If you’re following me because you’re lost, I have some bad news. I am too.

Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Peculiar
Current Date: April 23, 1402

Character: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 24
Current residence: Peculiar, Erisia
 

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If there is one thing that I’ve never been great at, it’s orienting myself. While in the main dome itself, that was never an issue, not really. It was hard to get lost. There was a lot of terrain to be covered for the size of the dome itself, but there were directions everywhere and if you missed one lift, there was one five to ten minutes’ walk away. There were maps left and right and it was just never much of an issue.

As far as the drop dome was concerned, that was a whole other story. I’m more than a little glad that we had the trackers from the very start—at least, from the moment I was old enough to have to join in on the drops. I know I’m not the only one who has no sense of direction, and using the trackers was a very secretive affair since it was stuff that we weren’t really supposed to have, but still.

I still remember one of the first few drops, I got paired up with an absolute bully but since we were paired up, we were essentially expected to work together. When I walked up to him after gathering up my things from the drop in itself, he gave me this look and told me that if I was following him because I was lost, I wasn’t going to like the little tidbit of news he had to offer me, he was just as lost.

All of that was said with a bit of a sneer on his face and I got the feeling he wasn’t half as lost as he claimed to be, but I didn’t really let it get to me. I let him believe what he wanted, and I just sort of made my way, following the tracker as subtly as I could. He followed me from a distance, but not once did he make any mention that he was glad I’d managed to find our way.

Not that I’d expected him to.

Here, in Peculiar, it’s sort of much the same. If I’m within sight of what has become our base, all’s fine and right. I can make my way around without getting lost, but the moment I get to a certain depth into the densely wooded areas, if I don’t have a tracker with me, I’m absolutely hopeless. I don’t know how the others manage. I know that I’m not the only one who uses the trackers still to this day—solar-powered batteries for the win—but it still baffles me that I can go only a short distance into the woods and get turned around.

Things got a little dire near the beginning of our stay here. Once everyone had moved in, I know I overestimated my ability to not get lost. I figured that everyone was here, I’d only go a short distance in because I knew that there was a clearing only that short distance in and the path was clearly marked and yet, I got absolutely lost.

It took three hours for someone to find me. I wasn’t all that far away from the clearing itself—which is about ten minutes away from our base—but I was still far enough that the ground they had to cover to make sure they found me was fairly large and well, I suppose, to them, it might have only taken an hour or so since I was told that it was about two hours after I said I was heading to the clearing and hadn’t come back, that they sent out a search party.

You can bet that I never went back into the woods without one of the trackers ever again. That or, you know, I just sweet-talk Karter into joining me. It’s always easier to find my way when I’m with someone else, though, on that same note, I don’t mind getting mock-lost if I have Karter with me. It gives me an excuse to stick even closer to him than usual. Not that I need any reason to stick close to him and I know to get all of my daily tasks done before I even think of slacking off and bothering a loving and adoring bother to him but still.

Since we’ve come to be here, I’ve learned plenty of life lessons that I don’t think I ever would have learned back in the dome. Sure, the survival drops have taught us a whole lot of things that have helped us here, but there is still so much more to things than just what we can learn from spending time out in a wilderness dome, surviving for a week or two before we’re picked back up. I’m grateful for the time we checked in on the farming dome too, there’s a lot more to life than what we’re taught on a daily basis and I’m glad we’re here now.

Final Word Count: 822

I think anyone could tell that I was being serious when I said I didn’t want to remember that.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: November 15, 2023

Character: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 21
Current residence: Warwick, New York
 

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No two people will define a traumatic event in the same way. For some, it might be the loss of a pet, a parent, or a friend. For others, it might be not getting into the school you might have wanted. For others, it can be as mundane as dropping something and breaking it. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that last one, it feels so minor, but I’m sure that people have their reasons. The item could have held sentimental value, after all.

In my case, currently, the event I’m trying really hard to forget but I’m having a hard time doing so because I’m still healing up from it; is the crash. When we’re playing in the city, all of us just make our way to the field we’ll be playing by our own means; it’s what makes the most sense. When we’re playing outside the city, we tend to all gather in the mall parking lot where we’ll be getting onto a bus to get to our destination. This ensures that everyone makes it at the same time. The handful of times we didn’t have a bus to get us places, several players were late to the games because they’d underestimated the time they would need—traffic can be a problem.

