Something about you has changed. I think I like it, though.

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Characters: Naoise Quirke
Race: Halfling – Demon (risen) / Human – Healer
Age: 29
Current residence: Los Angeles, California
Final Word Count: 837 words
 

---

I hadn’t seen Pedro in years. Honestly, I hadn’t even known whether or not he still was alive. After I’d left the sweetest foster mom ever behind, I’d forgotten about my life there. I hadn’t forgotten about her, though I still didn’t talk to her very often, but I’d left the rest behind. Pedro and his sister were best left behind and I had no qualms about it. The scar on my forehead is actually grateful for the fact that I eventually left that place. At times, I wondered which of the three of us was craziest.

Until I learned that my crazy wasn’t any sort of crazy, of course.

So to come across him recently left me feeling a little startled. Who wouldn’t be? I hadn’t seen or heard from him since Greg’ri had taken me in, since he’d wrapped me so effortlessly around his fingers and yet, I’m sure that if you were to ask him, he’d likely tell you that he’s the one wrapped around my fingers. I guess it’s a good way to know that we’re good for one another.

Usually, most of the herbs and ingredients I need for the creams and pastes are things that I’ve come to grow in the yard. Certain things, however, are a little more difficult to grow as we’re not quite in the right climate for these to grow. Most things do, really, just that handful or slightly rare things do not.

To deal with that, I tend to head to one particular shop that sells these things as, of course, they’re the type of herbs that you won’t find anywhere else. I certainly wouldn’t find them in any grocery store if I tried and, over the years, the owner of the little shop where I pick up these extras I need has learned that I need them as fresh as they can be, as well as dried out and has actually changed some of their stock to accommodate me. I can’t even explain how grateful I am for that. It’s one of the lesser-used creams but it is very potent, and I need some on hand at all times. It is at its most potent when it has had a bit of time to sit, which is why I make sure to have a bit of everyone on hand all of the time.

I really wasn’t expecting to see Pedro. He spotted me before I spotted him, though the voices had warned me that something I should have been wary of had come nearer. I suppose it’s one thing I’m grateful for, now that I do have better control over those voices. I can pick out the few important bits in what they’re telling me.

I’d just stepped out from the little shop, I was considering what my next step was when his shadow came over me. He’s always been bigger than me, but I don’t think it’s that surprising that pretty much everyone is bigger than me, that’s just one of those things that I’ve accepted a long enough time ago.

He looked and felt… calmer. I’d always felt a strong and somewhat unsettling buzz coming from him when we both were with Stella. I could barely feel that now and, yeah, it startled me. He was looking at me with wide eyes, as though he’d just been presented with a gift but, thankfully, he kept his distance. He grinned at me, stating that it had been forever and that it was nice to see me again and just, all the general niceties, I guess, that people spew when coming across someone from their younger years.

I guess I must have managed a smile, but all I could tell him was that something about him had changed. That seemed to sober him up a little and I only ended up tipping my head somewhat in the other direction. I told him, perhaps to soothe ruffled feathers though I doubted that to be the case that it was a good sort of change.

That seemed to do the trick as he smiled again, though he still kept his distance and that, I’m still grateful about. I didn’t need him touching me.

To make a long story short, though I think we only spoke for a few minutes as I had places to be, still, but it seems as though he finally had found the right doctor to talk to and the medication he was taking was doing him a world of good. I didn’t ask about his sister, she’d never really been good for him but that’s none of my business, in the end.

Somehow, I know I managed to tell him that it had been nice to see him again but that I had to go. No spoken promises about trying to get together again because I didn’t want to. He didn’t try to follow, he didn’t ask to have more details about my life, and we both went our separate ways, thank goodness.

Go be creepy on someone else’s time. If you haven’t noticed, I have sneaky things to do. Very secret sneaky things.

 
Timeline/World: Edge of Forever – Gifted Ones
Characters: Naoise Quirke
Race: Halfling – Demon (risen) / Human – Healer
Age: 28
Final Word Count: 731 words
 

---

Preparing stuff to make sure the idiot in my life lives as pain-free as possible has become something that I’ve become a bit of a master of. I mean, it’s not like I have to redo them every day or even every other day; it’s just that I’ve read pretty much all the books he had on the subject and I remember every single word.

