Some of you suck at communication. I’m saying this as someone who also sucks at communication.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Current Date: July 10, 2058

Character: Faye Storm-Daii
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human / Strife
Age: 45, physically about 23
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

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Considering the size of our family—I can imagine there are bigger ones though none that come to mind right this second—you would think that communication wouldn’t be an issue. You would think that if one person forgets to mention something, another would let it slip or something of the sort.

Now, this isn’t something that I’ve found myself dealing with often. There really only is one particular situation that comes to mind at this point, but it was a huge situation, and we all were more than old enough to not be kept in the dark about it.

In a way, I guess that this is the issue in itself. Maybe they were trying to keep us in the dark until they were dead certain—I don’t mean that as a pun at all—that he was going to be all right. Uriel is one of the babies of the family. One of the last born. He’s not the youngest of us all but he’s one of the youngest three and, most importantly, he’s my brother.

I’m not saying that my learning about what happened to him back on that day was more important than others learning about it, but quite a few of us were left in the dark until he was in full recovery and no longer in a dangerous zone. I’m not even sure how our parents didn’t tell us these things or how they managed to keep that from us. As someone who has struggled with communicating things before—and I still do—I want to believe that in that situation, I still would have found ways. It would possibly have not come out cleanly, but I wouldn’t have kept it quiet.

There’s nothing any of us can do about it at this point. He’s back, he’s healthy—as healthy as he’ll ever be—and he’s okay. I don’t know that I’ve seen him with his wings out since that day but that’s hardly something I can base myself on, considering that he rarely had them out as we were growing up. I might have been the one of us three who had them out most often while we were growing up but it’s one of those things. I’m the oldest, so who knows.

I think it’s a bit of a miracle that we didn’t swarm him when we finally learned about the accident. By that point, we were nearly all grown up, adults in our own right—for the most part—and I guess that we knew better. At most, whenever I went to see him, there was one other person with him when that person wasn’t Gus.

I’m sure there have been other instances of information not getting to all parties when it might have been a good thing that it did. There’s just so much potential out there for information to slip through the cracks but I feel that in a world like ours, where we know everyone—by sight, if not personally because I certainly don’t know everyone that way, but I know who they are when I see them—information falling through the way I feel it did with that accident shouldn’t have happened.

I rehashed that very thought so often back then. Almost any time I visited him, I thought about that again, and again. Maybe they were trying to spare us the pain of things if he didn’t make it—something I can’t imagine happening. There have only been three instances of loss here that I’ve ever heard about after what they call The Return and none of them actually happened while the people in question were here, under the safety of the invisible roof that covers Atheria from one side to the other, including all nooks and crannies.

I’ll be honest, I don’t often think about Uriel’s accident; not because I think it doesn’t deserve thought, but mostly so because it’s the opposite. He made it through, he’s still with us and while I know that he still has some very mild issues that are often taken care of right in-house and that none of us possibly even ever hear about, he’s doing great. He doesn’t need to be reminded by any of us that his life could have been forfeited. He doesn’t need any of us to point out that particular thing to him because he was the one it happened to; he’ll very likely never forget that fall and, well, yeah. It’s his life and if I’m the one it had happened to, I wouldn’t have any real desire to be reminded of what had indeed happened. Not by outside parties.

Final Word Count: 778

I don’t think I ever indicated that I was okay with you trying to be my friend.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Faye Storm-Daii
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human / Strife
Age: 44, physically about 23
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 775 words
 

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It might come across as something fairly funny to some if they were to listen to the story, but when I look back, I’m not sure how I really feel. It was during a time when I was trying to understand myself, so probably around my early teens. Especially when puberty first hit. I spent a lot of time on my own when I could because I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin, and I didn’t want anyone else to see that. I’ve never really been able to hide how I feel from anyone.

During that time, I did spend a good bit of time on my own. I was often in the yard, wings out because they felt as though they were the most normal part of me compared to the rest of this body that was confusing everything out of me. I couldn’t have the wings out while at school, it was a distraction more than anything else and early on, I never learned to sleep with them. Dad never really had them out in the evenings, and I don’t really remember when I first learned about those very wings, anyway.

But yeah, I spent a lot of time out in the yard, surrounded by trees, wings out. It was one of those things I learned early on that distracted me enough to the point where I wasn’t focused on other things. Grooming these wings, if you would, takes a good bit of patience. A good sort of patience. It’s always been interesting to sort of settle somewhere, wings out, and just working my way through some grooming of these very wings. It’s mostly a matter of fingers through them but it’s there anyway.

It was as I was out there that I’d find myself surrounded by birds. Now, I do have wings, but they’re not fully just birds. I’m aware that gryphons are a type of bird if you want to look that way, but they’re still not really birds either. So, to find myself surrounded by birds as though they were drawn in by the wings—or whatever else, really—was always something that made me shake my head a little. I didn’t want these birds trying to befriend me. I didn’t want them trying to make me smile and, at times, when all I wanted was to brood and forget how uncomfortable I was in my own skin, I believed that this was what they were doing. They were trying to make me smile.

