Some part of me hopes this will fail, so I don’t have to watch this anymore.

Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Peculiar
Current Date: March 22, 1402

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

---

Adapting to life in Peculiar was a challenge at first, but it’s a challenge I think I was more than prepared for. I might not have been able to ensure that I was ready for every little thing that could come our way—because who could predict anything in a new environment—but I was ready for a lot of it. The hard work was endless, it felt like. Working the land, fixing up the housing that had somehow already been there, and putting our own buildings up. The first winter was hard on all of us because we’d never had as much snow as we got but the air was just so crisp and different from the drop zone.

During that first full year, I think that most of us probably fell to bed and slept out of sheer exhaustion. We all made sure to take some days off, and during the times when work still needed to be done, we figured out a schedule so we all could have days off while others kept to the daily tasks, a bit of a rotation of shifts thing and it worked out well for us. We still work that way.

I know that some of us still keep a loose track of the days and time, mostly for the rare visit back into the underground, but it also helps us prepare for the season changes—though that can usually be felt in the air when it is coming around so it’s not really a necessity but it’s interesting to know how long we’ve been here, already.

I don’t know that I ever really had bad dreams or nightmares before in my life. Maybe, once in a blue moon, I’d dream of something that would unsettle me, but there hadn’t really been much of anything. Even after the A-frame incident of the last grinder, I don’t remember any bad dreams or nightmares, despite the fact that I could have died if I’d not caught myself. I don’t know how my mind works, in the end. I just know that these things don’t really get to me, I guess, is what I’m trying to say.

A few days ago, out of nowhere, I woke up in a cold sweat. Thinking about what little I do remember of the dream I was having before I did wake up, I’m not even sure why I woke up in said cold sweat. Our bedroom was slightly chilly, but we tend to keep it at a cool temperature in the colder months and just add on a couple of blankets. It wasn’t at a bad temperature, and I wasn’t overheating under the blankets. It really was a cold sweat and not a heat sweat, which, it’s strange to think that these are technically two very different things.

There was the bully from the A-frame incident, sneering at me, telling me that some part of him hoped that I would fail to catch myself the next time so he wouldn’t have to watch me struggle anymore. None of that made sense. Am I perfect? Certainly not. Did I excel at everything? Not really, but not very far from, at least, not when it came to everything our father had taught us. I was going to say instill, but instill isn’t a strong enough word, it wasn’t just an idea of something he put into our minds, he taught us to be perfect soldiers and we were, in many ways.

As far as the dream is concerned, I don’t even know how he came to be; I don’t really remember anything other than that one scene, but possibly because it was the last thing that happened before I woke up. Why any of this would leave me in a cold sweat, my heart hammering briefly before it calmed down, I have no idea.

I did the one thing I do best in situations like these when I can at least manage to do them, I turned around, nestled back against Sera, breathed in his scent and settled back into a light doze until it was time for both of us to properly get back up and get our day going.

The more I think about it, the more I’m baffled as to the reason why I dreamed of that at all. Our life is peaceful now, compared to what it was under the dome. Though I don’t know that peaceful is the right word for it. We work hard but we don’t play quite as hard as we used to; no more grinders, no more survival drops four times a year. We just live our lives to the fullest by doing what we need to keep everything healthy and safe. We take care of our crops, we take care of our steady-growing numbers of livestock.

I don’t even know how it was managed, but somehow, we now have a handful of cattle, swine, and even two goats. We have roaming dogs and even a few cats; it’s been a strange change of pace, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Final Word Count: 853

Whenever you ask if I’m okay, you never seem to understand that I’m always running on at least three hours of sleep.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: March 1, 2024

Character: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 25
Current residence: Warwick, New York
 

---

It didn’t really take me long to find a new job. It was a little further away than I would have liked, and I end up spending almost two hours on the road every day, but it’s been worth it. There haven’t been any team bonding exercises, no idiots that filled other people’s houses with balloons while that person was away and nothing for me that really set off any alarm bells. I mean, I’ve been working there for a little over two years now and other than the drive there and back, it’s been a charm, working there.

