Surely there’s a reason why you decided to stay here. I mean, look at this place. It sucks.

Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City – Iathea
Current Date: February 4, 2040

Character: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human
Age: 32, physically about 22
Current residence: Arcadis Settlement, Iathea
 

---

The first thing we did when we landed here—the ones who were old enough to help in any way, shape, or form, that is—was put together the housing. That took a long while and most people stayed on the ship at that point, I think. A good chunk of us came out, we gathered resources, we helped put things together and, little by little, the settlement—which I guess is just about the word to use—came together.

By the time we had enough houses, people had started moving in. I know that plenty preferred to head off, much the way they had when we first got out of the bunker, and no one tried to stop them. It wasn’t because they’d gotten on the ship with us to escape another, much longer, ice age that we had to force them to stay with us. That’s not really the way to get anything done.

There are quite a few of us out here, though, we cover a fairly long distance of the beach and shallow and less-so-shallow water as the houses spread out. I love living on the water like this, we’re all just far enough from one another for a comfortable amount of privacy but still not too far that we can’t be reached when it’s necessary.

Even though it’s been close to a decade that we’ve been here—it doesn’t feel that long—I’ve never really gone out there. I’ve been places, I’ve explored like just about everyone else, but I haven’t gone looking for the people who left us behind to go do the surviving thing on their own. I still do call it surviving because we were aliens on a brand new planet with only what was in the ship for us to make it out here. The ones who left more or less only left with a pack—if even that—and who knows what was in that pack other than possibly some food and maybe a few tools. I don’t even know if any of them are still alive. Some must be, but that’s just an assumption.

There are plenty of rumours. We have people whose self-chosen jobs are pretty much just that, they’ll head out there, explore, discover new things, and come back with that information. I know we have mapping tools and that’s been helpful in knowing the safe limits of our settlement. With passing time, our safe area grows, not so much because we kill off everything we encounter, it’s quite the opposite most of the time, but because more and more gets explored.

We find safe pathways into new places, we discover nooks, crannies, and certain areas that only a handful of people might ever be able to see because of where it is located. All in all, at this point in our lives, I think we’re doing fairly well, all things considered.

Of the rumours that come back with the explorers, we hear about new flora and fauna that most of us can’t even imagine; we hear about caught glimpses of those others who walked away and never come back. One of those rumours currently making the rounds is about this one really aloof guy that I remember from way back when we still were on Earth. I guess he left his mark on me because the first—and last—time I ever met him, was when he was coming back into the hub because the message had gone around, telling people that the hub was a safe place and that the weather was beginning to change.

That being, we were preparing to leave on a spaceship that none of us had ever even seen or heard of.

He looked rough, he was skinny. It seemed as though he’d done well enough to survive out there, but just barely so. I’m surprised the doc was willing to put him to sleep in one of the pods, I felt like he’d probably never wake up again from that sleep. But he did like the rest of us but, unlike the rest of us—again, rumours, I never saw him again—he refused to take residence in the offered housing on the home level. People say he made himself a shelter in a copse of trees on the green level. He’d come down now and again for some food, but he mostly lived off of what grew on that level.

I mean, I guess he had his reasons to stay where he did, but it feels so strange to imagine it. If it’s how you’ve been surviving for years, I guess it’s one of those things, but even then, I don’t know that I could handle just living off on my own like that, always trying to hide away from everyone else for reasons I can’t imagine. I’m not really a group guy, but I still live within our settlement.

To each their own, I guess.

Final Word Count: 827

All I’m going to say is that you’re reckless and now’s the worst time to be that.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: March 19, 2058

Character: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human – Demi-God of Vengeance
Age: 63, physically about 22
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

---

Do I always get along perfectly well with my twin? You wish. Anyone that tells you that living with your twin is a piece of cake is a lying piece of s—well yeah. Now, most days, we get along perfectly well. I mean, we do share someone and we do so almost flawlessly, I’d like to think. But there are days—and I’d like to think that this is somewhat normal for everyone and not just the three of us—when I would like to get right up in my brother’s face and remind him that he’s an idiot. I’m sure he’d love to do the same to me.

We’ve done it before, mind you. It’s rare that we don’t get along and it’s even more uncommon that the day I might find him exasperating would be the day he finds me just as exasperating. But it does happen. We’re living, breathing beings and anyone that tells you that every single day of your life is going to go by flawlessly is a liar.

Or maybe it’s just us. I don’t think so, though.

