All I want to do is watch the sunset with you at my side.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: June 10, 2024

Character: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 29
Current residence: Warwick, New York
 

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While it’s not always an issue, there are times when it’s fairly difficult to get my schedule to fit up with Vent’s own. It’s weird to imagine because my hours are usually fairly steady. While I vary these hours through the week—I know that not all my patients can come and see me for therapy between eight and five, though I much prefer seven to four and those are my usual hours—so as to include at least one evening and one weekend every so often, they don’t change much otherwise.

Vent, on the other hand, while he’s been years in, and does get a mostly set schedule, has had to head in at unexpected times to fill in for someone else. We both have schedules that vary at least some, but we make the best of things, and we still get plenty of time together. All of the time together, really. I can’t complain, I know it could be so much worse and we could be living in a situation where he mostly works overnight, and we only get an hour or two every day together. I’d make it work, I know we both would. I’m just glad we’re not in that situation.

When it to taking time off, we try to plan that together. It makes the most sense that we’re both scheduled for time off at the same time—not that it always works out—but it just makes that vacation more pleasant. While I don’t mind just relaxing at home and making sure the meals are ready, the house is clean and that the bed is ready for tumbling into, I much prefer being able to spend all of my vacation time with him.

We don’t even need to go far. Not that I mind planning little outings with him, but I suppose that I’m a bit of a homebody for the most part and settling on our porch with a glass of sun tea while the sun sets just there all around us but most especially in front of us is one of my favourite things when it comes to being with him and not thinking about anything at all.

Our last time off together—that was more than a single day or weekend—was a four-day weekend we got last autumn. We’d made no plans whatsoever other than to visit one particular orchard to get all the apples we would ever want, but otherwise, we were set on staying home, enjoying one another’s company and settling outside with warmer tea and a light blanket for the sunset.

Things did not go as planned. I wish they had, but they did not.

On the first evening, while the sky had been clear and the day beautiful, come evening, just as the sun had started to come down, clouds just gathered out of nowhere and we had a major downpour. We had to rush around the house to get all the windows closed and then we had to mop up a few messes. It was a freak storm, it came out of nowhere and none of our weather stations had managed to warn anyone about it.

On the second evening, we weren’t even really planning on watching that sunset. Unlike the preview day, we’d had stormy cloud cover through the day and while it hadn’t rained, it didn’t bode well for the sunset and while we saw a few blips of colour in the sky as we passed the windows, there wasn’t much to see.

On the third evening, we actually got to watch most of it, or, well, about half of it as just about halfway through, both of our phones and our TV blared with an Amber alert. Now, I don’t take those lightly and it’s not an every-day occurrence. We were both so startled by the blaring alarm and trying to get to our phones and the TV to shut it off and take in the alert that we missed out on the rest of the sunset.

We didn’t really get to watch the sunset on that last evening either; we’d spent most of the day deep cleaning the house and I personally was just so stupidly tired by the time the sun had begun to come down that I preferred just sort of settling on the couch to cuddle.

Now, I don’t really make much of a fuss about being able, or not, to watch the sunset. It’s just one of those things that I find to be very soothing when we’re given a chance to enjoy it together and I take it as a treat, most of the time. I know that life is full of unexpected things and that four-day weekend off was full of them. We just took things as they happened. It’s not as though there’s much else that can be done about it, in the long run.

We’ve had other sunsets since and missing one—or several—isn’t going to end the world.

Final Word Count: 837

Maybe you shouldn’t doubt me so much. I am, after all, the only one who knows how to get us out of these situations.

Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Peculiar
Current Date: October 20, 1400

Character: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 23
Current residence: Peculiar, Erisia
 

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In a way, I nearly didn’t make it into Peculiar. I would have fought my way through if I’d had to, but I was stopped by someone as I was on my way to the lift from my specialization. It was that one thing I was most worried about, in a way. I don’t know why, though. If you think about it, when someone dies—and people do die, after all—and they’re possibly the only person handling a specialization, the higher-ups are just going to do what they can about it, you can’t just not die.

