble because he did, I would have to deal with that as it happened. I was perfectly fine with that, and the rest is sort of history at that point. I had been right about his tail, too. We’ve made it far since that day and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Final Word Count: 850

Stop letting your gryphons into my house. They’re destroying all my pillows.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Crafted
Current Date: June 21, 2024

Character: Air aka Samir
Race: Elemental – Air
Age: 35, physically about 22
Current residence: Moss Beach, California
 

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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.

Final Word Count: 788

One of these days, you’ll regret pushing my buttons.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City
Current Date: June 20, 2024

Character: Sasha Lars
Race: Human
Age: 35
Current residence: New York City Ruins, New York
 

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There is a new mother in our building, and I don’t know how I feel about her. Though I say new mother and I suppose the term is fitting but at the same time, the fact remains that this isn’t her first child, she has two more living with her, an on-off boyfriend and I still don’t know how I feel about her.

I suppose that starting from the beginning of things would likely help.

She moved into the same building we live in about two years ago, I think. She already had the two kids with her at that point and back then, I would have put the older one at possibly six, the younger of the two maybe three. I could have been wrong, I’ve never been great when it comes to pinning the age to the face or body but Magnus said that was just about the ages the two kids seemed to be. There didn’t seem to be a father figure in the picture, but I also didn’t make it my business to ask her about it. She seemed as though she’d been in another building, but still in the hub, so it wasn’t as though she didn’t know her way around and all.

She wasn’t even really courteous to any of us, she’d ignore us if we crossed paths in the stairwell or in the hallways and I guess we learned to mostly tune her out, if nothing else. Her kids were sweet, though, they were playful and not even wary of strangers, but I think that most kids born after the snow just aren’t. Our community is just so small that being wary of strangers isn’t exactly common anymore, though it technically should be in some way.

Anyway, over time there were men coming and going and I have to use that term very loosely because, based on the sounds coming from her apartment, I just feel bad for her kids, and I hope they sleep like the dead when said men are coming. I wish it was a pun.

About a year ago, the flow of men seemed to slow a little and I guess it wasn’t all that hard to understand why considering how big her belly was at that point. I’m not saying that heavily pregnant women aren’t attractive, I’m well aware that for some men, the more heavily pregnant a woman, the more attractive she will be. But clearly, she was heavy with at least one child, and it was the same man that came around at that point. At least, the one that we saw more often than not.

Cue six months back, two beautiful babies came to be and if not for that on-off boyfriend, I don’t think that the two little ones would even be alive at this point. I’ve lost count of how often we’ve heard her scream at the little ones to stop crying, how she somehow seems to think that they’re pushing her ‘buttons’ on purpose and that they’ll regret it one of these days. These little things are six fucking months old. They’re not pushing any buttons. They’re just trying to survive at this point.

So yeah, I say she’s a new mother, but I don’t know that the term fully fits. I know I’ve been told that being a new mother is never really over, while some doctors say that it’s those first six to eight weeks post-partum and just, I’ve never had kids of my own, I don’t know that I ever will, even if I could but I still don’t think that screaming at your kids to stop pushing your buttons when they’re barely six months old is going to get you anywhere.

I really don’t know how I feel about her. I didn’t mind her at first, I mean, she was pretty much just ignoring the lot of us and barely even parenting her own kids, they’d run to us when they saw us outside and in the halls and I feel that we—as the building’s family, if you would—have been raising her little ones more than she has since she’s come here.

I know that the guy that drops in almost every day—but never spends the night, I see him come and go enough to be able to tell that much—is probably the only reason why those little ones are still alive at this point. I don’t know if he’s their father or not, not that it really matters all that much to me, but while I don’t know anything about him, I’m still just glad he’s around if it keeps the kids alive, then it’s a good thing.

We might have to do something if he stops coming around and doesn’t take off with the kids if he ever does. I don’t want things to end up going that far, but I’ll do whatever I have to if it does.

Final Word Count: 826