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

Show your solidarity by throwing your shoes out the window too. It’s only fair.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: May 23, 2059

Character: Lukaas Borough
Race: Human
Age: 71, physically about 25
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

I found an old pair of shoes I hadn’t worn, let alone even know I still had, while doing some deep scrubbing of the house. Once a year, usually in spring, I suppose I have this need to deep clean the house. I don’t even try to rope anyone into helping me, but I do tend to set aside about a week or two of my time to get the house taken care of from top to bottom. From the roof, the windows and the sidings, to every inch of the floor, walls and ceiling. Every appliance, every nook and cranny.

In a strange way, I feel that it reminds me of how much space I do have in the house and how open everything is. Not that the house is an open plan, but compared to the hell we lived in for years while we were cramped together all four of us in the apartment, this feels like a palace.

I was cleaning the back of one particular wardrobe. We barely use that wardrobe for anything other than blankets when the seasons change. Lightweight summer blankets, the ones that are good nearly year-round and the much heavier winter blankets of all sorts. We have more than we need but I admit that I like the sight of a blanket on the back of the couch, and I might or might not find myself changing it every week, depending. At times it’s just as the mood hits. It’s even better when we do use those blankets and don’t just keep them as decoration, of course.

There was a small box tucked away in the corner.

I have no idea how I’ve never seen that box before. I tend to empty the wardrobe fully when I do my spring cleaning, just to check on all the blankets and make sure they’re okay, they don’t have too much wear, the usual as is.

In that small box, was a pair of shoes. Had I not made my peace for the hell we went through, I think that the sight of these very shoes would have thrown me off a lot more than they did. Sure, there was a pang of something that felt quite a bit like dismay at the sight of them because I was so certain I’d left them out there in that apartment, but there they were. There was no anger, no disappointment, nothing much other than that brief feeling of dismay and some confusion.

I remember the day we finally left, it was perhaps that one final act of defiance as we’d managed to get through it all and while I don’t know that we could call what we did winning, we escaped with our lives. Most of the clothes and the shoes we had to wear day in and day out, while in that cramped apartment, were things that were bought for us, and we only had so few changes of anything. We hadn’t even really been able to keep our own beyond a thing or two.

The memory is vague but it’s there, we’d decided that throwing our shoes out of the window was the best thing to do. The four of us would do it, it was only fair. I recall that we threw a lot of clothing out those windows too.

The strange part is that in this memory, I remember throwing these very shoes out of the window. I remember watching them tumble down with the rest and yet, there they were. I did the one thing that made the most sense to me at that moment. While I might have made my peace with everything that happened back then—for the most part—I wasn’t about to deny myself a little bit of extra peace.

I took the shoes out to our outdoor fireplace, I dropped them in there with some kindling, a little bit of wood and a few other things that needed to go the way of the flame and I just lit it up.

I did stay to watch it burn, but I only stayed for a few minutes. Once I’d seen that they had caught on fire in a thorough way and that it was clear nothing would remain of that, I went back inside to go back to my cleaning. The fireplace was a closed setup that I wasn’t worried about leaving on its own, it was meant to keep all the sparks inside and once it reached a certain level, it turned to embers and the rest was finally, properly, history.

Making peace with it all doesn’t mean that I want anything of that time in my life left for me to find again. I don’t need reminders.

Final Word Count: 792

You’ve been on three dates, two of which were heroes, and the last one was a villain. I think I’m allowed to tease you about your love life.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: May 18, 2059

Character: Maureen Hayden
Race: Human
Age: 71, physically about 23
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

I don’t read much. For no other reason than I just don’t care to. I have no trouble reading, my eyesight is doing pretty all right, all things considered, and while I don’t mind an audiobook, I still just don’t care much for them. There was always so much going on in my life that slowing down to read felt like one of those things that had no real room in my life.

Between working what felt like countless hours before I made it here, trying to keep my head above the water and just minding my own business, books had no place. I already spent my days looking at documents and working at a computer; my eyes needed the rest more than anything else.

Sure, once I came here, I found myself with more free time, and yet, for a while I filled in that free time by working at what was the front desk for this place. I filled in paperwork some more, I updated files, I changed information as needed for new people coming in and other people leaving—there was a fair bit of in-and-out when I first started at that job.

I did that and plenty more until the new system came into place and the tower was no more. We were now a community with more homes than I think I’d ever seen in any area that was this ridiculously green and it was wonderful. I still kept myself busy, I sent birthday cards out, and I added little trinkets that felt as though they might have been liked along with that but, yes, I had plenty more free time.

