I like it when you call me dependable. Makes me feel reliable.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Current Date: April 23, 2058

Character: Leann Kimball
Race: Drow – Demi-Goddess of Deceit
Age: 47, physically about 22
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

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Let’s not rehash the fact that I know I’m different. I’ve known that all of my life and this is something I’ve accepted a long time ago. Something Cy seems to not make a fuss about and I’m glad about that. I don’t know that I’d feel as comfortable in my own skin if I was constantly reminded that I’m different. I know I have to bundle up in the cooler months. I don’t think I even own anything that has short sleeves. Though, certainly, a good few of the longer-sleeved items I do own are lightweight and are good for layering.

All of us are different in our own ways. Some are more different than others and that’s all there is to it. My parents did coddle me, I’d like to think that they didn’t coddle me to the point of exaggeration, however. I was treated in a way that was fitting, considering how quickly my health could turn. That, there, is possibly the important part. It was just enough—or so I want to believe, in any case. Just enough.

When I was old enough to really understand why I was more limited than others on particular things, I think I realized that certain things that might have seemed commonplace for others were ridiculously important to me.

One of these things so happened to be whenever someone—my parents, Cy, my few friends—called me dependable. It made me feel useful, reliable. I was the one kid who started school later. The one kid who got dropped off by her parents every morning even once I was old enough to be in the dorms. I didn’t sleep in the dorms. My health wouldn’t allow it.

It might not have seemed like much, especially to the ones who might not have wanted to sleep in the dorms at all, but I didn’t want to be different from the others. I wanted to be like everyone else and being told that I was dependable, even if it was something akin to keeping seats at the lunch table or hanging onto notes for classes, it was enough. It felt good.

Sure, as I got older, as we got out of school, as I eventually moved out from home and in with Cy, things changed a little but, honestly, not that much. I felt a bit more in control of my own destiny. It might seem like that’s rather an outrageous way of thinking about it but that’s what it felt like—and still feels like—to me.

My parents didn’t stop me from trying new things. I was just reminded that if I did those things, I had to go about doing them in a particular way because that was the way I could manage them within my limits. By the time I was a teenager, I knew these things by heart, but it still was in the air; it was just a silent, unspoken rule.

Here, with just the two of us, I know that the rule is still there but it’s not in my face; my health has gotten better though I know I’ll never be at a hundred percent but I feel as though I have more freedom. I feel as though it’s not quite as important to my daily life that I be reminded that I’m dependable, that I’m reliable, and that I can be trusted to do things.

Thinking back, I feel as though I might have been an odd child, health aside. Seeking these feelings of being good enough for something, I don’t know that they’re things that should have come to happen but they did, and you know, it’s all right.

It’s strange, the things you think about when you’re going through old school stuff. I guess it’s one of those things when another ten years have gone by. Now quite ten years, of course, but it’s getting there and it doesn’t feel like I’ve been out of school and in this house of ours for close to twenty years. Time has this way of slipping on by unnoticed a lot of the time. Not that I mind; I want to think that I make the very best of every day. I might not keep track of every passing second but I live each day to the fullest as my health allows me.

I have all of forever if I’m careful enough and careful enough has been my middle name for decades. That’s never going to change. I’m as healthy as I might ever be and that’s all there is to that. I don’t want pity or sad sighs or anything else. I am as I am and that’s all there is to it in the end.

Love yourself as you are, right?

Final Word Count: 795

I’ll move however slowly I want, thank you very much.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Leann Kimball
Race: Drow – Demi-Goddess of Deceit
Age: 45, physically about 22
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 757 words
 

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Dreams are strange.

I can only walk so far before I’m completely worn out, but the distance has grown quite a bit from when I was a child. I can now actually manage to walk to the heart of our community to go to the market and back and I don’t usually have to stop in the middle of that walk. Sure, I’m pretty worn out by the end and it’s usually better for us to just use a special door, but I can manage that.

Which means I can actually manage fairly long, slow, and steady walks. I do love walks, too. I’m not going to deny that I do push my own limits when I can do so safely. I’m well aware that I’ll never be able to do things the way everyone else does but I’ve accepted my limits fairly well.

In dreams, though, I usually seem to find myself without the physical limits I’ve come to know all of my life. I’ve realized that I can often round around and do things that wear me out quickly in real life without any repercussions in the dream world.

The thing is, though, I don’t tend to do these things; waking up and remembering that I was running around because I could tends to leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Yes, I’ve accepted my limits, but it doesn’t mean that I’m happy about them, I think this is one of those things, really.

In the last dream, however, there was this horse; he was a huge animal. Yes, I’m aware that I’m quite slight and small and that most animals look fairly big next to me, but he was bigger than some of the horses I’ve seen here in the stables. He was sleek, all-black that seemed to shine somewhat dark blue in the light and he was beautiful.

