There are some dangerous people around you and it seems to me that you like messing with them.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Current Date: August 6, 2023

Character: Laryam Makel
Race: Reborn – Angel
Age: 34, physically about 20
Current residence: Heavens
 

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I’m not sure whether it is Roane or the years of rebirth finally catching up to me, but I’ve barely had any nightmares as of the last year or two. Usually, I wouldn’t be keeping track, but as I’ve had nightmares—not every other day, but still often enough that I found myself noting them down—since my rebirth, all based on my prior life, something I shouldn’t even have remembered, keeping track made the most sense.

I didn’t want to write any of it down, not at first. Not when writing things down meant I had to rehash them in my mind and be reminded of the things I was trying so hard to forget. Most of the nightmares had to do with my life in that solitary cell. It was possibly my only saving grace in a way that if I had been out with the other prisoners, I fear that my body might not have lasted very long.

After all, I was this skinny, blind, harmless young man. I could hardly keep myself safe from others if they so wanted to take, well, anything from me. A small part of me is still bitter at the time I spent in prison for a crime I had not done and being sentenced to death over it. The only upside to all of this, I suppose, is that here I am now, reborn, an angel, with my sight back to me, though, Heavens, it was hard to adapt to that and even now, I have days when the ability to see confuses me.

I have no idea as to what triggered this particular nightmare. It had been such a long time since the last one that I had foolishly wanted to believe they were all gone. That, of course, was too good to be true and I accept this hurdle just fine. This is still better than my last little bit of life in solitary confinement.

Which is what the nightmare was about, of course. What else would I even dare to dream—or have nightmares—about? There was nothing else that was triggering enough in my life before prison and the death sentence that could have led to nightmares.

There were a lot of echoes in that cell. I don’t know if it was from the cells around me or from the hallway out of that cell—I walked that hallway often enough as they led me to the showers so I could wash up. I was always alone there, and I learned very quickly that being worried about my own nudity was moot. To them, I was a skinny blind guy who could do no harm—they talked behind my back, I could hear them talk about how pathetic I was but how sad the system was when it was clear that I couldn’t have done the crime I was being punished for.

The nightmare had few sights or smells, it really was all sound. Most of the nightmares are mostly sound and smell since there was no sight for me to have at all and though my mind has stupidly tried to make up sights for the smells and sounds before; I found it less than amusing when I woke up that first time, more confused than terrified by what the dream had tried to feed me.

In the darkness of the cell that felt just so damp, I hear voices. I often heard voices, but I could never tell their origins. This one had a pair talking about how there were some dangerous people around whoever the speaker was talking to, and that said other person quite liked to be messing with that and clearly, it could only end in absolute disaster. That, in itself, isn’t so much anything that could make the dream a nightmare.

It was the voice itself, a voice that has haunted me through every single nightmare; a deep, gravelly voice, sounding almost like one could imagine a lifelong smoker would sound and I’m not even sure why I know that, though I think Adrian is the one who explained it to me at one point. A voice I don’t know that I remember ever hearing in my life before but there is something about it that sinks deep into my bones and sets me on edge.

As though that voice belongs, almost, to the man whose place I clearly ended up taking on death row. I have never heard his voice before. I don’t even know who he is. To anyone else, what happened during my sleep cycle could be brushed off as just one weird moment amid so many others but, to me, just the sound of that voice is enough to set the tone for the rest of my night.

That very voice could have been bidding me good morning and the rest of the dream would be a nightmare. It didn’t matter what happened during the dream-turned-nightmare, all it took was the voice and I wish it wasn’t so. I wish I could explain it better, but I just can’t. It’s as though he’s my own personal ghost and he terrifies me.

Final Word Count: 862

I have better conversations with my plants than I have with you, to be honest.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Laryam Makel
Race: Reborn – Angel
Age: 32, physically about 20
Current residence: Heavens
Final Word Count: 733 words
 

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“…boring.”

The single word his brain dares to catch from the conversation happening near him draws Laryam out of his mild daze. This wasn’t all that unexpected or out of the blue for him. For as quiet as he usually was, most of the time a presence more than anything else when they had newcomers, Laryam was rarely involved in the conversation of others and, just the same, others seemed to forget he even existed at all.

Blinking a moment to clear his sight, he manages to stifle a yawn, even as the conversation continues next to him. He tunes it out, even as the girl complains to her friend about how having a conversation with him—her friend—is boring and how she has better conversations with her plants.

It makes him roll his eyes and with a soft sigh, he moves to his feet and stretches carefully. It is neither the motion of him getting up nor his stretching that make the pair go quiet, it is the rustling of his wings and feathers as they do stretch behind him somewhat, as though awakened from a slumber themselves.

Through his wings, a few small decorative trinkets sit, catching the light. It seems to always draw the attention of others—about the only thing about him that draws attention.