It’s only in recent years that I’ve started reading, and even then, I don’t do it much. I find myself pausing at details and asking myself half a dozen questions. Clearly, my brain has issues with suspension of belief and thus, most of my read books ended up being closer to romance than anything else.

Even then, I would find myself nitpicking things. Damsels swooning at the sight of a knight. Who would even ever do that? I suppose I’m biased. Anyway.

My most recent foray into the world of reading was supposed to be a bit of a slice-of-life sort of thing, with heroes, villains, some supernatural things and a little bit of everything in between. Each story was short, only a few pages long and the first few were written well enough that I had no issues actually reading through them. They were sweet in their own way, the last one being bittersweet, and I was enjoying myself quite well until this one story that I started reading.

It starts so abruptly that I don’t know how I feel about it. I guess I just like my stories to sort of set things up so that I know what’s going on, I guess? Even in the first few short stories, I knew the general area where things were taking place, and I knew what the characters looked like. With this one? The author—it is a book with several different authors—starts right in. I assume they are possibly two friends talking or something of the sort, but the first sentence is one character stating that the person they’re talking to has been on three days, two of which were heroes, and the last one a villain, so they believed they were allowed to tease them about their love life.

I guess that for some people, they might not mind starting a story on something like this, but it took me aback, I guess. I was expecting something else entirely considering the others I’d read at this point, and it made me pause long enough that I ended up putting the book down, I sort of just forgot about it for a few days. It’s only when I was cleaning up the low table in the living room that I spotted the book and I remembered that I’d been reading that, and that single sentence had startled me so much in what felt like brusqueness that I’d just left it there.

It’s unlike me. I don’t like to leave things unfinished. Ask Shantae, and she’ll tell you about my delightfully nagging habits—which, those are my words, not hers—of making sure that everything is done thoroughly from laundry to cleaning, dishes, gardening and the rest, that no, I don’t care for the idea of leaving something unfinished and this usually includes books. I’ll just have to get back to it and remind myself that every author has a different way of doing things and I can’t be here judging these people for the way they did things. It was their way and if others liked it, then others liked it. Not everyone loves what everyone else does and that’s the only way to go about it.

I know I’ll finish reading the book, it might just take me a little longer than I’d first planned.

Final Word Count: 834

I could tell this story a thousand different ways, but the ending will be the same regardless.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: May 14, 2059

Character: Tobiaas Borough
Race: Human
Age: 71, physically about 27
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

With the passing years, I have rediscovered a love for reading. The selection of books I do allow myself to read is heavily filtered out but that is for my mental and emotional health. I have been a victim far too long for mine or anyone else’s liking, and it took a lot of work to get me—and my brothers—to move on from the hell that had been ours for those years.

That’s not to say others have not had a rough time of things themselves. All I know in depth is my own story and that is what I base myself on when I think about what I need in my life and what is best left behind. I tip my invisible hat to others who have managed to overcome bigger issues and are able to enjoy things in their lives that I just cannot anymore.

Life isn’t a competition, and I wouldn’t even dream of making it one.

Too long—during the dark years and for a few years following that—I rehashed the same story over and over again. I was trying to see if I couldn’t change this one detail or that other down with some hopes of changing the ending but none of it mattered. I could have told myself—and others—this story a thousand different ways, but the ending never once changed. It was set in stone, and it happened the way it did with nothing but scars to show for it.

Maybe, in some way, had I not lost so much time on that, I would have changed my path just somewhat. I would be able to enjoy certain things that have now, instead, been barred completely from my life.

Would I turn back time to change my behaviour, change my path, and tell the story a different way? No. I would much rather just live in the present and deal with the consequences of my own actions. I have lived through that hell a thousand times in my own mind and once physically so and that is more than enough. No amount of wanting to change the result of things is worth going through it again and this is something I’ve long since understood.

So, like my filter for books, for movies, and even somewhat for music, I live my life as best as I can. I make few plans that require any thought to the future, and it suits me fine. If the desire for a getaway makes itself known, we might make plans for about a week out, but scheduling something yearly tends to not work out well and it’s just one of those things that work out that way in our lives.

When something begins to feel overwhelming, I just stop, I step back, I take stock of things and I figure my way out from there. It took me too long to realize that forcing myself to deal with something that I wasn’t meant to deal with wasn’t the way to go. Sure, we did that plenty while we were out there, across the ocean, dealing with family drama, but we were locked in that too-small apartment and there was no escape. Not really.

