Many of my decisions have been made hastily, but it’s not really going to stop me.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Crafted
Current Date: April 28, 2023

Character: Grief aka Aven
Race: Emotion – Grief
Age: 34, physically about 22
Current residence: Moss Beach, California
 

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I still take a few classes at the university but not that many. I’m still not really sure what I might really be interested in learning, not in the long run, and it just has given me something to do when I feel as though I’m just twiddling my thumbs, waiting for time to pass. It isn’t all that common; there’s plenty for me to do. Between walking the big fluffy dork and helping out around the house, downtime tends to be welcome and deserved. Still, learning things at school is nice.

I feel as though I might just manage, at one point or another, to find something that really appeals to me and then I’ll register possibly for full-time classes. It isn’t as though I don’t have all the time in the world for that, anyway.

As it stands, there is a girl in some of my classes that has left me so baffled that it still bothers me now, even though it’s been weeks at this point. Last I saw her, it was before the holiday season and yet, I still have passing thoughts about the whole situation and there are days when I think back about her behaviour, and I’m left scratching my head in confusion.

In a way, there are times when I wonder if I’m part of a minority or if maybe, we’re sort of evenly split. The people who do take their time when making decisions and the ones who are so hasty that there are plenty of regrets to be had when things don’t turn out the way they were expected, or something doesn’t work out well in the long run.

This is the case with the girl—a woman, really—whose behaviour just confuses me to no end. She has to be in her mid-thirties, that, in itself, is not an issue, I’m certainly in that age group myself, even though I know I look a decade younger, and I’ll never look any older. What bothers me is that I feel as though that, by that point, she’s had at least a good few years’ worths of life experience to base herself on as far as decisions are concerned but it never seems to be enough.

I’ve lost track of how often she’s made hasty decisions, later regretting them, but claiming that it was never going to stop her. It was just how she was and that was all there was to it. Like opting to get a new tattoo—a tramp stamp, I’ve heard some say—after meeting a guy she claimed was going to be her ever-after prince charming. Except that yeah, she got the tattoo a week after meeting him, and only a few days after that, he was out of her life.

I haven’t seen that tattoo and I’m not all that interested in seeing it either; what I do know is that his name is probably somewhere in there and, well, what are the chances she’ll meet another guy with the exact same name, really. That or somehow the guy in question comes back into her life.

This is just one of the many things that I’ve heard about—things she discusses freely as though they hold no consequences in her life—that have come out of hasty decisions that she thought were great ones at the time. I’m sure they were possibly very great back then but looking back now, they clearly were not.

Still, she keeps at it. I’m sure there’s a reason behind it all. I’m sure there’s something in her mind that leads her to the belief that those hasty decisions are the best thing ever.

In a way, I think that I might just be worrying for her, in some way, even though I don’t know her that well, because one of those decisions might just end up taking things too far and when that happens… what next? Does it lead to something even worse than being inked with the name of someone who isn’t in your life with that ink being in a rather in-your-face spot—at least for a potential new partner? Somehow, I get this feeling that if she had a friend who was more than willing to jump off a bridge, she’d be the kind of person to jump right after that friend because, well, the friend has to be right in their decision, right?

I really don’t understand the people who think this way, but I admit that my socializing has not been great up until the time when we were old enough to come up here and out of the rather secluded spot where we grew up. So, all of us are possibly a little stunted and I can’t be the only one who finds myself baffled in certain situations. All in all, I do the best with what I have, though.

Final Word Count: 817

One of us is going to have to decide and it’s probably not going to be me.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Crafted
Characters: Grief aka Aven
Race: Emotion – Grief
Age: 32, physically about 22
Current residence: Moss Beach, California
Final Word Count: 723 words
 

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I admit that I was a little worried when the cats were first brought into the house. Cuinn was a beast of a dog but still young and still with more energy to share than either one of us had expected but it kept us on our toes. Neither one of us knew how things would turn out. I mean, he was essentially a hunting dog with a pretty big prey drive, and we’d been told that he was likely to chase anything that might run away from him.

Since he was still very young when the cats first came in, I think that the socialization helped a lot, and he loves chasing them around and getting down to their level. I’ve lost count of how often we’ve seen him flopped somewhere with cats flopped on him, it’s adorable.

It took us nearly two weeks to figure things out, though. I mean, neither one of us wanted to be the one to decide that it was time for him to meet with the kittens. We were worried he’d tried to eat them up. The breeder we’d gotten him from had told us that his parents had been raised as hunting dogs—which seemed weird considering where we live—and that they’d never been around any other smaller animals as company, so we had to be wary.

We’d have staring contests, the first one to blink would have to decide and I didn’t want to do it. Carwyn didn’t want to either and we just, we were at a stalemate.

In the long run, neither one of us actually was the one to decide. As it turns out, one of the kittens had gotten out of the room where they were being kept while they still were too small to really roam the whole house and had made its way over to our side of things where Cuinn had been lounging on the floor, just being a big carpet of fur and hair and love.

