You’ll always mean something to me. I just wish you weren’t so annoying sometimes.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Current Date: July 8, 2023

Character: Naela Shiroshinrei
Race: Human – Meta – Water
Age: 31
Current residence: Xiang Po, Terraphim
 

---

Do I always get along with my twin? I wish, but I think that this would lead to things possibly feeling a little boring—just a feeling, little more. I could be wrong, mind you. Always getting along with Jaela could lead to things around not changing very much; they could be the same as they always had been, but I don’t know that this is really how things would work out, not really.

For one thing in particular, our elemental gifts are on two very opposite ends of things and while both can damage things irreparably if allowed, I can douse hers out but unless under very specific conditions, hers will never really be able to overtake mine. Not that I’ve ever said anything about that; it’s a silent understanding we have that our powers both have strengths and weaknesses, but I’d never use them against her and vice versa. Families who end up taking that route confuse me to no end.

Are there days when she frustrates me, and, in turn, are there days when I frustrate her to the point that we’ll both need to spend time apart, not being near one another for a short while until we settle again? Well, yeah. Now, considering that we all live within the same home, there are times when being apart is a little more difficult but not fully so. There are means if you’re willing to find them.

We rarely feel cross with one another for more than a few hours, as is. Spending time outside and apart from one another will do that just fine. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t times when I like to remind her that yes, she’ll always mean something to me—the world, really—but that there are days I just wish that she wasn’t quite as annoying sometimes.

It’s never really a jab at something she might or might not have done; the times I’ve reminded her, with either exasperation or the hint of a joke, that she annoys me to no end, are those when I’m usually too tired to deal with her outgoing nature. That’s the one thing that makes us who we are even more.

There is Jaela, always willing to put on a smile even when she’s not feeling it. The playful, extrovert, outgoing one. She’s a little too stubborn for my taste but it has gotten us out of trouble when we were younger.

And then there’s me, the older one of us two, the introverted one who’d much rather just mind my own business unless someone comes to me asking for help. I never turn someone away who needs it. I’m the one who’ll be able to talk us out of sticky situations and I have more patience than she might ever do.

We’re our own separate person even though our souls are attached firmly together. The why of that is for another time altogether, there’s no real need to get into that at this point. We look nearly identical, though as of quite a few years now, we’ve found means of adding streaks to our hair since we’re both fond of wearing it in very similar looks. Even without, I’d like to think that the boys would be able to tell us apart, I’d be a little miffed if not, really.

As it stands, I know she has days when she finds me as frustrating as I do and that’s all there is to it. The perfect family doesn’t exist, don’t get me started on that. No amount of trying to make me believe that there is a family or a household out there that lives every single day in perfect harmony without a single drop of frustration, no matter how minimal, will make it true. I know better. No one is perfect in this world, no amount of wanting to be perfect will make you perfect.

So yeah, there are days when I’ll feel a little worse for wear than I want to be, but I’ll also do my best to not take that out on anyone. It’s no fault of theirs if I’m feeling a little cruddy. That one part, I feel, is something everyone should get a 101 course on. Even if you’re feeling under the weather, no one has to deal with you being a grump about it. Just don’t go out and about unless it’s an absolute necessity and there you have it. A recipe for not being a pain to anyone’s buttocks.

Then again, that’s just my take on things and I know that not everyone lives by the same rules I do. I’m not here to police anyone, after all.

Final Word Count: 781

I took one look at the mess you made and felt myself age fifty years.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Current Date: July 2, 2023

Character: Deimos Demetriou
Race: Human – Meta – Ice
Age: 27
Current residence: Chester, Pennsylvania
 

---

I don’t know that trying to understand what happened will get us any further in dealing with any and all of this. Just stepping into this particular area of the warehouse is hard to swallow and I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels like I’ve aged decades just looking at it all. Thankfully, I suppose, the mess is contained to this particular area, and I can’t even begin to put into words how grateful that the whole warehouse was separated into sections, even if the sectioning is done through panels that aren’t permanently secured. They take a lot of work to move, but considering the tornado that went through this place, I’m surprised they’re still standing.

There are thousands of dollars’ worth of losses here and the only thing I can see as a positive thing is that these had been in the process of being refreshed and had not been bid on, no one was expecting any of these on their doorsteps and we didn’t have to call any clients to tell them that particular little snippet of bad news.