We had to deal with things as they happened, or we would find ourselves drowning under the weight of it all. We did end up just about doing that, but we found an escape route. Now, at this point in my life, the escape routes are all wide open highways and if I ever find myself facing something uncomfortable—which has become a rare happening—I know how to deal with it for the most part.

A bit like this book I picked up recently. I read about a third of it in just a couple of hours. It was good, a sort of romance that had a few somewhat steamy parts that I hadn’t ever really allowed myself to read before, but I figured that there was a first time for everything.

Except that without much of a warning or even any sort of hint about that turn of events—which I suppose is the point of a plot twist—I found myself faced with ex-lovers, backstabbing family members and, further down I’m sure I skimmed and saw mention of it, murder.

I might or might not have dropped that reading pad as though it had just burned me. I might or might not have glared murder at it for a good five minutes as I worked my breathing back under control and got my heart rate down to a much slower rate. I know my triggers well enough, and it took more effort than I wish it ever should to pick it up again, flip the book shut and mark it as a do-not-read. I know it was in the hidden folds of the story, so to speak, but I still tagged the things, but I tagged them under spoilers. So, if anyone else ever stumbles upon the book, they’ll know about it and can avoid it as need be.

The author had nearly a dozen books published by the time the planet went arse up and now I’ve just put them all into my do-not-read list. I don’t even want to chance it.

Final Word Count: 885

Why are you asking me if this is a good idea? Clearly, even you know it’s not.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: April 16, 2059

Character: Amrit Vemulakonda
Race: Naga – Forest
Age: 108, physically about 26
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

The day is unseasonably warm, even for what is beyond their yard. While it was a mystery once, Amrit knows that their yard is surrounded by some type of magic—technology is the word his mate uses—and it is kept warm year-round. He likes it that way, it keeps him from falling into a deep, moon-long slumber and it allows him to spend more time with her.

It isn’t excruciatingly hot outside but after heading out to the place of foods with his mate, Amrit feels as though the general temperature outside feels closer to the beginning of the hotter season than it should be the middle of the season of rebirth. There is a difference, that much he knows, but he understands, to a point, that the temperature cannot be controlled fully, not as it is with their yard.

From his spot near a window—with its panels open, allowing warm air and warmer scents to drift in and surround him—Amrit merely watches the happening around the yard. In recent years, he has taken to sticking to his legged form. A strange habit, to say the least, as he had never used this form before his mate entered her life, but it has its positive points. While his grasping strength certainly isn’t the same, there are places he can ease into and reach with his legs that his tail was too big for.

Outside, of course, that had never been an issue but inside has become a comfortable thing at this point. His tail was good and useful when it came to survival but there is no real need for survival anymore. It still has its use, but that use is more private and playful than it is anything else.

From the corner of his eyes, movement catches his attention and Amrit turns his head just barely, hoppers—rabbits, though they look more like hares to him—have come into the yard and are carefully making their way across. From the careful movements, the twitch in the ears, the thudding of their little hearts that his ears can still pick up despite the glass between him and his once-prey, he knows that they are frightened and, at times, he wonders if they have thoughts much the same way he does.

An unlikely thing, he’s aware, but this was usually why he offered his song of peace and rest after he had taken down a prey. They might not have been able to truly understand what had just happened to them but showing them compassion made sense. There had been plenty that used to hunt for pleasure while he still was out there beyond the barrier but for him, it has always been about hunting for survival and for food.

For a little while, he watches the hoppers. Half of the little group—so rabbits, most likely—lags behind, as though questioning whether or not the crossing of this unknown yard is a good idea. Some even look ready to turn back around and Amrit finds himself smiling just slightly—an amused smile, as though the once-prey’s discomfort pleases him.

In a way that makes sense to his mind, Amrit knows that he has been domesticated in part. This, however, hardly changed the fact that he is a predator and there always is a faint sense of predator and prey humming through him, especially in situations like these. His stomach grumbles somewhat, reminding him that he should be looking in the cold box—the refrigerator—for something to nibble on. While rabbit would be a tasty snack, the thought of having to wash up after gobbling one up has less appeal.