A few weeks ago, my supervisor and her own supervisor asked to have a chat with me. At first, I think I found myself worrying needlessly. I hadn’t done anything wrong, there had been no news of cuts in the funding, and there were plenty new people that had come after me, whatever it was they wanted to talk to me about couldn’t be that bad. I managed to keep whatever anxiety likes to nibble its way around my mind now and again mostly down. Helped by a cup of soothing tea.

So, on the set day, I walked into the supervisor’s office, knocked, and was told to come in, so I did. I sat down and just watched both of them for a quiet moment. I didn’t know what to expect of the whole meeting and what little my brain might have tried to think this meeting was all about, I was very, very wrong.

I was wrong in a good way, though.

As it turns out, they do have work-from-home spots on the team. It just requires that the proper computer equipment be installed in a secure room in the home. I’d never really known this because it had never been brought up while I’d been around. I mean, that’s fair, I’d been fine with the drive there and back morning and afternoons, or late evenings to early following mornings. Those were uncommon but they had happened. My main love is to be at the telescope, but I know that there are plenty of other projects for me to work on.

So, with all that in mind, they offered me a work-from-home position as one had opened up. They had brought back into the little office one other worker who hadn’t been handling the work-from-home well. I didn’t ask for any details, they didn’t offer any as it was none of my business and that was that. It was on a trial basis but both of them seemed to believe that I would be a good fit to work from home and it would save me on gas—the joke’s on them on that front, I drive an electric car. Still. I wasn’t going to say no.

It would take a couple of weeks for them to get the proper computer stuff ordered, then delivered to my place, for a technician to come in and install everything in a room that already served its purpose as an office. I’d talked things over with Seraiah and we were fine with near-fully converting it as mine, adding a lock on things and all. He had his own room that served as a studio, so this wasn’t a huge change for either one of us.

During those two weeks, I still worked from the office, but they brought Ronald back into the office from his own now-defunct work-from-home position.

To say that he looked like crap most of the time is an understatement, and anyone asking him if he was okay would earn the very same response every single time. Did we not understand that whenever we saw him, he was always running on at least just three hours of sleep? I get loving the night sky; as a teen, I had to find ways to fit my night star gazing into my schedule as otherwise I often felt as though I couldn’t function, but I still got more than just three hours of sleep.

There was also the fact that I was a teenager and while supposedly teens need more sleep than adults, I feel like it’s the other way around at times and I could bounce back easier. Now, if I don’t get between six and eight hours of sleep, I feel as though I need a cup of tea with a lot of theine to get through my day or I might not manage to function quite so well but I’ve also managed to find a good routine that works out well for me.

There will always be days with shorter nights but they’re uncommon and now that I’ve settled into this work-from-home routine, it just seems so much easier. I can do small tasks around the house during my breaks and my lunches, and I get two more hours to myself—and for Seraiah—every day and I don’t know that I’d want to change this at any point. I just hope that they see that I can make this work.

Final Word Count: 840

Something is distinctly wrong here, but I can’t place it.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Hopeful Beginnings
Characters: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 22
Current residence: Klahanie, Washington
Final Word Count: 766 words
 

---

The end-of-session project with Ludwik two years ago took so much out of me that I nearly considered not registering for my classes the following autumn. I was so burnt out that even Seraiah mentioned that maybe I should take at least one session off to try and get back to my feet. I was physically exhausted. It had been a huge project but my use of the new system the university had in place helped to at least ensure that the professor knew I’d been the only one who’d done any effort on the project.

Not that Ludwik failed the class, but he had himself a barely passing grade. I suppose that was good enough for me. For a guy who only came to class because his parents forced him to, I think it was too good but I’m sure he hated being in class as much as I hated having to deal with the whole thing on my own.

