Trust me, the nightmare’s never really over. Not around here.

Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Current Date: August 8, 2057

Character: Zevian Wölfisch
Race: Anthro – Wolf
Age: 91, physically about 28
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
 

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Blindness has been mine from the get-go. All there ever has been for me has been the darkness that was mine from birth. I’m sure that if my parents or anyone else had ever mentioned that this was not the norm, I wouldn’t have known. I would have focused more closely on the fact that my skin burns when in contact with anyone’s touch who isn’t hers.

As is, I don’t focus much on the blindness. We both keep the house in pristine order, and I know its layout by heart. We’ve changed it once and while it took me a few months to locate things after they had changed, I don’t think I can truly complain. It was a nice change and one that I’m sure we were long overdue.

So, when I woke up this morning with light pressing against my eyelids, I might, or might not, have freaked out a little. Not in any way that might have caused issues though I’m sure that my waking up with a start and my slightly clammy hand reaching for hers was enough to startle her awake. I know the dark. I’d like to say that I am more than just close friends with darkness. She is my oldest friend and will always be.

So, the presence of light against my eyelids and a dancing spotlight in front of my eyes, once I had gathered the courage to open them, was not something I was ready for, and I still don’t know what happened. My brain barely registered that I woke up from something of a nightmare and, even as mild panic set in from this strange presence, I feel as though I heard words whispered in my ear.

Words in a low, raspy tone that stated that the nightmare was never going to be over.

I’ve had nightmares before. They come with sound and, at times, sensation. They wake me up with a start but leave no lasting effects as I pull myself into the awareness of the day.

Despite the heat of the day, I covered up and called in a once-over. I might have once not bothered but I’ve learned to not take anything that relates to my health lightly. I’m just glad that new breathable materials have been found and made for clothing because covering up from head to toe to avoid touch so that my skin would not burn is not fun to do in the heat of summer.

It was disorienting, this light. Where all of my life there was nothing more than darkness with no hint of light at all, I now felt as though I had bright spotlights pointed right into my eyes. For all I knew, this could have been a very low light that would not have bothered anyone else, but it was more than I’d ever had.

Once at the clinic, they ran the necessary test, found nothing out of the ordinary and simply asked me to keep track of things but that they felt that this spotlight that I saw—so strange to think of it this way—would fade.

It did. It only took about half of the day. Over the course of that very day, the light seemed to fade little by little and with them, the memory of whatever the words that were spoken to me might have meant. I still faintly remember the words, I recorded them into the system for safe keeping, just in case, but they don’t mean much since I have no recollection of what the nightmare might have been about.

I don’t even really recall what the voice might have truly been like, other than low and raspy. It could have been male, female, or anything in-between and I wouldn’t really know any better.

In a way, this is for the best. I don’t need someone trying to prophesize some nightmare world to me. Not when this had already happened once in this lifetime. I refuse to even allow the thought that it might come a second time. I know it won’t, we are safe and protected here in ways we weren’t before, not quite, and that is all there is to this.

I spent the rest of my day settled back into my usual darkness and now, as we settle for bed, it is almost as though nothing had even happened at all. I can’t complain about that fact. My visit is noted in my files, we’ve updated them as to the progression of my resettling darkness and there are no other signs that anything has happened at all. I know that we will be keeping an eye on things but I’m not truly worried at this point.

Final Word Count: 790

You try getting stuck as a dog and then tell me how you feel.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Zevian Wölfisch
Race: Anthro – Wolf
Age: 91, physically about 28
Current residence: Atheria City, Eresiel
Final Word Count: 779 words
 

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Dreams are strange. Dreams, for others, as I’ve learned of it, are filled with images and sounds and, even to some who have offered some information, with sensations.

As far as my dreams are concerned, they are filled with sound and, at times, perhaps, I can allow myself to believe they I might feel the wind on my face or on the rest of my body. Sight is not something I have ever had and in turn, not something that is a possibility in dreams. I think I would be more than a little confused if I suddenly could see whatever it is that happens in the dreams that I do somehow manage to remember, rare as they are.

As is, the last dream I do remember has left me to wonder if it truly is a dream and simply not something else altogether. The blip of a memory that has surfaced through something we might have talked about during the day. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. We had lives long before we met and there was something resembling a life while we were forced apart. Not that it was pleasant, but there are memories attached to these years and while they might be muddled and faded, but they are there.

This dream, even now, I call it that, but I just don’t know whether or not it was. Not that it truly matters but it makes me smile somewhat. As one who is able to change between my humanoid form and a four-legged canine form, someone telling me that getting stuck as a dog sucks is just going to be amusing. I can understand that if you’ve never been ‘stuck’ in that form before, it’ll be more than a little disquieting for you, but I don’t know that it really sucks. It’s different.