I can only shake my head in amusement now when I think back to how many times, I must have softly grumbled under my breath at any of the birds that dared to land on me—dared, really—that I had never indicated to any of them that I was okay with them trying to be my friends. Now, it was a good and bad distraction both. Good because it got my attention on something other than myself, and yet, it was bad because sure, I’d read that story about that princess that seemed to attract all sorts of sweet animals that would help her whenever she needed it.

I didn’t need that.

I was in no way, shape or form, a princess.

I wanted nothing to do with the idea of being a princess and these birds just there, all around me, making tiny little vocal pests of themselves, only brought that particular image to the surface.

Looking back, in a way, I think that I stopped feeling that way about things when I found myself face to face with a hawk. It didn’t attack me, I didn’t reach out to it out of curiosity, I think that we both just sort of looked at one another and tried to size one another up. Though it sort of kept its distance, the sight of that bird of prey partially erased the whole suffocating princess sensation that all of the other birds had ever brought to the surface. I couldn’t imagine some sweet, innocent, fantasy-book princess surrounding herself with hawks or other birds of prey.

I did let my parents know about it; at least, I think I did. It goes so far back that it’s hard to really remember but it’s one of those things that I think is very likely how it happened. That encounter didn’t really change me, I still was asking myself endless questions about how I felt in my own skin but at the very least, it made spending time out there at the far back of the yard a little easier on me until I did start to understand myself better.

I knew you were tricking me! I just didn’t know how.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Faye Storm-Daii
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human / Strife
Age: 43, physically about 23
Final Word Count: 702 words
 

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I wonder if there’s any surprise to my stating that I didn’t like eating my vegetables while I was growing up. Yup, I’m that one kid that put up a fuss about the veggies on their plates and yet, if you look at my plate now, you’ll rarely see any meat protein. It’s not that I don’t eat meat or, you know, fish or anything from the animal kingdom, but I don’t eat it very often. I’ve found means of balancing my diet mostly on raw food and I’m healthy, so why not?

I’m not sure when that changed. I mean, the thing about how I didn’t like the idea of eating my veggies. It has to originate from somewhere after all and I remember just pushing my veggies around in my plate after I’d devoured whatever protein there had been. I can imagine my parents were pretty exasperated by my behaviour and were often trying to find new ways of making sure I’d eat my greens.

Of course, I’d often study my plate and the things in it, trying to find the way in which they were ‘tricking’ me into eating the good stuff, as I recall Papa calling it at one point. I don’t know that I ever called them out on this not-really tricking thing. They were just trying to make sure I ate healthily.

One of the things I do recall, however, is how they never forced us into finishing up our whole plate. I don’t recall there ever being a mention of finishing our plates or no dessert. Forcing someone to eat all that’s on their plates, when they’re not hungry enough, tends to promote overeating and that’s not exactly a healthy habit. Whenever a plate wasn’t emptied, it was usually set into leftovers and eaten the following day, normally around lunch now that I think about it.

I really wish I could recall around what time my mind changed about vegetables. It wasn’t just the green stuff or the yellow stuff or anything in particular. For some reason, I just didn’t like eating vegetables though if you put fruits of any sorts on my plate, I’d devour those like it was nobody’s business. Thinking back, I think I ended up drinking a lot of smoothies while I was growing up. A good mix of fruits and vegetables though I mostly could only ever taste the fruits in it.

That honestly might have been the best way they’d found for me to eat what I was reluctant to eat. It wasn’t even about the taste or anything relating to allergic reactions, I just didn’t want to. One of those things my child-brain was set on and there wasn’t any changing it or fixing it. Just, I wasn’t broken. I was just, I don’t know, wilful?

Not that it really matters at this point. I eat when I’m hungry, my meal portions are never overly huge but it just so happens that I tend to snack a little throughout the day, so I balance out my energy needs that way and even on my yearly, I’ve been told that I was healthy as could be. Healthy weight, healthy eating habits, healthy everything. It’s not because I don’t eat three substantial meals a day that I’m not healthy and that one actually took some time to sink in.

I can’t blame my parents for this. We always ate three good meals a day at the house and small snacks in between but I never could finish my plates, it’s just one of those things and I figure that most households are like that, it’s an old way of life. It didn’t take long after I’d moved out to settle into a different eating pattern and it has worked out well for me.

One thing I do make sure of, however, is to let Ari eat on her own schedule. That’s not to say we don’t share meals, but I don’t force her to eat small portions of things every few hours if she doesn’t want to, I don’t think that would be quite right and, well, I’m not the forcing type, after all. Why would I be?