With a sigh and a half-hearted glare at the rabbits that, deep down, he knows have no true blame to take for his sudden hunger, he stretches tall, fingers not all that far from the ceiling once he stands, and he carefully moves towards the other room where the cold box sits. Once this particular hunger is sated, Amrit will settle to wait for his mate to come back and sate another hunger with her in delightful ways that were more than a little new to him the first time it happened.

That simple thought brings a smile to his lips that one could definitely define a predatory and yet, when it comes to his mate, it has little to do with a predator seeking prey—not anymore, in any case. For the time being, he focuses on the items in the cold box, locates a platter of thinly sliced, cured meats—something new he had to get used to—and moves to prepare himself something to snack on. He would wait upon her return for something more substantial.

Final Word Count: 792

I want a love as open and breathtaking as the night sky.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: April 4, 2059

Character: Natasha Summerfield
Race: Human
Age: 70, physically about 27
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

I don’t know if all young girls dream of finding their one true love and living their best princess life ever after. I mean, I suppose it depends on the parents; it depends on the upbringing; it depends on a lot of things.

I grew up in a house where we had help. My parents would call them servants, and see them as slaves, and I just wanted to help most of them with their daily tasks because it didn’t feel right that they had to take care of everything around the house and my parents didn’t have to lift a single little finger to do a thing. I know my parents paid them, but back then, I believed rather strongly that they weren’t being paid enough to deal with everything they had to.

I didn’t have many friends, as my parents didn’t care for the idea that I would mingle with anyone of a lower status than mine. That alone felt like a load of bullock most of my young life until I spread my own wings and left that house far, far behind. I was home-schooled—by someone they hired from abroad because forget being taught, again, by someone of a lower status than mine, or theirs, as was—and that meant that even if I had been allowed to mingle, I wouldn’t have had a whole lot of outside socialization time to do so.

My free time was spent reading all the storybooks my mother would have ripped out of my hands if she’d known I had them. They had been gifted to me by Fulki’s mother after I had helped her several times. I often balked at the idea of accepting these gifts as I felt the money could have been spent on better things, but she always reminded me that the books were second-hand and had not cost much but she thought that I would enjoy them.

I enjoyed them greatly. It didn’t matter to me that they were second-hand books, that someone else had handled them and read them possibly again and again before I did. This was actually a good thing, as far as I was concerned. The idea that someone else had enjoyed the books I was now reading pleased me greatly.

A lot of the books were stories of princesses being rescued by their princes, or princesses finding their true love and living their best lives ever after. The type of stories that every young girl—or so I believed back then—craved and desired more of. I would read these books again and again, imagining myself finding my own love at some early point in my life. A love that would be as open and as breathtaking as the night sky.

At least, in my early teens, that’s how I would see it, likely so because I found myself spending a lot of my early nights awake, staring out at the dark, beautiful sky. I would wish for a love as open as that sky, as much as I would wish for the freedom to roam all of that openness.

The freedom so happened to come to pass much sooner than my eventual love story.

I don’t know that I can claim I was bitter about not finding my true love while I was so much younger. Not that I was that old when Reese came into my life, but according to my childhood hopes and dreams, I was much older than I had any right to be. Thinking about it now makes me smile a little because, if I’m being honest with myself, I think I stopped hoping to find love when I left him. I was more focused on staying alive and just making my own way, away from everything that had made my life what it had been.

I barely had anything to my name when I packed up my things and left. It was a decision that happened nearly overnight; I packed up what I could of my clothes, and I packed up my jewellery with the intent to pawn it off because I had no real money to my name that my parents had ever bothered setting aside for me despite all the money they did have, I put on my shoes and in the cover of the night, I left.

Leaving behind all these storybooks that had accompanied me for years was difficult. I had wanted to take all of them with me, but I had no room in my small bags, and I knew that they would have only weighed me down. I took one single book, a small, pocket-sized copy of a bigger book that had been one of the firsts ever given to me, and I still have that one to this day. It’s in a safe box, put away. A keeper of old memories.

Final Word Count: 814

You’re my first choice. Always. Okay?

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: March 19, 2059

Character: Tyron Mathewson
Race: Angel – Earth
Age: 798, physically about 29
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

I cannot understand how the mind of certain people works. In a way, I suppose this may not be all that surprising. I don’t know that any of us should be able to understand how everyone and every little thing works. I will leave that to those of higher powers, and even then, somehow, I cannot fathom that the knowledge is present.

How would I know, as is?