Then again, for as much of a loner as I am, even if I couldn’t shift and I did get stuck as a dog, I don’t know that I’d mind so much because I still would be doing fairly well. Or, well, at least I figure that I still would be doing well. There would be no real reason for me to try and get my point across to anyone that this isn’t how I’m supposed to be.

That is of how things were before Vivi came to be part of my life. Even now, though, if I somehow ended up stuck in my wolf form, unable to talk to her or tell her that it was me, I know that we’d be able to work things out and, if I were stuck out there in the wild, well I’d manage about as well as I could. Which, in a way, I don’t know that I’d manage all that well. A blind wolf out in nature might not manage to get very far if you ask me.

The only upside to the wolf form is that somehow, this curse of mine is dormant. I don’t know if it has to do with the fur or anything else, but I did notice that some years back, possibly even before I ever set foot here the first time. It’s not all that easy to explain and I don’t think that it’s all that important to indeed explain it. All I know is that I had needed shelter for a night and the only place available to me that I could feel—I’d been walking in this forest for hours—was a very low cranny.

In no way, shape or form—no pun intended—would I have been able to get into that spot in my human form, so I ended up shifting, taking all of my clothes with me into that tiny little cranny and I settled there to wait out the heavy storm.

Come morning, or what felt like morning back then with the heat of the sun shining down, I realized that someone was nearby, and I guess that I hadn’t tagged my clothing in as deeply as I’d thought because I was woken up by someone tugging at the clothes. To make a long story short, I came out of that cranny growling—I was a cranky, still tired soul—and while I felt someone try to shove me away for some reason, some show of teeth got them running off, but I wasn’t hurt. Then again, I’m aware that they could have been wearing gloves but, somehow, I don’t think that was the case.

So yeah, sure, you know, I’ll find some amusement in the idea that someone might complain if they get stuck as a dog. I can’t help it.

We fought. It was a long time ago and you weren’t around then, but that was the last time I ever spoke to them.

 
Timeline/World: Through the Looking Glass – Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Zevian Wölfisch
Race: Anthro – Wolf
Age: 90, physically about 28
Final Word Count: 763 words
 

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I had one person in my life that I think I could have called a friend. I was still so very young at that point, little more than a ‘pup’ in terms of those I grew up near. I might have been seven or eight at the very most. I don’t know how I remember this, only that I do. I recall how my parents seemed just so incredibly pleased that I finally had a friend—a friend who had understood very early on that touch was bad. I think we had one issue where he witnessed first hand what touch did to me and, after that, he kept his distance though we still spent time together.

I think that my parents had tried to keep me away from most of the others in the little corner of the neighbourhood where I grew up. They knew about the curse—I still don’t know how it came to be mine—and somehow tried to keep me safe. This little boy, however, he just came, one day. He was there, hopeful and bouncing and the next thing I know, I’m screaming, my arm is burning, and I thought he’d never come around again.

I really did think my parents weren’t going to let him back in; I figure they must have been terrified that he’d go ‘tattle’ about what had happened, but he hadn’t. It took a few days before he was back, and it was just long enough for me to mostly heal up from the accidental touch.

As I faintly recall it, we were friends for a few years, we played while always keeping just enough distance between us, it was easier in the winter since we covered up more but after that incident, my parents started making sure that I was plenty covered, even when it was too hot outside. I made do with it all.

It might have been when we entered our teens—I was thirteen, I believe—that things came to a surprisingly abrupt end. I don’t even remember what the fight was about. One moment we’re playing relatively peacefully, just spending time together, the next we’re fighting and arguing, and I never saw him—figuratively speaking—ever again.

My fight with Vivi brought back up the memories of this friend. It all just felt so oddly similar. So vastly different in its own way but still so similar on that same note. I hadn’t really thought about him since that fight. He’d been the only friend I ever had had and things turned sour after that day. After years of peaceful playing with this friend, now people were swarming to the house because of some tattling about the freak with the touch.

By that point, I can’t even really remember what happened. I just remember that I no longer had a roof over my head, and I no longer had my parents. I had a few changes of clothes, all things that were as covering as they could be, and I was on my own. I’m in no way certain of where I ended up or how long I walked, hugging the side of the road but moving away whenever I would hear the sound of traffic. I know I must have slept for a long while during whatever vehicle ride my parents must have used to drive me off to wherever it was, they left me at.

All of that is a muddled thing at this point, I simply know that it did lead me here and here is where my life is meant to be, even if it meant losing Vivi for a few years. The only person in this whole world able to touch me without burning me. I cannot stress enough that without her in my life, I am no one. I would be a shell of myself and that would very much so be the end of it all.