The game was done and over with we were on the bus home, there was plenty of celebration going on because we’d won the match but… well I don’t know what happened exactly. All I really remember is waking up outside while paramedics triaged the lot of us.

From what I do know, the vast majority of the team got out of the accident unharmed. A few small bumps and bruises at the most. There are fifteen of us in all, players, goalkeeper, substitutes. I think that two had to be bandaged up a bit for bigger cuts but were still considered minimally wounded. Three of us—myself included—ended up having to be taken to the hospital.

I’m fine, mind you. I mean, okay, I have butterfly sticky things on my forehead for a gash I got there but it was mostly the fact that I was concussed that they worried about. My whole body aches a bit but otherwise, I’m okay. I’m just glad that Karter, Royale, Skyler and Santos were part of the group that was mostly okay.

The problem, in the end, is that when I close my eyes, it’s like my mind is trying to put the whole scene back together since I’m missing so many details. From talking to some of the others, just barely because I’m trying to not think about it at all if I can help it, there was a semi-truck coming our way, going way too fast, that seemed to have lost control of its breaks. The few different versions of the story don’t match up. Long story short, our driver swerved to get out of the way, but we hit… something. It made us roll hard into a ditch.

As we were each released in time, I think we all just sort of went home. A week or so later, we all got back together, though I still couldn’t join in to practice, people just sort of got to talking. We’d had one team member who hadn’t made it to the game. He was a sub, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but he more or less came stomping in, claiming that he never again wanted to go to the dentist because it was the end of the world, and he hated it. And that if anyone so much as mentioned it while he was around, he was going to scream.

As though, you know, somehow, the fact that he’d had to, quote-unquote, suffer at the dentist was so much worse than what could have possibly happened to him during the crash. He glowered at anyone who was near him enough, muttering that he was being serious about it all and he didn’t want anyone to even breathe a word of the whole event because he just wanted to forget that ever happening.

Most of us might have ended up just sort of staring at him quietly. Some got in his face about his blatant disregard for what real trauma looks like and I remember how he just scoffed a little. This just brings me back to the point that not all of us see trauma in the same way. I get it, I guess. If going to the dentist is traumatic for you, I’m not going to keep on bringing it up to you, but the least you could do, before barging into a place and making the day all about you, is maybe ask your teammates if they’re okay after the hell they’ve gone through, too.

There are some people that I just don’t get.

Final Word Count: 815

You can’t say I’m being mean just because I won’t do you a reckless favour.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 20
Current residence: Warwick, New York
Final Word Count: 788 words
 

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I don’t know why I thought that, at the general age our group now was at, we all would be more than mature to not end up doing stupidly childish things. I know that not everyone defines childish things the same, but this still feels like something that is really out there in its own way.

Calling someone mean, because they won’t do you a favour that you’re asking for, is childish in my book; I’d even say it’s very childish. Especially since that particular favour is pretty reckless. As it stands, even if I had wanted to say yes to this particular team player, I wouldn’t have been able to thanks to my age.

The favour in question? This particular idiotic dude wanted me to head into the liqueur store and get them a few different things since they’re just nineteen. Hi, yes, hello, I’m not old enough to be drinking and, even if I were, I would never do that kind of thing. Underage drinking isn’t something I condone, and I don’t even like the idea of drinking at all but that might have more to do with the way I was raised than anything else.

When he first came up to me, all honey-sweet and smiling, I was a little wary. It’s not that we don’t get along with him when we’re playing, he’s a great player and we get along relatively well, but he’s always been toeing the limits of things. He’s skirting the line. The law might be right there—a good example being the one he’s currently sulking me for, alcohol—and he’ll try to see if he can’t find a way to sidestep that law to get what he wants. It’s not a great thing, especially if he has any hopes of making it big like most of us do.

I’m not going to lie, I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually gets dropped. He plays great, that’s not the point, the point is that I’m pretty sure that if he gets arrested for one thing or another, it’s not going to look great for his career. He came from another school—there weren’t enough of us at our own school when the scout came—and we only got to know him through playing games and practices, so I don’t know whether or not he’s really focused on the idea of being a professional player.

There are times when I get the feeling that he’s only playing because it was that one thing that presented itself to him when it did and that he’s taken this way out for the time being. He’s been late to practice a good few times, he does seem to pour his heart and soul into the games more than the practices and I suppose that’s mostly fine because the games are most important but you’re not supposed to skimp out on practices just because you think they’re not important enough.