I know what happened, in a way, at least. I know that if we look over the footage, it’ll tell us more or less the same thing but to make a long story short, let’s just say that several of the pieces that had been brought in recently had had fairly bad entities attached to them, but these entities were sneaky. They passed the primary test. Otherwise, the items in question would have been put into the vault. I know the Royals would have made sure of that.

Once in that section and unpacked, the entities should, by no means, have had the means of jumping from one item to another, not if they were unprompted, can you just imagine the chaos this could cause in houses? No, the entities were well and locked into their items and it was only when someone started restoring the item in question that things turned bad.

Strange as it may sound, once in a blue moon—or once we realize that we have entities loose in an area—we’ll bring the dogs in to do a bit of an overnight hunt. I’m pretty sure that this is something that most dogs can’t do, and I don’t know, in this case, if this is because they’re living with us or something but even from the very beginning, these mountains were able to sense and near exactly pinpoint the location of incorporeal visitors.

Something to be kept in mind is that this isn’t the first time they were brought to the warehouse. They’re gentle giants in their own right and they’ve never broken anything while on their hunts. Something clearly different happened in this case and none of us can begin to understand it, let alone explain it.

From the video that we did later watch, the dogs wasted no time in getting to the area that the issues had been located in. At that point, they’d normally just, you know, point us in the direction of the necessary item but this time, it was as though the item in question—a pair of carved bookends—was little more than a fleeing prey.

Let’s just say that the dogs are all right, there is some limping amongst them, but the vet has looked them over and they’re all fine. The bookends are the only things that are not missing any pieces and many of the items that were in this section have gouges in them, are missing pieces, have bite marks, and one in particular is even scorched to no end.

Thankfully, and this is the only true upside at this point it feels like, the book ends were secured into the vault where they should have been from the beginning and the place was cleansed.

This leaves having to deal with the cleaning up of that section but until we feel up to it in a day or two more, we’ve marked the area as being off-limits and the workers are usually fairly understanding about these situations. Most of the time, it tends to be because something needs to sit for a little while—usually as it dries after some restoring—but they avoid the areas they’re not supposed to be in.

These events don’t happen often and I’m grateful for that too. I don’t know how well I’d manage having to deal with that sort of thing more often if I had to. In a way, I don’t mind. The Royals are the ones who handle the items the vast majority of the time but yeah, once in a blue moon we’ll find ourselves in situations like these and it’s always the weirdest thing.

Final Word Count: 795

Splitting up leads to terrible things in horror movies, so I don’t see why it’d suddenly work out here.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Current Date: June 6, 2023

Character: Yang Dimm
Race: Sprite – Water
Age: 33, physically about 24
Current residence: Rochester, New York
 

---

When they asked me to cover the rare evening class as a new thing, I wasn’t all that sold on the idea. As I was still relatively new to the job, though, I didn’t argue much, and I said I’d be willing to give it a try. Something about how certain people couldn’t really manage to come to daytime classes and they wanted to offer more options. Yin was offered the same thing. We worked the same nights as it gave the place the ability to only be open one night a week instead of all five.

It wasn’t so bad at first. In my class, I admit that I was mostly used to seeing other guys and the very rare woman, but, of course, just to be the one to gender everything, most of Yin’s students were women with the rare guy. Now, I know for a fact that all of this gender thing is bullshit, but it might just be the area we’re living in and teaching in; people are mostly sticking with the gender norms. Usually, it doesn’t bother me much but at times I just wonder.

Now, on that third evening, the class let out at the usual nine in the evening, it was dark out because it was still way early in the year and people were filing out. Both of us were not far from the door; making sure everyone had gone, before we went back to finish our clean-up and a pair of young women from his painting group walked right on by us.

That, in itself, that’s not so much strange or unusual—everyone was walking by us to exit, after all. One of the women was stalling, though. She kept on shaking her head a little, even as her friend was nearly dragging her outside. The fussing one was going on about how splitting up always led to terrible things in horror movies, and she couldn’t understand why they had to split up just then.

Her friend certainly seemed exasperated with her, and Yin even offered to walk them to their vehicles. Somehow, that calmed both of them down. Imagine that, feeling calm when a tiny, skinny five-foot-four-inches guy offers to walk you to your car. I wonder if it’s because she somehow imagined that he was the one who’d get snatched away by whatever villain was out there in her mind’s eye.

