TAMASHII

Three years ago, we had been forced out of Opening and took up residence in the outskirts of Phoenix. We started a farm there and grew cabbages and carrots, chopped wood, hunted, fished, and bred wild turkeys. The turkeys turned out to be capable of fending for themselves. They ate not only the nearby leaves, fruits, and nuts of plants, but also lizards and bugs. Unlike farmed livestock, we exerted basically zero effort keeping track of them, hunting them only when they became a nuisance like the deer that were also in the forest. Plus, they were cutely arrogant. They looked like Churchill.

Mom taught me how to fish and helped us catch some of our food. But hunting and fishing were kinda just fun activities. When I was finished with farming chores, I’d just typically disappear into the forest and wander around for a while. Sometimes, my folks joined me, other times I invited my friends. For the whole year, they kept me away from town. When I was about seven, they tried to teach me about traveling with friends or with parents to be safe, and gave me a small allowance. But unlike other little kids who had a vague memory of time and how events shaped together, I had a great memory and understood exactly why they kept me out in the woods. I had little desire to leave. I began to visit town only once my friends proved they could keep me safe. Gradually, I moved from being deeply fearful of life in towns to shopping and having dates outside with friends. But still, even today, I preferred the great outdoors to the city.

Today as other days, I hung out in the forest, climbing trees, and chasing after turkeys. I didn't really have weapons to hunt them with me, but it was fun to chase them down. They were huge snobs of the poultry world, like some character from Downton Abbey that made snarky comments. And they were just so fat that I had to! After getting that out of my system, I joined Sastra climbing trees. Well, I climbed. Sastra kinda just jumped on top of the tree, jumped to another one, and swung to a third. One could do worse that swinging birches. Portia didn't see the point. “Nah, I can fly,” she said, “why would I do that?” She did seem to enjoy some of the other stuff, like fishing and exploring. I even got her to help me chase one of these guys around!

AMBROSIA

I was there when Tamashii was born. I was there when she learned to walk. And she was far more coherent at talking than most children her age (she learned to talk about as soon as her mouth worked that way, and seemed to pick up language by reading our mind or something). Walking on the other hand, was a little more tricky. Then her psychic powers developed, and within her territory, she could basically levitate around the room. I knew this child, and for the most part, I loved her. Although, that day I was worried to death. It was the scariest moment of my life, far worse than fighting any creatures.

I told myself that I would never spank my child, not for any reason. But two years ago, I realized I needed to teach her a lesson. There were households back before the 20th century that spanked on a regular basis, there were those in the late 20th and in the 21st century that refused to even say no when a child grossly overstepping his/her boundaries. I realized that day though that spanking was the only right thing to do here, because it made Tamashii aware that she wasn't invincible, that death was painful, and she shouldn't risk her life or those of others. Only actual pain could teach this lesson, and I tried to keep it brief but memorable. You know the expression “this hurts me more than it does you”? Well, it's true. She was slapped in the behind for about a minute, she felt the pain for about a day at most, and then she simply resolved to not do that again. She went back to playing, and just stuck to safe activities. But I was haunted for several years worrying whether I was too hard on her, whether she was permanently traumatized, whether with my already serious nature that she would decide that I was a cruel parent.

Maybe I should talk about what caused this whole thing. So typically, Tamashii went to the mall in Phoenix, since the small town had built up massively in the last nine years. Or they went climbing, which was a bit dangerous, but they stuck to trees. Or they fished or hunted. Given what was around here to do, this was most of what they could do. Typically, things were safe enough that I didn’t worry. There was a Crystal Mirror theater, a restaurant or two, they had paintball and laser tag, and a few other things they could do like ride horses (Tamashii was really too young to ride an ostrogoth and nobody would let her, because it was dangerous). But one day, she decided this was “boring” and went by water train to the island where Opening and Shoten are. I awoke to a hastily written note in my mailbox mentioning that they had gone to Tsukuyomi Mountain, sent apparently by Portia. According to her, she was coming mainly to make sure everyone made it out safe. Sastraneth on the other hand, probably went along with it because she thought it would be fun. I guess I should be thankful that Tamashii was not a victim of peer pressure. Nope, she was the ringleader of this group.

That day, I could have stormed out after her. But I saw a large wasp stuck indoors, and spent about a half-hour trying to scoop it outdoors without it flying back in. And so, I was almost too late to help them. I found all three of them badly wounded, even Sastra who was practically made of iron. I waited for them to recover, and I let Elias and Azrael heal them. I let them explain what went wrong.