Now and again, my darling brother will get it into his head to try something new. As with most things that concern us, this isn’t commonplace, I’d even say it’s fairly rare. At this point in our lives—though by some standards we’re still quite young—we’ve found what keeps us interested in things, we’ve discovered what we like doing and what we’d much prefer to avoid. Little things.

At times, it’s bigger things. Activities we’ve done now and again that are interesting enough but not to the point of doing more often. One of these particular activities that Ode seems to find interesting but only does once in a blue moon so happens to be cliff jumping. A lot of the younger generation seems to have done it—a random number of them, I know, but to me, it seems like a lot from what I’ve heard of it.

I can’t even remember the first time Ode actually talked about doing it, but I do remember telling him that he was being crazy, that he’d break his neck, that he was being reckless and that he had picked the worst time ever to be exactly that, reckless. Thinking back, I’m not sure I can pinpoint exactly why I thought he was being reckless. This is on par with not remembering exactly when that happened. It was so many years ago. I really just remember the scene as a whole with some information missing.

High chances, I’d been feeling under the weather—just about the only time when I’m willing to argue with my brother about things if I’m being honest—and that’s possibly why I got on his case. He did go out to do the thing I told him not to do. He did come back in one piece, looking both exhilarated and yet a little scared. That didn’t stop him from going a few more times and if I do think about it. I honestly think he’s gone just last summer. He goes every few years at this point and yes, he always comes back in one piece, and I always worry to hell and back that he’ll get hurt despite the fact that I know that the place is safe; otherwise, it wouldn’t be open for the whole thing.

Does the fact that he keeps on coming back in one piece when he does head out there help to settle my stomach at the idea of what he’s doing? Not one tiny bit. Does the fact that he’s my brother changes the way I see things? I highly doubt it. I’d be freaking out just the same if Hayden decided he wanted to try that too. I’d possibly freak even a little more because I know that, despite the fact that we’re still ‘just’ humans, so to speak, we’re half-gods and our means of healing are a little more potent than if we were little more than just humans.

Now, I’m not saying that humans shouldn’t do things that could be possibly dangerous. We’ve got the means of healing up at the clinic, but it hardly means that I would recommend cliff jumping—into the watery depths below—to everyone I come across. I don’t have the heart for it and I’m always amazed that Ode manages to find it in himself to do it again and again.

Even if, you know, it gives me anxiety just the same. It’s strange, really. The way our minds will fixate on certain things and not others, or how they’ll mix and match until you’re not even sure how you’re feeling about something anymore. I don’t know how happy or not I am about that thought but there’s only so much I can do about it but let it go and hope for the best.

Final Word Count: 820

I want to say it was worth it. For a while, it was.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City – Iathea
Characters: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human
Age: 30, physically about 22
Current residence: Arcadis Settlement, Iathea
Final Word Count: 770 words
 

---

I don’t get the guys—and some girls, I guess, I try not to pay attention, but I’ve heard a lot of guys, especially recently for some reason—that brag about all the sex they’re having. Maybe I’ve just been in a mood lately and it’s always been a thing, or maybe there’s just something going on in the air, but man, I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve heard just boasting how much they’ve been banging that one person or this other person. That’s the word they’ve been using, too. Banging.

It feels impersonal when you talk about making love to someone that way, but I guess that this is the thing, too. It’s not about that when they brag about it that way, is it? No, it’s just about the sex. There’s little else involved. Maybe I’m just weird for being happy with Hayden in our lives. We don’t need anyone else, and we don’t need to go banging behind some tree, like some wild animal rutting.

Maybe I’m just too prude. I don’t know. I’m sure it’s worth a laugh or something or a congratulation. Guys patting one another on the back when they brag about how hot their night was. There’s this one guy, though, he used to brag like all of the others, but he’s gone quieter recently and I’ve never really been the one to approach anyone to ask if they’re all right. I’m very much the one that prefers to keep to himself.

I know Ode stepped up to him at one point because the guy had been staring off for some hours just sitting on his boat. Good thing that boat had been anchored because I’m pretty sure the guy would have just floated away to never be seen again otherwise. Ode said that he couldn’t make much sense out of what little the guy told him. There was some mumbling about how something had been worth it, for a while at least, but now it just wasn’t anymore.