As it turned out, their vehicles were front to back; they weren’t even going to be splitting up that very far from one another. Yin told me that the braver of the two, so to speak, apologized for her friend and explained that the friend in question had been on a horror movie kick lately but it led to situations exactly like these, every time the sun began to set. Fear of going anywhere on her own, fear of dark alleys, of corn fields, of a lot of things, really. I can’t understand someone who will get so swept up in something like that, that they’ll develop these fears.

Yin tells me that he hasn’t seen them since; they usually had come to the late-afternoon half-class but that they’d switched instantly to the evening class when it had been offered. They came a handful of times and then stopped altogether. I mean, it’s their decision and their money at that point, if they decide to stop coming to class, that’s on them, we’re not going to force them.

I’m still really glad for this change of career for us. The people have started opening up to us all the more and they’re all pretty nice. The hours, other than the one evening shift, are usually great and I get to go home feeling as though I was actually pretty productive during my day. It was one of the things about teaching the after-school thing to the kids. I know they were learning something, but to them, this was more of a daycare during which they were being kept occupied more than something they were in there to learn more about.

That alone has changed the way I feel about heading to work.

I don’t know how long they’ll keep the evening classes open, but at the very least, it means that we get a bit of our morning to ourselves the following morning since the classes on the day after are usually mid-morning to afternoon classes. If they shoved us right back into class mode at eight in the morning after letting us out at nine the day before, I’m not sure how I would be feeling about it.

Final Word Count: 771

Stop telling everyone I’m your soulmate. We both know I don’t have one.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Current Date: April 7, 2023

Character: Kyrie Reed
Race: Living Marble
Age: 36, physically about 21
Current residence: Moncton, New Brunswick
 

---

Their relationship only lasted a couple of months. I’m surprised it did last that long. Rumours go that there was a trip she wanted to take that was well out of his wallet’s depth and she walked away. I hardly know for certain, I try not to poke my nose into other people’s business. She didn’t stick with our agency either and he looked fairly sad but only for a week or two. After that, it was as though the relationship had never happened.

A strange sort of thing to be certain but one that hardly has any sway in my own life, in the end. I feel that things would have been awkward at work if she had stayed. I may not truly understand how this whole dating and love thing works, but I feel as though I have heard enough gossip—which I should not base myself on, I know—to know that at times, when relationships fail, things do become awkward between the two parties, depending on the reason behind the failure.

In this case, where one side of the gossip went for the fact that he couldn’t afford her at-the-moment dream vacation which, to me, asking for a partner to pay for an expensive vacation not even two months after you’ve started dating feels rather like an outrageous thing, the other side seems to claim that he had gotten creepy about things and had begun to tell everyone that she was his soulmate. To which, the rumours claim, of course, that she has no such thing as a soulmate.

The word makes me smile a little. I have heard plenty about souls, their nature, their possible use, or whatever else it is that people believe about that. Do I have a soul? I hardly know. I know that the man who turned me from marble to a living, breathing version of that marble once claimed that the only reason I had life was that he had infused me with a soul but if that is the case, whose soul would it have been?

There are so many options—I don’t know if option is the right word—when it comes to souls. I feel as though it might be closer to the point that there are so many open and unanswered questions when it comes to the possibility of souls that I hardly know where to look or what to think. Some claim that souls come from heaven, that they are kept in a sort of vessel and are given to each new life, and that the souls of those who have passed then go back to that vessel.

But then, there are the ones who believe that certain people do end up in hell. Is that just their souls that do? Is it their bodies? Because if it is their soul, does that not mean that the vessel might eventually run out of souls? There are just so many questions. I know that these particular thoughts on the subject of souls are mainly religious, and I hardly know that I have any beliefs in such things. Yes, I was made, brought to life by a man I often thought of as a madman as I learned my way around the world but now, I hardly know anymore.

All I know at this point is that I need to stop even paying attention to the rumours and the gossip that goes around this office and the agency. More often than not, it leaves me with more questions than answers and while I feel as though there is still is so much for me to learn about the world, I want to believe that I am not as naive as I might have been some two decades ago.