I can’t judge him. I don’t know him on a personal level, but I think it’s really childish of him to pout and act all, well, childishly frustrated—stomped feet and all—because I refused to get him alcohol when he shouldn’t even be drinking it and doing that kind of thing would get me in trouble anyway. I don’t have a fake ID, I don’t want to have a fake ID, I like doing things the way the law tells me I should do them because it’s what makes sense to me, all right?

It’s certainly not because we’re in a state that allows people to buy alcohol when you’re not 21 yet that you should go for it, either. It’s still somewhat rare at this point that we go out of state for games but it’s always a pretty big deal when we do. Can you imagine the sort of chaos that would come if someone on the team was found out to be inebriated before a big game like this? I mean, I suppose that after is a case of whatever, since we are all eighteen and essentially speaking adults, but it’s still not something I really like thinking about if I can help it.

I don’t even really need to warn the others about him asking them for these things, he doesn’t hide his requests from anyone and I’m not the first one he asked. I think that only makes things a little sadder in the long run, that he seems just so desperate to want some alcohol in his life when I don’t even think it’s going to be any good for him in the long run. I’m not his parent, though, so whatever he does, at this point, is his decision.

Yeah, it was totally a joke. I’d never rob a bank. Never. Who do you think I am?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Hopeful Beginnings
Characters: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 21
Current residence: Klahanie, Washington
Final Word Count: 781 words
 

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We have this new co-worker on the team and I’m not sure how I feel about him. I try to not judge people by their looks, but I swear, when I look at him, he has that shifty way of doing things that just sit so weird with me. I mean, yes, there are certain things that I’m private about and I won’t discuss with others, but this was beyond that, it was something else entirely and I’m still not sure how to put it into words.

I’ve even tried talking it out with Karter, figuring that someone with an outside view of things would probably help but it hasn’t. It only ended up making me feel more suspicious of the guy and that’s not exactly a great thing to be feeling when I’ve been doing a lot of closing shifts with him.

Now, as a whole, I guess you could say he works hard. He does the job he’s supposed to, there are times when he does things a little weirdly but maybe I’m just so set in my ways, and I’ve worked here so long that I’m used to doing things my way. Like, he’s supposed to shelf certain items, and sure, he’ll do it, but he’ll only do the front row of things without making sure that the back is done too. Or he won’t double-check the clothing items that have price tags to make sure the prices are okay.

Just, little things, you know. Little things that I’m sure are harmless. Maybe. I guess. I just don’t know.

I’ve quietly brought it up to the boss and he just sort of shakes his head and says that so long as the work is done and the clients aren’t complaining, it’s all right. I’m pretty sure that’s not really the right way to go but I’m just the employee and he’s my boss so I’ve learned to let it go. Somewhat.

It’s hard to let go of the little demon sitting on my shoulder when I walk into the lunch room and the guy is on the phone, talking to someone on the other end—I don’t get people who use the speaker phone thing in public—about how he had things almost all figured out and he just needed to get the keys to the register and then he’d be set.

When he heard me come up, as I guess I tried to make noise to let him know there was someone there and I didn’t want to just hear him keep on talking away about whatever it was he’d been discussing, he gave whoever was on the other end a quick something or other about how he had company and he’d call back later.

I wasn’t even looking at him when he told me he was planning a big joke with his friends, that he’d never rob anyone or any place, really, who did I take him for? I hadn’t asked, I hadn’t prompted him, and his laugh felt stupidly forced as he ‘joked’ that all this was, was his planning a joke on a friend. I told him it was funny, though I’m sure my face betrayed me, and I just gathered my lunch and left. I eat outside as often as I can. Which, be outside, I mean I eat at the mall’s food court, I’m allowed. I’m on my lunch break and I can be anywhere I want to, so long as I clock back in on time.

I very quietly brought the whole thing up to the boss, just for the sake of being on the safe side of things. I didn’t want to chance keeping that knowledge—potential joke or otherwise—to myself, in case, well, yeah, the guy did try something stupid and possibly crazy like rob us. Especially since I’m the one who’s been stuck doing closing with him most evenings.

I don’t like not feeling safe in my work environment. I don’t need the kind of drama I feel this might end up leading to if something does come of it. The boss did tell me that he had cameras everywhere, that there were alarms set up at the register and whatever else. I’m pretty sure he was just telling me what he thought I might have wanted to hear so I could calm down, but it hasn’t helped.

