You’re looking for a moral compass in someone who’s never even heard of one.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Current Date: April 26, 2059

Character: Eska Storm
Race: Halfling – Strife / Succubus
Age: 97, physically about 25
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

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There is a lot in my life that is not worthy of pride. I was not a good person during most of the years before settling here and while I know most of my behaviour can be excused due to my very present lack of sanity—being ripped away from the rest of your family and growing up in the down-below when you’re not meant to will do that to you—I still know that I was not a good person.

There are a lot who have come to harm because of me and while most of these people are now long gone themselves, I still remember quite a bit of what I’ve done. I think of it little, but it is there, in a little box in my mind. Preferably locked away though that lock seems to care to crumble to pieces every few years. My mind finds itself swarmed with memories of things better left behind and, well, Maria has to schedule an appointment for me while I rock myself in a corner.

If nothing else, there is one thing that I have managed to learn through the years is some form of control. When I feel the lock begin to crumble, I let Maria know because even at the very beginning of what I suppose I’m now referring to as an episode, I know that I cannot put words together well enough to schedule that appointment myself. Then, I find a spot that is out of the way—most of the time, this ends up being the virtual reality room for the sake of its empty bowels unless it is in use—and I stay there until I am picked up. Usually by my brothers who will then take me in.

The doctors have long since learned to not truly engage with me while I am in that state either. I am merely sedated in a way that actually works with me, they change the chip that does what it needs to, to keep the lock from crumbling, and they let me come to before I get back home. A procedure that lasts at most a handful of hours since it seems to take a long time to knock me out for said procedure.

I remember spouting completely nonsensical stuff while being walked to what felt like my execution the first few times. Accusing my brothers of things they had never done; laughing in their faces when my mind would decide that it was the best time. I still remember one of the first few times—I wish I didn’t—it all happened after the dark years had been left behind for some time. It was Blake who walked me in on that particular episode and if I didn’t tell him half a dozen times that looking for a moral compass in me when he should have known I’d never even heard of one was the least of the ugly things that left my mouth on that day.

There are fractures in my mind. These fractures will never truly heal and all that can be done for those is temporary. A band-aid sort of thing that lasts for a while but eventually does need to be replaced. There is a slight irony to the fact that there are things from the down-below that I do wish I could remember but they are in the locked box, just like everything else. As far as this broken brain is concerned, it is everything or nothing at all.

Do I want to be an absolute menace, put Maria in danger in ways that she didn’t even get to see while she was in the down-below, just so I can remember a few things that would probably—maybe, just a little—help me be a better person? Not really. I may be insane on good days—figuratively speaking though perhaps not so figuratively on bad days—but I know better than to put her in situations that she doesn’t deserve.

Not that she deserved being in the down-below. It is the very last thing I would have ever wished for her, but these were things that were well beyond any control—like the fractures in my mind—and we do not bring up those years. Turning back time to change the way things turned out would likely not even lead to a good result, so I’m just going to keep on living my life the way I am right now and deal with things as they happen; there’s only so much anyone can do about it at this point and I’ve made my peace—as much peace as my nature will allow me.

Final Word Count: 781

Was this supposed to be a test? If so, there’s no way I failed.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Eska Storm
Race: Halfling – Strife / Succubus
Age: 95, physically about 25
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 754 words
 

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Dreams are uncommon. I much prefer them that way if I have any say, but it is rather rare that I do get a say. I’ve made my peace with that if that is even something I can say. I am aware of what my bloodline entails, and this is fine.

Nightmares used to be a more common occurrence not long after I had gone to fetch Maria from the down-below. They were rather a nearly nightly thing but, with her at my side, I overcame these demons as well.

I hardly knew what to make of dreams when they first started cropping up. They did so rarely, and it only left me scratching my head all the more. None of them seemed to be repeating themselves and the information that came from them was content to leave my mind quickly after I had woken up. I was left with glimpses of things that my mind had put together during my sleep and no understanding of any of it.

With time and patience on Maria’s end, I was able to understand just what it was that my mind was doing and why. Though even now, that why is a little confusing and I still would like to wake without these flashes of mindless things that are not memories bothering me in the morning.

Recently, after something akin to a year without any dreams, I woke up in the middle of the night, dream fresh on my mind and still holding on strongly, as though the fact that I had woken up as I did, had been enough to warrant it sticking long enough that the details were clearer.

I was in the place where I had grown up—a spot worthy of nightmares to most—I must have been young as my point of view felt very low compared to what I remember of my last few trips, even if these trips were decades ago. There were others nearby—it was rare I was alone while in the down-below. There was a figure that should have been familiar in front of us, hands on hips, looking as though nothing we were doing was right as per them. Something that was common enough while I was there.