If he could have gotten away with not showing up at all, I think he’d have done it. I do remember our discussion, though; it’s been two years, but his statement still remains with me. How he didn’t want to be in that class, how his father had forced him to it and would ensure that he had passing grades, so long as he showed up to every class. He did show up. He showed up late, wearing garish pyjamas but he showed up.

When the project was over, I was filled with such a sense of relief that I cried. I cried and I slept for nearly a full day, and I think that I scared Seraiah with that. He’d known the effort I was putting into this, he’d known how exhausting it was and I’m sure that he would have tried helping me if it had been something he’d known anything about. Our passions in life are so very different from one another’s but I think that this is what makes it work for us.

One of the first classes I attended in the autumn following that exhausting spring session was confusing, to say the least. I think a lot of the students—and I say that somewhat loosely as I feel as though there were possibly only twenty of us in the much smaller classroom—were as confused as I was when the professor started in on her lecture for the day.

The subject she spoke of had nothing to do with what she should have been teaching us and while I figured that it was possibly a tangent of sorts, I think I mostly felt that there just was something off, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Now, the professor didn’t even really introduce herself, she didn’t explain how things would work out. She merely walked into the classroom, started talking and told us to start taking notes.

It was only the next time we had that particular class that things became clearer. Somehow, in some way, our real professor hadn’t been able to come in and they’d sent a sub. That, alone, shouldn’t have been an issue, but it had been a last-minute thing, and nothing had been prepared on the subject, nothing had been handed out, and nothing had been worked on.

Long story short, that poor woman didn’t even know what we were supposed to be taught when she stepped into that classroom. I feel as though they should have just posted on the door that the class was dismissed for the day, and we’d have caught back up on the following one. I know I was confused when an older man stepped into the room instead of the woman from last time. The quiet murmuring going around let me know that I wasn’t the only one who was baffled by that.

Thinking back, it wasn’t the only time that this particular professor couldn’t show up to class. The other times, at the very least, they left a notice for us and for the most part, I think it wasn’t all that terrible a thing. I’m sure they possibly could have found someone to replace him on those particular days, but it might be possible, just the same, that what he taught was just one of those things that no one else had really mastered.

I don’t honestly know, and I never bothered asking. I don’t think it would have changed much for me, or others, in the long run. He didn’t miss often enough that it caused issues, at the very least.

One last backstab, just what I needed. Because one wasn’t enough.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 22
Current residence: Rockbourne Dome, Erisia
Final Word Count: 771 words
 

---

It was just after the winter grinder that we decided that we’d had enough. Little by little, my siblings and Seraiah’s own, as well as partners paired to each member of the families have been trying to figure out how and when to head into Peculiar. The place is coming along, it will be ready for just about everyone by the time the summer drop comes to an end. I know that this was the primary date decided because it’s going to be the last mandatory drop that anyone on either side of the families and partners is going to have to attend.

Drops after that one are on a volunteer basis and I don’t know that any single one of us truly has any desire to keep on going. I know that I haven’t honestly gone on a drop since I’ve graduated, except for the winter one. I think that we’re more or less all there during that one since it’s the hardest one to deal with and we look out for one another.

The grinder was the last straw, though. I’ve never had issues with the grinder before, Father raised us to be ready for anything and we were. Since his death, we’ve all become a little more human. Becoming more human, however, means that, you know what, I don’t go to the drops as often and while I work hard on the grinders, I don’t see them as a competition anymore, even though, in a way, it still is.

I was making my way up a seriously slippery A-frame when someone else managed to come up next to me and without any regard for safety, because, you know, it’s still a competition to a lot of the younger kids still, they tried to shove me off to the side and off the frame, as though somehow there wasn’t enough room for the two of us on there. Thankfully, my reflexes saved me from a broken neck, but I still ended up dislocating my shoulder as I grabbed onto anything I could to keep myself from tumbling off. The A-frame is ridiculously tall and at an angle that makes it hard to deal with on good days, in the snow and with ice, it’s almost a death trap.