There was a fence between the two of us and I’m quite sure that it was late spring as it is now in the dream. I was walking along, keeping my pace slow and steady because I could and because I do actually love walking and walking in dreams I can appreciate as it doesn’t wear me out, I just do it slow.

The stallion would constantly trot ahead, look back at me as though expecting me to keep pace, then trot out in a wide circle, come back to my side, and repeat it all over again. It made me smile, why wouldn’t it? Several times, I told the mock-beast that I was going to be moving however slowly I wanted to and that he’d just have to deal with it.

He neighed at me and ran off at a gallop, moving quite a way ahead but once there, he slowed, looked back, came back my way via an even larger circle pattern and it was a repeated game over and over again.

That’s pretty much all the dream was about. Little me walking along this fence with flowers everywhere, the sun just so wonderfully warm on my skin and this black stallion trying to entice me to move faster. I had no destination and the fence seemed to go on forever without things seeming to repeat. I might have seen a tree a handful of times, but it wasn’t quite the same every time. Eventually, I know I reached a small brook and that too I walked away from, or more aptly, I crossed its shallow bed, feeling the coolness of the water between my toes.

I really don’t need much in my life to be quiet and content. I’ve learned to love the simpler things because they were what made the most sense. After all, I’m not going to fight against my health for being what it is and I’m not going to just wear myself out faster because ‘life is unfair’. I am the way I am, and my health gets a little better every day. At some point in my life, maybe a hundred years from now, I’ll be almost normal, and I think that this is going to be a time to celebrate even more but until then?

I’m fine with my life as it is, and I love how Cy is at my side through it all. We grew up together, I’m still in awe over the fact that he’s with me until the end of everything and then some. I adore him in ways that I try to show as often as I can.

Considering how the last mystery ended up, I don’t think it should surprise anyone that I hate them now.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Leann Kimball
Race: Drow – Demi-Goddess of Deceit
Age: 45, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 702 words
 

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I am not a fan of mysteries. I mean, even as a child, I don’t think I really liked mysteries. From relatively early on, my parents must have realized how much I didn’t like opening things that were surprises and that just stayed with me up until this point in my life.

Up until about two weeks ago, however, I didn’t think that my dislike of mysteries applied to, you know, fictional things. I read a lot of books, it’s one of those things that I can do and that doesn’t technically require any effort and I can’t know what’s in store with a book, you know? I can’t know what the whole book turns out to be like because, you know, I haven’t read it. To know what the book is like, I have to read it.

Looking at it from another angle, up until two weeks ago, I hadn’t picked up a book that was classified as ‘mystery’. A theme I hadn’t really approached up until then because I hadn’t really thought about it. Mind you, I read about paranormal things—technically, there are things in there that are considered mysteries. I read plenty of things that have things that I suppose could fall into that theme, but I’d never opted to read a ‘crime and mystery’ sort of thing.

I hated it.

Now, I know that this very well could have just been a thing from the author. I just felt like I was being dragged along on a pointless goose chase that wasn’t even meant to go anywhere. I know I should give the theme a try but there are just so many other books and other themes that I can explore that I’m not even going to bother with that anymore.

I did read through it all, you know. I forged on, I wanted to throw it out into a pit, I wanted to never have started to read it in the first place. I’ve read a lot of cruddy books over the years but none of them made me want to just rewind my way back to the beginning as badly as this one did.

I don’t even want to watch detective movies but that’s not new, I never was interested in that kind of thing. I’m not even sure why I picked up that one book, besides the fact that the short synopsis and the cover made it look interesting.

That thing about not judging a book by its cover? It goes both ways now; I know that much. Even if the cover looks terrible, there is a possibility that the writing in that book will be quite interesting but, on that same thought, even if the gorgeous is very appealing and all, it’s possible that everything about it will be absolute crud.

I’m surprised I managed to drop the book back into the system instead of just flinging it out there once I was finally done reading it. I was good, I didn’t even skim my way to the end—I’ve done this just the once and it was because I was actually curious as to how it ended, and I did finish the book anyway after I’d had my quick glimpse.

Most of the time, I’m not actually picky. I’ll read a little bit of everything. I’ll let my ‘you’ve read this, that could interest you’ list be how I pick my next book and it rarely has led me astray. Sure, some authors possibly shouldn’t have ever published anything, and I wish that certain others had published a lot more than they ever had but you don’t control these things, not really. It’s all right, though.

Not that what I read is changing much to my life, but it does give me something to do when it’s just too cold outside or even just too steaming hot. I like being out there and spending time under the sun, just, you know, not so much when the temperature threatens to squish the life out of me. We don’t want that, and I’d rather not even imagine that happening if I can help it so let’s not, okay?

Okay. We’ll be fine, I think.

