Anything you see here does not reflect on me as a person, okay? This… this chaos wasn’t my fault.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Current Date: September 1, 2058

Character: Roslyn Freeborn
Race: Human
Age: 47, physically about 28
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

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I don’t know why I spend time thinking about the people and the places I’ve been while I was stuck in my own mind. It’s been so long, and it was such a traumatic time in my life that you’d think I’d much prefer to leave it behind, never to think about it ever again and yet, here I am.

Now, I don’t do this whole thing all that willingly. It just so happens that every now and again, I’ll find myself staring off, even for just a few moments, and I’ll find myself facing old memories just surfacing.

It’s like there’s something in my mind that triggers these old things when my eyes go out of focus.

For the most part, these slips into the memories aren’t bad ones. They’re just reminders of what my mind brought up, perhaps to keep me company, perhaps to teach me some sort of lesson.

When I’m asleep, though, I do dream. These dreams have nothing to do with the memories that are associated with the time I spent in that coma, roaming what I think I’ve started on-and-off calling the ether. Some of the dreams seem to be attached to proper memories though they like to change these memories up around some.

I know that for a playful fact because the last dream I had was based on a childhood memory—the first time Aaric stepped into my room—and it was nothing like the real memory itself. It’s not the end of the world, mind you. Furthest from. That’s not the point. It’s mostly just how unlike myself I was in that dream, compared to what I do remember of the memory.

Before my incident with the magic, well, everything, I was a playful child, I was outgoing, I was full of energy, and I was fairly chaotic. My room was never a mess, but it was never really orderly. It was always a little bit messy but in a way that I personally knew I could find my way around.

In the dream, for some reason, as he approached my door to step in, I told him that anything he saw in my room did not reflect on me as a person—a turn of phrase that I wouldn’t have used at that age either, another clue. That whatever was going on in my room, the very present chaos, wasn’t my fault.

The dream-room was chaotic and that was putting it lightly. There were more plants all around than there was wall space, there were more books, there was everything and if you didn’t know better, it didn’t make a lick of sense of why it was all the way it was, but it was. Anyway.

At this point, just this morning, after having recounted the dream to him, I think we both had a bit of a chuckle about it because yeah, my room was chaotic when he first ever stepped in. It wasn’t overfilled with plants, though, there were only a few books, but it was chaotic, and I embraced that chaos wholeheartedly.

I’ve learned to control that chaos now, of course. There’s still a slight sense of chaos in the places that I fully call my own—one room in the house, is fully mine, just like he has a whole that’s all his—but I’m better about our shared space. I wouldn’t force him to live in my chaotic messes, even though in my eyes, they’re not that chaotic. There’s a sense to it all.

That nature of mine calmed down after I’d woken up from the coma, as is. I needed clear pathways everywhere while I recovered because learning to do a lot of things again required that I focus on different things and I wasn’t as agile, not for the first long while. After that, even once I was fully back on my feet, I never went back to the full-fledged chaos of my room. It’s still not perfectly placed and clean, I’m sure it’s a nightmare to anyone who thrives on perfectionism, but it’s mine and I’m unapologetic about it.

After all, I am who I am and I am just as I am; why would you change me as a person? Aaric certainly doesn’t try; we wouldn’t be together if we didn’t accept one another fault and all and I’m pretty sure that this trait of mine is just endearing to him. He wouldn’t have let himself go near-sick waiting at my bedside these three decades ago either.

He’s mine, I’m his, we’re together and there’s nothing else I want from life than to be with him until the end of everything.

Final Word Count: 780

I don’t think this is the kind of forest you’d want to have a nice easy-going hike in.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Roslyn Freeborn
Race: Human
Age: 46, physically about 28
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 772 words
 

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I’m not against getaways now and again. I think that they give life a little bit of something. I mean, we’ve lived in Atheria all of our lives. This place is big, we’ve got a lot of roaming room, there’s a lot of forests to be had and even each yard is pretty stupidly big. I know it’s meant to give us all the space we might want, and I can’t complain about it. There’s just the point, I think, that there are times when something different is just a nice alternative.

A week spent on the edge of a lake, a week spent near a mountaintop, some time spent out in space because yeah, we have a station up there. I discovered that not that long ago and it’s been an interesting idea to keep in mind. We haven’t gone up there yet, because there’s just something about being up there, in the dark of space, away from everything but our planet below us that honestly scares me a little.

I know that while I was in that coma, a few of the places I ended up ‘walking’ through, if you would, were deep, dark and empty spaces and I’m not completely sold and visiting that again, even though it’s been long decades.

One of the places where we’ve gone to, though, was this sort of cabin lost in the middle of a fairly thickly forested area. Some of the trees grew so close to one another that it was hard to see through them. The whole back area of the cabin was covered in that type of tree setup, the front was a little more sparsely covered and in the far distance—an hour or so on foot, I believe—there was a lake. We could see it from the second floor of the cabin but that was it.