I want to believe that I know enough to know better and knowing better means I do not get involved in business that, well, does not involve me. I do like the office worker, he is nice from what I know of him and I never truly thought that their relationship would last. Not because I did not wish him all the happiness he deserves, but because she felt like a shallow one and I feel as though that is saying a lot coming from someone working at a modelling agency.

Now, not all models are shallow but there are plenty that I have seen coming and going who are shallower than a flimsy paper plate but there have been plenty who were in the business because they could but they still were the gentlest and most precious of people I had met. They would have given someone the coats off of their backs if that had been a necessity. There are all types of people who work here at the agency, and you’ll never know who you might meet.

Final Word Count: 808

I’ve never let anyone tell me what I should do, but I’ll make an exception just this once.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Current Date: January 28, 2023

Character: Jaela Shiroshinrei
Race: Human – Meta – Fire
Age: 30
Current residence: Xiang Po, Terraphim
 

---

People change and grow, this, I think, is the most important of how society is changing. The change is slow; I doubt that I will truly see it in my time but it is changing and it is warming.

We haven’t really had anyone come to us in our little haven recently; not in the last half-year, now that I think about it. We’d had a mother and her daughter, not this summer but last, and since then, there were only two others. I wonder if it’s because women are putting their foot down more, or because they are now more afraid to try and seek help. The former makes me smile, but the latter worries me. I have no idea which it might be.

Our last visitors were a pair of sisters with a young child whose gender I could hardly take a guess at. They were still young enough that the features didn’t seem to tip the mind either in one direction or the next and the name, as well, as the way whichever of the two women was their mother dressed them left one to wonder. Not that it matters. Women on their own, or women with children of any sort are welcome to come to us to seek shelter until they find somewhere safer to find their way to. That is how it is.

They were very secretive, it was hard to know anything at all about them and, truly, I couldn’t say that I recall ever seeing them before. It made me wonder if they truly were from our area but seeing, as I know, that there still are a handful of families—especially on the further off edge of the city—where the men of the house don’t even let the women outside at all, I suppose that it might not be all that surprising that these two rang no bells.

We allowed them in, it’s the way of things; we set them in a single room as per their very, very quiet request. The child was aloof as though set in mind to do whatever they wanted even if that so happened to just be sitting apart from the women they had come in with.

Now, usually, we don’t much make pests of ourselves with our guests. If they feel safe enough to come and see us during the day, they do. The women mainly stayed in their rooms other than for meal times and even that was something entirely as they took their portion back to their room from the set table. That was fine, the dishes and everything else were always brought back when they were done.

The child, however, we saw a little bit more of, them during their stay. Thinking back, I believe they stayed nearly two weeks before moving on. Usually, the stay is shorter but I know that the winter before this one, one woman stayed for close to six weeks.

Aoi was the name of the child. Something I only learned on the day of their departure. We were given as little information as possible about the three of them as they possibly could get away with. It makes sense in a way when fear grips you so tightly that you can hardly tell who you might be able to trust and who will break that trust by letting anyone know where you last were. We don’t tell anyone who asks us about the whereabouts of the women who come to us; that is just stupidly counterproductive.

Aoi, despite being so quiet and aloof seemed to have a bit of spirit left in that little body. They would roam a little bit more than the two women they had come with, but they rarely held eye contact. I recall hearing them huff a little whenever I crossed their paths, as though my presence was a problem and I won’t lie, it made me smile a little. I just hope that the little one wasn’t taken away from a potential father who would have taken good care of them. We’ve had that happen just once, near the beginning.

It is the downside of trusting these women who come to us with the information they gave us. One woman, in particular, had come to us with an infant, acted as though she was on the run—in a way, I suppose she had been—and needed a safe place to stay for a little while. It is only weeks later—she’d only stayed a couple of days—that we heard about a mother taking off with her child, away from a husband who looked everywhere for the woman he loved and the child he wanted to raise.

To make a long story short, it turns out that the woman was somewhat delusional and the child was reunited with its father within the month; a small mercy.

My memories of Aoi don’t seem to hint at that. They were old enough that I think they could have possibly said something if there had been a need to. After all, some of the only words they ever said to me, on the day before they left, were about how they never let anyone tell them what they should do, but they’d made an exception just this once—this was after I’d reminded them to be careful about the pond in the back. It made me smile a little, I can’t help it.