This was not a place of love and affection, after all. At the very least, the area where I spent my life was not and it really is all I know is the down-below. If there are other areas that were different, then they were but my knowledge of them is simply not there.

Someone to my right, in this perhaps-memory dream complained that everything had been too easy and if it had been supposed to be a test, then there was no way they had failed. That seemed to enrage the figure looking at the lot of us children—we seemed to be, in any case, and the general surroundings did remind me of when we were being taught things, just briefly. I might have been insane from the near get-go, but I knew better than to talk back at my elders or do anything that would draw more punishment down on me.

I woke from the strange dream as the figure began to stalk closer to us, intent, I’m certain, on dishing out punishment for the smart mouth of the group. One of the things I do remember from my time back then, however, insane or otherwise, is that punishment rarely was only dished out towards a single person. Even if only one person was at the source of the problems, everyone in the current group would be on the receiving end of the punishment.

It certainly didn’t help in the sanity department.

After spending some time trying to figure the dream out, I ended up just sort of letting it go. Thinking about it too much, wouldn’t have done me any good so I ended up just rolling back over, nestling somewhat again though I knew I’d end up rolling back to my other side, and I settled back to sleep.

Learning to sleep has been… an experience. I can’t say that I can complain about it. It’s been something new to discover and even though that, too, happened decades ago, there still are days when I find myself wondering just how it is that my mind knows that when I’m settling down in that bed, it means that it is time for rest. That bed only has two uses, and both are delightful, I’ve discovered.

This is not the fight you want to pick. Not with me.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Eska Storm
Race: Halfling – Strife / Succubus
Age: 94, physically about 25
Final Word Count: 710 words
 

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Some people use the word ‘insane’ without truly knowing what it means. I know the meaning of the world; I have lived with it for a long, long time. Others would look at me and call me crazy. They would certainly not be wrong but having been, technically speaking, raised in what serves as hell but is also just a temporary limbo of brimstone, fire, and pain, I think I have a right to not be sane most of the time.

The only time sanity remains with me and clings strongly onto my hand is when Maria is with me. That truly is the only time when I am wholly myself. Or, well, that was how it used to be.

It has gotten better over the years. I still do better when she’s with me but I can handle being on my own for a small handful of hours, preferably not much longer than that, however.

I remember one of my last trips before I came back, it wasn’t very long before I had to go back to the very place I had vowed I would never step into so I could get her. The trip itself was mostly a mindless thing. At least to my broken mind, back then, it was a mindless thing. A get in, get out sort of thing where I had no real goal beyond offering some chaos to all those around.

During one of my rare moments of clarity, I did come across a young man and I still remember vague details of his face to this day. He looked ready to fight, enraged to the point of blood lust and I recall him telling me that this fight, the one that was about to happen just then, it wasn’t a fight that I wanted to pick. Not with him. I suppose that being in a mostly genderless form at that point might have been confusing, though I knew I looked far more feminine than not.

I recall how the look in his eyes changed when I grinned at him. He must have finally realized the mistake he’d made. His anger fled right out of the window. The downside is that I don’t actually remember what happened after that brief moment. As it stands, I’m quite certain that I ended up killing him; he’d crossed me in a way that my mind would not easily forgive, not back then.

Who knows whether or not his death was a shame. I can’t recall if there was a sense in him that he had anything left to live for, but for someone so young to be filled with as much anger as he had been, I think that it was quite possible he’d lost a lot in the recent past, just before our meeting.

It’s a little hard to remember but I do recall how ravaged the whole area had been, as though there had been a natural disaster at work though they were so far inland that anything related to water was unlikely and, thinking back, I’m pretty sure that earthquakes weren’t a possibility there either. So the carnage must have been man-made.

Or, you know, demon-made or something of that nature.

What I do recall is that I wasn’t at the source of the strife and chaos that had struck this place. It had been that way when I first came up to it and while I might have been insane, I would have remembered coming through already, had I been at its source.

Before my sanity slowly stitched itself back together beneath the careful hand of my Maria, I would not have cared that this had been one more or one less death to stain my hands. It didn’t matter back then, not really. I’m pretty sure that I relished the chance to think back on the death I had caused though I no longer am this way. Not that I think much about the deaths that came to happen by my hand, not really.

I simply give them little thought. I haven’t added any deaths to my counts since coming home with her, so I would like to think that this has to count for something in the long run.

What an idea time to stop and take pictures. Not! Keep running!