I never thought I’d be able to understand that kind of knowledge, let alone be able to remember it all. Up until he came to be part of my life, I’m pretty sure that all that mattered in my life was the fact that by the time I’d be reaching twenty-five, I would finally be free of it all and I would have access to whatever money my parents—my mother—had left behind, just for me.

I know that this makes me sound like some terrible moocher but I am what I am. I was a single child, raised in foster care because his mother was never part of his life. All I have of her is the paperwork. I spent most of my life—all of it, actually—in foster care, even when I was old enough to not even be part of the system anymore. I still had one woman who willingly took care of me when I needed it.

All of that aside, I like to spend my Monday afternoons, when there is nothing else on the schedule, checking on the creams and pastes and everything else I’ve made. It gives me a chance to make sure that I have enough of everything on hand and I can make more of the stuff we’re a little low on.

Most of the creams don’t require much in the realm of focus, shove everything together, mush it good and voila, you’re done. Others, however, are a little more on the occult—if you would—side of things and require focus, quiet and peace. I usually end up going downstairs to prepare those but, now and again, I’ll stay upstairs because I need more ingredients than there are to be found downstairs and I’m feeling too lazy to make all of the necessary trips up and down the stairs to get it all in the same spot.

Downstairs is where I have the most chance at peace; the shields keep everything out though I’ve learned to tune all of the voices out. I usually don’t really hear them. I am, however, a magnet for these little buggers and every so often, we get some that slip by and will giggle their way around. It’s easy to send those off, but not when I’m in the middle of making one particular cream that requires absolutely precise amounts of certain ingredients or else it’ll not do what it is supposed to.

So imagine that you’re trying to prepare something that requires all of your attention—and your attention, generally, tends to waver easily even now. You’re in the middle of sprinkling one of the crushed ingredients into the dish when, suddenly, you hear not one, but two voices piping up from not very far away. You pause and sigh as they yap at one another. That was the story of my life this last Monday.

What do you do? You either ignore them or deal with them, as I couldn’t deal with them, I tried to ignore them but listening to one of them whine at the other to go be creepy elsewhere because they were busy trying to do secret, sneaky things, was annoying. Because it really was whining and I could have just—it was worse than listening to kids complain about not getting enough candy, as I see it. It was that bad.

I did eventually, somehow, manage to finish preparing the cream and it had the right consistency and colour, so I know I managed it right but it was hard to ignore them. I didn’t start a batch of the other three things I had to work on, I got these two squared away first. I had to. I wouldn’t have managed the rest of my work otherwise.

In the long run, they didn’t even need to be told to scoot off to the light, they got one look at Greg’ri and they scampered away, squealing like scared little pups.

Okay, I know I said ‘You can throw a hairbrush at them’, but I didn’t actually mean it!

 
Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Almost Timeless
Characters: Naoise Quirke
Race: Halfling – Demon (risen) / Human – Healer
Age: 26
Final Word Count: 613 words
 

---

For most of my life, until I met Greg’ri, I thought I was crazy. I was on medication because I thought I was crazy. Hearing voices will do that to you. The doctors will assume you’re a complete nutcase and feed you so many meds that most of the time you won’t even be able to tell one thing apart from the other.

Had I known that I wasn’t crazy, so much as I was different, I think my life would have been much, much different from the start. However, I’ve got Greg’ri with me now and I don’t really need anything or anyone else. Sure, I like spending time with Mari and Gréa, but my main focus and attention always go back to my mate, my one, my everything.

Back to the fact that I grew up being crazy. Or well, believing I was crazy. I was such a blank most of the time. I had therapies to go through really often and they left me in a sort of blank state. Normally, Stella—my foster mom at that point, so to speak—let me stay in for a couple of days before coming to pick me back up for a few more days at the halfway house and then back to therapy. I was crazy; I’d been in therapy for years.