Final Word Count: 909

You might just be the loneliest person I’ve ever met.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Current Date: September 21, 2022

Character: Duke Lagenberg
Race: Human – Meta – Telepathy
Age: 29
Current residence: Chester, Pennsylvania
 

---

Things quieted down some after the issue with the shipment last year. Even now, with plenty of digging and trying to understand the source of that shipment, we have no information. We reached out to others who could have helped us find the originating point of the shipment, but it turned out to be rather moot. There was nothing. We had no idea its source, we had no idea who, why, or even when, really.

What little we found out about the shipment came from the crates themselves. They had been to so many different ports that it is near-likely that they had travelled for months on end, possibly even a year by that particular point. We took care of it as we needed, and the rest is somewhat history.

A couple of weeks ago, we received another mystery shipment.

This time, it wasn’t even a crate, it wasn’t even a box. It was a simple padded envelope with no sender information, more stamps than there should have been need for and we didn’t even take any chances. We opened the thing right in the vault.

Inside the envelope, there was a single ring, but we could both tell that there was something strong attached to that ring and it was placed in a velvet box in the second layer of the vault. Neither one of us wanted to take chances.

Along with the ring, there was a folded letter with a wax seal that was still intact. I hesitated to open it, but Earl would have none of it and, with a gentle bit of nudging, we actually managed to open it without actually breaking the seal at all. I don’t know whether that was good for us or not, but there have been no issues since, so I suppose that in the long run, it turned out to be all right.

There wasn’t much to the letter, it was addressed to an ex-lover, or so it seemed. The general notes behind the letter were bitter in the reading. Someone telling the person the ring was being sent back to that they could no longer be part of the original ring-holder’s games. Something about how that person—not the one writing the letter—must have been the loneliest person they’d ever met, and they regretted it every day.

The letter was oddly long, nearly three pages and it rambled on quite a bit, but the general idea seemed to be of a broken-hearted lover.

It’s hard to tell if the presence attached to the ring is that of the one who sent the ring back, and thus the letter writer, or the person the ring was going back to. As the letter was still sealed, we both seem to think that the presence attached to the ring is that of the person who sent it back, but we have no real way of knowing without having to draw this person closer to the surface and neither one of us is interested in that sort of thing.

We folded the letter neatly once we’d been done with it and we set it under the ring that we sat in the box. We left it in the vault, cleansed ourselves as needed and left the vault itself.

I don’t know that Earl has given it much thought since then and I hadn’t much on my end, either, but I picked up an old book to read a few nights back that brought the whole thing back to the surface. Now, I’m not really one to read mushy romances but there’s always been something about this particular book and it has been read so often that the cover and spine both are worn, and I have to be careful with it.

In the book, there is something a little similar. A bit of a scorned ex-lover out to try and do some nonsense vengeance thing on the person who has broken their heart. It all fails, of course, and ends with something a little steamier than I’m sure they’d first planned but the story works out well, the details flow and it isn’t just one minute hating someone, the next, jumping into their bed. I can’t stand books like that.

Still, reading a few passages from that very book brought the ring back to the forefront of the mind. I didn’t spare it much thought, other than a few mostly mindless moments, but it did happen, and they were a somewhat bittersweet few moments. I don’t know how it would feel—and I don’t care to learn—to have such seeming hatred for someone you loved before that it consumes you to the point where it did with the ring.

That poor soul just stuck to an object they no longer wanted anything to do with.

Final Word Count: 805

All this time I’ve wasted trying to get you to change your mind. I’ll never get that back.

Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Current Date: August 29, 2022

Character: Yin Dimm
Race: Sprite – Water
Age: 32, physically about 24
Current residence: Rochester, New York
 

---

If you ask Yang about it, he’ll pause whatever he’s doing, give me a long, quiet look as though somehow, he needs time to figure out the proper answer to the question, and then he’ll tell you that yeah, I’m a wallflower. Yeah, he was as surprised as could be when we both agreed to step into the teaching world because I do prefer to remain unseen, but I am artistic, and it was a good outlet.

What do I do when I end up having to deal with an arguer? Because there are plenty in the classes I teach. Adults, young and older ones alike, who think that somehow, they know more than their teacher and when I stop to think about it, I can only shake my head. If you think you know so much more than me, why are you in this class at all? Why are you here, disrupting the others, not even with the right answers?

