This town is like living in a horror movie twenty-four-seven except you never know what the horror is going to be next.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Current Date: November 14, 2023

Character: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human
Age: 29
Current residence: La Caye, Saint Lucia
 

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As someone who works mainly from home, who isn’t a huge fan of socializing—though that hardly means that I live locked away in my room at all times—and who has near to no social skills in a non-work environment, I’m always a little baffled by what gets discussed around during the monthly in-person meetings.

I’m not much of a fan of these meetings, which I’m sure is of no surprise to anyone at all, but I still go. This is my work team, the meetings are meant to be a good thing and it does get me to interact with others in different settings. It’s not great for what I know to be social anxiety, but I’ve managed to adapt fairly well to things in the long run.

What I’m still not used to, even now years down the road, is that some people are very strange. Sure, I’m well aware that I might be the one who is seen as strange considering how little I end up being a chatterbox to everyone when we’re all in the office, but to listen to people talk about how they think that living in this town—which, Castries, where the office is located, is far from a town, and the spot I drive from is more a village than anything else but I digress—is like living in a horror movie twenty-four seven, except they never know what the horror is going to be next.

That’s not a common theme, I’d like to think not, but it was the subject being discussed at our last get-together and I couldn’t even begin to understand why. The one loudly talking about this particular thing was a young woman I had never seen before. That, in itself, isn’t hard to achieve. I do text chat with my colleagues almost every day as we work on projects, but I don’t care for video calls and I only ever really meet the new folks, or the folks from other teams, here.

I don’t know if it’s her choice of a discussion subject that bothers me, or the fact that no one else seemed bothered—or showed signs of—by it. I even remember hearing quite a bit of chuckling from the people she was talking to, even while she was very loudly, I should say, claiming that all she was saying was true.

This whole thing draws more questions to the surface than any answers. Where exactly does this woman live on this beautiful island? As far as I’m aware, though I haven’t visible all of the island yet and I’m not sure I want to, most of Saint Lucia is beautiful and I can’t easily imagine that any one spot would be akin to living in a horror movie twenty-four seven.

It’s sad, in its own way, because I can barely remember anything from this meeting other than her and her weird stories. I didn’t even stick around to hear her begin to explain why she believed what she did. I just moved to another room where it was quieter, with only a few other people; I half-heartedly mingled with the people of my own team as I waited for the proper, work-related meeting to start. Thankfully, she wasn’t in that meeting. I don’t know how I would have handled things if she had been introduced to the team as our new member.

If she’s not part of my engineering team, it just means that she’s possibly part of the administrative team and I feel bad for them. Especially if she’s going to keep that up. Then again, I don’t know a single thing about her. Maybe she’s been working for a couple of weeks at this point, and everything has just been perfect, and she was just having a bad day.

Or she was just being an idiot and saying bullocks like she was just for a little more attention. I don’t understand those types of people; they make no sense whatsoever to me. Then again, I don’t like being the centre of attention, so I suppose that it’s not all that surprising, in the end.

I was glad to get back in the car and drive home, though. It’s a short distance but it’s not a bad one. I know we could have possibly moved into a closer spot in Basée, most likely, but the homes we found in the cul-de-sac-like spot in La Caye were perfect. It just means that we need to do a little driving to get to bigger places, but it also means that we just get all the quiet time we need.

Final Word Count: 778

I haven’t taken a human form in six years, so forgive me for continuing to crawl around on all fours.

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Terraphim – Swinging Pendulum
Characters: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Fire
Age: 25
Current residence: Xiang Po, Terraphim
Final Word Count: 834 words
 

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There are all sorts and types of people out and about. When I take my own gift into consideration, I know that it would be foolish to think that only gifts like mine and that of my brothers are what can be found here. I know that there are other species, as well as more powerful gifts though I’ve tried, since first coming into my power, learning to control it.

It is not all that common that I head out into the market, being around books is the only thing that truly soothes me, and I still get nervous around crowds. I can handle going to the competitions for Jade but that’s the extent of my comfort. At least, in a general sense. I know I can’t just be hanging on to Sakari as a child would its main source of comfort while we’re out and about. It is something that is sorely tempting but I do without.