It’s not the first time that little things like these happen. Most of the time, it really is just the competitive nature of the grinder that gets to people but, at that particular point—and especially when I realized who it was that had tried to shove me to a painful fall—I decided that I’d had enough. For one thing, I had to slide back down the frame to get to one of the nearby medics, so they’d get my shoulder back where it belonged. Until the change in leaders, I would have been expected to keep on going, despite the shoulder, but since the change, at the very least, I didn’t have to deal with going back up the A-frame. I went around, continued on my way.

When I made it to the range, the idiot that had tried to push me off was still there, doing what he had to and man, he sneered at me when he saw me. Thanks to Father, we’ve all learned to hold our guns through either one of our hands. So even with my shoulder as it was, I was able to change resting sides and get through that portion of the grinder with minimal issues.

But really, I’m tired of people acting this way. I get that it’s the point, but it’s not about the survival of the fittest, especially not on the grinder. Shoving someone off of the high-side of the A-frame isn’t going to net you any extra points and after I got done, and once I’d had a talk with Sera, we both figured that the backstabbing was too much. Neither one of us is overly known as far as the population is concerned. Sure, we’re both kids of two of the biggest family there had been, but other than that, no one really knows who we are.

So, we’ve packed up our things and I’ll probably be one of the first permanent residents to Peculiar. I know that Sera is worried about Sam, but we both know Sam will come when the time is right, as will my siblings. We all just need to be patient. We’re all committed to this, and I don’t think anyone will be able to change our minds on the subject. We need this new start to our lives, and we’ll take it.

Is this going too far? Surely it’d be okay? I mean, who doesn’t like a house full of balloons?

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 22
Current residence: Warwick, New York
Final Word Count: 763 words
 

---

Watching them work was like waiting for the train to run off of its rails.

I didn’t really want to get involved and I can usually talk my way out of most things, but they claimed that it was a team-bonding exercise.

What other types of weird team bonding exercise am I supposed to expect when, right now, they drove us to one of our teammate’s houses while he wasn’t there—isn’t that weirdly counterproductive to team bonding?—and they’ve been filling balloons with both regular air and helium, claiming that it was good and funny and that he’d love it.

There are four of us here and only two are actively giggling away as they fill in the balloons, I haven’t set foot in the house though they dragged me to the back yard where they set up their camp. I suppose it makes us harder to see from the front, but I still so happen to think that this is absolutely stupid.

The other young woman on the team has half-helped but, at the same time, she keeps on pacing. One moment she looks into the house, asking herself, more than anyone else, if this is going too far. My answer? Yes. I keep my mouth shut. We’re both the new ones on the team and I’m starting to rethink this place. It isn’t the team I wanted to be part of, but it was the one that had an open spot.

Then, she’ll start pacing again, watching the other two guys giggling away as they fill balloons and throw them into the house. She mutters something about how it surely had to be okay, right? It was all in good fun. After all, who doesn’t like a house full of balloons, right? I can give you an answer to that. I don’t. But we also have three cats and delicate decorations here and there that could fall and break if jostled by those balloons.

There again, it isn’t really so much the decorations I’d be worried about as the cats. Our newest addition is an easily spooked foster and we found her hiding in a far corner of the attic last time we lost track of her. Neither one of us knows how she made it there and we wouldn’t want a repeat. The other doesn’t have pica, but you’d think he does because he likes to chew everything. Can you imagine if somehow these balloons started to pop? He’d be on those elastic pieces in no time and then what?

Does this guy have any pets? Is this normal behaviour out of these idiots? It took me far too long to shake my head and walk away. I couldn’t do it. I don’t care if they claim it’s good team bonding, it just isn’t. It makes me hate these guys in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise. I already hadn’t liked them much from the first meeting, but this just proves things.

I spared the girl a single glance before I walked away but she was still pacing. I don’t even know if they noticed me walking away. I got back to the car, drove back to the office, talked to the boss, told her I was sorry, but I just couldn’t keep the job. When she asked me why, let me tell you, I didn’t hesitate to tell her about what the other idiots were right in the middle of doing.

