Rain, smooth jazz, and the sound of my fireplace? This is true relaxation.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Agathe Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Water
Age: 37, physically about 20
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 789 words
 

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I’m not sure when I discovered jazz as being an interesting type of music to listen to. It’s not the type of music I’ll blare loud and at all hours of the day. Honestly, I don’t even play it all that often, but I do every so often in the evenings when the mood calls for it. A little rain, some smooth jazz, the little fireplace in the cooler evenings and, you know what, I’ll be set for some time to come. There’s something just absolutely relaxing about that kind of scene.

I’m sure that someone who might know me would like to claim that my affinity with rainy evenings—far more than rainy days but give me rain during the evenings and nights—comes from my hydrokinesis but I hated this gift for a long time, especially when mom was dead set on making sure I knew how to control it.

Now, well, now I make some use of it as might be necessary but, for the most part, I tend not to. I don’t need to use my gift to move things, I don’t need it to water the plants that might need it—that’s the lazy way out if you ask me—and while there possibly could be some use elsewhere that I might not be thinking of right now, I think that’s the point. If I can’t think of a reason to use my gift, it’s more than reason enough not to use it.

Clean up after getting filthy while working in the garden? Sure. That makes it easier, and I don’t have to worry about tracking dirt—or water—in the house. I think that’s about the only time I make use of my gift. That and cleaning up spots I can’t reach, I guess. It’s a fairly rare occurrence that I do, and it suits me fine in the end.

Really, though. One of the ways I can picture a perfectly relaxing evening really does require quiet, smooth jazz, rain and the crackling of the fireplace, these only happen during two seasons because there’s no way in ever that we’ll use the indoor fireplace when summer time has come around. I’m sure someone out there will state that there are evenings that are chilly enough in the summer that using an indoor fireplace is perfectly respectable, but I beg to differ. In the summer, I’ll stick with using a light blanket if I really need to.

One of those things I’ve realized, though, is that I’m very picky with the kind of jazz that I listen to. My library of jazz music is limited enough that there is possibly, at most, two hours’ worth of playing before it starts back in on itself and I keep it on a shuffle pattern so even then, I can never really tell which song I’ve listened to more than once. Most of them have enough of a similar feel to them that it’s not jarring when the song changes and just, if I find new songs, I’ll give them a try, if I get tired of a particular one, I’ll drop it out.

Those rainy evenings really are the only times I’ll have that music playing anyway so it’s not like I’ll really get sick of listening to it any time soon. It’s not as though we get a fire going on every single raining evening when it’s cool enough. I think that would just take the magical feeling out of it if it happened too often. At least, the rain, jazz and fireplace thing. I admit that most fall evenings when it gets cold enough, I’m happy to have the fireplace going, even if it takes a little work to keep it going.

The house itself doesn’t really need it for warmth, even in the dead of winter, the fireplace isn’t so much used for warmth as it is for the coziness factor—for me, in any case—but I wouldn’t trade it out for anything else. That little crackling thing the logs do when they’re burning, it adds to the feeling of relaxation that comes from the whole scene.

I’d like to think I’m not a very complicated person. I don’t have very complicated wants or desires. I like to keep things simple and when we do deviate from the simpler things, I do so with him because that’s how everything should be. His presence is what makes everything ten times better. So sure, rain, jazz, the fireplace, those do lead to a relaxing evening but when he’s with me and I can settle close and comfortable? That turns the evening into something just so much better.

You look ready to fight. You always look ready to fight.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Agathe Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Water
Age: 35, physically about 20
Final Word Count: 652 words
 

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I never even considered the idea of having a pet. I felt like I had enough on my plate with just dealing with my own life without adding something else into it that might require my attention. I’m pretty sure I would have forgotten to take care of it just a few months in, if not even just a few weeks in, and in a way, I didn’t want it all to fall on Callias for caretaking, so we didn’t.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t looked at pets that others have raised or taken into their homes. Now and again, when I take walks just for the sake of taking walks, I can’t help but notice the big cats that still roam, someone’s dog or, I think I’ve seen someone walking a lizard on a leash of sorts before, that was interesting.

None have left me scratching my head like this one that comes to steal all the food from our feeders. They’re supposed to be anti-squirrel and whatever else but that one guy—could be a girl, I know but I’m pretty sure it’s a guy—somehow always finds the means of overcoming the obstacles we’ve set up in the way. Even if we have a feeder with peanuts just for him and his pals, he still comes to chomp on our birdseed.

A few times, I’ve seen him perched on the window sill and looking at him, I can’t help but feel like he’s looking ready for a fight. It seems odd to say but there’s just something about that squirrel that screams, ‘I’ll bite your head off if you bother me.’ Maybe I should become a squirrel whisperer, wouldn’t that be something? Really, though, It feels like he’s always looking ready to fight and it makes me shake my head a little.

What kind of life could a squirrel have had to have that look plastered on its little furry little face any time I see it? How do I know it’s the same squirrel and not a few different ones? He has a very distinctive marking on his chest that makes him hard to mistake for any other. That and well, he looks like he’s missing part of his tail; which, I’m sure can explain why he looks so grumpy all the time, yes.

I don’t know why I feel so invested in this squirrel, you know, beyond the fact that he keeps on stealing all the bird feed. That’s possibly the only thing as he’s been smart enough to outdo us all summer. Once the colder season settles, I don’t know whether or not he’ll stay; he might just and that’ll mean more fussing about making sure he leaves some food for the birds that do stay but I guess that we’ll be getting to that when the time comes.