Still, it was the one thing I worried the most about heading off to Peculiar. Leaving behind the people that I had started working with to help them with their physical recovery. I’d always wanted to pick that specialization and I could have started much sooner if the man in charge, at that point, hadn’t been set in his ways and refused my requests because of my father. It’s only through Ventus that I got in and I can’t even thank him enough.

So, I suppose that it might come as no surprise to anyone that my last stop before I headed over, most of my things already out there, a single duffle bag on my shoulder, was the clinic. It made sense, in a way. I did have a few things to pick up from there so I could take them with me, and I hadn’t thought to bring them home with me when I’d last gone home. With each passing day, our departure date came closer and closer and yet, there still was so much I felt that I should have done that I couldn’t get done until the very last few moments.

I was on my way out after talking to one of the guys I’d been helping. He’d been fairly hard to work with, always arguing with the exercises, seeming to believe that I only gave him the hardest exercises because I wanted to see him fail, it was in little things but little things that added up. I had a couple of appointments scheduled for our departure days, they were mostly follow-ups, and I wasn’t meant to be there for more than an hour or so and yeah, he was there. With him, there was a man I’d always assumed to be his brother, they looked so much alike, but he never introduced me, nor the man in question.

When I’d walked in, they’d been arguing, the older one of the two—the unknown—had been saying something to my patient about how he really had to stop doubting him because he was the only one who could get him out of these situations, whatever ‘these situations’ were supposed to be. It wasn’t my place to ask, and I clearly hadn’t been expected to hear any of it. The stranger gave me such a dirty look when I stepped in but my patient, at the very least, had a smile for me.

So yeah, we went through his quick follow-up, but he stalled, asking question after question after question. All of these questions he’d asked me before and I’d given him the exact answer then as I gave him on that day. Eventually, he let me go, I took care of my second, now delayed follow-up and yeah, it was on my way to the lift that the stranger approached me. I still think they must have been brothers.

He started telling me that I wasn’t treating Samson—my patient—the way I should have. That the exercises were too hard, that I was pushing him too much—all the things Samson usually brought up to me because he thought everything was too hard and yet, I’ve had patients with worse wounds than him just fly through the simple exercises.

The stranger clearly refused to let me go anywhere until he’d pointed out everything I was doing wrong with Samson and then some more. I wasn’t in the mood to argue. That transport wasn’t going to wait forever, and I certainly hadn’t wanted Ventus to have to come looking for me since I’d promised him that I’d be there on time.

I nearly didn’t make it. I honestly had to push my unwelcome guest slightly to the side so I could get on the lift because I was about to miss that one too and there was no way I was running to the next one, I wouldn’t have made it on time.

Peculiar has been a breath of fresh air. I know that once the temperatures start to cool down, even more, we’ll probably change our tunes a little but, you know, I’m actually plenty ready for that. I want to think that we’ll be doing just fine, in the end.

Final Word Count: 805

You’re the only one I know who would help selflessly and yet refuse to be helped.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Hopeful Beginnings
Current Date: October 14, 2027

Character: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 25
Current residence: Klahanie, Washington
 

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Once in a blue moon, I find myself swept up into conventions of sorts. I don’t know if that’s the proper term for them but that’s fine. I didn’t want to go the first time it was offered to me. The idea of so many different people all gathered in a general idea made me feel claustrophobic and I’m not. I’m anxious to no end—but under fairly good control at this point in my life—but I’m not claustrophobic. Still, I was talked into going and while it was stressful for the first few hours, the rest of the day went well, and it really did end up being quite interesting.

I feel like I learned a few new things that I hadn’t really been aware of and while I certainly didn’t end up making any friends, I encountered others like me who seemed to go through life not unlike I did, accepting of the fact that the chances of a day when all of the patients you see will be happy to see you are ridiculously slim.