Is that considered tattling? It might have been but considering that the other guy they were doing this to didn’t know and that they were doing this during work hours, I’m pretty sure there was a violation of sorts somewhere in there. She looked pretty appalled, apologized for their behaviour, asked me if I really couldn’t stay, even on another team but I just told her that I couldn’t.

Even in another team, I would have had to be around these idiots, and I don’t think it would have made for a comfortable working environment, especially considering it seemed as though they were about to be busted. I did tell her that the other new girl hadn’t taken any active part in the whole thing, because, well it was the truth.

She wished me good luck in my future projects, I thanked her, gathered what very few things I’d had with me when I first had come in and the rest is mostly history. I walked out. I called Sera, told him about the whole stupid thing and drove my way home. I’d find something else, I knew.

I’ve never messed up that badly. I can’t believe it.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 22
Final Word Count: 748 words
 

---

The wedding was a small affair. We didn’t want anything over the top; it was just a small ceremony though the guest list could have been huge if we’d given it a chance. As it was, we went for the simplest of options. We saw a Justice of Peace for the wedding itself and once that was done—it was just Sam at his side and Augustin at mine—we headed back home where the rest of our families were waiting. Our families, their partners, it was a lot of people but we still kept it as simple as possible, it was a celebration like any others for most of us. A celebration of joy.

Mind you, we’d planned on doing something a little bigger, with more people for the wedding itself but after we witnessed the absolute flop of a friend’s wedding due to a common friend during the ceremony, we decided that mock-eloping was the better option.

Now, the issue was simple enough, we had invited that common friend to our own ceremony, Seraiah had even offered for the man in question to be one of his groomsmen. I think he’d opted for three since, well, I had too. It was hard to pick between my brothers but Augustin so happened to be the one who was free on the day we went to see the Justice of Peace, so that settled that and neither Asarel nor Aryan seemed to mind.

During our friend’s wedding, the common friend in question showed up not only drunk but not exactly looking very clean. Still, they allowed him to have his spot but it was a disaster from beginning to end. I’m told that when they went to see him—a family member to the idiot—the following morning, he was full-on weeping and apologizing about how he’d never messed up that badly and he didn’t know what had come over him and that he’d never do it again.

As it stood, that hadn’t exactly been good enough and just, it wasn’t happening. We couldn’t chance him doing the same thing at our wedding and in the end; we opted for getting married in private with just four of us in the room along with the Justice of Peace. The celebration afterward was beautiful if simple and well, I’m not going to go on about the honeymoon because I don’t kiss and tell but let’s just say that we spent a bit of time in Ireland, in Italy and in Greece. It was heavenly.

A few months down the road after the wedding, the friend in question—someone I had only known somewhat as he’d been part of the band at one point but hadn’t stayed very long—came to ask us about when the wedding was finally really taking place and when he’d get to make his speech and you know what, it was sad.

Why?

We’d sent him an invite for the celebration that took place after the small ceremony. We’d sent a few of those out, all via registered mail so we both knew that he’d gotten the invite. We both knew that he’d read it because, lo and behold, he’d actually returned to us the RSVP ticket with his preferred meal of choice. He knew when it was happening, he knew the date, the time, he knew the place.

He didn’t come.

We didn’t really bother answering any of his questions. We told him we’d see him later—which, you know, hasn’t happened yet and I’m grateful—and we went on our way. I didn’t even look back his way when we walked off, I didn’t think I’d like to see that lost and confused look on his face. I can’t stand drunken people and even as early as it had been on that morning, he’d reeked of alcohol, old and new. His clothes were filthy, he was unshaven and he looked like he’d been sleeping in a trash can for a while. It wasn’t really a pretty sight.

I know that some people drink because they need to forget. I know that some people can’t help themselves but there is always help to be had and there are so many foundations and meeting places and people just willing to help, you only have to be willing to work towards being sober.