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 1st Generation
Characters: Eska Storm
Race: Halfling – Strife / Succubus
Age: 92, physically about 25
Final Word Count: 583 words
 

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I have met plenty of strange folks in my life, plenty of interesting ones, and plenty of disturbed ones. I have met more than my share during my time spent in ‘Hell’. I use the term ‘Hell’ in a loose fashion as it was a world in a side dimension that really was mostly all fire and brimstone and those not meant to live down here don’t live long. Some souls do end up here but only because they’re bartered and stolen. No one comes here willingly unless they have business, not a single soul is ‘meant’ to be here, not one.

During my travels, before madness overtook me, before everything that was lost and broken within me surfaced, I have seen and witnessed strange things. Some seem like they could have only been found in fiction and at times, I wonder if the memories are true. I wonder if they’re not fabricated because the sight is so unusual that I don’t know that I can believe its veracity.

There were mountains, so many mountains. Mountains as far as the eye could see and there was snow because these mountains were covered in snow. There were climbers here and there, mostly on the smaller mountains that had villages nestled along their bases and nooks and valleys. Now and again, they had avalanches. That was something else, as I’ve learned. I’d never seen an avalanche before in my life, preferring the warmer climates but now and again I had to go into colder areas.

Watching the snow come rushing down the mountainside is a sight I’ll never forget and it’s a sight I don’t think I could actually get used to. I’ve seen it a handful of times now and it still leaves me breathless, my heart beating a complicated rhythm in my chest while my breath indeed almost stops, as though held hostage by the falling wall of potential death.

All this chit-chat about avalanches because I was remembering one pair of young climbers I’d crossed on my way back down from the mountains. They were at the little inn I’d been spending some time in and they were laughing and talking loudly about the avalanche they’d survived just the other morning—an avalanche I’d also witnessed.

One was laughing, tears pouring from their eyes and the other was a little shamefaced as they were telling their story. It seems as though, that when the avalanche started, the storyteller had stopped in their tracks to take pictures of said oncoming wall of doom while their friend was telling that this was a terrible idea, that they had to turn around and keep running.

Clearly, they’ve made it out of there in one piece, I couldn’t sense any harm on their being but it still had been a story to listen to. I could imagine it easily enough and I could understand the laughter from one, now that they were safe, and the sheepish shame of the other at their first reaction. I still wonder, now and again, about how those photos turned out if they did at all. It must have been something.

That being said, you can’t make me go back out to the mountains. I refuse to go. I deal with the winter as it, it’s a season amidst others but I’m not going to have to deal with more snow than is necessary, no one can make me. I might still be somewhat crazy but I’m not that crazy.

You’re my very own medicine.

Timeline/World: Atheria 1st Generation
Characters: Eska Storm
Race: Halfling – Strife / Succubus
Age: 90, physically about 25
Final Word Count: 514 words

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I don’t know what good deed I have done in my life to deserve her. Our time together was not always easy, at least not at the start but we make it work well now and every day feels like bliss to me. A bliss at times I feel as though I don’t really deserve. Her beginnings, like mine, were not easy but I guess that might be why we do so well together. At least, that’s how I see it.

I don’t know what I did in life to land myself where I did. At least until I met her. That I am unlike my brothers spoke volume to me, for years, on how there was something so very different about me and I do not mean about this ability that’s in my blood to take on the physical attributes that most appeals to my mate. That is something I held a tight rein over; I didn’t want those who surrounded me to be the deciding factor on whether I was male or female in body. I wanted that to be my own decision, in the end.

It cost me. Of course it did. I paid the price for what was seen as arrogance but in the end, none of that really matters. Being with her is my one satisfaction. She keeps me grounded, keeps me breathing. She is the reason I can sleep at night and get up in the mornings, the reason why I’m here at all.

The big split was… it’s not something I want to think about. It’s not something I care to remember at all if I can help it and I just do all I can to leave it in a locked-up place in the back of my head. Those years were terrible, as much for her as they were for me and I have no desire to go back to that time.

Life now is different from what I ever thought I would manage to have as my own but I’m glad it is. It just feels so good. It feels right to hold her close, whisper my complete and utter devotion to her ear. I love watching her come apart under the knowledge of my wandering hands, my lips, my everything. She deserves the world and at times I feel undeserving of her love and affection but it is that very love and affection that reminds me that she chose me, that she was not forced to stay at my side and even now, if somehow there was a chance that she would seek the presence of someone else, I would let her.

It would kill me, little by little, on the inside, but I still would let her go. I don’t think it will happen, most everyone within the walls is more than happily paired up and you could almost say that our little town could be considered nearly dormant in terms of anything bad happening and that is for the best.

I want nothing that is part of our world to change.