The somewhat sad part is that I can’t even remember the name of that boy. We played, on and off, for years, and his name is as faded as where my parents dropped me off when that friendship went sour. I wish it wasn’t so but there is only so much or so little that can be done about that type of thing. It’s quite all right though. I still have mostly fond memories of that time spent together, even if it all ended in absolute misery. It did give me a taste of what it was like to have a friend.

I didn’t get to where I am by letting anyone push me around.

 
Timeline/World: Atheria – 1st Generation
Characters: Zevian Wölfisch
Race: Anthro – Wolf
Age: 57, physically about 28
Final Word Count: 564 words
 

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I have never met others with a curse like mine. I feel like I could also honestly say that I have never met others with a curse that held any similarities to mine before in my life. Saying I have never seen anyone else like such, is not a lie, but stating that I have seen others that could have shown symptoms of a curse of similar nature would have been a blatant lie and I suppose that one might be able to smile a little at it.

There were days, when I was so much younger, when I wondered if the curse had not been given to me as a punishment for something. I have no true recollections, not at this point in my life, of how the curse came to be, how it was passed on to me. I can hardly recall whether or not I was born with it though it seems unlikely as that would have made it impossible for my parents to handle me at all. At least up until the point when I was covered by cloth and no longer suffered from skin on skin touch.

Now, a little while ago, I came across an old saying that made me smile somewhat. A saying that, in a way, was fitting; it was not, however, fitting in a way that would have perhaps been for anyone else. In my case, the saying was fitting in a literal way. I did get to where I am in life by doing my own thing and refusing to let anyone push me around, but I did that because there were no other ways. Skin on skin touch by anyone other than the one whose soul was meant to be bound to mine caused the touched skin to burn as though that touch was acid.

Mind you. The healing process was relatively quick, a small mercy, though it took more than a minute or two, or even an hour or two. These burns—and they usually ran quite deep despite how short-lived the touch had been—would take a day or two, at times up to a week to heal if they extended to a greater part of me. Quickly enough to survive but still painful to handle when they came to be. I can only imagine how often one would be able to handle the feel of an acid burn on any part of their body before they gave up.

That is perhaps where the saying settles into a less than literal thing for me. I could very well have let myself be swept away into the misery that is the curse. I would have let it consume me, destroy me from the inside out as well as from the outside in but I refused to let it win, I refused to let it have the upper hand.

I am where I am now because I am strong. Because I wanted to be here, because I am a survivor. It has not always been pretty and there have been years during which I felt like letting the acid eat away at me was the only solution to the emotional torment I allowed myself to wallow into but I am pleased with my decision to keep on, to keep my head high and to fight through it all until I came out victorious.

I want to give you the world.

Timeline/World: Atheria 2nd Generation
Characters: Zevian Wölfisch
Race: Anthro – Wolf
Age: 86, physically about 28
Final Word Count: 536 words

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As is with my curse, I had made my mind that no one would ever have to suffer the way I did. That touch by anyone but the one, someone I didn’t even know existed, burned my skin in a bad way. Add my blindness into the mix and I spent my life covered in layer upon layer, leaving not an inch of skin, if I could help it, uncovered.

Meeting Vivi was a blessing and a curse. I felt something for her the moment we were introduced; there just was something there that I couldn’t really put my finger to. It was terrifying that I would want to discover more of her and chance the fact that it was likely she would not be the one. When it became clear that she was, however, things did change, slowly, carefully. For the better.

When the split happened, I’m not sure what really happened. I lost track of time as I did all I could to survive on my own again. Our return to the then manor and to each other’s life tightened our bond once more and being apart from her since has just not been an option.

The idea of children has crossed our discussions once or twice but the terror I feel inside that they may be cursed the way I was, put that particular idea right to the ground. Instead, I focus on her, I focus on giving her all I have, all that is me. I want to give her the world and everything that comes with it, within the limits of my own person.

If I could give her the moon and stars, I would but that is just not something I am able to and I know how far I can or cannot go. Still, whatever she asks of me, if it is within my control, I will give her.

I will not claim that my life is perfect, it is not. There still are things that I wish were different, they are minimal, however. They are things that only cross my mind once in a blue moon and hold my attention for barely more than a few moments. Every time I breathe in the scent of her or feel her touch against my skin, the only touch that leaves me intact and without pain, those thoughts fade to the back of my mind as though they had never existed.

It does not matter that I cannot see her though I wish I could, I still remember the thought of her in that uniform and I’m certain she would have been breathtaking. It does not matter that a good chunk of my life was spent living in fear of being unable to spend a single day without my skin bubbling and burning through an accidental touch. Now that we have a house—a house! It has a yard and everything—and I no longer have to walk somewhat tight hallways to get from point A to point B, I live my life with more freedom though I still would rather spend my day simply holding her to myself and feeling her heartbeat against my palm.

She is my everything.