If that comes to happen? I think we might be willing to welcome him back into our lives but only then.

That nerd. How dare they plan the perfect proposal with all my needs in mind?

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 21
Final Word Count: 736 words
 

---

Proposals aren’t this big thing, not here. For the most part, things are still old-fashioned and a lot of people are still working by the bid system, though, from what I’ve heard, many are just sort of trying to wrap their mind around the new freedom still and it feels good to know that our society is changing. It’s changing little by little, but it’s changing.

Seraiah is the one who brought up that maybe we should exchange our tags, that is what a proposal is about here, but he didn’t just do it like that without preamble or anything else, oh no. He planned the perfect, even if still simple, proposal with all of my favourite things included in the little display.

I don’t know how down-to-the-minute he had planned it, but on the evening that he asked, the sky out and beyond the dome was clear and stars were speckled throughout, that was the first point in his favour. I just love all things night sky and stars and he knows it. We walked to the lake sitting at the far edge of the dome, not very far from where we both grew up and settled down on the bench there. It was just a quiet, peaceful moment that would have been perfect in itself but then, he shifted.

I’ve read a few books from the underground where they used to propose with rings and, once you were married, the wife would get another ring to go along with her engagement one. The thought baffles me, that’s just not how it works here. His shifting isn’t what drew my attention so much as the fact that he was reaching back to undo the small chain on which we all keep our tags.

Truth be told, I might have gaped at him a little as I watched him take the chain off and settle on one knee. That is definitely a book and history thing and it made my heart flutter, I’m not going to lie.

As I’m not a kiss-and-tell person, I won’t repeat the whole beautiful little sort of speech he told me. Let’s just say that it brought tears to my eyes because it was perfect, beautiful and was totally an ‘us’ thing. It was wonderful, just like him. I was crying when I fumbled with my own chain and he actually let me. This was just something big for the two of us and I think that we both knew that certain motions had to be done just so. It took me a few moments to get my chain unhooked and it was with trembling hands that I was removing one of the two still-shiny tags off.

Our fingers brushed as we exchanged those tags. Here is where it differs from one person to another, I think. Some will set their tags on the chain of their fiancé while others will exchange tags and set the tags themselves on their own chains and that is what we did.

I was in such a happy little state of bliss that I don’t honestly remember much from the rest of the evening. Just that I was warm, perfect and so happy at his side and nothing else mattered.

What I do remember is that it was late by the time we got back up and headed back to the little place we call home. It’s not even on the top level. While we both were raised there, it didn’t feel like a necessity to stay there as well and we found a comfortable place to call our own on the second level.

The tags still feel so warm against my skin every time I think about it. The whole sweet evening happened months ago at this point but I still remember it as though it was yesterday. At least, the important parts I do remember, the rest, clearly, wasn’t as important as the sight of my tag sitting next to his after he’d clearly planned the perfect evening for us.

There have been plenty of perfect evenings following that one but none quite as absolutely perfect as it and I don’t think it will be any time soon that another memory will take over that one. Except, of course, the eventual day when we will move on to being legally paired until the end of time.

I will never be on time for anything and expecting that out of me will only bring you disappointment.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Hopeful Beginnings
Characters: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 20
Final Word Count: 813 words
 

---

A few months ago, I know I made mention of someone constantly coming late to class, someone who had shown up—and still has done it on three more occasions—to said class wearing pyjamas. They are a distraction, a frustration, and I wanted to avoid them until the end of the session, just four months from now but my luck ran out at the end of last week when our professor explained our latest project and the fact that we had to pair up to get it done.

Okay, sure. I liked a few other people in this particular class and I thought we could have worked together but the professor finished the statement by saying that the pair list had been posted on the door—which we’d all walked by to get inside and had not seen—and that there were to be no switching of pairs around, we had to work with our selected partner.