I was a little less so reluctant to go the second time it came up. In a way, I think I sort of expected for things to be mostly the same as they’d been when I’d gone the first time but the people doing the speaking in front of everyone else and the subjects were different. It wasn’t as interesting as it didn’t really touch on anything that I might have needed with my patients, but it still wasn’t such a bad thing.

While there, I came across some of the people I’d met the first time around and while we didn’t chat endlessly, we did greet one another before going on our way. Others were introduced to me, and I can’t remember the name of any of them but one.

Her name is Sandra—was, I guess. I learned during the most recent convention or gathering, or whatever you want to call them that she’d passed away. I overheard a small group talking about her, saying she’d taken her own life because she just hadn’t been able to cope with whatever had happened a few weeks before that. One said something about how she had been the only person they’d known that would help others selflessly and yet refused to ever be helped.

I wasn’t really surprised by that one, I won’t lie. We’d ended up sitting together during most of the talks on that day and during breaks, she’d talk at me a little and I guess she got me to answer a few of her questions as well but I had gotten the sense on that day that she was like that. Out to help everyone but refusing to be helped in return.

In a way, I guess I saw myself in her just a little, not much. Mostly the fact that I have a hard time accepting help and asking for it. I’ve learned to ask for help from the one person in my life who has been there through thick and thin at this point—and my family, but that’s a given—but asking anyone else is hard and honestly, I just can’t make myself do it. I know that it possibly can’t be healthy to be this way, but I can’t help it.

Helping others, if they’re so willing to let me, comes easier, but others helping me is just something I can’t do. At least, not easily.

I was sad to learn that she’d passed. We’d actually tried to keep partially in touch out of the conventions. She was a couple of cities away and these got her out of that city and travelling a little bit. I suppose I should have expected that there would have been people from other cities at the convention, but it hadn’t even really crossed my mind at first—never you mind that this was out of the city for me, but not that far out.

This was the last convention that happened, there seems to be a sort of medical gathering almost every four or so months at this point—when the seasons change. I don’t know how I feel about going to the next one. I know that going is probably the better option, there’s still the potential that I might learn something new and it’s the point of going, but I think I’d miss her more than I do now if I were to go. Maybe I’ll skip just the one or two. I don’t think that it’ll really be the end of the world if I don’t go.

I mean, when people are sick during these times, they certainly don’t go, right? And it’s not as though I’m being forced to go, so I think I’ll skip a couple, just to settle back into the idea that the one person I had somewhat befriended is gone.

Final Word Count: 823

You’re about as reckless as your driving if you ask me.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Hopeful Beginnings
Characters: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 25
Current residence: Klahanie, Washington
Final Word Count: 766 words
 

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A year ago, near literally, I found myself closing my books for the last time. That feels anticlimactic when I look at it this way and it isn’t quite true, but I finished my studies, and I was able to find a job in a clinic. I even work one day a week, or so, in the nearby hospital. It was a struggle to get through it all. On those later nights when I was cramming for more of that knowledge I knew I needed, my anxiety would begin to rise, and I would start to doubt myself again and again. I overcame it all.

That’s not to say my anxiety is gone but, with the proper care and medication, I have it under a semi-comfortable control. It will never fully go away. It is part of my life and I’ve made my peace with this. It just means that I have to take things one day at a time and that’s what I do.

Through work, I’ve met a whole lot of people. I want to be able to say that most had been understanding of the reason why they had been sent my way, but the percentage isn’t even that high. It’s possibly split somewhere in the middle. The people that would come to their appointment because they did want to get better. The other half came begrudgingly because they had to. Of those that came with an understanding that this was for their own good; I’d say that a further half, after the first few exercises, would fall back into the begrudging group because of how uncomfortable some of the exercises were.

In the long run, perhaps a quarter of everyone I see knew and understood that I wasn’t trying to torture them. That wasn’t the point of things. The point of things was that I was only trying to help them, and these particular exercises were what they needed to get back on track to things. It’s that simple, in the end.