We’d gone there just because, I think. At times, I feel like our means of picking where we go next is dependent on where the randomizer takes us. We have a few filters in places, but not a whole lot and, well, we’ve been to a fair few different places.

My first thought, when we got there, though, was that the forest at the back of the cabin wasn’t the kind where I’d be going for an easy hike in. One thing that I did eventually find out when I went through the back, mostly for discovery’s sake, was that the terrain climbed in a sort of large staircase formation. By large, I mean that each mock-step of the staircase was nearly four to five feet tall so there was only so far you could go in that direction.

That didn’t stop us from enjoying the absolute quiet of the place. I admit that we didn’t go out much, other than for brief walks through the front paths of the cabin. We’d planned on going for a walk one of the evenings, as the sun had started to come down from the sky, but I know I changed my mind when we saw a pack of wolves just wandering by. Now, I’m not scared of wild animals, but the idea of being out there while these wolves were around and, you know, possibly hungry wasn’t interesting to me.

We made use of our times in much more pleasurable ways, and I have no complaints at all about it.

The only thing I feel that I could have enjoyed trying, was looking at the whole area from a bird’s-eye view. Each place usually has a bit of a walk-through 360-degree thing that you can check out and a few aerial photos, but the aerial shots rarely give away the beauty, or you know, the mild creepy factor, of certain places. In a way, I think I wanted to see more of where this cabin was situated, how high the mountain at the back went up, how big the lake might have been, little things, you know.

Not that I’d change a thing about any of our time there, seeing the wolves was just an interesting plus, as far as I’m concerned. I have no regret about our time spent there. It might not be high on our list of returning locations, but it hasn’t been barred. I think there’s just the one place that we filtered out and it was something in a cave. I mean, I think the cave system was possibly huge and there was a lot of natural light coming in nonetheless, but I’d rather not do caves if I can help it, so yeah.

This is entirely an accident, but um, your dreams are super strange.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Roslyn Freeborn
Race: Human
Age: 45, physically about 28
Final Word Count: 714 words
 

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I met strange people while I was stuck in my own mind; my body in a coma and sleeping without sleeping. I worried everyone I’ve ever cared about but I think I’ve finally managed to make progress, as far as forgiving myself for that is concerned.

Yeah, I know, it was three decades ago. I know that most normal people would have moved on from the issue and forgiven themselves. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t forgive easily, not for something this big. If it was something small, like not-so-accidentally spiking Aaric’s coffees, then that’d be something else entirely and I’m known for small teasing things like that. I mean, he still trusts me to bring him his cups, I don’t think I’ve been that terrible about it. As is, coffee is a terrible thing and he can have it all, I’ll stick to my tea.

During that time, as I said, I’ve met strange people. I don’t even think I’ve ever really met these people. I mean, I’ve lived here, in the safety of Atheria, my whole life. I don’t know who these people are, the strange folks that cropped up in whatever dreamland I lived in while I was under. There were beings that weren’t human; if not for the wings or even the horns on some of them, though, I don’t know that I could have been able to tell. For the most part, they seemed to act like any other human being around.

I wasn’t sure where I was. I remember most of the dreams—visions?—I had while I was in that coma. I don’t really remember their details at this point, but I remember the general point of them and, one of them, made me pause. I think it’s the last thing that came through to me before I wake up. Half of it is fuzzy but I still mostly remember this odd man—it could have been a woman; it was really hard to tell.

That person, they were tall and slim, their voice was low but maybe weirdly musical and I just wanted to keep on listening to them as they spoke about mostly mindless things. At one point, though—and that was before I woke, I remember that—they told me that they could only tell through an accident and they apologized for that, but my dreams were somehow quite strange.

I remember that it made me pause in what I was doing; I had to. It made me pause and think back because, for however long I’d been in that place, I couldn’t recall ever actually dreaming.

I couldn’t remember sleeping.

I couldn’t remember eating.

It had just been an endless series of, like… I don’t know how to put it, like a series of flashes but not flashes. Like one moment I’d be walking around this one area I didn’t know, seemingly the next without much of a notice or anything to mark the change between two scenes, I was elsewhere and talking to this one stranger or that other stranger.

It’s something I talked about at length after I’d gotten strong enough again to be back on my feet and see a head-doc to make sure I was fine. Head-doc, physical doc, plenty of therapy because my body needed the exercise to get back to its feet, so to speak. It wasn’t much of a fun time for the few months that followed my waking up, but I cherish every second of it because I got to see my parents, I got to see my few friends but, most of all and this is never going to change, but I got to see Aaric.

I got to see him slowly getting better.

In a way, I think that we got stronger together and I wouldn’t change a thing in our lives, even if I had a chance to. I would, perhaps, change the way I was an idiotic teen that got herself in that predicament, to begin with, but it shaped me into who I am, and I don’t think I would be quite as I am now if I hadn’t been shaped into the person I am now, so that’s just going to have to stay.

What you’re feeling right now is regret.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 3rd Generation
Characters: Roslyn Freeborn
Race: Human
Age: 44, physically about 28
Final Word Count: 663 words
 

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Almost two years ago—I took note of the date in my sort of diary that I don’t write in very often but still every few weeks—I told myself that I would move on from this part of my past and I’ve tried, trust me, I’ve tried.

