I can teach you, but I’m not sure what I’ll be getting out of this.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: March 24, 2058

Character: Jared Westlake
Race: Halfling – Angel / Human
Age: 73, physically about 26
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

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I wonder if it’s much of a surprise to anyone who isn’t truly familiar with me—my family, the few I can truly call my friends—that I don’t care to fly. I know, colour me surprised, right? Here I am, my one father a human, my other, one of the highest angels there ever was and here is little old Jared, not quite afraid to fly but possibly so not very far from.

Dad never forced me to learn. I’m grateful for that. I mean, I know from hearing about it when the kids were growing up that everyone with dragon blood was invited to join in on 101 lessons about flight and whatnot. I think that was pretty smart of them to do it this way. This wasn’t really an option when we were younger and, I’ll be honest, even if it had been, I wouldn’t really have bothered attending, though I might have been made to.

While in my teens, there was someone who offered to teach me. He was a few years older, he went to the same school we did. I don’t know what his bloodline was like but it must have been muddled—which, you know, I’m not judging, it was perfectly fine—because I couldn’t even begin to pinpoint the design on his wings, it was so strange. On that same note, I suppose he could have been from a much lesser-known species with abilities to fly. In the end, I just didn’t know.

I remember telling him that I wasn’t much of a fan of heights and that while I appreciated his offer—I have no idea why he offered in the first place and it was such a long time ago, I don’t know that I’d be able to even properly remember—but I do remember that he rolled his eyes in response, he said that he’d offered because he had figured it to be the right thing to do since I seemed so green around the edges but that he hadn’t known what he’d be getting out of the whole thing.

So I guess he must have been glad that I didn’t accept his offer. The single thing I got out of that reply of his, that did stay with me for quite a while after that, to the point that I remember talking to my fathers about it after I’d gotten home that day, was that I would have been expected to offer some form of payment for his good deed.

Knowing near to nothing about him, other than he was a little older and that I’d never seen him spend any time with much of anyone, at least when I caught glimpses of him so who knows how true or not this might have been, it seemed to me as though he didn’t have a whole lot of friends. In the long run, I had no idea what he might or might not have really been like. Not that I could judge him on friends or not, I didn’t exactly have a whole gaggle of friends either.

I’m not sure what brought this memory to the surface. It’s one of so many of what I remember of my high school years that possibly live in something of a box at the very back of my mind. They’re being revisited at times like these when something triggers them but they’re the kind of memories that I don’t spend all that much time thinking about otherwise.

Maybe it comes from the fact that spring is settling in, snow, while we’ve had a fairly big storm not that long ago, has begun to melt and the days are warm enough that most of the birds that head a little further south and into warmer winter temperatures have started to come back. I’m well aware that we have plenty of birds that do stay during the winter but quite a few of the more colourful ones don’t.

That and, I’m not going to lie, I’ve never spent that much time watching birds though I do appreciate seeing them in flight. Ironic, I know, all things considered. Though, on that same note, I feel as though it’s not quite the same to appreciate watching birds fly versus being made to fly. No one is going to erase my fear of heights with a snap of their fingers—now, I know it possibly could happen, but why would it—and I’m not the one high up in that sky with the birds. So yes, I do like watching birds fly but I suppose that the sight of them returning might have brought old memories back to the surface.

I don’t mind.

Final Word Count: 787

It’s never too late to apologize, but it doesn’t even seem like you want to.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Jared Westlake
Race: Halfling – Angel / Human
Age: 72, physically about 26
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 722 words
 

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Some memories cling in ways that make me shake my head. How can any of this make any sense? It is a memory that changed our lives forever. It made it into what it is now, there’s no denying it. It’s the memory of that one thing that happened, and we both regret it to a point where I think we just can’t even think about it anymore without wishing we’d done things differently.

But what can we do about it?

It’s in the past. We’ve apologized profusely about it, but the harm was done when it was done. I can’t keep on rehashing this memory, but my brain seems intent to. There are no other ways to look at it. For the most part, that memory is dormant at the back of my mind. At times, though, something will trigger that painful blip and it will surface all on its own. Usually, it isn’t even during the day that it will bother me, it is at night. Something during the day will happen, it might even just be a small thing that will seem insignificant to everyone else but to me, oh, to me it will be a reminder of my failure, as well as Tiden’s.

At night, when my mind brings up the ugly details of these things in dreams that I find myself unable to escape, I hate it. The dreams begin innocently enough but soon become nightmares that cannot be escaped until I’ve lived through the whole ugly thing over and over again. On the mornings following these dreams where I still find myself begging for forgiveness and apologizing like it is nobody’s business, I request an appointment with one of the head docs to discuss the surfacing of the dream.