Once back to what has long since become our rooms, things are different, and I am very much so one who will invade his personal space. I can barely get enough of just breathing in the scent of him. It is very soothing.

A few mornings ago, I did need something from the market, and it never takes much effort, it seems, to convince Sakari to join me. I do always make sure that when I ask him to join me, he has no other tasks lined up right at that moment. I’m not needy enough to keep him from his work, though there are days when that is more than a little tempting.

So we went to the market, we easily found the few things I did need but, as we walked, we also came across a few other small trinkets that I had known my brothers to have mentioned needing recently. I didn’t know whether or not they had gotten them, but they were things that we all used on the daily, so it made sense to get them.

It was as we were leaving the final booth and preparing to head back home that we came across a strange sort of scene. I don’t know that calling it a scene is honestly the right word. It was just something that was happening between two people with one of them looking like a child that could hardly be more than eight or nine. The child was crawling around on all four and it was as we passed by them that I heard him—he looked like a boy, I suppose she could have been a girl too—told the young adult just watching him move, that he hadn’t taken a human form in six years, and to please forgive him continuing to crawl around on all fours.

It made me pause for all of a heartbeat, it was such a strange thing to say. I mean, I’ve heard of shifters, though I’m not exactly all that familiar with them. I don’t know how they go about things. There is aunt Naela, but I’ve never seen her shift and just, that’s her own thing, I’m not going to go bother her about something that just feels this personal.

I remember exchanging a brief look with Sakari when we finally had our backs turned to the strange pair. Little more than a shrug a moment later and we were walking back home. I’d come for things I had needed, I had found these things and a few others for my brothers and their other halves and I was more than ready to make it back home.

There’s a sense of relief that comes over me when I step past even just the main doors into the courtyard. There’s just something about this place. Though, in a way, I know it might be more of a mix of things. Between Sakari being there, being back where I know I am safe despite the fact that this is also the place where the tutor did what he did, but there is a sense of home, and it helps. It helps so much.

I remember that we made quick work of handing out the extra items we’d brought back. The look of delight on Briar’s face more than made up for the strange situation out there at the little market. I’m pretty sure he’d only mentioned things once, in passing, and I don’t think he’d really expected anyone to get it for him. I know he goes to the market every other week or so, but he doesn’t head out there otherwise, unless it’s an emergency, so I was happy to get it for him. Jade seemed as delighted, even if he’d already gotten the item in question, it was already well-used and getting more was just perfect.

By the end of our trip out, we were right back where we’d started, in my room, comfortable, safe, and in the arms of the man who means the world to me.

You are overestimating how much luck I have.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human
Age: 26
Current residence: La Caye, Saint Lucia
Final Word Count: 729 words
 

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He was giving me this sad, puppy-eyed look through the camera screen and it was taking all of my willpower to not roll my eyes at him. This was the third time in as many days—not even in as many weeks—that he was doing this to me. Acting as though turning to me and asking me to bring his idea higher up into the hierarchy would do any good.

Somehow, the guy seems to think I am filled to the brim with good luck, and I still have no idea what that has to do with anything.

I suppose I should start at the beginning.

At the last monthly gathering at the office, I was introduced to the newest member of the team. A college-fresh kid who’d only be joining in part-time because he still technically was in college. That was fine by me. So long as he could get through his assigned tasks in his given time frame—and do those tasks well—it was all fine by me. I didn’t care if he worked full-time or if he worked part-time.

Now, the following morning, as I was setting up my computers, I received a ‘ping’—a message from someone on the team—that had been sent the prior night. Now, I don’t check these things after hours and as I spend my day at the office on that particular monthly thing, I don’t open my home computer at all.

So, there it was, a ping from the team’s newest, seeming to be gushing about how great it had been to meet me. The ‘gushing’ part was filled with more typos than I could be bothered to shake a stick at, and it made me cringe a little. I just hoped he was more careful with his coding than he was with the way he types. Then again, I shouldn’t be all that surprised, most of our younger recruits—maybe I was just raised differently—seem to much prefer the whole chat speak thing, even in professional settings.

So, I let it be, I didn’t reply to him as nothing in his message warranted a reply of any sorts and I went about with my day.