We came into our room to the kitten tucked just oh so sweetly under the crook of his neck and he hadn’t even budged that we could tell. Once the kitten got up as we approached, it mewed and all Cuinn did was flick an ear. It was once the tiny thing was up and wandering away that the big lovable beast got up too and just started to follow it.

At that point, I think we both knew that we didn’t really have any worries to have, at least not as far as his being near one and it wasn’t running around, so it was a start.

We didn’t pick the kitten up, we did follow the pair from a distance, though, just in case something was to happen but the little ball of fur made it back to the room from where it had escaped and just plopped its ass in front of the gating, as though waiting for someone to let it through. I know I rolled my eyes, picked it up and let Cuinn have a good sniff at it before I plopped it back to the other side. It took off at a playful run and all we got from Cuinn on that, even though he had no access, was a good bit of tail wag and interest in play time, that we could see.

Little by little, we let everyone eventually meet. We still keep an eye on things, of course, but enough time has passed with this big not-wolf actually playing with the cats and getting down to their levels and even chasing them playfully that we’re pretty sure everything is going to be all right. If he’d been any older and already set in his ways, I don’t know that he would have handled learning to co-live quite as well as he did but it’s one of those things that we might just never really know about, in the long run.

I can’t complain about the fact that the decision was technically taken out of our hands, as far as how to get him socialized with the cats was concerned. At times, you just have to accept that certain things happen and when they do work out, well they’ve happened for a reason, and we were all happy about it.

Pretending that there isn’t a large wolf casually seated on your bed, I need to know what you got on question number 16. I think I’m a little confused about how it’s been worded.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Crafted
Characters: Grief aka Aven
Race: Emotion – Grief
Age: 31, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 687 words
 

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I didn’t expect to go to school, not in a formal setting. All of our schooling was done while we were down in our own little pocket of hell, being raised by Lucifer himself and he’s nothing like most people believe he might be, he’s not. He was actually a pretty swell guy but since we’ve come up top after we turned eighteen, we haven’t heard much from him. We know he’s busy and we’re fine with that. I guess he thinks that since we’re no longer kids under his watch, we don’t need him anymore.

In a way, I suppose that it’s true. That’s okay, though.

I’ve felt a need, a few months back, to try and attempt something to do with higher learning. I still haven’t really picked a subject to focus on, so I’ve been mostly taking general classes and it’s been interesting. I’ve met plenty of people, some who were more willing than others to get to know me a bit better and I was amused, more than not, to tell them that they didn’t stand a chance, I already had someone in my life and that wasn’t going to change, I didn’t want it to change.

We’ve been living here for about ten years now and I admit that we haven’t really let many people into our lives and our homes. I suppose it’s because it’s our private place, it’s our home and our world. A few have come by, however, and in those few, one particular girl who has shown no interest in getting into my bed, only in getting to know me and that might be why I opened up a little to her. Not much, though, she still thinks I’m as human as the guy next door and that’s how I wanted it.

Now, on one of her first visit, she was led into my shared room where I was going over a report we had to write and Cuinn—mine and Carwyn’s gorgeous wolfhound—was flopped out on the bed, taking up a good chunk of it. Carwyn had been the one to walk her in and the little smirk playing over his lips at her gasp at the sight of Cuinn told me enough. He’d done it on purpose.

She stalled in that doorway; I’m not going to lie. I was looking at her, just waiting for her to tell me the reason for her visit since she’d dropped by unannounced. Not that I minded, we’d had a shared class earlier during the day and it wasn’t the first time she was doing it. She had texted, asking about potentially coming and I’d told her it was okay. So not completely unexpected but still unannounced.

Eventually, she stammered that she was going to pretend that there wasn’t a large wolf casually flopped on my bed but that she needed to know what I’d written on a particular question on the exam we’d had to deal with during the class. Something about how it had been worded. I admit that I had to think back on the exam for a moment because I felt as though I’d eased my way through it without much of a hitch. What had been question number 16?

It did eventually come back to me and all the while, her eyes were huge and glued on Cuinn—still a puppy, mind you, so not done growing up—and I told her what I’d written and how I felt the question was meant to be taken. That seemed to get her attention back onto the reason for her visit but I admit, she looked a little disgruntled so I figured she hadn’t answered quite the same thing.

When those exams were graded and handed back, mine a near-perfect score and hers not so much, it turned out that I’d understood the question right and as our professor went back over each question and answered any that his students had, I wondered if I couldn’t pursue this subject a little better. I’m still not sure but I’m considering it. I just don’t know yet.