Hard to know what it was about, if it’s even important in any way, I mean, I remember sort of seeing him possibly last year already with someone. They used to spend a lot of time together but that’s about as much as I know about that situation as anything else. They could have been related for all I know because I personally never saw them doing anything that might have led me to believe otherwise. Not that I was a creep and just constantly stared at them while they were around, I’m not like that.

It’s just that every time I did see them, they were either just side by side, but not touching, not holding hands, not anything, really. They did look happy though and I guess that’s what mattered. At this point, though, who knows what’s gone on in his life. I don’t see them spending any time together anymore. I actually haven’t really caught any glimpses of the person he used to spend time around. I know that he joined the group of braggers only for a few weeks, far as I could tell. After that, he became distant.

Yes, I know, that probably makes me sound creepy or something but again, it’s not like I’ve just constantly been watching him. But when you’re set with a certain group of people for your work days, you hear plenty and you see plenty, even if you don’t pay them all that much attention. It’s hard to ignore them at times, they seem like such a tight-knit group. Though, looking at the guy doing the moping and often staring off, I don’t think that any of them has even asked him what was going on with him that he stopped hanging out with them, so in a way, I suppose that it doesn’t really look like they’re that much of a tight-knit group.

I would just like for them to stop talking about the things they do in their bedroom as though it’s like a contest. That’s what it feels like right now. From what I’ve heard, I know that through Doc Flynn, there’s some sort of things that people can take that’ll keep them from getting the girls pregnant unless they want to and that’s probably why people have been going wild about having more sex or something but I still wish they’d just keep it to themselves, or at least focus on their work first, and then talk about whatever they might want when they don’t need to be focused on the work they’re doing.

Maybe I’m just weird.

Can you be less… you? At least for this very important meeting.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human – Demi-God of Vengeance
Age: 62, physically about 22
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 754 words
 

---

During my most recent bout of top-to-bottom house cleaning, I found old photos from the heydays. I know I can’t even really call those days that, but I suppose it’s the word that seems fitting for now. It was neither a time where we were most popular, were most successful or anything else, but it was back then, and it was just about the only time when I really was surrounded by so many people that I could have been considered popular. Popular in a bad way since people always were trying to tempt me into stupid things.

I have no idea where that album came from. Especially since, once every season change, I clean the house from top to bottom. I leave no spot uncleaned, and I should have found these things by now. I suppose that it might have come from one of the few boxes that we do keep out in mock storage and those, I usually don’t actually bother with. I mean, they’re boxes of old things from our younger years, we don’t really need to look at the things in there every day and most of the time, they’re taped shut and I only make sure the stack is straight when I get to that point.

The photos in that album, they look like they might have been from our early teens. I look like I couldn’t have really been much older than eleven in there, and I know what I looked like at that age mostly because I had lost my last tooth and it was my left, top-side canine. I liked to smile wide enough to show that hole in most photos whenever I could.

I was a weird kid, no one ever said otherwise.

I was doing just that in that particular photo, too. I was grinning widely but the person above me—a bully, as I remember it—was glowering into the photo. The more I looked at the photo, the more I felt as though I could remember exactly the day as it had happened. There was this one kid who kept on going around school with this camera, the kind that popped out the photos instantly and you had to shake them a bit to make them appear faster—though I’m sure the shaking wasn’t really necessary.

He’d go around, taking photos of nothing and everything and I always wondered just how many film packets he went through in a single day, he just took so many. He’d come up to you and just call out a slightly lisped, ‘smile!’ and he’d snap the photo. That’s what happened in that one photo. I’m not sure what the bully had been trying to get on my case about on that door, but I recall that he tried to take the photo from me once the kid handed it to me since I’d been more front and centre than the glowering idiot behind me. The idiot who tried to threaten me and told me that I should seriously be less… me. How can someone be less themselves?

There had been others nearby, and I sort of feel like he’d been dragging me to this ‘meeting’ of his and I was supposed to behave and, well, to the surprise of a few, I managed to mostly save myself from trouble on that particular day. Though photo-kid helped. The moment I yanked that photo out of the bully’s hand after he’d taken it from me, I took off running and yeah, to no one’s surprise on that part, I ended up running right into Ode.

No one bullied Ode. I was the perfect target, even at that age. I just am how I am and it seemed a bit unfair that they’d be trying to make me change who I was, in a way. So yeah, we still have that photo, and this one album seems to mostly be filled with other Polaroid shots like that one. Most of them are of me but a good few of them are with Ode at my side and just a small handful have Ode alone. With his constantly reading during quiet times, I suppose he might not have been as interesting a ‘target’ for photos as the rest of us, but that’s fine.