I still don’t trust the guy.

I still don’t want to be the one doing closing with him but, on that same note, I don’t want to dump the others on the team into a situation that could be dangerous to them. I just don’t know what to do.

Don’t you ever wonder why I refuse to tell you these things? It’s because you spread rumours as though you’d die if you stopped.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 21
Current residence: Rockbourne Dome, Erisia
Final Word Count: 800 words
 

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When I first learned about the other place, I was worried. I mean, a spot without a dome? What about the polluted air that kills everything out there, what about the blue tide? Okay sure, the blue tide still has nearly two decades to go before it comes back again but it will come back, what about that?

Alexandro used his drones to check the area out as much as he could. He can’t even get them high enough to get over the mountain range that seems to surround the place on all sides and, far as he can tell, that goes on for so many miles, he has no idea where it ends. I think he and a couple of others were sent off on a sort of safety trip out there a week or two ago. They were packed up with breathers and all, with the done, with enough equipment and food and the rest to make little outposts and keep on moving but even that didn’t turn out to be viable. I think their next option is to bring in one of the old bikes that we found underground.

Yeah, I hear you, there’s no way in the stars’ name that this might ever run but it got fixed up and it actually runs. I don’t know how well it runs but it can only handle two people, so they need to pick someone to go with him on that trip out and just hope for the best. He has in mind to set up like these little signal boost towers so he can always keep up with base camp.

Stuff out there is really growing up and so far, by every study thing that’s been completed, we know that by the mouth of the tunnel, the general area is maybe just a mile or so across but if you travel all of ten minutes on foot, it opens up to five or six and then opens up wider yet. At this point, I think they’ve travelled close to fifty miles off and the place is by that point maybe twenty across. Alexandro tells us that there’s still a huge bit of distance to cover but the further off they go, the denser the forest.

If you can’t tell, I’ve started to wrap my mind around the idea of going over there myself. I think it would give me a purpose. I still don’t care much for this semi-specialization thing I know I have going on but it’s what I can do at this point.

The guy I knew that would fail the exams did and it’s down to two of us and I’ve taken to not really talking to the other guy much. I tried at first, not about anything personal, but the moment I’d tell him something, not even a few hours later, I’d be hearing rumours about these very things and people would be giving me odd looks. Don’t believe me? I did a little ‘study’ thing about it.

I told the guy something completely random that had nothing to do about me, something that I figured no one else could really make up. I told him about how I’d managed to pull a fish as long as my leg during one of my first drops and look at that, the following morning, as I was heading in to our training, I was stopped no less than four times by four different people who were all wide-eyed curious and wanting to know about the fish I caught when I was just so young. I told them that it was all bullocks and that they shouldn’t listen to tall tales from the guy they’d heard it from and that was mostly that.

Now he wonders why I don’t tell him anything anymore. I think I stared at him for a while before telling him about the little experiment and man, he got so pissed off. He tried to hit me. I think that for a moment there he forgot who I was, and he didn’t manage to land a single punch. I got him subdued without much of a fuss and I honestly told my instructor that it was likely I was going to just drop out because I couldn’t do the classes anymore, they just weren’t doing it for me.

No point in telling them why I’m really going to drop out. I just need to see if I can’t convince Karter to join me out there and we can help with the building of stuff and the settling the place up. I think it’ll do us good.

I know that we can’t all ‘disappear’ at once, so us joining in the group little by little seems to be our best option.

Some of the things that matter most to me are in this very room and one is standing right by the door. Any guesses?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Hopeful Beginnings
Characters: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 20
Final Word Count: 737 words
 

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For a while, I thought I was really oblivious to a lot of things but, watching other people try to almost desperately get their point across to the person they like makes me realize that I’m not that oblivious. Of course, I suppose it helps that I’ve been with Karter for years at this point though it wasn’t always all clear-cut. There were things that we had to figure out but I’d like to think that we figured these things out together.

For a few years, at least before we both got out of school, I think I had big dreams of making it big. I wanted to play football with the professionals. That didn’t really pan out, not in that way. I do still play, though, I’m part of a local team and we go out now and again but it’s not what keeps me going in life.