Of these clients, I have Kent whose moods, whenever I see him, are never the same. One day he might be laughing and working hard, grunting through some of it but doing all of the necessary efforts, the next, he’ll be a grumpy arse who refuses to do any effort. That’s okay. I deal with that. I did learn, however, through the person accompanying him, that Kent had a hard time moving away from the things that had led him to the situation he was in.

Now, this is beyond my scope of expertise. From the snippets I’ve heard of them heatedly arguing just some feet away from me with Kent being on the receiving end of frustrated comments about how he was as reckless as his driving—the reason he was here—it seems as though my patient still has a history of drinking and of doing certain drugs that don’t mix well with the painkillers he’s supposed to take.

These are things I’ve noted in his files and passed on to someone more specialized in that kind of behaviour. There really is nothing I do for him professionally to help him with these things. I can help with his physical recovery. I can handle him complaining, huffing, grunting and all around just being as unhappy to see me as a lot of my other visitors and patients but that’s about it.

I have chosen my path and I have worked hard to make it as far as I have. I have no regrets whatsoever for the fact that certain days are just draining because clients will act in whatever way they want to act, this is just part of life.

So yes, if I can refer someone I’m seeing to another professional because it’s clear they’ll need the extra help and not just in a physical way, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. Whether or not they follow that referral is something else entirely and it’s out of my hands.

Do I wish, at times, that all of my clients could understand that I’m not trying to torture them? Sure. That’s not the point. The point is that I’m here to help them and whether or not they want that help is out of my hands. I still give them my undivided attention, even if they’re being arses about it. That’s just the way these things are.

I believe in treating others the way you want them to treat you. It certainly doesn’t work with everyone, but I think that it’s just a positive way to go at things.

When you’re with me, I don’t feel so lost.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 23
Current residence: Rockbourne Dome, Erisia
Final Word Count: 752 words
 

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Up until Ventus came into my life, I really only had two goals. Staying alive despite all of what Father was putting us through, and trying to get into my specialization, no matter that I was constantly being denied because of my father. By that point, I didn’t have my blue tag. Asarel didn’t have his either. Our father starkly refused to believe that we could be tagged as defects. Never mind his day blindness and the fact that he could barely see a thing in the daylight, and it caused him migraines, and that my lungs could barely handle the colder winter air without a struggle. We both needed those blue tags, not to get any sort of special treatment anywhere, but just because we needed treatments of sorts.

Ventus is the reason I’m still alive despite it all, at this point.

I didn’t fully know what to make of him, not at the beginning. I suppose that can be said of any of us when we first met the person we’re currently heart-set on spending our time with. I love this man so much that the mere idea of being out there in Peculiar without him is something I just can’t spend too much time thinking about. I never imagined myself needing something so badly in my life that it felt worse than the drops in the winter before he and Argus got together and finished the new filtered design on the mask.

I never realized how I felt as though I had no real direction in my life before. I knew what specialization I wanted but that was about it. Other than that, I was just going through my days without much focus. Now that our chance to escape to Peculiar is coming closer and closer, I know where I want to be, but I need him with me. Without him, I’m just lost, but when he’s with me, it’s like there’s a little bit of extra light that comes into my path and I know where I’m going.

Thinking about it all, it all just feels like one big, pretty mush ball. I don’t know how else to put it. I feel like I’ve gone completely soft inside and if Father still were around, he’d be so mad. Where has his perfect soldier gone? It’s not as though I don’t run the grinders just fine and I didn’t do well on the last few drops I’ve gone on to help with. I’m just more emotionally stable, in a way.

I’m more emotionally alive. This is the way I want to look at things. Other than Aaron who met Emmett when both still were young enough to form a bond, I think that most of us were fairly dead inside. Meeting that particular someone has opened up a door to us that I’m pretty sure none of us had ever really thought would be open. I proudly wear his tag next to mine, between it and the blue tag that I might not have to wear anymore once we get to Peculiar. I mean, I don’t think I’ll remove it simply for the fact that it’s just always been there but it’s something I’ve just realized recently.