Since it was a pretty big classroom and not everyone knew everyone, he took the last twenty minutes of the class naming who would be paired with whom and where we were meant to sit during the next handful of classes. So when my name came up, and the name Ludwik Praet came up, I knew who my pair was and, trust me, some despair filled me. The professor had even set us up almost front and centre.

Front-and-centre isn’t much of an issue, I’m the type who will come in early enough and just take the first seat that comes up within my line of sight though I do tend to prefer the sides.

I tried to talk to Ludwik before he left but he escaped along with everyone else in the mass departure group that happened as the professor let us go and it was only the following week that I could get him to talk to me at all.

I think that things happened something a bit like this:

I walk into the room, it is mostly empty as usual, I find my seat where it’s supposed to be and I settle, I bring out my things and over the next few minutes, others file in, find their seats, their pair follow suit and they start all talking lowly together about what the project could be about. Even as the professor comes in, Ludwik hasn’t shown up yet and comes to class ten minutes late and, to my dismay, wearing garish pyjamas that are neon in colour and clash with everything else. He sits next to me, slouches really, brings out a notebook or two and instantly starts doodling. I feel myself sink.

As the class comes to its end, he finally turns to me—after I am pretty sure that he hasn’t listened to a single word our professor has said—and tells me that he will never be on time, that if I expect him to show up on time, I’m in for a rude awakening because I will only be disappointed. That he doesn’t care whether or not he passes this class, it was forced on him through his father and said father will ensure that he gets a passing grade even if he screws up all of the exams. So long as he shows up for the classes.

Have I mentioned that I felt myself sinking? That only made everything sink further as I realized that I likely would have to do this project alone—not something I was unfamiliar with but it was going to be a big project and it would be exhausting to do it all on my own. I’ve also spoken to the professor after that class was done and over with—after having confirmed with my partner that no, he wasn’t interested in working on the project and wouldn’t meet with me anywhere outside of class even if I paid him to—and he told me that it was meant to be a joint effort, that no matter what, I couldn’t really claim that I had done all the work myself, even if I had. It would be impossible to prove it, after all.

Just watch me, though. The university has a new system that can be used for projects, you can send in all your updates, it dates everything, it dates who the users who have done the uploading are, everything. I still send invites to Ludwik every time I want us to work together, I record his answers with mine, I send those in with ‘our’ project and just, I do everything to prove that I’m the only one working on this.

I refuse to fail this class because some sulky guy, whose parents are rich enough to pay off the university, refuses to do any work. I’m not. It’s going to be exhausting but I’ll do it all.

What are you wearing?

 
Timeline/World: Urbana LaCrosse University – Hopeful Beginnings
Characters: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 20
Final Word Count: 706 words
 

---

Teaching has to amount to a certain amount of stress that I wouldn’t know how to handle, I don’t think. I mean, I’m pretty sure that every single job in the world has its own stress attached to it but as I’m not really a people’s person, I don’t think I could be able to handle the stress of teaching, especially not when some of your students—I’ll mention no names—come into your classroom wearing their pyjamas.

Okay, I suppose the excuse could be used that this isn’t a fancy business classroom where people will eventually have to wear suits to work every day and as I know it, you’re not expected to dress up fancy to go to these either, just after. Still, if you dig through the dress code for the classroom, you’ll get a few lines that state that you need to wear a shirt, pants and-or shorts or their equivalents at all time, so no going around topless and you need to wear bottoms; you also have to have shoes on and that’s about it so I guess that if people want to show up wearing pyjamas, they’re allowed but it sort of shows that you’re either not really serious about your class work or you’re just an idiot, both answers work.

The thing is that this is the fourth time since I’ve seen them first come into the classroom, all of about two months back, that they’ve cropped up wearing their pyjamas. Most of the time, they’ll be wearing sort of slouchy clothes, everything with long sleeves as though the still warm—by then—weather was too cold for them. I mean, I guess it’s not a terrible thing, but it’s distracting, especially when you’re constantly showing up late to the lectures and your classes but if you’re not going to bother changing before coming into class, at least give your hair a bit of a brush so it doesn’t have that fresh out of bed or, I don’t even want to think about it, freshly sexed-up look.