Next to him, the pair is quiet, seeming to be taking in the sight of the small glittering items more than paying attention to anything that made up the man attached to the wings. Shaking his head, mostly to himself more than not, Laryam tucks his wings close and steps away. If these two had settled there while he’d also been there, it was fine, but he didn’t want to listen to their conversation; there were quieter spots everywhere if he so wanted to find one.

“….so weird!” Even as he walks away, a few words reach him and he does what he’s always done best since being reborn, he tries to ignore them. Water to a duck’s back, he remembers Adrian telling him. That’s how these words have to be for him. Water. He’s the duck and the words are water.

The issue, he knows, is that they still hurt a little.

It is no fault of his that he’s just so quiet and keep to himself. He remembers the life that brought him up to the others. A life that most reborn angels forget about the moment they come up. What makes him different? That is something else for the big book of mystery that is most of his life. The only thing he knew for certain, having been told so by Adrian, was that the man that had committed the crimes he’d been accused of had died of supposedly natural causes not long after he’d been put through his death sentence, himself. It was the only thing he found even just a mild amount of comfort into.

That and, well, Roane.

Or well, Parnell, as Laryam knows his first name to be, but he had been asked, nearly begged, to call the other Roane—his middle name. As far as Laryam was concerned, he was fairly certain that he was the only one using that name for the other and it made him feel something warm inside. Something he couldn’t quite put into words.

Roane’s presence near him always makes him feel better. He didn’t know how to deal with the slightly brash presence before, but as time passed, Roane proved to be a gentle soul. A bit of a temper, certainly, but never directed at him. The redhead is the only one Laryam truly speaks to; something that should be remedied to but he has no desire to open up to anyone else.

So many years spent behind bars after a young life that hadn’t been all that easy, opening up to others, even after a rebirth, is just difficult. Talking to plants would likely be easier and the thought actually amuses him just a little. Some people might claim others boring enough that talking to plants would be more interesting, but in his case, he knows that it would be different. He likely could get away with talking to plants and it would entertain him just fine.

Roane would, of course, most likely chuckle away at him and tease him that he was being adorable again but… so what?

Need I remind you that none of us are in top shape?

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Laryam Makel
Race: Reborn – Angel
Age: 31, physically about 20
Final Word Count: 718 words
 

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There is something to be said about how some nightmares still cling to you even though it’s been so long that it really shouldn’t be a problem at all. Though I suppose that this particular dream isn’t really so much a nightmare as really just that, a dream. It’s strange to think that I have dreams relating to the years I spent in death row when all there should be are nightmares.

It’s just, if you look at it from my point of view—which, in a way, I had none of my own while I was there, not in a literal way—you would figure that a young, innocent blind man being put almost straight on death row for the gruesome death of a young woman would lead to nothing but nightmares. I didn’t kill her, the man who killed her died of terrible sickness not long after I died, myself. That hardly means that he didn’t find himself more victims during my incarceration.

That poor girl, from the trials, what I remember is that she was carved into in such a delicate and careful way that,
this part of her torture, as a whole, shouldn’t have led to her death. It was more the fact that over time, he emptied her of her blood and replaced that with I don’t know what. I stopped listening after a while since it was clear that they wouldn’t make any effort to find the real killer.

They wouldn’t take into account the biggest point that made their whole claims moot. I was blind. I had been born blind. How does one cut delicate, almost artful design into a woman if he can’t see what he’s doing? There were never even any mentions of potential accomplices which would have made some vague sense otherwise but no, they were dead set on getting rid of me permanently and I had no one to come to my rescue.

I only spent a single day—two, maybe—in a normal cell at the beginning of it all, I still remember that much. I could hear others talking around me and while I was in a bit of a shock following everything, I still picked up a few things and one of them is what resurfaced in the odd dream I had a few days ago. All I can hear is a whisper near me stating that none of them were in top shape; if they wanted to achieve whatever they were planning to achieve, they needed to be in better shape. Even then, I didn’t know what that was about and I still don’t know.

Were they planning on trying to escape? Were they planning a show? It could have been just about anything, in the long run. I don’t know why my brain has brought up that little part; except, maybe, that we’ve had a big group come in together through the introduction group a week or so ago and it’s been a bit chaotic. Sadly, there had been a pretty big landslide somewhere and a whole bus had gone with it; sure, not everyone was sent up to us for rebirth for these seven were. None of them seemed surprised by the outcome and were mostly willing to complain about everything instead of trying to listen to what they were being told.

It’s quite possible that one of them complained about something that it brought back up that dark scene in my mind; dark by the fact that I was unable to see it, only hear it but it’s one of those things. I might just never know but, just the same, it’s all right. I’ll take the odd dream like that instead of the nightmares and night terror.