Things are going to be so different once we’re out there. The buildings have come up, though some still need plenty of fixing up. Crops are growing, that I’ve heard about, and a couple have already made their way there in a permanent way. I know we still haven’t fully figured out how we’re all going to go missing at once if you would, but that’s one of those things that we’re all working on as we can. Details are being figured out as they happen.

For now, I know I have to focus on the few people I’ve been seeing to. For the most part, they’re small cases that my mentor, still present and lively enough, can take care of as needed but it’s good practice for me. I might not get to see too much of it once we’re on Peculiar, but I can’t say I’d complain, that mostly means that we’re all going to be staying healthy and preferably without lasting injuries that will require my help. That’s not to say I can’t help with general exercises and making sure that everyone stays limber, but if that’s the extent of what I’d be needed for, as far as my specialization is concerned, I’d honestly be perfectly fine with that.

Running never got me anymore meaningful, but anything was better than staying there, you know?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 27
Current residence: Warwick, New York
Final Word Count: 779 words
 

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You meet a whole lot of different people when you do what I do. Honestly, I think that in the case of most jobs that have to do with the medical field, you’ll be meeting a whole lot of different people. Sure, in my case, a good few of these people are repeat customers and that’s the way it should be. Not that they’re really customers, they’re my patients and I’m working with them on making sure they get back on their feet the way they should and that’s what makes everything worth it.

I don’t care to have to fight with some of the patients, but I know that I have to argue at times, and I know that I have to put my foot down every so often. There’s no helping that. Some patients understand that the healing process is not without its own pains and that I’m just there to make sure that this very healing process goes as well as it can and that they can get as much of their full range of motion as they can. If they work with me, usually we get fairly good and great results, if not, well, I can’t force them.

I can argue with them all I want but when I know that it’s moot and they refuse to even help themselves, I have to hand them over to the mental therapist eventually. Even if it’s just for one session, just to get to the bottom of their refusal to cooperate. At times, people are depressed over what happened to them and I don’t blame them. I’ve been in these shoes. It wasn’t a long part of my life, but it was a marking one and I’ve been with Argus from the near get-go when his accident happened. I saw the way his moods shifted, I was with him when he went through the depression and when he pulled himself back up, slowly.

I know.

Not everyone has direct experience with things the way I do, I feel like it gives me some sort of perspective. That might be why I push as hard as I can on trying to help my patients when they’re with me. It’s why I do all I can to get through to them before passing them on to the others. It feels like a failure when I can’t help them, and I don’t like it. I’ve learned to let go, though. It’s no fault of mine that these people refuse to allow themselves to be helped, let alone help themselves.

A few months ago, I was handed a file about a runner that had gotten hit by a car. While nothing had been broken, there had been plenty of torn things and the healing process had been going on long enough that they were ready to start their therapy and man, it had been a pretty long time since I’d had anyone coming into my therapy room that willing to work. He pushed a little too hard at first and I had to slow him down several times, I couldn’t understand it.

Not until he told me that he’d started running to get away from everything else that surrounded him. That confused me a little, I mean, I grew up in a household that wasn’t perfect, especially not when Father was still around, but it wasn’t enough to really want to send me running, not in the way he seemed to be explaining. What little bits and pieces he seemed willing to share stated that while running had never given him any meaningful answer as to anything in life, it still had gotten him out of the house and that had been better than nothing.

By the age in his files, he’d been in his mid-twenties, plenty of time to have gotten away from what could have been a very toxic family. But I can understand that if he’d been running—and always coming home instead of merely running away, a fair partial exchange, I guess—since he’d been a young teenager, stopping now, when his body was so used to the motion, might have been something he wasn’t really willing to do. I mean, I like the idea of jogging. I can’t really run to save my life if I had to, but I can jog good distances when I have to time and I do try to make the time every so often.