Not all memories associated with the photos are bad ones, I can’t deny it. Most weren’t happy because I was such an easy target, but I guess that it’s one of those things, in the long run.

Nothing says ‘home’ like books overflowing on every shelf you have.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human – Demi-God of Vengeance
Age: 61, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 739 words
 

---

I’m not much of a book person. It’s not because the letters swam on the pages, it’s not because I couldn’t pay long enough attention to finish reading what I’d started, I just wasn’t—still am not—someone who gets engrossed in reading. I’m not even a fan of audio books. Ode tried to convert me once and I tried, I did, but I nodded off before they were in the third chapter and that was a total and complete failure. I just can’t get into books. I’d probably do better off if I could watch them, I guess. Not that I ever spent that much time in front of the telly, oh no.

We have a lot of shelves in the house and, let me tell you, most of them are overflowing with books. While I might not be a book person, my brother certainly is. Why yes, the brutish one of us is the one who was handed enough brains and patience while we were in the womb to be able to appreciate all things books and man, does he ever read. Even while we were at school, he would usually have a book on hand and I think that book changed every other day, depending on the size of it. At any time we weren’t in class, he’d find a little spot and he’d read. I lost count of how often I had to remind him to eat.

I think that might be one of the reasons why everyone else at school always underestimated him. Certainly, a nerd—what other terms would you use for someone constantly reading?—couldn’t be all that much of a problem, especially when it came time to his brother getting in trouble. As it was, though, Audley wasn’t a nerd. He was a fair mix between a jock and a nerd if someone was so desperate to put a label on it. I don’t think those labels fit him but, back then in school, they somewhat did for this purpose.

What they didn’t know is that Ode had a pretty strict exercise routine, even when we were younger. I’m not talking about weight lifting or anything but he did little things. At first, it’d be jogging, and then eventually it was also sit-ups, and stretches, push-ups and even, gross, planks. My brother wandering around without a shirt is a sight to behold. He’s just defined enough that I’m sure he’s eye-candy whereas I’m flat and a little skinny but that’s okay.

Ode participated in every sport he could while we were at school, he just so happened to really like the idea of reading to fill in every other quiet moment of his life and I envied him this ability to just sort of know what he wanted with his life, so to speak. As a kid, the fact that he could fill in his every moment with something to do both bothered me and amazed me. Why wouldn’t I be more like him? Why was it that whenever I was trying to fill my time with something, someone would sneak up on me and whisper a silly idea to me that would eventually get me in trouble?

It didn’t happen every day, but it happened often enough that I can’t remember all instances of it. What I do remember is every instance that resulted in Ode turning to violence—even mild one—for me. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to thank him properly for that, I don’t know that I’ll ever really be able to. Even now, so many, many years later, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as though I show my gratitude enough.

Looking back, I know I’ve changed. I’m not the boy I used to be, I don’t react as brashly to things as I did and I don’t get swept up into silly, pointless dares. I can still get swept up by random ideas but they’re never bad ones. You should see me go when I finally decide it’s time to clean the house top to bottom. Get out of my way because I get that shit done in a thorough way that leaves everything spotless. I’m weird about keeping the house clean and that means dusting every single book and that, I do with the utmost care because I know how much my brother loves every one of these books.

Telling me to do something was your first mistake. Expecting me to do it was your second.

 
Timeline/World: Until Tomorrow – New York City – Iathea
Characters: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human
Age: 29, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 730 words
 

---

That poor girl, she most likely never saw it coming. I mean, I think of her as a poor girl but I don’t feel sorry for her at all. It’s people like her that give the rest of us bad reputations.

He’s still just staring at her, one brow quirked and a very deadpan look on his face. This is a look he’s mastered over the years. I’m still just such a softy that people try to walk all over me but we are, in the long run, identical twins and people have a hard time telling us apart. Some even seem to somehow think that there’s only one of us and even when we tell them otherwise, they refuse to believe it.

They’re idiots, that’s all there is to it.

The thing is, the people who mistake Ode for me are the ones who are usually going to end up getting the wrong end of the stick. Like this girl, really. Not that he’s going to do anything to her, he’s only going to keep on staring at her the way he is until she starts to squirm uncomfortably and leaves. He’s right, though. She shouldn’t have told him that he had to do whatever it is she talked about. I wasn’t really listening. I just heard his answering words and that pulled me out of my little daydreaming moments.