But to get back to the mock-question at hand, when I’m faced with these people who seem to thrive on arguing or think that they know all and in turn must somehow know better than everyone else, including the one teaching the class, I usually manage to get them back on track with a few perhaps somewhat underhanded tricks. I distract them by changing the subject somewhat.

It doesn’t work with everyone, and I’ve had a few wait until the class was over to get on my case and try to argue with me some more and they just end up wasting mine and their time. One-on-one is easier to deal with. I don’t have to deal with the expectation from the whole class who, at that current point, look up to me. I am the one doing the teaching; therefore, I have the knowledge, yes? Right.

To most students, it doesn’t even make any sense to argue, especially when the things I’m teaching are nearly textbook. I do try to give it a bit of a twist when I do because it just makes it more interesting, but I rarely deviate from the basic textbook information. These people are around to learn the stuff of beginners, I won’t go into details about more advanced things until I know the beginner stuff has been mastered and I’d like to think that I’ve been teaching long enough—even if it was at a much younger level up until recently—that I know what I’m talking about.

A few days ago, one particular student I’d had near the beginning but who’d only stayed for a week at the very most—she tried to argue every little point I was trying to explain and I did end up having to ask her to step outside if she couldn’t just be quiet and pay attention—came back. She registered for the very same class and came in early on that first class.

I did remember her, I was wary of seeing her step into the classroom and rightfully so. The moment she saw me at the front, she made a beeline might way and started right on in trying to argue one of the things I’d taught on that first day. No hello, no how-are-yous, just straight into arguing about complementary colours as though I didn’t have a colour wheel right there on the board. It was even an interactive one.

I let her blow off some steam, arguing one-sidedly until she seemed to realize that I wasn’t going to argue back. I had no desire to argue with her and I wasn’t going to argue about something as simple as what that particular subject, to me, was. She eventually deflated with a mutter. Going on about how she’d wasted so much time trying to get me to see that I was wrong and that I had to change my mind and that she was never going to get that time back.

Somehow, I still kept myself from engaging her. I only gave her a long, quiet look, and just as quietly reminded her that if she couldn’t just follow along with the others while I taught and constantly kept trying to argue everything I was going to be teaching, then I wasn’t going to be able to keep her in the class. It really was that simple.

She huffed again, turned right around and marched herself out of the classroom. That was it. I haven’t seen her since and you know, I’m fine with that. Thinking back, looking at her art—the few pieces I ever got out of her before I had to get her out—I wonder if there’s not some colour blindness to her. There always were a few things that weren’t quite right with her choice of colours. I don’t know much about the whole thing, but it could have some potential, I think.

Not that it matters at this point.

Final Word Count: 824

This is not the first time I’ve seen you standing at the end of the hall, just staring. It’s creeping me out!

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Characters: Duke Lagenberg
Race: Human – Meta – Telepathy
Age: 29
Current residence: Chester, Pennsylvania
Final Word Count: 772 words
 

---

The dogs have made a game of finding our uninvited guests and letting all of us know about it. In a way, I don’t think I can complain about it. I still remember my encounter with the woman on the ceiling some two years ago. I don’t like being startled and as I can sense everyone else coming when they’re near me, her presence startling me wasn’t something I cared for.

Mind you, it’s not because I have anything to hide that I don’t like being startled. I don’t know that anyone likes being startled and when you’re just so used to being able to hear everyone coming up to you, being startled is just an extra nuisance. That’s how I see it, in any case.

So, every now and again—again, visitors of the ghostly nature kind aren’t all that common—the big, lovable brutes will find means of letting us know that there’s an extra in the house. Through the seals, the protection, and the wards, the only thing that might be able to slip through are the really harmless ones but there is still something quite unsettling about walking down a dark hallway and finding someone just standing there at the end of that very hall.

Especially when you can’t tell who that person is due to how dark the end of that hall is and how silent their mind is—to me. I know near-instantly that when I can’t hear someone who is near me, it is, the vast majority of the time because they are no longer alive. Some have managed to find means of blocking their thoughts and it is never something I do—probing—but even with their thoughts blocked, there still is a sort of hum that can be felt when I approach someone who is living, breathing, and, well, alive.