I never know what kind of patient I might find myself coming face to face with, every time I clock in. I think that’s one of the strange but beautiful ways to look at my job.

I don’t know what time it is. Maybe that’s a sign that I’ve been up for too long.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Hopeful Beginnings
Characters: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 23
Final Word Count: 735 words
 

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I don’t know why I ever thought I was suited for this. Though, I have to remind myself that this is a lie. I know that’s my anxiety trying to throw a wrench into everything. I want to do this. I will study my way through and I will manage. I mean, I’ve already finished through my double degree at this point and that was mind-numbing. That I had to drop out of work in the middle of my first year is something I hadn’t been exactly pleased with but I knew I had to. I couldn’t juggle my course load and work. It was too much.

Now, now it’s just the focus on the physiotherapy side of things and my brain has been trying to tell me on and off that I’m an idiot for wanting to do this; my anxiety is going to ruin it all; I’ll always second-guess myself. The list goes on but I know I can do this. When it comes to the wellbeing of others, I’m pretty focused.

Plus, as it stands, I have until next June to convince my brain to shut the hell up and just let me do this thing. I’ve made it this far, I’m going to have to keep on making it even further and, well, no, my brain isn’t going to stop me. It’ll try but it won’t stop me.

What might stop me, though, is when I take a break from the books and I have to ask myself what time it is. My little working corner is comfortably light but the rest of the place is dark and I can’t really hear Vent. It either means that it’s late as can be and he’s asleep or it’s somewhere in the middle of the day and he’s out. Both options are possible but don’t seem to matter all that much to my brain because I still can’t tell what time it is. I know I’ve been up too long but that’s the thing. I get engrossed when I start in on these books and that’s why I know I’ve chosen the right path for myself.

I remember high school, I remember struggling a bit with my classes because I would try to read something and I’d lose track of where I was pretty quickly because my attention wandered. These books, though, they’re different. Sure, the first few books I had to open for my degrees earned similar results, I struggled to keep focused but the moment we entered all things relating to the human body, it’s like there was this switch that was flipped.

More often than not, I had to be pulled away from my reading because I lost track of time or, you know, I’d fall asleep with my face in my book but after getting pretty far into things.

Another quick glance around—I need to get a small clock close to my studying space—and I still can’t really tell what time it is. The room isn’t windowless but the one window has blackout curtains with poles that bring the curtains flush with the walls. It had already been dark when I’d started studying and the curtains had been closed.

It’s as I stand that I know I’ve been sitting and studying way too long, my legs threaten to buckle a little beneath me from the sudden shift and I lean against the desk for several long moments, just breathing through the pins and needles as feelings return slowly, but surely. When I finally make it to the window and I peer out, it’s still dark outside but that could be any time of the night up into the early morning so, instead of just asking myself more questions, I go back to the desk to mark my pages and close everything.

I knuckle my eyes and finally spot the first clock when I step from the room. It’s almost four in the morning; I guess that might explain things. Even as I know I would sleep better curled up behind him, one part of my brain reminds me that if I go into that bedroom, I’ll wake him. So I do what I’ve done every so often when I realized I’d studied deep into the night. I plop down on the couch, pull down a blanket and I know that, within moments, I’ll be asleep.

Complain all you want, we both know you love when I sing to you.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 25
Final Word Count: 717 words
 

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Clients that willingly thank you for your hard work are rare; since Elric when I was still in the middle of studying, there really haven’t been any that have truly left their marks on me. I’ve seen him now and again since he came back into my life, he sends me updates about his beautifully growing child and the work he does on his house. It might seem like weird updates to send to your old therapist but seeing as the doctors had told him he never would walk again, I’m sure you can imagine why these updates are so good to hear about and see.

Most of the people I see for therapy are there because the hospital sends them my way as necessary visitors; these people are usually either still at the hospital and will be for a while or they are people that were released and are being sent in because they need to. Now and again, I’ll get someone who really is willing to do their work because they want to get better but they are a rare minority; I’m not going to lie about that. I’ve learned to work with these people and I love my job.