At this point, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do with my life. I’ll be honest, I never thought I’d make it this far. With my father acting the way he used to, I didn’t hold much hope for the future. I had a feeling he’d try to marry me off the way he’d planned for Alisa and Annabelle. I already knew, though I still was pretty young, that most of us would only be assets for him, something he would use.

So, once I graduated, I actually kept at the job I’d found the summer prior. It’s a pretty big sports place. We sell the shoes, the clothes, some of the equipment, it’s pretty neat. I didn’t have a whole lot of hours at first, I still was going to school after all, but once I got out, they offered me a full-time spot and I was hard-pressed to say no. It’s not the best job in the world but it’s a good enough job that I can afford the roof over my head—the roof over our heads.

My coworkers aren’t so bad either but that particular mention brings me back to the point where I feel the need to state that I thought I was oblivious to a lot of things, but compared to this one coworker of mine, I was enlightened from the very beginning.

These two have been flirting on and off for months. He’s clear about his intentions—at least, to me he’s been clear about his intentions but she’s just not getting it. Every time he brings up things like dates and gifts and—coming up soon now—Valentines she just sorts of brushes him off saying that he’s such a sweet friend. You’d think she’s doing the friend-zone thing but I know she was being oblivious and it became clear earlier.

But yeah, earlier, he was clearly exasperated and I think he’d been pretty close to calling it quits but he just sort of went for it all. Loud and clear, as she was preparing to step out of our little dining area, he stated that some of the things that mattered the most to him were in this very room, and that one was standing right by the door. He gave her a look, that look. The ‘go on, I dare you, ignore this’ sort of look. He tipped his head as she just stared at him, open-mouthed, he asked her if she had any guesses and she just actually sort of teared up.

I’m not going to lie, I had to move out of the way and fast because she was jumping into his arms and kissing the daylights out of him seconds later. She would have run me over if I hadn’t moved and I wish Karter had been in to see that one. I know that a few had bets going on as to whether or not she’d finally clue in and I would have felt really bad if she’d turned away from him considering all the flirting they’d been doing.

I’m glad that we’re allowed relationships between coworkers, so long as it doesn’t affect our work ethic, so I’m hoping that this thing these two now have isn’t going to be a problem. As far as I’m concerned, I can be as professional as I need to be while I’m at work, even with Karter nearby. Work is work, home and my private life is something else entirely.

I would never let you walk into danger alone, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to hop into any sort of trouble you find.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 18
Final Word Count: 695 words
 

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I’d like to think that the project-for-the-year that I did over the course of my last year at school was a success. On that same note, I know that I’m not going to be able to really keep up with it anymore. I believe that my younger siblings still at the school might, very well, keep that project going, but I’m not going to force them to.

In a way, though, I don’t know if it was because I was focused on getting more people to understand just how much bullying hurts others that I saw less of it or, exactly for that reason, but the other way around, was I too focused on the project to see what was going on around me? I don’t think so.

Through the year, we’ve done meet-ups, we had an anonymous box for anyone who felt like they needed to tell us something but couldn’t, we had outings out and around, mostly just to spread the word and while there were a few bad seeds out and about, we didn’t really encounter people that really needed to be dealt with.

During some of the meet-ups, we had kids from the school and kids from the surrounding neighbourhoods who’d come up to talk to us or to just listen to what we had to say. I’ve never been much of a public speaker but I liked working on that project, it felt good and it sort of gave me a sense of purpose.

One of our last meet-ups was only a few weeks before the end of the school year; I didn’t expect too many people to show up. The day was really nice and bright and people possibly would have preferred to spend time out in that sun than with us. I mean, we’d had a lot of rain over the past two weeks and I didn’t really want to be there either but I was hosting the thing so not showing up would have been pretty stupid if you ask me.

There were more people than I expected, it was surprising and I’m pretty sure it was one of our bigger meets. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that so many people had shown up when the day was just so beautiful. Within our visitors, there was a small group of friends that I’ve playfully labelled as ‘the trouble seekers’. It’s not even that they’re out looking for trouble; it’s more akin to the fact that I often hear one of them talking about how they would never let their friend walk into danger alone, but that they certainly wouldn’t be willing to hop into any sort of trouble they’d find.

That usually seems to be the general subject of their discussion when we’re on break in the middle of the meet-ups and we’re offering either some juice or quick snacks that were very kindly prepared by Alisa. I used to go to each small group when I did the meet-ups, I’d talk to them a bit if they were wanting to but I guess I was just making sure that they didn’t have any questions.