There’s just a part of me that refuses to let go, no matter what because while I’ve learned my lesson and while I know so much better now, there still is regret there, attached to that memory of almost thirty years ago and I can’t bring myself to let it go completely. A tiny little part of me clings to the memory because it seems to feel that if it were to let go, somehow, maybe, I would forget what lessons I learned on that day.

The mind is a funny thing, let me tell you. I mean, I can’t even begin to imagine it, but somehow, this brain of mine believes that I might forget things I learned after nearly killing myself—by accident—because I’m allowing myself to move on from the regret of that particular day.

I don’t even really remember that day in itself. I just remember that I’d sneaked out, I remember that I’d gathered one of mom’s older books, the one I shouldn’t have been anywhere near until I was well into my twenties and had a stronger control over my heritage, I remember that I’d made it out to the edge of the forest with some ingredients and then I just don’t remember much.

I remember waking up at the clinic, I remember everyone’s face as I woke up, I remember the white streak that is now a permanent addition to my hair. That alone keeps me from forgetting that day but I still wish I could move on away from it. I wouldn’t forget, I would just forgive myself for being an idiotic teenager out to try anything and everything she could get her hands on.

Most of all, though, I remember Aaric’s presence. I remember the look on his face, I remember breathing in the scent of him, I remember feeling as though I’d just finally come home again. It was on the gaunt look of his face, though; I think that this is one of the reasons why this regret still clings to me. I felt terrible for how my parents had felt while I was in a coma, I felt just as bad for my friends, but it was Aaric that I feel I had hurt the most.

I know he’s forgiven me, I know they all have. I’ve been over this whole thing where I wished mom would have gotten mad at me over the whole thing once I’d woken up but I know better. I think I’m mostly over that particular part but really, it’s the regret.

As I said, it’s been some thirty years, give or take. I think it’s about time that my brain understands that letting go of that regret isn’t going to change me. It’s not going to undo everything I’ve learned and it’s not going to change the lessons that have been taught by that ugly mishap. I wake up every day with a clear reminder of what happens when you play with toys that truly aren’t meant for you to play with, let alone are they even toys, to begin with.

So clearly, mind, hey, if you can hear me, you can let go of that regret, truly. I’m more than ready to move on myself, so how about you do the same and give me a chance, here? It’s really not that hard. Just open your clingy little mental grip over the emotional side of the whole mess and let me breathe in deep. I’ll let go of that regret, finally move on from something that’s three decades in the past and we’ll all be doing even better than before for it.

Please, ‘kay, thanks.

What have I told you about being careful?

Timeline/World: Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Roslyn Freeborn
Race: Human
Age: 42, physically about 28
Final Word Count: 553 words

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In a way, I guess this makes me crazy but I wish my parents would have gotten on my case after I really screwed up. When I tried to do shit I shouldn’t have even tried before, shit that backfired, landed me in a coma for I can’t remember how many months and just, I learned my lesson, I did, but I still wish at least mom, since this is her heritage, would have at least gotten angry, even just a little. Told me to never do it again, to be more careful, to—I don’t know.

I mean, I understand this whole relieved thing that I woke up from the coma bit, I do but at the same time, I feel like they overlooked the biggest issue.

I also learned my lesson, which I suppose makes this whole wanting them to be mad at me for this whole thing moot, but I just can’t explain it. It crosses my mind now and again and I’ve brought it up to mom a few years ago, she sort of shrugged and told me that I had learned my lesson, so why get angry about it when it wouldn’t really change the outcome?

I should let it go, I rightfully should. It did teach me to better learn things before I put them in practice. It taught me to slow down and ‘smell the roses’ as that old statement goes. I mean, I still love a lot of the things I did while I was growing up but I guess that, in a way, I’m not really going to rush headlong into any of it without really being sure that this is absolutely what I want to try.

There are some things I still do without really spending much time thinking on. Things that I know I absolutely want after a single look at them. Like that one tattoo I got just before I was bonded to Aaric. It’s a small little thing and it only shows in certain conditions but I still love it to this day and it means the world to me. I didn’t spend days debating whether or not to get it. I saw the design in a dream, I scribbled it down carefully after I woke up and I just knew that this was it. The one thing that would be with me forever, just like our bond will last forever and then some.

So I guess, in a way, it’s time to move on from that one belief that they should have been mad at me, no matter that I’d pulled my ass out of a coma, no matter that I’d almost died, that there was now a permanent white streak in my hair to remind me of my failure. Looking at it from that angle, maybe that streak is enough. I can’t do anything about it. I’ve tried to dye it but the dyes don’t stick. I’ve cut it to the scalp—I actually had a short undercut style for about six months before I moved on—but it still grew back right where it was, exactly the size it had been before and just, it’s there to stay, never getting any bigger or any smaller. Okay, fine. I can accept that this is a good enough reminder.