I’m not the only one who has had encounters with our end-of-the-hall visitor. There’s little to tell any of us what it might be about and other than looking very creepy while it is standing out there, it hasn’t caused any harm, so we haven’t really bothered to try and remove it from the home. Even the dogs at this point have settled into a sort of agreement that it is moot to remind us it is there when they seem to scent it out. I really don’t know how they do it. Though I’m aware that certain animals seem to see so much more than we do.

They’ll still be alert when they first notice it but then it’s as though there is something in their adorable little hunter-brains that tells them that this particular one isn’t going anywhere. That there’s no point in bothering anyone about it. We figure that, in time, it will leave as it came, or someone will get really tired of being spooked by the sight of it at the end of that hall, clearly just staring, and we’ll do something about it.

When there’s no harm being done, why do anything about it? I’ve long ago settled on seeing these visitors as one would certain spiders. While I do not care much for these eight-legged wanderers, I’m more than aware that they are good for us. They will eat other bugs as necessary and if there is a spider somewhere, it usually means that it has plenty of food to keep it fed and that means that it’s being a useful presence.

Now, I’m more than aware that this doesn’t truly, properly applies to ghosts but, in a similar way, it does. Ghosts aren’t really helpful with bugs or anything else, but if they don’t cause any harm and they’re stuck in a loop, which is clearly the case of our hallway visitor, why put effort into sending them off just yet?

I know that I’m not the only one who thinks this way and it just so happens to be what it is. If we had to put together a battle plan for every passing visitor we get, I don’t know that we’d ever get anything done. It’s not because we have many of them, nor do we get a constant in and out flow but considering our line of business and the number of possessed things we’ve had to deal with, we know that the harmless ones should really just be left alone.

From experience, I know that certain harmless ones might end up not being so harmless if you antagonize them, even if it’s just to get them to leave, so we’re fine with peaceful cohabiting for however long it might be necessary.

Are you telling me you named one of your dogs ‘Knife’?

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Characters: Yang Dimm
Race: Sprite – Water
Age: 32, physically about 24
Current residence: Rochester, New York
Final Word Count: 779 words
 

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This new job has been a change of pace that I knew I needed but didn’t think I’d ever actually get. There are no two ways of looking at it. We were being paid peanuts for the work we were doing, the kids weren’t always willing to listen to us and while I did like them to a point, it still wasn’t enough for us anymore.

I still can’t put into words how grateful I am that I was able to convince them to let Yin in, too. He’s my twin, I adore this goober to no end and I need him near me. We both realized that we just can’t work separate jobs, not in different buildings. If we’re in the same building and we can see one another a few times a day, we’re all good. We’re not tied at the hip, we’re not likely to go crazy if we’re separated too long but we do function better when we’re in the same general area.

I’ve seen so many people come and go from the classes that I can’t keep track of them all. Some only show up once or twice, they realize that they don’t care for the learning and then they go on their way. Others stay for the length of the class and we get to know them a little better as they do.

I mean, people tend to open up as they’re working on their projects, either to the people near them or in general as the class starts talking about this subject or that one.

Of the things I’ve learned from the people who have come to the class, the one that baffles me the most at this point is Ronald. Ronald is a middle-aged man who seems to have hit a bit of a low. He’s in that midlife crisis stage, or so he likes to remind everyone, and he needed some change in his life. These changes came in the shape of taking a woodworking class and adopting three little yappy dogs. He’s the one that calls them yappy. When he says that single word, it’s affectionate as could be so I suppose that it’s all right.

The one surprise of it all, I think, came when he announced to the class that Fork, Knife and Spoon were all doing great after their trip to the vet. I think all of us paused midway through what we’d been doing. Now, so far, what I know of Ronald is that he’s not very imaginative. I hadn’t expected him to be unimaginative when it came to naming dogs, though. They’re not terrible names, but truly, who gives dogs names like that?

The idea of being around him when he calls out to his dogs makes me shake my head. How are you to know if he’s talking to his dogs or asking for some utensils? I know it might seem like a childish way to look at things but that’s how I see it. I would never call an animal by a common name like that. Though, I suppose I’m only half surprised, I’ve met someone who’d named their cat Pickle. I mean, pickle as a name isn’t so bad but it’s still weirdly out there. Pickle, Fork, Spoon, all mostly harmless. Calling a dog—or any other animal—Knife sounds like you’re just asking for trouble.