“So?” I asked, “what were you doing around there?!?” Tamashii explained, “Well, ummm, so we were bored,” and looking around the room, she amended, “I was bored. So I kinda dragged these two along for some skiing. Portia didn't want to but she figured if she had to keep us safe, she should have fun doing it. That's what she said anyway. Anyway, we climbed up that mountain, and started skiing. Well, it was fun, at first, but then when I tried to widen my skis, I still couldn't stop. I crashed into Sastra, and we starting rolling down the mountain, heading for a huge cliff. Portia went full-angel on us, and tried to catch us as we fell. But she was carrying a half-demon (which you know are heavy), plus me, plus all of her ski equipment, and trying to split her protective aura three ways. I hope you'll understand.” But I didn’t. How could she?!?

And then I spanked Tamashii, telling her what each hard slap on her behind was for. “This is for letting us worry and not telling us. You could have died out there!” I said. “This is for endangering your friends! You almost killed both of them with your reckless stupidity,” I continued. “This is for picking a dangerous mountain to ski on! Tsukuyomi is nothing but steep drops all the way down,” I hit her extra hard on that one, we raised her to make smart decisions. “And this, is because Sastraneth and Portia didn't talk you out of this,” I spanked her as I said. Sastra objected, “Why her and not us?” I explained, “I can't hurt either of you two! And she's gotta understand that she's responsible for the safety and happiness of her friends. Plus, Aqorm would kill me if I laid a hand on her child. So let that be a lesson to you, Sastra. She's suffering because you didn't talk sense into her. Ummmm, I also can’t hurt you because you’re both too strong for me to hurt.”

I looked at Portia, giving her a mean glare, “And as for you...” I stepped towards her and as she was flinching from fear, and then I wrapped her in a huge hug, “This... is for saving my daughter's life. You're always welcome in my house.” She kinda melted in my arms. She was so shaken up by my apparent cruelty, that she hadn't yet understood that the reason I found it necessary to hurt my only daughter was because I was in fact concerned for her safety. Contrast this with those who tell you they love you, and hurt you for no reason. I spent the rest of the day trying to unpunish my daughter, treating her to whatever food she asked for, trying to cheer her up, and apologizing for hitting her. She had almost lost her life, and I had just punished her on top of it. I needed her to understand that I did that mainly because I almost lost her, and never ever wanted to see her risk herself again. She had me so worried...

TAMASHII

A year ago, I had like the worst time ever. Well okay, maybe not considering my past had a mob with the standard pitchforks and torch, but it was still pretty bad. I had just mailed a note for the others to meet me, and then I gave it to the mail crow. Normally, it would take about an hour to get to them by bird, and maybe 30 minutes to teleport to me. And because of Sastra's pendant, she always had a ready portal. And so, I waited for them to show up. And yet, they never showed.

At the time, I didn't know that the sunspots from last week had interfered with teleportation. Her necklace was shot, and while Portia could teleport freely under her own power, she spent the time there fixing her friend's magical item. I only knew that I had lately taken my friends for granted and had been teasing Portia because she was always blushing about something, and Sastra because she was a wild kid. Obviously, they didn't like me anymore. I was just some bratty kid.

I felt alone and rejected, and a cloud of darkness built around my heart. I was unlovable as far I knew. As I have explained before, psychic powers operate by territory. I understood this in theory, that my powers had a sort of area of effect, and I had a pretty big one for a Soulfire of my age. What I didn't understand at the time, was the larger implications of this. I had understood that I could actively use my power within my territory. But I didn't understand yet that my own emotions could alter the area around me. This is true of normal humans, and is called the Law of Attraction (i.e. good attitudes create good results, and the reverse is true). But to a Soulfire, reality literally changes around the person. I was sad and feeling isolated, so around me was an area where my friends couldn't enter. And so it was that my friends couldn't come to see me after they were done. The barrier was simply too thick.

My depression started to mean other things fell apart. The land rotted and dried up where I sat and cried, and extremely localized rain fell around me, making an area that was both dry and constantly raining. Yes, I know that doesn't make sense. But this is how my powers worked, it thrived on my grasp of reality. The more distorted my emotions, the more weird things became.