It’s a cloudy day.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 3rd Generation
Characters: Leann Kimball
Race: Drow – Demi-Goddess of Deceit
Age: 43, physically about 22
Final Word Count: words
 

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I guess it surprises people to know that my favourite season is autumn. I love the change of colours in the leaves, the way they fall slowly over time after they’ve turned their beautiful colours. It’s one of the things I wanted with the yard. I wanted particular trees so that I could witness the change of the season with the full spectrum it had to offer. Sure, it’s more work to then have to rake everything up and I help some but it’s one of those things.

On that same note, I love the rain. The sound it makes when it hits the window panes, the low, distant rumble in the sky when there’s a storm on the horizon. I’m not as sold on storms but I like rain, it’s a soothing sound and it was probably a near-constant in my room while I was growing up.

Sure, it means I have to bring out the extra layers but that’s the story of my sickly life, how is that going to change anything? I’m healthier now than I’ve ever been, that much I appreciate in ways I can’t even begin to put into words. Summer is fun because I can wear slightly shorter dresses without having to wear leggings or tights with them but autumn is just so beautiful, it takes my breath away—figuratively, of course.

Winter is a bit more difficult to deal with because I have to bundle up so much to keep myself warm, but I’ve found out that particular materials and certain layering techniques make be able to spend time outside in winter without being a marshmallow and actually having the use of my arms and legs. That took a few years to figure out but now that I have that trick noted down, I actually like winter walks.

This morning, though, I wish I could have gone on a walk but the weather wasn’t looking like it would be on my side. The sky was dark and cloudy. Getting up just an hour earlier, I was left to wonder if the hour on my alarm clock was wrong, it was so dark. The day is going to turn out to be really cloudy and I don’t know that it will really rain. There’s a heavy wind going on too and that’s probably why I’ll avoid my walk today. Pretty sure that wind could sweep me away without much effort and I can’t imagine Cyrus would appreciate having to find means to get me out of a tree where the wind likely would deposit me.

Don’t laugh, it actually happened once!

Though that had also been a bit of a near tornado, that one. Not that we’ve ever had that but we’ve had winds so strong they’ve uprooted trees. Just once in our yard but I think it happened about four times in the last forty or so years, or so I’m told. Usually in the winter, right by the tail end of what used to be storm season for people living this close to open water. We’re lucky in that regard, I guess.

Anyway, I guess that today’s going to be a bundle up slightly and read a book day. That or a flop on Cyrus and be a pest day. I think that mostly depends on how he’s going to feel about the weather. I know he’d let me be a pest to him any and every single day if I felt like doing that but I’d rather not. It’s just one of those things that I like making special, I guess. I don’t know how else to really look at it. It’s like a sort of treat.

What? I’m weird, I know. So?

It was an exhausting task.

Timeline/World: Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Leann Kimball
Race: Drow – Demi-Goddess of Deceit
Age: 41, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 533 words

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Growing up, everything was exhausting. Everything was dangerous and everything was a potential threat to my health.

Now, well I guess now things are still somewhat exhausting, dangerous and a potential threat to my health but not as badly as it was while I was growing up. I don’t really know what happened or why me. Not that I really mind or blame my parents for this but I was born a sickly child and being as I was and still am, daughter to Godhood, most of the technology available had no real sway on me. I could only be mostly kept inside; I was bundled up when I was outside but my play time was never very long and before much time had passed I was nodding off and ready to head back to my bed.

School was an interesting time in my life. I could manage to mostly stay awake during my classes but that might have to do with the very simple fact that exercising my brain was nowhere near as exhausting as exercising my body. Sitting still behind a desk, learning was easy.

Schooling is now long done, had probably the highest grades of most kids though that might be a lie, I’m not sure. I had almost perfect scores in everything. It’s the one thing I was good at, after all. What Cy ever saw in me and still sees in me is a little beyond my understanding.

My days now have no real set schedule but I like being out in the garden, we keep our yard to summer year long, it’s about the only season when my health gives me no issues whatsoever though I like bundling up and going outside for a slow walk through the parks and neighbourhoods in the autumn, the colours are just so breathtaking.

I join him in activities whenever I can, even if it’s as a spectator most of the time. If it’s time in the pool though, I’m more than ready to join in, that feeling of weightlessness feels more than a little wonderful and I crave any chance to be in the water I can. Usually, only the pool at home because the water is kept to a certain constant but not too hot temperature. I wish I could swim in the open ocean but the water is a bit too cold for me unless it is really the dead of summer and then, the heat makes it near impossible for me to make it out there comfortably.

At times I really do feel like I’m holding him back but my life would be so empty without him at my side, I don’t know what I’d do. I know I’m not holding him back, at least not in the way my mind tries to cripple me into thinking. There are certain things I can’t do with him but we opt for other activities to replace these. Never mind that I can appreciate just sitting back and watching others do their activity of choice without an issue, too. It’s interesting and I lost count of how many snowball fights I have been witness to, those always make me laugh.