Can you imagine? Date night, it’s somewhat dark in the living evening, you’re watching a movie together or something and you hear soft little clicking sounds from the floor. Your partner seemingly very randomly exclaims, ‘Knife!’ in a gleeful tone and… well that would leave me wondering and thinking that I should be heading out of there because walking knives seem like a stupidly dangerous thing.

After his announcement, I admit that everyone else was quiet for a few moments, probably trying to process the information they’d just been given before there were quiet little cheers around once knowledge that he was talking about his dogs came to the surface. It really was all just quite strange if you ask me. That’s all I can really say on the subject.

If you think about it, when you don’t know what someone is talking about, them stating that these utensils were doing great after their trip to the vet, you’re going to be scratching your head for a while. Maybe that’s just me, though, I don’t know. It’s all I can really think of, at this point. I try not to think about it much because I know that if I do, I’ll lose sleep while trying to figure out just what goes on in his head.

I’m letting you breathe the same air as me. Considering that, I think I’m being as merciful as I possibly could be.

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Characters: Meallán Brennan
Race: Human – Meta – Lightning
Age: 26
Current residence: Chester, Pennsylvania
Final Word Count: 785 words
 

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I’ve had to play the part of the arsehole. I don’t think this surprises anyone. The Royals are the ones who end up taking care of all of us in one way or another but if you look at our dynamics, a lot of people will look my way and call me boss. I’ve never argued the point and the Royals seem fine with that and, you know, it’s all right in its own way as well. It is what it is, I’m not about to start arguing the point. I’ve always been fairly level-headed, and I know where to go to get from point A to point B and so on.

With that being said, I’m sure that anyone meeting me now, who might have known me when I was younger, at this point in my life, would possibly not really recognize me. While these guys were important to me as we were growing up together, we did lose somewhat track of one another at one point, but they’ll all still point out that I have changed and, you know what, I’m all right with that.

I’ve changed. Meeting Jamie has helped me calm down some. It has helped cool down my temper and I don’t even mean that in any way that could be considered pun-like. I don’t even like puns so take that as you will, really.

But man, my behaviour when I was younger was something else entirely. I think it got worse when I really landed on my own, though. After these loving idiots were out of my life for a short while. We still somewhat knew where the rest of our little groups was, but we weren’t keeping closely in touch. I was in a new place, I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t really want to know anyone, and I made sure that this was abundantly clear to anyone that might try to approach me. Why I somehow allowed Jamie past my defences is beyond me, but I have no regrets about that whatsoever.

I remember at one point, I think I was on a train, the memory is a little vague, but I still know it happened. There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm rolling through and, well, knowing me, I lived for that. I still made sure that it kept its distance from us in a general way, but I lived for those storms. There was this girl in the cabin with me and she kept on whimpering. She seemed close to my age but what do I know, right?

At one point, man, I recall how I snapped at her to just shut the hell up because she was pissing me off. I kept on hearing her whimpering in the back of my mind and it was frustrating the hell out of me. I tried to keep myself calm but every moment with her around was frustrating. I almost lashed out, I know I did, but somehow, my brain latched onto the fact that by being merciful and just leaving her to deal with her clear fear of the storm, it would be good enough for me. That I was stuck breathing the same air as her terrified self was bad enough, but I guess that in the long run, it was enough for me to be amused by it.

In a way, this was possibly the start of that change in my behaviour for the worst.

There has to be one particular incident that started that change in me, but her whimpering presence in that train cabin is really the point at which everything started to unravel.

I do have some regrets as to some of my behaviour after I’d settled into my dorm but Jamie just… he changed it all in some way and the rest is history. There are days when I have to deal with folks that I do end up being a bit of an arse still, but it’s gotten mellow over the years. I suppose some might laugh a little and just tell me that I’ve gone soft and, you know what, it’s possible that I have.

I don’t think I’m asking for all that much as far as my life is concerned. My friends, my partner for life in sickness and in health, these idiotic but lovable mountains that are supposed to be dogs and that’s about it, really. Sure, the roof over our heads and good food every day is also a plus, but I think that if something terrible were to happen and we’d lose this roof or anything else, we’d manage so long as we all stayed together.

So sure, maybe I’ve gone soft, but so what?