It’s time you knew where you actually came from.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Crafted
Characters: Grief aka Aven
Race: Emotion – Grief
Age: 30, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 622 words
 

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I think we were six when they sat all of us down to tell us about our origins. There was nothing actually gross out the story and nothing that would have gotten kids our age to go ‘eeewwwww’. I think most of us were just a little baffled about learning that we’d been made. It hadn’t crossed our minds to ask before that, at least, it didn’t cross mine.

After that, though, I know I was full of questions and I’m not the only one who had them.

The one question that seemed to come up the most often was ‘are the others like us?’ That one earned a resounding no and that might have been just about by that time that we started to learn to control our make. As we’d only been around one another and the people who cared for our wellbeing, we didn’t know that our very make would turn out to be a problem if we were ever to be left to roam amongst those of the upper levels.

I also know that ‘upper levels’ isn’t really the word to use. We were raised in hell, so to speak. With Lucifer as our father, yet again so to speak. What one has to understand is that hell and heaven both are in different dimensions. Hell is one dimension all in itself though people are taught that it’s below us and heaven is in a dimension also all by itself but people are also taught that it’s above us. The statement ‘between heaven and hell’ comes to mind for that but it’s all just a lie, something for people to cling to. Something for the ‘believers’.

I don’t recall the exact age we were when we truly began our training. We’d already been moved elsewhere, into another ‘level’ of hell itself. A place that was still out of reach of most mortals but also very quiet so we could just focus on learning.

The doorways to the realms of mortality were opened to us when we were eighteen. The so-called magical age that turns you into an adult. I don’t think numbers matter. It’s really just about maturity and learning that we were so different from the norm changed us. It might have changed us in a minimal way but small things can grow over time.

We also did learn that we weren’t the only ones. Emotion-born, we were unique, but there was another batch, that of elements, who had been raised with another on an island protected by a shield. An island invisible to the eyes of all but those who were meant to see it. An island where one being was kept as punishment for the crimes he committed but I know that the last part of this is a lie, the crimes, that is.

Not that it’s my place to judge, it really isn’t.

We’ve met the elementling. As of this part in our lives, we actually all live on the same overly large patch of land. Our yard is next to theirs and on the other side, there is another large family. We’re a small ways off from the main road but it’s easy to get everywhere from where we are.

I do like the peace we have out here. I love the quiet. I might not show it most of the time but I can appreciate people just giving me some space if it can be helped at all. It’s not like I want to be a recluse, I’m good with mingling now and again but being able to sit down, close my eyes and listen to the sound of the wind through the leaves it just one of those things.

For fucks sake, dude, how many times do I have to tell you that that’s not what penises are for?

Timeline/World: Main Profile
Characters: Grief aka Aven
Race: Emotion – Grief
Age: 28, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 544 words

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Those are words I wished I never would have had to utter and yet, here they were, again. Though I suppose I shouldn’t say spoken, they’ve been typed again and again but if this idiot would stop sending me dick pics with said dicks in… I suppose they’re disguises? I wouldn’t have to write down those words.

I get it though, some people get off on that kind of thing but I don’t and I don’t even know how this jerk got my number to begin with. The moment I block a number, another one crops up with dick pics of another kind. Most of the time I just ignore them or save them to laugh at them later because the world is a sad, sad place.

Don’t get me started, I was being sarcastic. The world, in general, is pretty depressing in that ‘I can’t believe people do this shit’ sort of way. Not boohoo whatever am I going to do, depressing. I get that I’m based on grief, it’s in my DNA somehow, someway but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything else. Blaike is rarely depressed, despite being born of that particular emotion, Ulric isn’t always angry though he is every so often and yet—get my meaning? It’d be like expecting Asher to be bouncy and happy all of the time and he’s not. Sure he’s bright-eyed most of the time but I don’t think that has to do with the emotion he was born from.

Now, this guy and those pics though. I don’t know I haven’t blocked him yet. He’s obviously straight and I assume he’s mistaken my name for a woman’s name, maybe. I don’t have much in my profile, other than my name and a somewhat old photo. My hair was longer back then and Rahim had managed to take the photo in such a way that I suppose it might have made me look a little feminine around the edges.

I don’t really care though. The dick pics are sad most of the time but now and again he manages to find a costume that doesn’t completely suck. It still is weird as hell that he’s doing this and I’ve seen some of the pictures that were seriously cringe-worth—because excuse me but seeing this guy’s private parts being squeezed under a deeply red high-heeled wearing foot just sits really, really wrong with him and makes my own private parts try to crawl back from where they came from to avoid a similar fate.

Carwyn has asked me a few times why I bother with these profiles, since I’m more than a little fine with keeping at their side when they’re willing to put up with me—which is most of the time—and I just sort of shrug and tell them I’m keeping track of how poorly humanity is doing or something. To be completely honest I don’t know why I’m doing it, I just am. These pics don’t really do anything for me, they have nothing on Wyn and they’re all that really matters to me as far as that is concerned.

So for today and the next few days, humanity can go and enjoy its own self, I have a significant other to pamper to bits.