A week later, he tried to start a one-on-one chat to discuss this great new project he’d been thinking about. The first red flag sprung up, but I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The project wasn’t great, and we already had something remarkably similar to what he was trying to offer. Something I’d built from the ground up myself and that’s not what made me tell him that he needed to focus on his job and not on side projects like these. I know my program isn’t perfect, but I also know what I can and can’t change about it. I’ve tried so many things before settling for what I did. Even now, I still work on it.

Except, since then, he’s started with the whole puppy-eye deal and I just don’t know how much I can take anymore. He keeps on telling me that if I bring his project up to the boss, he’ll be my lucky little cricket, just cheering me on but—and this just makes me sigh a little each time—he goes to butter it on even thicker by telling me that I wouldn’t really need him there to cheer me on, I was just really lucky at this point and I could do anything I wanted.

I’ll bring it up to my boss in a day or two more, it’s gotten ridiculous at this point and I get the feeling that he seems to think I’ve only made it to where I have in the company out of sheer luck. He could be no wronger about it and I figure that he’d probably get along well with Tabitha if she still had been around. Thankfully, that one left the building not very long after I received the award. I’m still not sure whether she left of her own free will or if she got the boot. I don’t ask and I can admit that it didn’t change much to the quality of our work.

I’d even have to say that there is less tension between each worker in my team since then and our productivity’s actually gone up a little.

We all know you’re waiting for a good moment to boast.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – Family Values
Characters: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human
Age: 26
Final Word Count: 765 words
 

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Most of my work is done from the quiet little office I have at home. The company I work for does have an office here, in this city in the middle of paradise but I don’t have to go often. Most of what I do can be done from home and I do. Once a month or so, we do have meetings at the main office and I think that this happens to everyone all around the globe. They have to step into the office at least once a month for some group gathering and all.

I get that it possibly helps coworkers create some sort of bonds together but I still think it’s sort of moot; they do, however, own the building and have to make use of it after all. Not that it sits empty, quite a few people work from that building but a few of us, myself included, are lucky enough—as far as I’m aware—to work from home.

Last month, however, still sits somewhat sourly in my stomach as I came face to face with a bit of a situation that I’m sure could have been avoided. Or, well, that’s what I tell myself but I’m pretty sure it would have happened eventually. If not last month, possibly at any other point in my life while I worked for any company at all.

The thing that I’ve come to accept is that you can’t make everyone happy, not at once. There will always be at least just the one person who will be unhappy with you for some reason and there is nothing you can do about it that might change things.

In this case, it was a new subordinate I had in my team. We had only met face to face once before—during the prior month’s meeting. We had had plenty of video-chats and I’d sensed from the beginning that she was competitive to a fault and in this business; there are opportunities to move up the ladder some. As it stands, I’m somewhere near the top, but mostly because of how in-depth my knowledge is and the fact that I do all I can to keep that knowledge up to date.

I’m not going to boast, I just like reading new material that comes out on the subject of what the company does and what the general public—so to speak—also does. I’m fascinated by my job and I just like being up to date, that’s not a crime, is it?

According to Tabitha, it must be. It makes no sense that I waste all my time reading all these new studies and looking into new programs and applications that are supposed to be top of the line. I must be a very lonely nerd with no friends and no one will ever look my way twice. If only she knew. That, however, is a case of personal life versus work life and I keep the two quite separated, thank you quite much.

So, just two weeks ago at the monthly gathering at the office, I hear Tabitha talking to Samson, I’m pretty sure they’re sleeping together but the company has no policy on relationships between coworkers so long as it doesn’t interfere with the work, so I don’t care. I hear them mention my name for some reason and I’m just not sure why.

I try to walk by them but she comes up my way, her nose up in the air and she tells me that she knows I’m just waiting for a good moment to boast. All I can do is give her a confused look and ask her to please step out of my way. She mutters ugly words at me, telling me that I’m just a brown-noser and that, at one point, I’d have my nose in so deep in someone’s ass that I’d never find my way out. That was a new one to me.

As it turns out? I somehow received an award during that meeting. How she knew about it is beyond me though I know that Samson has friends in the HR department. I didn’t boast, I didn’t dance around, I just gratefully accepted the award—for helping finish up a really big project that had been years in the working—and I stepped back.

That Tabitha somehow feels threatened by my presence is an uncomfortable feeling and I stayed behind on that day, I spoke to HR about it. I haven’t heard back from them yet but she’s been well behaved since, still.