Now, I might make it sound as though it is an unending thing and that I never have any peace but that’s not quite the point. I have these dream-nightmares maybe once, twice a year at most. They still are enough to disturb me and remind me of things I do so wish I had left in the past.

In most of the dreams, my mind makes it seem as though I never apologized. It taunts me about how it’s never too late to actually apologize and that, just maybe I should start now. Then, there is a strange shift in that little voice in my head that starts going on about it’s clear, however, that I don’t seem to even want to apologize for what is far more than a mere faux pas. I can’t argue with these nightmares, no amount of trying to find my voice—which seems to spur the nightmare on—does me any good.

I just don’t know how to explain it in any other way that might make sense. The nightmare is just that. A rehashing of that old memory, making it seem even worse than it was, and it was a very terrible, life-changing day, and then it makes things uglier and uglier.

It didn’t take us long, on that day, to realize that we’d fucked up big time. I apologized almost instantly, just seeing that look on her face, but it wasn’t enough. The harm had been done and she was gone for a while. As I remember it, she only came back long enough to pack up some of her things. That was the end of the relationship we’d had since her birth, and I wish I hadn’t lost that. I miss what we had like you wouldn’t believe but, on that same note, I know that nothing will fix it.

Let it go, I’ve been told time and again. I’ve tried to let it go. I’ve apologized, we’ve made amends to the very best of our abilities. The memory simply haunts me. I don’t know if it haunts Tiden as well, it must. Not unlike me, I know that he has appointments with head docs about making sure that everything that’s going on isn’t swallowing us whole and taking us under. I just know that this is something we try not to talk about. At times, we’ll bring it up in hushed tones, as we remind ourselves that there is no turning back, but otherwise, we’ve tried to leave that ugly day as far behind us as we could.

Have you ever thought about the way you say things sometimes? It’s like you want me to be insulted.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Jared Westlake
Race: Halfling – Angel / Human
Age: 70, physically about 26
Final Word Count: 666 words
 

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It’s strange, a little, all the memories you think you might have forgotten, that tend to surface when you bring out old photo albums. And I do mean old photo albums, the kind we don’t really see anymore. These days, there are frames hanging on the walls and they go through a series of pre-set photos selected by the person who has these frames up. I don’t know that anyone has printed photos on glossy or matte paper like this in a long time but I guess I could be wrong.

I don’t go through everyone’s home to find out what they do and don’t do after all. That would be stupid.

I like looking at our old photo albums, though, we do have some from when Alexa was younger and I think that it’s been so long since we’ve been stupid assholes that looking at those photos and reminiscing of things from when she was still just a toddler is something we can get away with.

The most recent album I took out, however, was an even older one, it was from our teen years when we still would sneak away into the city to spend time with the people we called friends but I don’t know how true that statement really is. About them being out friends, that is. They weren’t bad people but I think they also weren’t the greatest of influence on us. Besides the fact that they did smoke—some, not all of them—and drank—again, some but not all—and were part of a gang, they weren’t all that bad but they still had moments that made me wonder just what I was doing there with them.

I admit that they were Tiden’s friends more than they were my own but I wanted to be with Tiden and that’s what it took. I remember one particular situation, though, back then I’m not really sure if I was supposed to laugh or cringe because the tone used was clearly one of anger but, looking back, it might have been exasperated amusement, I just don’t know.

Do people still do this? Put their friends in headlocks and then mess up their hair a bit roughly while trying to tell them what they did wrong? That was something that happened often with the guys in that particular gang, often over seemingly pretty stupid things and one of them was between two brothers, the older one of the two was probably sixteen and his kid brother thirteen at the most, he was the youngest one in the ground.

The little asshole whose name I can’t even remember just got his brother in that headlock, seriously messed up his hair and by the boy’s whining and whimpering, it was plenty painful, and he was going on and on about how he was pretty sure that he (his brother), never really did give thought to what he was saying because it always sounded like he was making sure that his bully of an older brother would get insulted. All in all, it was a confusing scene and for some reason, we actually have a photo of our group, just a few moments after the whole ordeal.

How can I tell it was on that day and not another one? Well, for one thing, the boy’s face was covered in red patches as though he’d cried recently, his hair was an ugly, gnarled mess and I remember how he came to us the following day with his hair shaved off because the tangles had been unfixable in any other way. I still remember the clothes that were being worn in that photo, I still remember Tiden actually being unsettled by the whole thing when we were talking back home later that day. I’d been the one to take the photo and I was glad to not have had to be anywhere near the ‘leader’ of that little gang. He’d have probably tried to eat me whole.