In nature, I am well aware that there are times when a parent or even a group might leave its wounded or sickly ones behind for the sake of survival, I can understand this, especially in prey animals. I haven’t seen that behaviour much in predatory animals, but I have not spent all that much time around them to really study this behaviour—and it hardly is something I would wish to do. It has nothing to do with my nature and while I appreciate the understanding I have of the fauna, my main gift and focus still remain on the flora.

I have witnessed a different behaviour that still has some bare similarities with this in humans and other bipedal creatures and it has always left me somewhat confused. Especially when it came to parents picking one or the other of their children, just because. A partner telling their significant other that they—the significant other—will always be their first choice is something I can mostly understand. Not that it applies to me, and it never will, not in a true sense. I love both of them equally and would never pick one over the other, if it cannot be both, it will be neither, harsh as it may seem.

A parent telling one of their children that said child will always be their first choice when they have more than one child is something that I cannot even begin to understand. Should you not love all of your children unconditionally? I can understand that certain actions done by certain parties might change the way a parent views their children, but if all of them come home to their parents, all ill and in need of help, will that parent still pick one child over the others because they made that promise for some reason? Why help one child and leave the other two to rot?

This mindset is one I always struggle to move on from. It is so rare that I fall into what feels like an endless loop to me that I should not have any complaints on the subject. At times, I think it happens because the rare memory surfaces; one of a mother I have met during what feels like my endless travelling. She had many children—nearly a dozen, if my memory serves me right, two sets of twins, one set of triplets, the rest were single births—all under the age of sixteen, and of these children, only one did she truly spend any time with.

At the point of my visit, this was the youngest and I can imagine that some would tell me that it made sense for her to focus on the youngest, it was the child that needed the most attention and yet, the others, just barely older than her youngest, were still so young that they barely could stand on their own. Their care fell onto their older siblings.

I saw her daily; I remember how she would coo at her youngest, rock them in her arms, sing sweetly to them and promise them that she would always take care of them best. Whenever her other children would step nearby, it was as though they did not even exist in her eyes, I could make no sense of her behaviour whatsoever.

How do you have so many children and have no love for them in this way? How can your focus be turned so inward and focused on the one that you do not even see the rest of the beautiful ones you’ve brought to life? Her presence and behaviour alone made me shorten my stay in that area, I could hardly handle her, and I feel as though this says something, considering how much of a loner I have been all of my life.

There is so much going on in my mind that there is no room to focus on anything else. These looping thoughts are a frustration in and of themselves and I wish I could leave them behind. I wish I could forget that woman and her behaviour, especially considering it was such a long time ago. She was not the only mother in that little village that had multiple little ones; it seemed to be a thing within that tribe that the women were expected to bear many children and yet, the other mothers I crossed had time and affection for all of their little ones that I could see.

I know that the mind can be fractured in many ways; maybe hers was and this was why she would only focus on the one, but it still left its mark on me and remained with me as something bitter and sour, I wish it hadn’t been so.

I best try to find something to draw me away from this loop.

Final Word Count: 879

I wasn’t even trying to be intimidating, it just comes naturally.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: March 4, 2059

Character: Tiden Lars
Race: Halfling – Elf (snow) / Vampire
Age: 73, physically about 25
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

We’ve had the cats for a few years now and I still find myself discovering new things about them all of the time. I suppose this is what it is because they’re mostly Jared’s cats, in a way. He was the one who showed up with them just out of the blue. I’ve adopted them as my own at this point but I still feel as though there are times when he knows so much more about them because he’s the one who brought them in; he’s the one who feeds them, brushes them and plays with them the most, though I do my part.

A few weeks ago, I was watching them as they played chase around the house. I’m not even sure if they were stalking and chasing something in particular, they just were. Two of them were in chasing mode, being rambunctious little shits. The third was in stalking mode and would wait until the other two slowed down and paused somewhere before pouncing on them.

Every single time the pounce would happen, the other two would spook, fur standing straight up, and the pouncer would look at them with his own fur all puffed up, as though they had startled him more than he had somehow managed to startle them and that there was nothing intimidating about him, why were they even scared?

I’m very likely reading too deeply into what I find myself seeing in their little eyes, but I’m allowed. It makes me smile a little and it does remind me of my younger years.

Friends were uncommon; what friends I had were his own friends and by the time I met these friends, we were old enough to be having pleasurable moments together and it often led to us being just a little late to meetings with his friends. I was fairly passive when we would finally show up and they would grouse some and, at times, I remember just looking over at them and they would quiet down with a mutter and look away.