That very job could be just so much worse and yet it’s not. I’m doing what I love and it’s not just a few random bad encounters that will change my mind.

Have I had shitty patients? Yes. Some I still see every day. My daily routine is pretty routine, despite the fact that plenty of the people I see only stay around for a short while. In the morning part of my shift, I tend to check in on the ‘milder’ patients. Though I only usually see for short periods of time or the ones that don’t require me to be accompanied to see them.

In the afternoon, that’s different. In the afternoon, I do my rounds with an orderly at my side because these patients are much more difficult to handle but they still are human beings and they still deserve someone to look out after them when they need care and I’m one such person. I still remember when I’d been stuck with one co-worker’s twelve-year-old son for a day; it had been bring your child to work day and somehow, he’d ended up here instead of with his father or an aunt or uncle; I had to drop him off with someone else in the afternoon because I just couldn’t take him on my rounds with me, no more than his mother could have taken him anywhere with her during her surgeries.

It was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.

A few weeks ago, I found myself with a senior citizen added to my daily morning routine. She’s a sweet little old lady and while she complains all along about the work we’re doing—which isn’t all that difficult but I get it, I do—she also likes to sing and every single time I step into her room, she starts singing this sweet little love song that likely dates back to her youth. I have to chide her playfully about flirting with a married man and she only grins at me. Mind you, I don’t do it for that particular reason; while her voice isn’t terrible, it’s not great and there are neighbouring rooms around her and a few others have complained about the slightly off-key singing.

When she was first warned about this, she just huffed and said that not a single one of them could appreciate a good song so she kept up at it. We changed tactics. Now I gently chide her about what flirting with a married man might mean and she playfully rolls her eyes and tells me that I can complain all I want but we both knew that I loved it when she sang to me. It did make me smile; I’m not going to lie. She does, at least, stop singing so I suppose that I can see that as a small victory.

I don’t mind her singing; it means that she’s in a good mood and she’s not in too much pain but I still need to keep the other rooms in mind at this point.

I’ve been trying to mix my paints to match your eye colour and so far, I haven’t found anything even remotely close.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 21
Final Word Count: 717 words
 

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Flirting women are weird. I mean, I’ve seen how they act before but I never imagined it being directed at me. I can only imagine the things that must go through some of their minds. I know that quite a few women who are my age and slightly older still believe in the old ways. They still think that men need to lead and be out there, working and all while they stay at home, being baby factories—I’m pretty sure we still have a one-child per family law going on right now, though extra children aren’t removed from families but there are fees to pay—and being bed warmers and pleasure givers. It makes me cringe.

As far as Louise was concerned, I don’t know what she was thinking. I didn’t stay around long enough to get a feel for the fact of whether or not she was of the former—free of mind—or later—wishing to be a man’s wife—group of women. All I know is that she made me uncomfortable when she came up to me, telling me she’d been trying to mix her paints to match my eye colour and so far, she hadn’t found anything even remotely close.

I didn’t even know paints had been allowed in shops again.

Does that tell you where my mind went when she told me that much? I know she was trying to flirt with me but it just made me so uncomfortable that I switched to facts over anything else just moments after her comment. That she then commented that my extra blue tag was pretty too made me just sort of blink at her. She wanted to know if she could get a pretty pink one.

I know that, a few months after the medical tags came out, there was a dome-wide announcement about them. So few people seemed to understand the point of them and what the colours meant that they’d had to send the messages out. It was bad when a new officer refused to understand and accept the meaning of tags, after all. So many things that could be avoided with the proper knowledge.

I didn’t comment on her mention of the tags, nor the fact that pink tags were usually on people with terminal illnesses. They were so rare, since most of these people were usually transferred out into the far-end medical building that I don’t think anyone but those who work there will ever see them. I also didn’t comment on her mention of the paints, or that she somehow liked my eyes and just, I actually didn’t really say much of anything to her. I didn’t feel the need to, not really.