Stella had no kids of her own and every one of the kids in the house was a foster-kid, I remember two who were siblings but I can’t even remember their names at this point, how sad is that? Though that might be for the best, I know he used to give me issues and I don’t remember much about her.

I do remember one situation though and I still have the scar for it. I might have been sixteen or so. We were all three sitting in the bedroom I shared with him, they were talking while I think I was mostly staring off and after a moment something just smacks me in the forehead and it smacks me hard.

One moment, I’m minding my own business, the next I’ve got blood pouring down my face because she’d thrown her hair brush at me. Her brother was staring at her open-mouthed and eyes wide. He told her that she could throw her hairbrush at me to get me snap out of wherever it was I’d gone into my mind again but that he hadn’t meant it, not literally.

I recall her just shrugging and both of them still staring at me as I wandered back off to Stella so she could take care of it. I never told her what it was from, she just bandaged me up—head wounds, even the small ones, are ugly bleeders, I should know—and I went back to my things. I was due for therapy that day, as it was, and I think I was pretty blank-minded about it, it was probably my one escape.

I’m glad I’m away from all that now. I’m glad I know more about my ancestry and the fact that I spent years being medicated and more or less tortured for no particularly good reason but when you grow up in a neighbourhood of normies, I suppose it’s the inevitable conclusion.

That’s fine though. If things had been different, I might have never actually met Greg’ri and then, well, I don’t know where I’d be now and that doesn’t sit so well with me, it really doesn’t. I need him at my side. I’d like to think he needs me as much as I need him and that’s not just based on the job.

I don’t like owing favours. You know this.

Timeline/World: Alternate Earth – Almost Timeless
Characters: Naoise Quirke
Race: Halfling – Demon (risen) / Human – Healer
Age: 25
Final Word Count: 546 words

---

“Well, it’s this or that…” he was motioning to the rather heavily bleeding arm, “might just become really useless? I don’t mean that as a threat, either, it’s just how I see it. Either you accept the help and repay back in time, because I have no need for money, or you go on your messy way, either bleeding to death or gangrene might set into that if you manage to stop the bleeding.” He murmured the words softly, his head tipped a little and his gaze just slightly unfocused. He was listening to the voices of the others, those who could not be seen by the majority of people. It had been a curse for him for so long but now he had learned to control it, mostly.

The man who’d come to him with the bloody arm had backed away a step, uncertain. It wasn’t all that unusual and he normally didn’t even bother to give them an answer but Naoise knew he seemed to attract particular souls to his presence when he was out on his own; something that didn’t happen often, he was usually accompanied and it was for the best.

He tipped his head again, watching the internal battle the man seemed to be trying to work his way through. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen him, they’d crossed paths on several occasions lately, especially since the colder season had settled in. Their first meeting had been a surprise but now he almost made excuses to wander to see if the man would come to him again. Usually, it had been small things, a sprained wrist, a broken finger, a rather insistent stomach-ache. This though, this almost shredded arm was more than he would have normally dealt with, even while taking care of his keeper, so the mock price had been a little higher.

Naoise didn’t normally ‘heal’ the general populace but there was something a little otherworldly about the man. It was faint and faded but he could tell there was something, almost buried deep, far and completely out of reach. He wasn’t sure what it was but it didn’t really matter much, in the end, there just was a sense that he was meant to help and that is what he was doing. His ingredients, however, were not exactly cheap when it came to mini miracles like these, so he felt no real shame in asking for a favour in return for this little bit of help.

He could feel it, just there, needing only a little shove to make an appearance again. He’d have to ask Gregori first, just to confirm that he wasn’t completely off track with what he could sense and what the voices were telling him. It wouldn’t exactly be a good thing to release something dark and malevolent into their city, in the end. He wasn’t quite that stupid.

There was a look of defeat in the man’s eyes, a soft grumbling that made Naoise smile just somewhat. He really wasn’t doing it for the favour; he was doing it for a chance at freeing whatever was dormant within the man. He’d never felt that kind of pull before and he knew it was important that he gives it his best try.