My mom walked over. Mom and Dad had always been resistant to my power, as I trusted them to keep me safe. Mom patted my shoulder. “Hey,” she said, “you wanna talk about things?” I started crying, “Mom, I don't know what to do! I haven't seen my friends in a whole week! They've never done this to me.” She hugged me, “I know you think that things seem bad. But there was a time when I was first with Nevras where I felt certain that I hadn't a chance with him, that if I acted on my feelings that he would hate me. So I never kissed him and barely even was able to hug him. Guess what? He left me. But I tried to change my decisions and my outlook changed. When my outlook changed, my life changed. And then he became my husband and I had you. Why don't you go try to find your friends? At the very least, you can get a reason why they were held up. Maybe the mail got lost?” While I was a bit more pessimistic right now, I brightened a bit. The rain seemed to be slowing down. I walked toward town. And then I collided with my friends. We spent a few minutes picking each other off the ground.

I wasn't sure whether to be frustrated or happy to see them. So I asked, “Where were you all of this time?” Sastra explained, “We couldn't enter! It was like there was a wall around your house.” I was suddenly glad that I talked to Mom. My friends and I talked through the night, swapping stories of all the strange things that happened this week. They slept over that night, and we shared pizza pie while using the Crystal Mirror. There wasn't any such thing as live television, but they figured out how to string together sound and pictures together from memories and write them on a blank crystal, allowing home movies to be made. Normally, the older movies or shows were green, because they were archives. You could copy these, but never make anything. These new ones, these home movies, were red, and represented new media, even though editing was impossible. You couldn’t for instance pause the film to make any CGI effects, so anything you made would up being your own stunts. It was probably just as well, though, between news and reality television, I can't understand why anyone wanted to watch something going on right now. You'd be constantly sitting around waiting for the latest update! No, far better to play outside, and when it was time to relax to simply watch something pre-recorded. This is probably why DVR made such a big splash, people were sick of having their schedule taken over by live television.

The other advance that was made were blue crystals. These crystals were actually blank so they had no information on them at all; however, they were designed to connect with any red crystals that were nearby. Because there were data and audio crystals as well as video crystals, we basically had a streaming system that also showed other stuff. Unfortunately, we couldn't connect this to the green crystals. Something about different wavelengths, so we could play either homemade stuff or we had the ability to take our pick what to watch from previous recordings. I was about to go and pop in the blue crystal, when Sastra grabbed a random green crystal, which turned out to be mom's wedding. I guess streaming video could wait. This was cool too.

We scarfed down our pie. Pizza pie used to be largely an expression, but since the New Earth, many foods became lost and others distorted by the scattered records. Pizza and pizza pie developed separately due to a misunderstanding. Those who read books about pizza knew that it was a mostly flat circular roll that was topped with tomato sauce, cheese, and other things. Now, pizza tended to have more interesting toppings like squid or kimchi or even peanut butter, since there weren't groups like the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana to tell people how pizza should be done. But other than that, pizza was pretty standard. Pizza pie on the other hand, was poorly understood, so cooks began to make their own varieties until three trends emerged: Western, Central, and Eastern pizza pie. Eastern pizza pie was a batter, almost like an okonomiyaki, with the meat or veggies mixed in. It was fried, and topped with either a tomato sauce or some type of mayonnaise sauce, and it had no cheese. Central pizza pie was a latticed pie, and mostly tomato sauce and fillings mixed into it with just a bit of shredded cheese, enough to absorb some of the moisture. Lastly, which we were eating, was Western pizza pie, an open pie with the bottom section a sort of cheesy quiche made from ricotta, eggs, and then topped with some tomato sauce to cut the cheese, only to have shredded cheese and the toppings on top. We also had popcorn and loads of ice cream. The calories were enormous but it was so incredible, that I didn't worry about it right now. And those other two didn't have to worry about it ever since they had super-metabolisms. Lucky pricks.

As tempting as it was to have a pillow fight during a sleepover, I'm pretty sure I'd get hit hard enough to bleed from my skull if I started. The strength difference was just too much. Instead we parked sleeping bags near the Crystal Mirror and watched the home movie of the wedding, followed by several cheesy romance films. We tried to play spin the bottle, but Portia had angelic and demonic urges. This meant that she was not only overly modest but anything like hugging and kissing tended to make her blush uncontrollably, and she told me that if it wasn't treated she might even get a nosebleed. This sounded like a serious condition, so I let her go to the bathroom. I talked about boys with Sastra, but Portia didn't seem that into it. She mentioned she liked some purple-haired kid but wouldn't give his name. Then we finally nodded off in our sleeping bags. I had forgotten that I had been lonely just earlier today.