We didn’t like the play.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 2nd Generation
Characters: Jared Westlake
Race: Halfling – Angel / Human
Age: 69, physically about 26
Final Word Count: 611 words
 

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Life experiences now aren’t quite what they were when we were younger. The world has changed and with it, the rest of us. We might shake our heads, point fingers at what we think is proof and argue that we haven’t changed but we have. If the world outside still were as it had been when I was in my teens and early twenties and we shoved out the youngest generation, they wouldn’t really know how to handle it, I don’t think so.

Our life, for the most part, still does have its claws into the behaviour of past-times, that can’t change. We still go to the market for food, though there is no payment system, only an honour system; they still went to school though now schooling is done in virtual classrooms. It’s in the little things, really. Most of the music is from back then, not now; though we still have composers and musicians who create new music but the vast majority is from the past. The same can be said for movies and other things created for the masses.

Plays performed in a theatre are another one of those things. We do have an amphitheatre, it is outdoor and large enough to accommodate all of us, it can even be protected from the rain as necessary but it is rare that it is in use when there are no festivals going on and plays are even rarer now that all of the kids are no longer kids and are done with primary and secondary schooling.

I remember going to a play with Tiden, it was one of our usual weekend outings when we were still teens. We’d go to plays, movies, small concerts. I can’t remember exactly what the play was about but I suppose that might just make it clear that it wasn’t all that marking. What I do recall is that when we both stepped outside, we stopped just under the awning by the door still, watching the fine drizzle fall, and we both had the same reaction. Both at once, without prompting or anything else, we just went ‘meh.’

That set us laughing so hard we had tears running down our cheeks and the others who were leaving the theatre gave us such a wide berth that it only made it all the more hilarious. As it turns out, neither one of us has been impressed with the play and I’m sure that if I were to bring it up to him now, he probably wouldn’t have any better idea than I do about what it was about. The only thing I really recall is our reaction to it and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the same for him.

If we were to watch plays like these anymore, it’s part of the virtual reality side of our lives. It’s not such a bad thing, not really. There is so much we can relive and rediscover through the VR that it makes for an interesting addition to our lives but I still do somewhat miss the ability to go out to the city and be part of a bigger crowd.

Then again, you can’t really tell whether or not the crowd in the virtual reality room is real or not. You can feel the press of their bodies, you can smell them, see them, they’re as real as they might ever be. The thing is, I know a few people who can’t immerse themselves into the realities, they can still tell that it’s not real, so I just really don’t know what that experience might be like for them in the long run.

None of it mattered.

Timeline/World: Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Jared Westlake
Race: Halfling – Angel / Human
Age: 68, physically about 26
Final Word Count: 545 words

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No matter how long it has been, the memory remains in my mind. It is vivid and I know I will never forget it. I cannot. It was my biggest weakness and I hate that I let it take over me but as it is in the past, I have made amends as much as I can and while the relationship can be strained at times, it is as good as it might ever end up being. I cannot blame Lexa for how she feels. We, Tiden and me, are the ones who created the situation as it is now and we should have handled it better but that is the only thing we can do about it all. Tell ourselves that we should have handled it better.

The issue is that I can hardly remember why the situation spiralled out of control the way it did. There was a sense of mild dissatisfaction between us as we raised our beautiful daughter, our only child. I know it wasn’t through her behaviour, she was very well behaved but there still was a trigger somewhere in there and I still know that the fault is as much mine as it is his. When we hit the lowest of our low, when we told her we wished she had never been born… it was like nothing else mattered. I remember the broken look on her face; I remember all the aching hurt, all the small details of her reactions are forever etched in my mind.

How badly I wish we could turn back time.

It took a lot of effort to get back to a semblance of normalcy after that. There are a lot of things within that time frame that I would rather not remember but I do. I remember meetings with our parents, together and each on our own, I remember talking with the head doctors, I remember medication because there was an imbalance somewhere but I refuse to blame what happened on that imbalance, it would invalidate everything. The fault is mine and his and that is that.

Now… well she still comes but she does so when there are other members of the family present. We cross paths every so often and share brief words but she has not set foot back in our home on her own since she was old enough to leave that very home. I hardly blame her for that fact. I know the house holds ugly memories for her and I want her to be as far away from these memories as she can ever be. I think I have accepted these… ‘changes’ in our lives a little easier than Tiden ever has. He’s more stubborn than I am and it took him longer to apologize, too, longer to realize the mistakes we had made, longer to admit to being part of the issue.

All of this, it all is in the past now. In the past but still not buried beneath everything else. It remains a constant. A vivid constant that is not at the forefront of my mind but it isn’t very far back either. Most of the time I can manage to mostly leave it unseen but it will forever be a part of me.