I was going to have a grand reveal, but you’ve ruined it!

 
Timeline/World: Newfound Worlds – Terraphim – Swinging Pendulum
Characters: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Fire
Age: 23
Final Word Count: 641 words
 

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Girls are weird. Though I suppose it’s one of those things, I’m sure would have made more sense coming from me some ten years ago, when I was likely around the age when I should have been ‘discovering’ girls. Except I never focused on that potential thing. Girls just weren’t something I gave much thought; I didn’t give much thought to anything but studying at that age and even then, the horrors that came from that are things I still haven’t managed to completely let go of. I wish I could have but I haven’t.

I don’t always tag along when Jade goes for competitions. I’m here when they’re here but when he’s out there, I let him go without feeling the need to wish him luck because I know he doesn’t need it. He’s stupidly good at it all and I feel like I have two left feet and thumbs everywhere. I much prefer books and I don’t think anyone will ever change my mind on that subject.

Now, the latest competition took place in this area so sure, I went with, Briar came as well. It’s just one of those things.

Jade has quite a few fans, both male and female. Most of the male fans seem to have understood that they don’t stand a chance, whereas several of his female fans seem to be oblivious to, well, the obvious. This point proved itself just a few hours ago when one particular woman who has been to all of his recent competitions, or so he’s mentioned while making a face at that particular fact, came up to him and told him that she had something to show him but she could only show him alone.

If that doesn’t ring warning bells with people, I don’t know what will. None of us stepped in to intervene, we all know he’s more than capable of handling himself when it comes to these people and he did. I don’t know what he told her exactly since I’d stepped away. He didn’t step any closer to her, he didn’t touch her, didn’t lean in. He only told her something that I couldn’t hear and she just started bawling her eyes out.

He looked even more exasperated with her when she started throwing a tantrum, foot-stomping and all, and going on about how she was going to have a grand reveal of her love for him and he just ruined it all. That was the icing on the cake, I think. He sort of just turned around and walked away, not even paying her any attention.

That, of course, made her cry harder and just, yeah. Women and girls are weird. I mean, I get that men can likely be as emotional but that type of outburst isn’t something I’ve ever really witnessed before, not for that particular subject. I’d be the biggest hypocrite around if I didn’t admit that yes, I’ve bawled my eyes out and screamed myself raw before but it was when that stupid tutor was trying to get to me after breaking through not one but two doors, I had a right to act as I did.

That’s not to say she might not have had a right to act as she did but, at the same time, her reaction just seemed and still seems way over the top to me. Then again, I suppose I can’t really compare. I don’t have to deal with that kind of behaviour and I don’t know my way around it very well. I’m quite fine with living a quiet and mostly peaceful life. Jade is the one whose life is full of people like that and it’s enough for me to essentially deal with these things in a second-hand way. I don’t need anything else at that point, I just don’t.

He was there the entire time.

 
Timeline/World: Terraphim – Swinging Pendulum
Characters: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Fire
Age: 23
Final Word Count: 642 words
 

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I can’t call them nightmares, they’re not. They’re just bad dreams but they’re still bad dreams and at times I don’t know what to make of them. It feels like a lifetime ago but it’s only been a few years. It hasn’t been long enough and at times, I think I can still feel the touch of his hands, his fingers, his breath on my skin. It makes me break out in goose flesh and I tend to flare up a bit temperature-wise.

It’s probably the best way for Sakari to know whether or not I’m thinking about the past. It’s about the only time I flare up like this as I can control my meta-gift just fine otherwise.

These dreams, they’re always the same. He’s always there, there’s no escaping him. He’s there from the moment I fall asleep to the moment I wake up. Just a presence, never within my reach, never close enough for him to touch me either. It hurts. I want to do so many things to just erase him from this dream but there’s nothing I can manage, nothing I can do.

I’ve tried.

I’ve set the whole landscape on fire, I’ve set myself on fire—which, strangely enough, was actually therapeutic but I was dreaming so I’m not going to try that out of my dreams—I’ve tried to set him on fire as well but he just… doesn’t catch. It’s like he’s a ghost. There, just as the edge, a frustration for me to have to endure.