When Adrian had left, both nightmares and night terror had nearly completely abandoned the building and Roane tells me that he hasn’t witnessed anything wrong with my sleep so far. It made me uncomfortable that he would stay around after I fell asleep but now, I just feel comforted by his presence. I know I do feel like I like him as more than a friend—something I had felt with Adrian but could never pursue—but just the same, I’m worried about how things might turn out if I say anything.

It’s incredibly easy to tease you and you make the cutest of faces when I do.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Laryam Makel
Race: Reborn – Angel
Age: 29, physically about 20
Final Word Count: 553 words
 

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“I do not.”

“Except you do and it’s absolutely adorable.”

I could feel my face warming up at his compliment and I let out a soft huff, shaking my head a little as I refused to look at him. Years past my rebirth and I still wasn’t completely used to having my sight back. Let alone was I used to being alive at all but that was just something else entirely. After having spent too many years behind the death row bars for a crime I hadn’t committed but I had been blamed for, everything still had a sort of edge that I just couldn’t get used to though I was giving it my best.

I had had a good mentor when I was reborn. Adrian had died of sickness before he’d been reborn and like me, he’d died far too young. He’d had family to mourn him while I didn’t but he looked after me as though I was his own, it helped me settle in for the most part. I miss him now that he’s left. High Angels like him are always needed in other places and the lowly elemental angels like me don’t get to stay at their sides forever though I wish I could have.

Roane was different from Adrian in so many ways that when he first spoke to me, I thought he had me mistaken for someone else. Roane was a little rough around the edges, he was the type who would speak his mind even if you told him you weren’t interested, the type to get in your face if you pissed him off because he was a redhead—so rumours states about redheads having a temper but I just believe that he’s that way because he is, not because of his hair colour.

Except, I can’t explain this part, with me, Roane has been kind, gentle and soothing as a presence. At first, when he spoke to me, he was somewhat in my face and mostly in my personal space but now he’s learned to give me a bit of space, at least physical space.

When he compliments me, I have a hard time accepting it because it was just something that never existed before in my life and I never know if he truly means it or not. It flusters me, gets me blushing and it gets him to lather on the compliments and the light teasing a little more.

I suppose I can consider him a friend? It’s hard to tell since I hadn’t had any of those before and up here, Adrian was the first person I truly felt comfortable around. After Adrian, there was Cael and he’s still a bundle of high energy. He doesn’t like Roane so much but I think that might be more based on the fact that the former is a water elemental angel and the latter is fire. Being an earth elemental angel sort of puts me in the middle between the two of them but I haven’t really had to ‘break up’ any fights. They just work together if they have to but they don’t spend any time together unless they have to, it works out for the best in all cases, as far as I’m concerned.

I still don’t think I’m adorable, by the way.

Can you give me a chance to prove my innocence?

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Lost in Translation
Characters: Laryam Makel
Race: Reborn – Angel
Age: 29, physically about 20
Final Word Count: 547 words

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Dying while behind bars was not the way my life should have happened but it did. I’d rather not get into the sap story that is the death of an innocent blind man because it just still hurts too much. I was set up. I was framed. The murder was one done with precise tools and delicate attention to detail and therein lies the stupid problem. I’ve stated it before just now and I’ll state it again, I’m blind. Or, well, I was. That was somehow returned me to when I was reborn up there, above with the others. I had been born blind and to see things for the first time was actually pretty terrifying.

It’s been more than a decade since I was subjected to the lethal injection and it still brings nightmares. They are uncommon but they still do happen now and again. There is nothing I can do to help them. The only upside to these, though I suppose in the same way, it could be a downside, is that the nightmare is in sound and sensations, there are no images to be had, there were no images for me to view.

At first, I tried to tell them to see my side of the story but they refused to. How could any judge, how could any lawyer not see the gaping hole in everything? How could anyone at all believe I could, or even would, do such a thing as kill an innocent young woman in such a cruel way as the way she was murdered? Just the thought of it makes me ill. I was told, a while after my rebirth, that the true culprit had suffered immensely and died from an illness not long after I had died myself, so in a way, I suppose that solved itself but still.

Adrian has been so patient with me while I tried to adapt to this new sort of life, to this new sight, this new world, this new everything. Everything terrified me at first and I wanted nothing more than to be left on my own. My night terrors, however, were making me a problem when my help was required out and about. That was something else I had to adapt to. Not only had I been reborn with sight, I had been gifted with a control over the earth—not the planet, of course not, but the matter on which we stand on: the rocks and dirt, for one thing.

Helping survivors out of an area that had seen a mudslide was amongst my first tasks when I felt well enough to help the other angels and it left its scar, so many bodies and so much blood, I had not been prepared for the sight that assaulted me and gave me nightmares. Only Adrian was able to convince me that it was all right, that I had done all I could and that the survivors were going to be all right. He’s also the only one who could ease the night terrors and nightmares away and for that, I am more than a little grateful for his presence. I wish I could have met him before he died, I would like to think we would have gotten along well.