There’s nothing I would have changed, except maybe what you did to my kitchen.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Current Date: January 10, 2058

Character: Susannah Magus
Race: Human
Age: 47, physically about 22
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

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Would anyone like some fried budgies on a stick, anyone? No? All right. I suppose we might as well keep them, but it hardly pleases me. Or well, I suppose it only is in the heat of the moment because, the vast majority of the time, these two are sweethearts. There have been more hiccups in recent months but I’m sure that there’s a reason behind it all. A reason—a little something—that only makes sense in their little budgie brains and that’s all there is to it. We’ll probably be taking them to Faith in a few more days, just to be on the safe side of things.

This whole thing doesn’t stop me from wanting to put them on sticks and fry them for the good of everyone else at this point, however. It will pass, especially once everything is cleaned up but waking up this morning to the mess in the kitchen; I just don’t know what to think of it all. The first time it happened, it was little things. Bird poop pretty much scattered everywhere but not that much of it. Some of their food scattered here and there and bites taken out of some of our fruits.

That feels minimal compared to what I woke up to, today, and if I’m being quite honest, I don’t even know how they might have managed all of this without waking either one of us up. This feels more like a mess someone might make while trying to cook up something. These two shouldn’t have been able to open up the flour container, let alone tip it over. By all means, they shouldn’t have been able to push the bowl where we keep our fruits for the day off of the counter and yet, it’s in pieces on the floor.

Yes, I’ve thought to watch through the night video feed, and it is rather conveniently inaccessible. There was an update in the middle of the night that cut off the system during the time when most of these things happened. We do see them hopping around on the counter but then the video goes dark. I’d opt the route that we had a different sort of four-legged visitor overnight but I’ve checked, all of our doors and windows are secure this morning and honestly, if they hadn’t been, I feel as though the two fluttering idiots would have found means of finding those spots.

The one thing that does bug me the more I think about it; it bugs me while I clean up this mess, reminding myself that I love these budgies, even if they cause us issues like this. I know for a fact that we made sure that the cage was locked, and the cover was on for the night. Both of them were in that very cage so, at this point, I’m at a loss as to how they got up.

When I checked the cage this morning, it was still locked. The cover was still on. I’ve looked at it from all angles but there’s no way that these two could have gotten out of it other than if somehow, they’d magically phased themselves out of there. I just don’t know.

So, as far as today is concerned, we’re changing the cage and cover. We’re selecting something about as big as they had, though the shape is possibly going to be a little different. We’ll need a new stand for it but, you know, that’s fine. This cage isn’t all that old but if neither one of us can find out how they got out, it’s probably for the best that we try a new one. It isn’t as though it’ll cost us, in the end.

I’m hoping that with the new cage and cover—I’m thinking the ones with magnetic edges that keep it tight and secure over the whole thing—these two won’t be able to get out and cause anything chaotic like this to happen again.

I really can’t understand any of it. The messes are all just so big that it couldn’t have been them and yet, we have no way of checking for anything else. As is, one way or the other, they were out of their cages this morning when they very much so should not have been, so even if this whole mess was not done by them, we might as well change it. Usually, they warn us when there’s a stranger—or anything that might be an unknown to them—in the house and they didn’t last then.

Then again, yes, I’m aware that it’s possible we both slept right through it since clearly, we slept through the mess making but that’s just something else entirely.

Final Word Count: 793

The sight of you on a day such as this makes me realize how much worse things can always get.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Susannah Magus
Race: Human
Age: 45, physically about 22
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 745 words
 

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I’m sure that if you were to ask everyone I’ve gone to school with, most would possibly, at a quick glance, overlook me. I’m not saying that because I think they didn’t care about me or because I didn’t want them anywhere near me. No. I was just such a quiet wallflower that I might have just disappeared into the nothing more than once. So to speak, at least.

I know that I wasn’t the only one who acted the part of a wallflower, there were not-quite cliques while we were growing up. I just so happened to be in the me-exclusively club though now and again I did spend time with some of the others. Still, it wasn’t all that common.

I’d like to think that things were mostly quiet and normal at home while we grew up. I don’t know that there really was any need to really get used to the change in our diets because, well from the near get-go, things weren’t quite what they were in other homes. Tanner’s health issues probably led to mom trying to find the best way around it so that we still could eat everything we needed for a safe and healthy diet and all.

I don’t remember that we spent all that much time together once we were of a certain age. Our means of keeping occupied were fairly different. While Tanner was wildly artistic, even from a young age, I was more bookish and just one splatter of paint on the book I’d been trying to read back then was enough to make sure I kept my distance while he got into his artistic moods.