My parents are aware of this, they’ve tried to help but I think it’s moot. I think that the only one who can do anything about this is me and I’m out of options. At least, that’s what it feels like. I just don’t know how to deal with the ghostly presence of the man who touched me indecently while he was tutoring me. The man who almost made me go crazy if I’d given him half a chance.

I can still hear his pounding on the door to my bedroom. I can still hear that door as it broke. The pounding on my study door. I still remember how cold the air felt and yet, I know that by that point, I was detached, I wasn’t really there anymore. I was just screaming myself raw because I was terrified and I wanted to be elsewhere. I wanted to be safe and I wanted to be gone.

I’m surprised I didn’t set the whole room on fire. My gift had awoken just a few days prior to that particular incident and I didn’t control it very well at that point. I guess I was just too cold to flare up.

What does it all matter, what happened? I know that thinking about the past isn’t going to make this go away. Quite the opposite, I’m sure. I just don’t know how to let it go. The man has long since lost his life due to what he’s done but even that hasn’t erased what happened. It hasn’t erased that he did indecent things and who knows if there weren’t other victims. I don’t know what he told the guards, what he told those in power. I don’t want to know.

I’m just grateful that I don’t get these dreams very often. They’re random but it’s rare that I get them more than once every three or four months, so I suppose that I have that I can look forward to but it’s still a problem. I still have those dreams and they’re still hanging on. What will it take for them to let go?

What will it take for this ghost of my past to release his hold on me and leave forevermore? That’s all I ask for; does it seem to be too much?

Ready to make me look bad?

Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Birds of a Feather
Characters: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human
Age: 24
Final Word Count: 563 words
 

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Not all of the memories from my time spent on The World are pleasant ones. As a member of her crew I had some privileges but not all of them. I had nowhere as many as some imagined I would. I was a crew member, one of her workers; I was her engineer, not one of her residents.

Most of the memories I keep of my time on the ship are pleasant ones: clients happy to be there, crew members who worked hard and were rewarded for working hard, sights to discover as we roamed the waters. The memories are plenty and are pleasant in these categories but not all are; that would be akin to claiming that babies are always happy or content, that they never cry.

Engine trouble—most of the time minor enough to not even require a stop until we were at our destination for the day—crew members who didn’t play by the rules, clients who were demanding. There are many but I try not to dwell on them.

One particular memory remains with me, however.

I hadn’t been aboard The World very long when it happened, I was on my second or so week and the man I had been hired to replace was retiring. Another young man, a little older than I was at the time, was his junior. Studying and working under him. He didn’t take well to my presence when it became clear that despite the fact that I was younger than him, my knowledge was more in-depth than his and he would be answering to me, not the other way around.

It was late morning and I was coming back to my quarters when I heard low, whispered voices just a hallway down from my own. Normally, I’m not the overly curious kind but in this particular case, I was curious and I carefully stepped over, being mindful to keep my steps quiet though I’d always been quiet on my feet. I listened from just around the corner. There were two voices, one I was familiar with from working with—my new subordinate—and the other I wasn’t too sure.

All I got out of their little discussion before I left was that one was going to beat the other up to make him ‘look’ bad and somehow try to place the blame on me. The thought amused me more than anything else. If either one of them had taken a moment to get to know me instead of hating me on sight, they would have known that I don’t have a single violent bone in my body. I’m the type who’ll sit out a fight and stay as far away as possible. I’m so mellow that my brothers have never actually seen me angry.

Still, with this odd information, I went to talk to the man I was replacing; he had been my first contact on the ship and the one I trusted. I told him what I’d heard and when came the time to ‘face the music’, as it were when the pair came our way with one of them battered, bruised and limping, we were ready.

Needless to say, they both left at the same port as the retiree and I’ve never heard from them again. Not that I mind much. I’m sure I’m much better off without that idiot.

I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am that my favourite cafe shut down.

Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Birds of a Feather
Characters: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human
Age: 23
Final Word Count: 570 words

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When you’re used to being out on the water, to being out on a large ship that serves as a home for people, trying to adapt to a different sort of life is a little difficult. Especially when that ship was a little village all on its own and the layout never did change; it couldn’t, of course not. So the little cafe was always there, the menu didn’t change, not really. The restaurants were all the same, the menus also remained mostly the same with little variation so after a few months, you knew everything you had to know about the place. Now imagine after a few years.