All in all, it’s been a good school year. There have been ups and downs, though there have been more ups than downs but I’m not going to lie, I’m glad it’s over. It’s weird to think that I’m done with school as a whole; at least, I’m done with mandatory school. I might yet opt for higher learning but I still have my sights set on professional footie and there have been recruiters around lately. There were a few during our last season and it looked good but nothing’s set in stone yet. Which, well it’s fine, we’re still young and we’ve got time to figure stuff out.

I know that not everyone believes that professional footie is a ‘job’ that will hold me through to the end of my days but I’m serious about it and I’ll do what it takes, just you wait and see. If it doesn’t pan out, I’ll find something else but, for now, big dreams.

You don’t learn from your mistakes and that’s what makes us so different.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 20
Final Word Count: 692 words
 

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I’ve given my name to stay here and be one of the instructors and I feel like I might be finding my place a little. I’m still not sold on the idea, I still want to do so much more but I’ve looked at the list of specializations and there’s just nothing that speaks to me, it’s so frustrating, I can’t even put it into words, not in any way that would make sense. I just don’t know what to do with myself but the mock-specialization choice I’ve made to stay here and train others is mostly okay.

I had to pick something, I couldn’t stay behind with the generalized classes, it was killing me, little by little. I know I sound like I’m being dramatic but I still felt like I was spending my time around kids who were thirteen and fourteen years old, it was that bad. There just was so much chaos most of the time that I went back home with a headache that wouldn’t go away.

I missed my last few days in generalized classes, however. I came down with the flu and I had to spend two days hospitalized. Something my father would never have allowed before but the fever was high enough that they were worried it would fry my brain, so I spent two days in a single, small hospital room with plastic protective walls for a mostly germ-free stay.

Anyway.

The classes on my schedule now are different and they were hard at the beginning because I still didn’t have all of my strength back but I’ve climbed that wall and I’m on top of things.

There only are two others with me in this semi-specialization and I’m starting to think that before long, there’s only going to be two of us because one of the guys—he looks my age but I know that can be deceiving—just isn’t fit for this. It’s clear in his behaviour, it’s clear in how he’s just not able to learn from the simple enough mistakes he makes and the one teaching us has told him time and time again that he needs to learn from his mistakes; otherwise, he’s never going to make it out of this training.

As far as I’m aware, this is actually his third attempt and I think that after three attempts if you fail the final tests, you technically get dropped back to generalized schooling but if you’re over the age limit for it, you’re pretty much just… well out there. You have to find yourself a job, one that doesn’t need any specialization. There are plenty of those, sure, but it’s not really the same as doing something you want for the rest of your life.

I really don’t know if I’m going to fit in here and if I’m going to love it, but it’s something I’m good at, I’m a good soldier, I’m more than just a good soldier, Father has seen to that and it’s probably the only good thing he’s done for us, though he’s pushed us so hard that at times, it’s hard to think of ourselves as anything other than soldiers though we’ve come a long way from then.

All in all, I suppose it’s just a matter of time. I see what comes of this, I see how I do with it, I see what it does for me. There’s really nothing else at this point. I don’t want to have to struggle to find a job without a specialization, I’m not meant for that. I’d rather try my hand at something I might not love, but still will be good at, than just do nothing.

I feel bad for this guy, though, he does look like he’s giving it his all but, the more I look at him, the more it seems to just go in one ear, go out the other; especially if he’s on his third try, which means he’s at least a couple of years older than I am and he’s too old for generalized learning, so who knows what’s going to happen to him.

You wouldn’t believe what I’ve had to put up with today.

 
Timeline/World: Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 19
Final Word Count: 667 words
 

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I’m graduating next summer. I’ve been looking forward to that for years and yet, at the same time, I’m dreading it. I haven’t picked a specialization and while I know that I’m not the only one in my family, I still feel like I’ve fallen behind.

Of everything they offer at this point, nothing had caught my attention and held it for more than a few moments. For a while, I thought about giving my name for the construction work since I helped with that but I got so sick and tired of that within just days of helping that this thought went way out the window. I thought about a lot of things and a lot of options and there’s just been… nothing.

I’m a very physical person and I’m beginning to think that I’m going to have to opt for the whole thing where I end up staying right where I am and I teach others, possibly the physical side of things. The training, the combat. I’m not the best but I’m certainly not one of the worst at it so I figure I could manage that.