So all in all, I’d like to think that my life was pretty okay and not just, you know, bad. I don’t know that I’ve ever really had nightmares until I was an adult and those were fairly rare.

So I’m sure that my confusion can be understood when I woke up in the middle of the night, night clothes drenched and the budgies actually screeching away in their cages in the living room. Even now, I’m still not sure if it’s whatever was going on in the nightmare or the birds that woke me. All I remember is the feeling that something was just so wrong and yet, a suddenly new presence in the mostly dark environment had sent chills down my spine and I felt as though that whatever that thing was, it could have made things just so much worse than they already were.

I didn’t really take much time to try and analyze what little I was remembering of the nightmare, the birds were worrying me, and, in the long run, it turned out to not be for much of anything important. I was a little slow in getting to them, just making sure the house was clear and it was. By the time I’d made it to the cage and removed their cover, they were both just looking at me as though they had no idea what I was doing. They both looked half asleep if that’s even possible with these two.

I know I didn’t imagine the noise they were making. I know I didn’t imagine anything as far as they were concerned. The thing is, there was nothing amiss in their cage, there was nothing wrong in the house and all that really got to me was the chill I felt because, well yeah, my clothes were sweat-soaked, the house was kept at a comfortable temperature but I still was faintly clinging to the remnants of the nightmare.

All in all, I think I sort of stared at them for a good five… maybe even ten minutes before I know I just sighed and tugged their cover back down. They didn’t make a peep. I ended up showering because I was feeling pretty gross, caked in drying sweat the way I had been, and ended up just sort of perched on the couch in the living room until morning. I didn’t want to go back to bed just then, and I knew that I could just read a book for a little while and I’d have been set.

I don’t even really know what could have triggered the nightmare, I’ve tried as much as I can to think back on everything I’d done the day before, but nothing came back up as out of the ordinary, so I really just don’t know.

I knew I shouldn’t have left you alone, but I didn’t think you could get into that much trouble!

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Susannah Magus
Race: Human
Age: 44, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 683 words
 

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So, for reasons that are a little beyond me at this point, especially as I find myself having to clean up everything left behind, I let myself be tempted by the sweet little eyes of a pair of budgies some weeks back. From all I’d read about them and all we’d been told, they would be good companions, it was possible they’d be talkative a bit but, all in all, they were good pets for beginners. I wanted to believe that.

Sure, for the first week, all was fine. Feed the birds, clean up the cage, make sure they have water, watch them play a bit in their water and with their toys and the rest, it was nice. For the second week, it was much of the same and so on.

Okay, sure, taking care of budgies is a good way to start with pets but I still wasn’t sold on the idea of another pet once these two had lived their possibly long lives. I hadn’t really checked on the potential life span and that was fine, we’d get there when we did but I still did expect a few years, at the very least.

Now, last night, I admit that I was more exhausted than I normally tend to be when I get to bed but the prior night hadn’t been very restful. I couldn’t even begin to tell you why. I went to sleep at the usual time, I don’t recall any dreams or nightmares and I only felt mildly unrested come morning but I didn’t think much of it. So sure, as it turns out, we both forgot to set the two buggers down for bed. That being, we forgot to close their cage door and pull down the cage cover.

So yeah, come morning, a lot of paper bits had been ripped to shreds, there were little bird poops in a fair few places, there was bird food everywhere and somehow, bird nibbles on some of the fruits that we usually leave on the counter to eat. I mean, I’m aware that budgies will eat a lot of fresh fruits, veggies and even herbs but this was not all that different from wondering if there hadn’t been a mini tornado to rampage through the house.

We found the two little loving monsters on top of the cupboards and told ourselves to not forget to set them in for bed when the time came. I mean, I knew there could potentially be trouble if we left them unsupervised but I hadn’t expected that they would get in as much trouble as they did, in the long run. I guess it’s one of those things but there still remains a frustration of sort at having to clean up after them.

You would have thought that for how much we try to engage them and keep them entertained during the day, they would have slept through their nights; like a puppy or something. Even cats, as far as I’m aware. I mean, I know that some like to play at night but that’s not the majority of them, right?

As is, the mess is clean, the little monsters are in their cage having a rest and I’ve placed a Post-it note on the outside of the bedroom door to remind me to make sure they’ve been set for sleep every night.

Just, it was once a few weeks in, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have happened again within the same weeks but I’m not going to lie and deny that I get a little forgetful when I’m tired, who doesn’t?

If nothing else, this is a lesson-learned sort of thing and I know we’ll be more careful in the future.