What I did hear, however, was his answering statement, telling her that her second mistake was expecting him to do the dirty jobs she’d just tried to unload onto him. I was just around another tree, a few paces away; I hadn’t heard her come up but I’m familiar with her voice. She’s always dumping dirty jobs on me. Picking up after the animals that we’ve started to domesticate, fixing up something broken somewhere that’s in a less than pristine area, as though that’s totally what I’m good at.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what she came about.

“Fionn—” she’s starting to sound exasperated and I know she’s about to pull the ‘your mother’ card except, you know, that hasn’t worked in years.

“Wrong name.” I can’t help but grin faintly, he’s still deadpan and I can imagine the look in his eyes.

“What?” At this point, I figure I might as well save her from embarrassing herself further and I step out from around the tree where I’d been, her eyes grow in size as she realizes she had the wrong twin.

She opens her mouth to talk to me but Ode beats her to it. “No.”

“But I—”

“Seriously, no. You already told him, thinking he was me, to deal with whatever it is you don’t want to get your dainty hands dirty dealing with but the answer is still no. I have enough on my plate today to deal with without having to worry about doing something that you were asked to deal with. So please, just turn around, walk away and go deal with whatever you were supposed to.”

“Your m—”

“No.”

I think it’s the first time she’s caught the two of us at once and I normally don’t put up a fuss, I’m just not inclined to argue with her but Ode sounds like he could go all day. Not that he’d really enjoy it. He’s already sounding a little gruff and I think I might have to stick Hay on him when we get back home.

She still looks between the two of us and, finally, she turns away, muttering about immature boys who should be helping their friends. That makes me snort. For one thing, we’re older than her. For two, I don’t think we can claim our behaviour as immature, and three, she’s no friend of ours. She just likes to abuse the fact that I’m never in any mood to argue with her.

It doesn’t take us long to finish the gathering we were doing and, before long, we’re back on our boat—every house has its own and each is marked to them—and we’re on our way back to the house with our gathered treats and a few food items we’ve exchanged for some of what we’d found at the little market we have not very far from the beach. I love the setup, honestly. It gives everyone a chance to help in their own way.

You do something wrong once and no one lets you live it down.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 2nd Generation
Characters: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human – Demi-God of Vengeance
Age: 60, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 647 words
 

---

I still remember our last few months at the secondary school before we were pulled out and we finished our studies home-schooled. I suppose it was for the best. I had a tendency for attracting trouble, Ode had a tendency of going out of his way to keep me safe and well, it never really ended up as a good thing for either one of us. I’m not going to lie.

It’s weird, though, because recently, what cropped back up in my memory was something from primary school. I think we were like ten, just shy of entering secondary school. It was a sort of sunny but slightly overcast late spring day. I don’t even know why I’m remembering these details but I am. I was fiddling with my uniform because I always did and Ode was constantly straightening up my tie because it was always askew.

There was this girl. She was in a few of our classes but she was a bit of a tomboy, never really adjusting to the skirts they forced the girls to wear. She was also a bit of a troublemaker and that worked out well in my favour because eyes usually were on her and not on me and whatever innocent trouble I tended to also find myself in.

I remember her often muttering about always having a teacher following her around because she’d done that one thing wrong once and now they just didn’t leave her alone for it. I suppose that was to be expected when, as I was so sure back then, that the particular ‘one thing wrong’ she was grumbling about was the fact that she’d dropped several of those firecracker things in a stall while someone in a wheelchair was using that stall.

It was for the better that they kept an eye on her because on that particular day, she’d planned on spray-painting pretty unpleasant things on the school wall but they found her and her arts-and-crafts items just as she was getting started.

Fast-forward into those final few months before we were pulled from the school and there she goes again, muttering under her breath, sporting the pant uniforms this time—I have no idea how she ever managed that one—and wandering off towards the headmaster’s office for some reason or other. I suppose that some people aren’t really meant to change. They’re troublemakers from the get-go and it just is something they seem to do mostly naturally.

In my case, I can’t really explain. It’s not so much that I was trying to be a troublemaker; it’s more the fact that I was prone to not having a filter and I was known for getting swept up into things because I didn’t think about them twice. One of those ‘things’ being when I was dared to wear the girl’s uniform, it had backfired, Ode had gotten into trouble and well, the rest is history.