Later on, Jared would tell me to stop trying to intimidate his friends; that it really wasn’t fair to them as it was our fault that we were late, and I reminded him that I wasn’t really trying. It was probably just my bloodline, as it stood, that made me seem that way.

Then again, those fragile friendships didn’t last long, and I did feel bad at first when he told me that they had decided that we weren’t worth their time. He’d had these friends for some time before I became wonderfully entangled in his life, but he was quick to remind me that they hadn’t really been all that great friends. They had been more the type of people who just came together with the people around them because it had been convenient. I can’t say I blamed him for not being all that hurt about their decision—and ours, in the long run—to not spend any time with us anymore.

The one cat of the three reminds me of that a little. Just the intimidating part.

Do I miss our younger years? I don’t know that I do. There are things that I do miss, things that I wish had never happened—but I harp about those enough that I don’t need to bring any of that up at this point or ever again—but all in all, I’m fine with leaving our past behind. We did things, we enjoyed our time, and we did other things that didn’t turn out great, but the important part is that we learned from all of that which happened to us, and we’ve grown since.

I do remember mentioning to Jared how the cat reminded me of, well, me from when we were younger and it only took him a few moments spent watching the cats play to understand exactly what I was talking about, it made me smile to think I wasn’t all that far off. The other two aren’t all that different from the pouncer and yet, in their own way, they are absolute pacifists, and it makes me smile.

We’ve had bugs in the house coming in every so often and only one of them would chase them around to try and catch them. Most of the time, the other two would just watch these bugs from a distance, curious but in no rush to intervene or do anything about them. Some bugs even seem to scare these two more than anything else and it always reminds me of that old saying about how if it’s smaller than you, you should keep in mind that it’s very likely that the thing is more scared of you than you are of it; you’re the one who’s a giant to that tiny little thing, after all.

Though I’m sure that if I were to stop and lecture the two on how they’re supposed to help with the bug problems when there are some, I’d get rolled eyes and reminders that I don’t pay them for that; I don’t pay them for anything.

That’s if cats could talk at all.

Final Word Count: 861

I can’t properly gloat without my rival here to witness my victory.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: February 24, 2059

Character: Nikolaas Borough
Race: Human
Age: 70, physically about 26
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

If there is one person in the world that I spend very, very little time thinking about, it is the man who fathered us. I can’t call him our father. From the get-go, even as we came from the womb, I know that there was discord. We were either too pale, or our eyes were wrong, the shape of our nose didn’t fit; he sought all of the excuses in the world so he could refuse to claim us as his own.

Once we were old enough that these differences truly made us stand out—all four of us looking starkly different from one another, at least in colours as you can still tell we’re brothers by our physical features—the man’s behaviour grew worse. We didn’t really know any better at that point, we were children—toddlers, really—and we didn’t know any better.

I still remember the way things turned out when we were forced to go back home. It’s such a dark moment in all of our lives that I know I’m not the only one who hates thinking about it, but it’s been on my mind over the last day or so. I’m not even sure why. I can’t tell what triggered the memories and brought them back to the surface. Not that it has kept me from being able to function. After all of this time, I believe that we’ve all made enough progress to have put that whole thing behind us for the most part.

Maybe it was that book I read, it’s the only thing I can sort of figure out as being the reason why. There was this father and son duo that clearly didn’t get along. By the book’s middle, we’d come to learn that the father was turning into the villain of the story—though that had changed somewhat by the end—and his son was the main character who was just trying his best to survive.

By that middle point in the story, the father was standing over his son, sword to the younger man’s throat and just gloating away. Or, well, no, he wasn’t so much gloating, he was half-gloating, I suppose. Stating that he couldn’t truly, properly gloat without his rival—his brother, the young man’s uncle—being there to witness his victory.

The book went downhill from there if I’m being honest. Following that not-quite-gloating, the now-villain let his son go, there was an escape attempt going on and just, all in all, it was failed fight scene after failed fight scene during which the villain kept on stating and somewhat complaining about his inability to gloat without his rival being there to see it and, well, it was a bore. We only ever heard of the uncle a handful of times, and never in any details.

I don’t even remember if we were ever told the man’s name.

If I do think about it, I figure that, just maybe, this could be what triggered these particular memories to resurface. I remember the look on our sperm donor’s face as we stepped into that courthouse for the first of endless times. The look on his face as we were escorted back into the too-small apartment. The time of our lives we wasted over there was exhausting in so many ways.