Now, after years spent on this home-type ship, adapting to life off the ship and into a place that was much bigger was difficult but not impossible. I was never the outgoing one so having lived on board the ship had suited me well, at least, that was before the nightmares started and before Jade found us paradise on earth and got us all to move there.

Finding a job wasn’t all that difficult, I suppose I was overqualified for a lot of places but one in particular had held my attention and they seemed happy enough to have me as part of their team. I could do plenty of work from the house and I had set up a small office in one of the unused rooms. What I liked about the workplace was that there was a world to discover all around and being a foreigner, I was mostly left to my own devices, I didn’t seem to attract the attention I was a little afraid of attracting.

One of the places I discovered early on was a little cafe that was more like a little hole in the wall than anything else. At most, there was room for a dozen seats in the place, at least inside. Outside there were little tables of four under parasols that people could settle at and enjoy their coffees, their little pastries and the rest. It wasn’t one of those places where the names of the drinks are commercialized and there are syrup pumps left and right, no. This was a place where your coffee was coffee; it was either black, with cream, milk or sugar. They even had a small selection of teas and that spoke to me as well.

The pastries were made in-house and stepping out there early in the morning when those very pastries were fresh from the oven was a mouth-watering moment. I admit that I had made it a habit of stopping there after work as well, buying a couple of pastries for dessert for us to have later on.

So learning that the place had shut down was a bit of a confusing moment in my life. I’d been so used to their presence, it had become part of my routine and I don’t know what I was more upset by, the fact that they were closed and those who had worked there were likely without income or the fact that I no longer would be able to stop by for pastries to bring home after a day spent working hard.

I’m not sure what the new place that took over is like, I haven’t gone. I’m not even sure if it’s worth checking out or not. I miss those delicious pastries.

Let them tell their story.

Timeline/World: Terraphim – Swinging Pendulum
Characters: Cameron Taylor
Race: Human – Meta – Fire
Age: 21
Final Word Count: 551 words

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It hasn’t happened in a few years and I’d like to believe that we’re over that now, that in twenty-one years, those who sought to harm us to get to our mother have moved on. It’s a foolish dream, I know but there are worse things out there to hang onto hope for, like turning back time, for one thing. Not that I have any desire to turn back time but it is one of these things that is more than a little foolish to hope for.

It’s hard to forget last time someone was on trial here at the palace for an attempt on our lives. Though I suppose that calling it a trial is a little much. They are brought to the Empress, asked to state their reason, asked to essentially tell us why they did what they did and then a decision is reached based on that story, on the evidence that was otherwise found and a few other small things. The last idiot who tried anything was actually released on grounds that what had transpired had been embellished a little by the guards and in the long run had been nothing more than an accident. A very ugly accident but an accident nonetheless.

I never did imagine that our lives would seem so important to others out there that we would be targets in this way. We’re not royalty, not really. We’re cousins to the heir but there is no royal blood that flows through our veins.

Now and again, I tell myself that I should have taken all these martial arts lessons more to heart; I would know how to defend myself better in case I might ever need it. Moments later I remind myself that I have Sakari with me and that he’s more than enough a guard dog at my side, though he’s much more than that to me, of course. I have my brain, my knowledge, my ability to set things on fire, too. I am not to be mistaken for someone who cannot handle his own safety but I would still much rather be reading a book and learning more about the intricacies of life.

All three of us, my brothers and myself, have developed gifts that we imagine are from our mother’s side of things as there has never been anything of the sort witnessed from our father’s side of things. I inherited my mother’s gift from before her sister died. Briar has mother’s current gift, though we learned it was her sister’s own and Jadyn has a gift born of perhaps our other aunt, the one mother never speaks of, the one who died so long ago.

I don’t know that anyone expected us to develop these extraordinary gifts but they came to us when we needed them the most, almost, you could be led to believe, in cases of life and death where that gift was an absolute necessity. At least, I know mine came at a time when I needed it most and so did Jadyn’s, Briar’s gift, its nature and birth, is a mystery to me as he does not talk about it much, if at all. I don’t mind, my curiosity has no true need for this knowledge and I’ve learned to let it be.