I’ve changed, or so I’d like to think. I’m just little old me. I work at the market like most everyone else, I do my work well and I’ve yet to hear any complaints. I do my bedroom duties with the utmost pleasure and I love those duties like you wouldn’t believe. I like to pamper the hell out of Hay when he lets me and Ode is still the protective brute he’s always been. All in all, we work out all well together. I don’t think we’d have gotten this far in life if Hay wasn’t part of it.

On most days, I’m happy to just do my thing and repeat it the day after. On certain rare days, I’ll feel a little mischievous but who knows what kind of silly thing I might do. Nothing that would harm anyone, that’s certainly a given but still.

I’m just me, really.

Was I supposed to know what you meant by that?

 
Timeline/World: New York City – Iathea
Characters: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human
Age: 28, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 678 words
 

---

Some people seem to forget that not all of us grew up before the big storm. Not all of us were old enough to have clear memories of the earth before it shattered not so delicately beneath our feet to reveal something new and different and at-times frightening. I was three when the snow happened. So you can imagine that no, I don’t remember this and that video game or this and that television show. There wasn’t much television for us before the snow, not that I remember. There was a lot of being read to and so much time spent with Dad. I cherish the few memories I do recall of them.

I don’t so much cherish the memories of the snow and the bunker. Ode seemed to have adapted to the new world much better than I ever did but I was the shy one of the two of us. The one who much preferred to hide in and under mom’s skirts—so to speak—and behind dad’s legs. Ode was more willing to explore, though I remember mom not letting us go very far.

So, what I’m trying to say is that no, I don’t know much about the earth as it was before the snow. I’ve honestly even left most of that behind at this point because, sure, while we grew up in the jungle, most of the talking being done about the planet wasn’t so much about what it was like before, it was about what it was like now and how they could make things grow or figure things out.

Even now, people still talk about how great earth used to be and how they miss this and that and I just end up staring blankly at them. I love Iathea. I love this planet to bits. There’s so much water and while there are some dangers, we’re careful, we’re growing our own food, there’s a world to discover and none of it is tainted by what used to be. That’s the one thing I cling to. The one thing I wish people would understand.

No, I don’t know what you mean when you say you miss how X restaurant used to make the best sub-sandwiches. I’m pretty sure I’ve never eaten one of those in my life and I don’t care. No, I don’t know what you mean when you say Y had the hottest trends. I grew up wearing what was found while scavenging, and then what was being made. I love how there are no two pieces of clothing that are alike.

I suppose I can understand that some people might miss the way the world used to be but that world is so far away now, literally no more than a speck out in the galaxy. I’m not even sure how long we were in space. Miss Florence is a little tight-lipped about that but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. The whole point is that Iathea is a new start, a new world, a new life.

We’ve got rules about waste and there’s near to none as is. Everything we grow and everything we catch is used up to the very last bit. Bathrooms have filtering and cleaning and systems that are way over my head in terms of things but they’re neat. Everything is neat and wonderful and I just want to spend the rest of my life living on this planet, discovering new things and being like an awed child when I see fishes bigger than our fishing boats swim so peacefully beneath us while we’re out there.

The size of things here is something to keep an eye on. There are huge fishes in the water but just the same, we’ve found pygmy animals, or at least, they look like pygmy versions of animals we had on earth, not the same, but with similar basic features.

Man, I could go on and on about how I love this place but I won’t, there’s work to be done so I better go.

You’ll never get rid of me. It’s impossible.

Timeline/World: Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Fionn Del Ray, Audley Del Ray
Race: Human – Demi-God of Vengeance
Age: 59, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 648 words

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“Seriously… shut up.” Swatting blindly at his brother does nothing, he knows this and it only frustrates him more but the whispered words are just as frustrating as the ineffectual swatting. Turning his gaze back to the mirror, he squints a little and stares at the little red bump sitting just above his lip and sighs.

The statement ‘I’m too old for this shit’ comes to mind but he keeps it quiet, aware that it would only make his brother prod and tease him more. Fin is aware that Ode doesn’t do it to be mean; he was the same way while they were growing up but the sight of pimples still somehow cropping up on his face leave him feeling disgruntled. Audley’s amused uttering of ‘You’ll never get rid of me. It’s impossible.’ whispered right in his ear isn’t helping either. He knows it’ll be gone in a few days, they always are but it doesn’t stop him from wishing they wouldn’t happen at all.