But we survived, and I know that this is the important part. We all have our scars; they’re physical as much as they’re mental and emotional but we’ve made a lot of progress in the years since the whole thing happened and it’s what matters.

While my mind didn’t really make the connection between the book and these memories, not while I was reading it, I remember that I did mark the book into the list of things that I’d rather not read about anymore. I gave it a few tags that made sense to me, and those particular tags are now blocked in the system. I know that this is going to potentially keep me from reading books that could truly interest me, but in the face of things, as they happened, I think that I’m just better off not going anywhere near books with tags like these.

On that same note, it’s highly possible that I might find other books that have similar subjects but just haven’t been tagged with that either. It certainly is one of the things I do appreciate about the system as it is now. Anyone who reads a book can add tags to it. There’s no one to really review these tags to make sure that they do make sense but we’re a good community, I’d like to think that no one would tag a book something that it isn’t. Mistag slightly, maybe, but that’s about it.

With a bit of meditation, I know that I’ll let go of these particular memories before too long, I’m not really all that worried about it anymore and, if I’m being honest, I think this is one of the better things I’ve managed in my life, as far as that part of things is concerned.

Final Word Count: 853

I don’t have to be right all the time, but it sure is nice when I am.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: February 6, 2059

Character: Einn Reikaru
Race: Halfling – Angel / Unknown
Age: 73, physically about 25
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

When I first got into all things computers and technology, I don’t know that I ever imagined there would be a day when I would be arguing with AI entities. Though, if I’m being honest, most of the time, it’s not even arguing so much as it is dealing with moody sighs, whining, huffing, and just flat-out complaining on their part about how they’re bored. The arguing is minimal, but dealing with AI that is currently in a sort of teen mindset is always something of a surprise. You never know what you’re in for when you first step in on that day.

The complaining isn’t going to change the fact that we have to keep them in closed, secure servers. We’re not going to attach the kid-servers to the parent entity. It would give them access to more things than they’re ready to handle and I don’t want to have to bring out any of the back-ups. You never know when someone might have dropped something into the system and reverting to a back-up would remove that from the system altogether.

At this point, in all of the years since our first AI found its nook in our system, we’ve had to bring out the back-ups twice and both times, we sent system messages out, requesting that nothing be sent into the system for about two to three hours. Every system was displaying the clock, and we removed that timer once we were done. That way, we knew for a fact that we hadn’t lost any information that had been sent in. The back-up was the most up-to-date thing we had, and it worked fine.

Of the children AI server, one of them is far more dramatic than the others and it still amuses me enough that I don’t mind dealing with it. There’s something to be said about an AI that is still vastly more logic-based than emotion-based, especially when it begins to try and argue with you about being bored and how you’re no fun.

This particular AI often claims boredom and complains that we never let it have any fun. It complains about theft of its lock-picking tools and then ignores us when we offer ways for it to keep itself entertained. When it does finally reply to your requests, or your input for means to keep it occupied, it huffs, states that it tried that, it was boring and that it knew it was going to be. There’s only so much we can do about it.

The worse part, in a way, I think is whenever we do make a small mistake somewhere and it leans about it. The amount of boasting it does afterwards, stating that it knows it doesn’t have to be right all of the time, but it certainly is nice when they are, is just obscene. As with most people, you would possibly expect a brief moment where the person does feel good about being right—and I wouldn’t blame them—but with the AI, this gets brought up at any chance and this is repeated again and again for weeks on end.

Every. Single. Day.

For weeks on end.

Until something new comes up and we can finally move on from this whole thing.

At times, it goes on for so long that we manage to redirect, though. We bring up something from long enough ago that it isn’t at the very top of its mind and so we can almost always get away with it thinking that this is something new and exciting, it can latch onto that, and we have peace for a while yet. I know that Folya spends a lot of time with this AI, mostly because it borders on emotional behaviour far more than logical behaviour. We’ve been trying to figure out what it is in the code that allowed it to tip in that direction but, so far, we haven’t really had that much luck.

I’m not about to give up on that project, though. Now, this isn’t because I don’t think AI deserve plenty of freedom, just like the rest of us, but there is so much power to be had with all of the information they have access to—which is limited for the child servers but still—that one wrong move and everything could go to shit if it isn’t monitored properly. This is what this is about, in the end. We’re just keeping an eye on things because it’s just safer that way. There’s not much else to all of this, in the long run.

Final Word Count: 765