I get that there could be a really valid reason for that but it still makes it weird. It could be the follow up to a night job—we have two who work nights and come in for early classes, they’ve shown up wearing work clothes now and again but they’re always on time—it could be any number of reasons though the night job is the only one that comes to mind.

It shouldn’t bother me. In the end, it has nothing to do with me but it’s the fact that I’m in that lecture hall, in that classroom, in that environment when the professor is talking and then gets disturbed by that late, pyjamas wearing student coming in. There aren’t even any apologies or anything else, just that very student making their way to an open spot, settling in and doing whatever it is they’re doing. So far, we’ve been on opposite sides of the classroom so I think I get that minimal bit of relief from having to deal with them.

I should get over it, I should. It’s just been happening too often to not be a frustration and all I want is to be able to get through my course load without having to be forced to a screeching halt every so often because someone has no common sense. Even Sera thinks that this makes no sense whatsoever and the professor should do something about it but so far, as far as I’m aware, there hasn’t been a thing said or done. The slouchy, pyjamas wearing idiot comes late into class and is usually the first one to leave, so try to figure that one out because I just can’t. If you don’t want to be in your classroom or if you don’t want to learn… don’t register and just don’t show up?

Though, there again, if I look back to my own situation where a lot of things were forced on us, this could be a similar sort of thing but it doesn’t really excuse it, not really. There’s nothing I personally can do about it so I’m just going to have to keep on trying to ignore it.

You never said.

 
Timeline/World: Erisia – Rockbourne Dome
Characters: Ashford Areleous
Race: Human
Age: 19
Final Word Count: 549 words
 

---

There is something to be said about being able to spend time with the one person your heart yearns for without having to worry about what anyone else might think about you, or without having to worry that someone might report you because what you’re doing is illegal.

That’s not to say we don’t get the odd look now and again, we still get plenty of those but it’s gotten less so at this point, it’s just so relaxing.

We used to meet up down below in the underground. We grew up together and I think that without him, I would have been a zombie-soldier like the rest of my siblings until the arsehole-that-was died. That’s not to say I wasn’t. A lot of my focus was spent on being the perfect soldier, just like we were taught but having Sera at my side was helpful in getting me to wind down, in helping me learn that there was more to life than just being a soldier, than just the army training and the fact that one of these days I’d have to place a bid on a woman when I couldn’t begin to imagine myself doing that.

What I like most, I think, is when we’re just able to settle somewhere quiet and just stay close to one another. We’re together without there needing to be anything else happening. It’s relaxing and wonderful.

I approached Sera with a question just a few months ago and he gave me such an amused smile that I thought my heart was going to burst. I felt silly for asking the question but I found myself just wondering. I found myself needing that answer.

I asked him when he’d realized he’d fallen for me. He answered me more than willingly but teased me for a little while afterwards before he reminded me that I’d never told him that much myself. I was a little baffled because I’d been sure I’d told him but I guess I wasn’t. It was a day of little discoveries and it felt pretty good, I’m not going to lie.

There is just so much that can be discovered when you’re still just talking to someone. I can’t even begin to explain how it all feels, really. There just this warmth inside and it feels like everything is right when and where it should be. I can understand that some people like their relationship a lot more hands-on than this and I’m not going to lie by saying we haven’t been hands-on as well but most of our time isn’t spent in private, trying to hide away so we can have a little fun, no.

Most of our time is spent outside when the weather permits. We just walk, we talk, we sit out back either in the gardens or by the lake at the far side of the dome. There are so many places for us to spend time at, especially now that we’ve got more than just the underground open to our wandering. I never thought I’d get to feel this way but I do and I’ll do everything I can to protect that feeling. It makes me feel alive and that’s all I want. I want to feel alive.