This whole thing hasn’t really helped to warm me up to the idea of having any other potential pets in the house, though. I think our lives are quite fine as they are, we’ll cherish these budgies while we have them and once it’s time, we’ll likely talk things through, figure out where we go from there.

The classics are classics for a reason.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 3rd Generation
Characters: Susannah Magus
Race: Human
Age: 42, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 547 words
 

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I took a seminar on classic literature a year or so after I graduated and to this day, I’m wondering why I bothered. It wasn’t that the information itself was boring. The information was startlingly, well, informative but the speakers sounded like automatons—not even the ones we’ve had years upon years ago but what I figure would have been some of the first automatons. The unchanging tone of voice, no inflection, no emotions all in all. I almost fell asleep halfway through the first fifteen minutes and I’m just not the type.

I searched for similar seminars each year afterwards for about five years running, always trying to find someone else who’d done similar lectures. I just wanted to see if the basic ideas would change, if someone’s belief in things would make a difference in the lectures and I have to assume that I must have picked one of either the lesser discussed subjects or I ended up picking up all of the lecturers that made it seem as though they were speaking from a text they learned by heart and not from the heart directly.

Not a single one of them had any passion for classics. While they went on and on about why classics were classics for a reason, they made it hard to want to believe them. I know that classics are classics for a reason, I can understand why; I don’t need to hear the facts of things. Show me your passion on the subject; show me that you’re not just doing this for the money.

Because that’s what it felt like during those five seminars. Once a year was enough, I couldn’t have handled any more than that. I didn’t want to. It felt like these men—because somehow all the lecturers I ended up listening to were men—were only doing it because they had to, not so much because they had any passion for the subject they were talking about and I found that just sad.

I try not to base myself on these things as to my thoughts about the past. I’m sure that there were plenty of teachers out there who were passionate about their subject, teachers who would gesticulate while they taught, teachers who wanted their students to know more about these things because they found it important and not just because, at the end of the day, there was a little more money lining their pockets. It’s hard though. Seminars on literature aren’t the only ones I’ve gone to and most of the time it’s always the same. It might be because I don’t have any luck with the VR or with my lecture choices, I don’t know. At least the teachers we had while at school were animated; they wanted all of us to succeed in their classes, even though before long, most of us would never truly have any use for what we were taught, not really.

I want to believe that the world was an interesting place before everyone tried to kill everyone else. I want to believe that there weren’t just monsters out there, monsters of the human and non-human kind. That some people were good and that they could have been worth saving.

Were they? I’ll never know.

I’ve never seen it.

Timeline/World: Atheria 3rd Generation
Characters: Susannah Magus
Race: Human
Age: 42, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 506 words

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Our home and haven offers a lot for everyone. Some would think that living in a little village like ours—though most call it a city despite the fact that there are perhaps five hundred of us in all—would get boring, nothing ever happening, the same old same old every day and all. It can be like that on some days but it really depends on the person. To some, it can be a daily adventure and to others, it can be just a relaxing day of peace and quiet.

I’m more part of the latter group. While I know I could go out there and surf on some huge waves or snowboard down a wintry mountain slope or even just go and watch a movie at the outdoor setup, I’d rather sit back and read or bundle up during the cooling months to go out and walk so I can admire the colours that nature has bestowed upon us.

There are a lot of things that are offered by other members of our home, classes for all things, activities of all kinds. One of these particular activities, during the spooky season, is the haunted house. The house is part of an amusement park that is open year round though the house itself is only open on a few nights a year that I know of, I wouldn’t really be able to confirm that information or not as I’ve never been. The whole point of being scared silly for fun just seems completely pointless to me.

Mind you, I’m not judging those who like to go, it is their prerogative and if being spooked by things that go bump in the night is what they enjoy, then that is good and fair. I just personally don’t see the need for that. I’d rather settle somewhere and read because I’m that kind of person, I’m absolutely boring, I know. If I don’t judge you, should you judge me? I didn’t think so.

The haunted house is just one of the things I’ve never been near, the whole amusement park has never been part of my idea of fun but maybe one of these days I might try, if nothing else for the Ferris wheel because being high up in the sky and viewing the surrounding beauty does sound like something I could enjoy. The slower rides are more up my alley than the breakneck ones that are the roller coasters.

Some might try to convince me that I’m missing out on some important part of my life by not doing more of these activities that ‘get the blood flowing’ but this is a world where it is each for their own and peace is what I like. I get enough exercise in shovelling out the snow in the winter and tending to the garden in the summer. I have my One and we’ve found a good balance of activities that make both of us happy so why should I want or ask for more, you tell me.