For now, I’m in general classes. I learn the same stupid crap as everyone else who hasn’t picked a specialization. I mean, no one is forced to pick one, but work, if you don’t, is slim. It’s better if you get a head start while you’re still going through years thirteen and fourteen so that once you graduate; you’re good to get started at least part-time.

I feel like I’ve been stuck with kids who are so much younger than me, it’s probably just their maturity level or the fact that discipline isn’t quite what it used to be but I feel like I’m with kids going through their sixth or seventh years. Maybe I’m just too old for this bullshit, maybe I should just pick a specialization so I don’t have to deal with this. Maybe I will.

I mean, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just too wound up and still too stuck up into perfect soldier mode though I’ve made a lot of progress as far as that’s concerned. More progress than I thought I would ever manage but I do have Karter to thank for that. Without him, I don’t think I’d be quite as human as I am now. Maybe I just need a bit more humanizing but the chaos in the yard today was exhausting and the man dealing with it all didn’t even seem to be willing to bother to call order into the group, it was that bad.

Maybe it’s also the fact that I woke up congested this morning and that rarely bodes well for me. I don’t get sick often but when I do, I tend to get sick to the point of needing to be kept bed-bound—hospitalization was never an option with my father—and even being kept bed-bound was not something he tended to even allow. I get so sick that my brain tries to fry itself and me along with it for about two or three days before I start climbing my way back up the slippery slope to health. Maybe that’s why I felt like today was an absolutely chaotic day.

I hope not, but I don’t know that it could be anything else. The last time I woke up congested was three years ago and they had to get me in and out of an ice bath every few hours to keep my brain from frying up. I know that Argus has managed to make a cooling blanket since, something a bit like his heating blankets but this one is cooled with some strange gel packs and it all sounds confusing to me but I know they’ve had to use it for someone else in the hospital a few months ago and it was working well.

So if it comes to that, it will, I just really hope it doesn’t.

They are perfectly normal.

Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Birds of a Feather
Characters: Antoine Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 17
Final Word Count: 612 words
 

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I don’t understand why some people feel the need to judge others. It doesn’t benefit us in any way to point fingers and claim that someone isn’t a good person, or that they look bad or that they act childishly. Everyone in this world is different and that’s what makes it so interesting.

I know that not everyone thinks this way but I wish I didn’t have to deal with people who will put others down because it makes them feel better. Not everyone feels into that perfect little mould most people have of the ‘good’ human being. Not everyone is what is considered normal but normalcy is subjective. No two people will see ‘normal’ as the same thing.

In years prior, I wouldn’t have said anything when bullies were doing their thing. I was just trying to focus on being who I was, on kicking the ball around when I wasn’t in class; I was just trying to mind my own life but some months ago, I read a story about a teen boy who was bullied so much that he opted to take his life instead of living with all of the bullying. Suicide takes strength. People aren’t seeing the whole picture when they say that suicide is an easy way out, it’s not.

That story was so detailed that it just struck a chord in me, it made me realize that everyone deserves a chance at peace, no matter what. So I started to stand up to the bullies who were bothering my classmates.

You have to understand, bullying is actually against school rules and, for the most part, it’s not an issue, at least, not during school hours. Things change after hours though I wish they didn’t. I know it’s inevitable that there will always be bullies and I’ve gotten into one fight so far. I came out on top but that’s not to say I’m proud of it. I just did what I felt like I had to do, that’s all.

This upcoming school year is my last year here. I’ve been thinking about a project I want to work my way through during that school year but I need to bring it up to the higher power of the school. That won’t be too difficult but I think it could result in something good.

Of course, I’m going to need to enlist the help of other people but I’d like to think that this isn’t going to be an issue either. My brothers will help me, significant others will likely help as well and friends might as well ask to join in. If I can get as many people to join this project as I can, I might manage to make the school an even safer place.

People need to understand that everyone is ‘normal’ in their own way. There is no true definition of what is normal and what isn’t, not when you think about it. I want to make that clear to everyone and I want to extend the no-bullying safety net as far as I can manage it.

Now, this isn’t something I want to do with my life, I have big dreams about going pro with the footie but I think that while I’m still studying, trying to make the world around me a bit of a better place is something I can give a try and I don’t know that there really are any better ways than this. My fingers are crossed that I can make this idea a reality; I really think that the school could benefit from this project and if it spreads to other schools, why not?