If there’s anything I hate, it’s a liar.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 3rd Generation
Characters: Faye Storm-Daii
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human / Strife
Age: 41, physically about 23
Final Word Count: 602 words
 

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When I first started questioning my gender identity, I used to have bad dreams. I’d like to think that they’re not related but they were, mostly because of all the books and research I read on the subject while trying to understand myself. All of this long before I ever brought it up to my parents.

So many of the older texts I found spoke of horror stories, of parents not being understanding, of kids abandoned to live on their own. It really was more than enough to give anyone nightmares so I suppose it’s not such a surprise that I woke up in cold sweat more often than not.

I don’t remember exactly when I started questioning my gender identity, I was pretty young though, not even quite into the double digits, I don’t think. I might have partially blocked that ‘beginning’ part of my questioning because of all the nightmares I used to have following all of the horror stories I ended up reading while trying to indeed find myself.

One of the nightmares, I recall, was centred around me finally having enough guts to actually tell my parents about how I felt, about how I didn’t really feel like a girl, but at the same time, I didn’t even really feel like a boy. I hadn’t found a lot of things about that in the oldest texts I’d found and I couldn’t even begin to explain why I started on older text and not more recent stuff.

I recall standing there, scuffing my toe on the carpet which was weird because we were in the living room and that room has never had carpet as far as I can remember but that didn’t seem to matter in the dream. I told them how I felt about my gender, I told them about what I’d found and what I was hoping we could work out but things just jarred to a halt when—I can’t even remember which one of them said it in the dream, I was so shocked—I was called a liar.

That just put a sharp stop to everything and I felt my whole world spiralling way out of control until I woke up.

Sadly, that delayed my talking to my parents for years. I was thirteen by the time I finally brought things up, uncertain and afraid. Their understanding and loving embrace were more than I had ever hoped to gain and while it wasn’t always easy, it was a lot better than I thought it would be. There were a few slips and it took some getting used to, especially with my siblings but I was out and open about things, I didn’t hide how I felt anymore and I can’t even begin to explain how good it felt to be accepted.

Thinking back on all those stories about teens whose parents disowned them for being different, teens whose parents beat them up, the teens who turned to suicide, the ones who sank into deep depressions and hid their true selves from the world… it breaks my heart. I know I can’t turn back time; I can’t go out to save all of those people from the horrible things they went through but there were days when I wished I could. I had expected my own parents to shun me due to finding so many more negative stories than positive ones and yet here I am one, so comfortable in my own skin.

I love and I am loved, I have my family, my friends, my ‘Ria. I don’t need anything else not really.

Your crush was obvious to everyone- especially them.

Timeline/World: Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Faye Storm-Daii
Race: Halfling – Demon / Human / Strife
Age: 39, physically about 23
Final Word Count: 562 words

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I’ve always been uncomfortable in my own skin. I don’t know whether or not being the second oldest of the brood, by all of ten days, where parents and uncles were all male—short one but that’s something else entirely—had any say on that. In a way, I suppose I would have to say ‘no’, when I look at Kallisto I see none of the issues I’ve had. Though I haven’t asked, of course, and most of the time I kept my problems to myself, so maybe she had those problems as well, I might never really get to know.

One day I would love dresses, the other I would hate them, one day I would love makeup, the next I would absolutely hate it. When hormones started to change the way my body looked, I hated it even more. These breasts, though they’re small, made me so uncomfortable I wanted to get rid of them most of the time but I learned to live with them. I didn’t think of myself as a girl, certainly not with how my body was making me uncomfortable but at the same time, I knew I didn’t feel like a boy.

It was only in my late teens that I finally found information on what I was feeling, it took me a while longer to find a good, strong middle ground for my feelings and emotions, for how I could work with my own body and adapt to it, a couple of years really, but after that I no longer felt like such a complete freak.

Then there was Rianna. We met when I was twelve; going almost on thirteen, she was three years younger and a cute little thing. Not that I would have said that, then nor did I really think it that way but those feelings came as time went by. In a way, I guess I watched her grow up alongside me, some would think it’s a little creepy but it’s not, really. It wasn’t until I was eighteen that I realized that she’d found her way under my skin but I couldn’t do anything about it. I was still struggling to be comfortable with myself and while I knew I was terrible at keeping these particular things to myself, I did.

I’ve always worn my heart on my sleeve; it’s the one thing of my personality I could never hide away.

It’s in December that things came to happen, I was twenty, I was mostly comfortable in my own body, able to admit and understand that I was non-binary, that while I was born in the body of a woman, I was neither. By that point, I could have had surgery of sorts, to ‘fix’ myself up but I was okay with my body, on some days I still hated it but it was nothing compared to how it was when I grew up and having Rianna at my side has helped me more than anything else.

I don’t know if I’m the only one or not, in our little city. This is a sort of private thing, after all, and not something you go asking others around, but that’s fine. If I’m it, I can live with that just well, it’s my own body after all and I’m the one who has to live with it.