Contrary to what he’s certain this little scene screams, if anyone else were to be in his personal bubble just then, Fionn isn’t the vain type, furthest from. Unlike Ode who likes to make sure his hair is placed just so and even uses hairspray to make sure it stays the way he wants it, Fin prefers to merely get up in the mornings, run a quick brush through his hair to get the tangles out and be on his way. He doesn’t need to spend hours in front of the mirror just trying to get the eyeliner to look just perfectly so—not that he’s never worn eyeliner before in his life but the last time he did does go back a while.

Swatting back once more to his brother who still insists on being in his personal space, his hand hits something solid and the huffed ‘ow!’ that comes next makes him smile in mild satisfaction. He turns his head a little and watches as Ode gives him the stink eye and steps away with one hand over his nose. “You big baby.”

Fin grins at Ode a moment, earning a soft huff more and a snort as the latter drops his hand from his face. “You know it’s not the end of the world, right? It’s not like he’ll notice it either unless you keep on fussing with it the way you tend to and—”

“And that’s exactly my problem, you know me. I can rarely ever stop picking at a scab or anything else long enough to stop it from scarring.” A sad fact that made this whole thing even more frustrating. Fin knows that it’s not about the pimple or the zit or even the small cut that scabbed over. It’s about the fact that he has a hard time leaving any of these things alone, especially if he can reach them. Picking at scabs is something he’s done all of his life and he has minute scars everywhere to prove it. Not that he’s proud of those, frustrated, more than anything else.

“We’ll get you some of that cream from Simon’s and we’ll keep you occupied enough that you won’t have time to poke at it, all right?”

“Thanks, Ode.” Fin knows that Ode doesn’t mean the teasing words but when they hit a bit close to home, he can’t help but feel a little unsettled by them and while some scars fade over time, his seem to tend not to. Ode’s gift of healing does him no good, most likely because he’s part of the same family line, otherwise, he never would fuss about these things. Feeling his shoulders drop, he steps out of the bathroom to face the day, wondering if maybe he shouldn’t just stay inside instead of going out there; however, going out there will distract him and he knows it’s the only way.

They’re getting a little better, don’t you think?

Timeline/World: New York City – Iathea
Characters: Fionn Del Ray
Race: Human
Age: 26
Final Word Count: 576 words

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I think we’ll be discovering new things about this planet until we die if we die. Miss Florence has been keeping us healthy and younger for what feels like forever and even our parents don’t look much older than we do. It was strange when we were younger but I think we’re sort of getting used to it, at least I know I’m getting used to it. It must be harder for the older generation to get used to it, the thought of being close to sixty but still being physically closer to thirty must be something out of a lot of science fiction books but it gives us more time with those we love.

We’ve been here on Iathea for almost three and a half years now, it doesn’t feel that long. Every day we find something new and wonderful to discover and it just awes me to no end. Just a few weeks ago, during the high tide when the water came to be almost level with our floor, a small little school of these very colourful fish came to sort of settle around where our stairs heading down normally were. We’d never really seen anything of the sort and we just spent a couple of hours watching them swim around.

Of the group, two or three seemed to lag behind the others a little, they weren’t as brightly coloured and it made us, though maybe mostly me, wonder. I didn’t want to bring them out of the water and away from the rest of their group though so we didn’t do anything beyond just watching them. When the tide started to recede and the majority of the school went with, I watched, I kept track, I wondered. Those three fishes that I’d noticed were staying behind and being someone who’s very close to my brother, it did bother me that somehow these little guys weren’t following the rest back into open waters.

So I did what I thought made sense, found a large container managed to get these little fishes and plenty of water into it and I started sort of half-nursing them to health in whatever way I could. I got them food I thought they’d eat—and they did—and I just made sure they had plenty of that and after a while, I was sure they were starting to get a little brighter in their colours, it was a comforting sensation that I was actually doing something right as far as these little guys were concerned.

I think that if I were to tell mom, she’d just shake her head at me and give me that amused smile of hers because I used to do this even before we left earth. I’d find the odd, small injured animal, I’d bring it back home and nurse it to health in any way I could. At first, I didn’t manage very well, I guess I just didn’t really know how but now that’s different. Now I know better than thinking that nothing but warmth and cuddles are going to help something wounded or sick get back to being healthy. I was a clueless kid, what can I say?

I’ll release these little guys in a few more days, I think. I just hope their buddies haven’t wandered off too far or that they’ll be able to get back together, else I feel like I’ll have done all of this for not much of a reason.