She gave me this doe-eyed look and I know I rolled my eyes, you know, those eyes she seems to want to like so much, and I walked away. I didn’t really want to spend any time around her. That she’d approached me at all, that, while we were in the process of moving heavy boxes and she was in the way, tells me that she’s an airhead idiot who doesn’t really deserve my attention.

For one thing, if she completely missed out on the markers that were set up to signify that this particular zone was technically under construction, she’s an idiot. For another thing, if she willfully just ignored those markers, she’s even more of an idiot. This has nothing to do with my specialty, which I’ve ‘graduated’ from being a trainee from, but they needed help since one of the buildings was old and they need to fix everything up.

The whole place was from the original build of the dome and it’s beyond me that they hadn’t torn it down when they’d torn everything else down to move our things from the bigger dome into this one. We’re a small team at this point, moving furniture out into a vehicle so the thing can be carefully torn down and cleared up. They’ll start construction once all that is done but I volunteered. It got me away from my mentor. I might have graduated from being his trainee but he’s still essentially my mentor and he’s been grumpy lately. I need to figure out why, but not today.

You ever wonder what’s out there? On that island? People say it’s haunted.

 
Timeline/World: Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Aloysius Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 20
Final Word Count: 655 words
 

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I think that rumours are an integral part of life. I try not to add to any of the rumours that roam around but I’ve just heard so many that it’s strange to not talk about them and they always add a little something to a conversion.

That being said, they were a major distraction during the summer drop this year. My last ever forced drop and it felt like one of my longest, it wasn’t pleasant but I think that it was because there were just so many new faces, boys and girls both because that’s what they are at that age, boys and girls.

We were dropped near one of the bigger lakes in the drop-dome, a place we are not usually dropped because there have been so many accidents there because of the island that’s about a five-minute swim away. It’s not far, we can even see animals when they roam the beaches of it because it’s so close but, according to a lot of our new drop mates, rumours have it that the place is haunted.

Now, I just don’t know where that rumour got started. I mean, haunted? I didn’t even know that was a thing at this point. As far as I’m aware, there has never been a single death on that island, so it could certainly not be haunted but what do I know? There hasn’t been a death in our drops but there are the other drop regions and this is the only drop-dome. It’s large, there are countless places to be dropped at but it’s possible that there have been some deaths there.

The only thing I can truly figure, however, is that someone just started a pointless rumour based on the wildlife that lives on that island and the fact that there’s often a pretty thick pea-soup consistency fog rolling in during spring mornings.

I’m more than willing to admit that some of the howling that happens on that island—it does have wolves—is a little disquieting and at times it could maybe be mistaken for a human wail but that’s about it, I’d say. The water of that lake is surprisingly warm and I don’t know if that’s why there’s always so much fog. It actually happens a lot in winter too but I only know that from research that’s been done, they never drop anyone near the island in winter, the area is more treacherous than anywhere else in the dome.

Now, I wouldn’t have minded if it had been mentioned here and there during the drop, that rumour, but most of the new kids, when they woke up in the morning or even huddled around at night before going to sleep, they’d be talking about the island and it what’s on it and the haunting and it was seriously exhausting. I wish I could have tuned them out but it felt like almost a third of our party was comprised of these new kids and they were everywhere. I know it wasn’t the case but it almost felt like every other tent had a newbie in it.

It distracted them, that rumour. They had to be called back to attention so often and reminded to do their chores every time, everything lagged, hunting and gathering took forever and I can actually say that this really was one of the longer drops I’ve been in. After the second day, we realized that sending the kids out for foraging and gathering was almost moot but they had to do it anyway so they were paired with one of us older ones and don’t get me started on hunting and fishing, that one was a complete waste and after that second day, we kept that chore to the more experienced ones of us on that drop.

All in all? Would not repeat. I also no longer have to, so there’s that.