At the same time, I’m sort of wishing for him to find a mate elsewhere and go eat someone else’s seed; it’s weird and I can’t really explain beyond the fact that it’s become a bit of a frustration to have to deal with the bugger constantly.

It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does, but I know it does because I like watching the birds come and go. I like discovering all the colours there can be on these birds and it’s just fascinating.

At least, if nothing else, I can rest easy in knowing that he’s been leaving the hummingbird feeder alone; I think that any knowledge that he’d somehow manage to get into there or show any interest in it would do more than just frustrate me. It’s sticky business to get that feeder filled up but it’s always a pleasure to watch the hummingbirds come and go. I’ve seen more of these guys than most other birds and I suppose I might have my squirrel buddy to thank—blame?—for that.

He can’t do that to us.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 3rd Generation
Characters: Agathe Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Water
Age: 33, physically about 20
Final Word Count: 576 words
 

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When I was twelve, I discovered I had my mother’s gift for hydrokinesis. According to her, I was a somewhat late bloomer but that wasn’t much of a problem or even a problem at all. I would just need to learn to control this gift so nothing harmful could come of it. I was down with that. What I wasn’t down with, was that this training took place over the weekend. I liked my weekends. I spent my weeks at school and my weekends were spent at home doing other things but at the very least, I had one day to call my own and an early morning of the other day spent training.

I didn’t actually mind it much at first, it was fun. I’ve always been mom’s little girl and while I adore my dad, I suppose I might have had a favourite while I was growing up and that was mom. This ‘adoration’ business sort of started to wane when she’d wake me up at six on Saturday mornings after I’d come home from my school week so we could train. I’d never been able to really pick up on martial arts, I was a little clumsy—not much—and I just didn’t like the notion of violence, even though I know, now, that this wasn’t about violence at all and I’ve taken to learning now.

I remember one particular morning in late February. It was cold out and she’d set us up in the virtual reality room and had set it up with us somewhere on some sort of tropical island with weird creatures that would fling stuff at us. I’m pretty sure these creatures never existed except in my mother’s mind but let’s not get into that particular discussion. There’s plenty I don’t know or understand about my parents and the world in general as is.

Now, these monsters, they were making me mad. I was trying to deflect what they were throwing at us but it was distracting business and I admit that I did complain a lot about it. At every chance I actually got and that likely was also why I couldn’t focus very well. Eventually, I just braced myself for an onslaught of mud cakes—they were flinging mud cakes at us—and as I got hit in the back by one, mom started laughing and that’s more or less when I’d had more than my share of everything.

“He can’t do that to us.” The words had come out of my mouth before I realized it and I sounded like I was whining and I suppose I was but still. Mom just quirked a brow, gave me that infuriating smile, and shrugged. I was starting to really dislike these one-on-one sessions though I knew I needed them, in a way.

It wasn’t until I’d turned into a complete mud monster that she called the simulation off and I mutter-grumbled on my way to shower off the sweat since the mud had gone with the reality as it had evaporated around us.

I know she was just doing her best to train me but at times I’m so sure she was doing it just for entertainment. Not that I blame her, I suppose it was hilarious to watch me get covered in mud and I couldn’t laugh it off then but I can laugh it off now, at the very least. She’s still my favourite, mostly.

Every time I try to talk to them, I fumble my words. I’ve never done that before.

Timeline/World: Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Agathe Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Water
Age: 33, physically about 20
Final Word Count: 538 words

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I’m certainly not the most outgoing person, looking at the rest of my siblings and my cousins, I’d have to think this is a partial family trait because some of us are this way and some of us aren’t, though maybe it’s just a natural on and off trait in people, I don’t know. I’ve just never been really big on going to others to talk about myself or to try and befriend them. I did still have a friend or three growing up but they’d been the one to approach me and I had let them.

Things changed a bit when it was Callias who came my way. I don’t even really understand how it all worked out or what he ever saw in me before we did start talking but I guess that is just one of those things. The friends I’d had at that point, I’d warmed up to them, you could say, it was easy to talk to them and smile and be outgoing but with Callias? I froze; I don’t really have any other way of looking at it, other than I froze. I’m stumbling over my words, not quite stammering but still being unable to really formulate anything overly coherent, it was mortifying.

Though, it wasn’t really that way at first. At first, it was closer to the way I’d been with my other friends. It was when this whole… dating thing started happening that my body and especially my brain started to do its thing. I can’t tell if it was because it was new or if it was because I did want to be with him in that way but my brain was somehow wired differently?

I’m over that now, of course, things are smooth and perfect at this point in our lives but the first couple of years were mortifying, at least to me. He was so patient it was different but… so often I had these thoughts that all of this word-fumbling and head ducking and uncertainty would drive him away. I’m glad it didn’t and that he stayed through it all, I would have been really lonely on my own but I would have handled it, I figure that if he hadn’t loved me to the point of staying with me all along, we wouldn’t have been meant and that’d just have been it, no arguing the point, in the end, a fact is a fact and you can’t force someone to love you, that’s just crazy.

The fumbling and word stumbling didn’t just disappear one day, though. Oh no, furthest from. It just got better, little by little. My heart wouldn’t constrict and then gallop away when he’d take my hand, instead it would just speed up a little in a fluttering motion and settle again, my words starting coming out in a much smoother fashion, my reactions became slowly more natural and less uncertain. I guess this is like getting used to a new thing that never was there in your life. Some people take to these new things with finesse and act like they’ve always had it and some, like me, just need a little—okay, a lot!—of getting used to it.