Aies Finley Cai Hall May 22th,20XX

The diamond earring glimmered between my fingers as I rolled it. Jake stood by one of the many entrances to the hideout, waiting for Ion to knock so he could let him in.

He didn’t know the earring was missing yet, since I’d just pilfered it off him, but it was only a matter of minutes. I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered that he took the task of guarding my magic so seriously.

For a human, he’d handled the whole 'new world' thing pretty well, but I could tell he was waiting on Finn to come back so he could have a proper discussion about it.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Jake making such clear distinctions between the three of us. I should have been happy since I’d been so scared of losing myself before, but since Cai had merged with Finn and seemed fine, I’d begun to anticipate it as well.

“Hey, Jake?”

“Aies?”

He turned back with a slightly surprised expression but responded pleasantly. It was a stiff tone though, not at all like one would respond to a friend.

“Why don’t you ever call me Finn?”

“Ah? But you’re Aies though? Unless you switched back.”

The way his face perked up at the suggestion only served to put me in an even fouler mood than I’d started in. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to hear, but it wasn’t that.

“We’re the same people though.”

My voice came out irritable and Jake went on guard, his posture stiffened and his eyes trained to the side, possibly where he planned to escape too if I took a dive at him. Once again, I was put in a bad mood.

“Calm down! I’m not going to attack you!”

Well, I’m sure my aggressive tone didn’t do much to help, but I almost saw red when I saw his feet point in the same direction as his eyes as he flinched.

He was scared of me.

“Yeah. I know. But can you blame me for being so cautious? Barely a minute ever passes before you jump Ion.”

He tried to play it off with a joke but his voice wavered a bit too much for me to laugh it off.

“Why… Why are you so careful around me. I mean, I'm still your friend at the end of the day, I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Well, not to bring up when you nearly choked me to death, or the other one when you kicked me into a wall and broke my spine.”

I winced and backtracked both verbally and mentally.

“Well, yeah. I'm sorry by the way. I'm not sure I ever apologized but I need to. But right now, do you really think I would, as I am now, harm you? I'm still 'Finn' you know? Aies isn’t even a ‘different name’! It's my middle name. I'm still that same guy you know. Your friend?”

The desperation in my voice stung my ears and made my throat burn with shame but I couldn’t help but stare in anticipation of an answer. The truth was that his answer wouldn’t change much, I had no plans of letting him stop being my friend as obsessive as that sounded. I knew it was unfair of me to ask him to forget such intense occasions and give me the answer I wanted to hear but I still felt the need to ask him.

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He put on a burdened expression and for the first time in a while ditched the fake smile he had taken to wearing while dealing with me.

“I don’t know what you want me to say Aies. Even if you say- Even if you are Finn, you look different, you act differently… you’re not human. “

“Finn isn’t human either.”

I couldn’t help but interject. Finley was a lot of things, but human he was not.

Human we were not.

Human, I was not.

Jake was cut off guard by my sudden interjection and quickly made a disclaimer.

“Well- yeah I’m not discriminating or anything its just a lot to process. Being in a different world with a bunch of people that have probably never seen a human in their lives isn’t helping much either.”

“I- I know its. I just still want to be your friend Jake. Aies, Cai, Finn. In the end, we’re all the same person you know. And I really enjoyed your friendship. It would really suck if we got back to the human world and you suddenly decided not to talk to me ever again because of this… is what I’m trying to say.”

“Well, that would never happen.”

He suddenly cut me off with a stern tone, as if the thought had never even crossed his mind.

“Why would I suddenly stop being your friend just because you’re not human? I already kind of knew Finn- well, you, had alternate personalities. I just didn’t know they came with alternate identities as well.”

I felt my face light up like a light bulb and did nothing to restrain myself. It wasn’t like restraint had even been a strong point for me anyway. I found myself blurring over to him and grabbed him by the arm- as softly as possible, he was still human.

“You mean it right? For real?”

Jake got a bit embarrassed and tried to pull his arm out of my grasp as casually as possible, but I wasn’t willing to let go and kept a firm grip until he responded to me.

“Yeah, I mean it… can you let go? You’re holding on pretty tightly.”

I felt a knot loosen in my mind and suddenly felt calm. Things were still bad.

I was hiding from a group of witches that wanted to brainwash me into betraying my people, the only help at the moment I had was a single cousin I hadn’t met until now and I could only hope for outside help to arrive but, the molten edge of panic had faded and I could look at things a bit more objectively.

“Don’t worry Jake, I’ll make sure you get home. For sure.”

The fake smile came back, but this time it was more out of awkwardness than fear. That I could deal with.

I left Jake to his watchman's duties and blurred to the other side of the room, too impatient to walk or even run. I dug into my pocket and brought it out, the earring that contained all my magic, or well, a good majority of it.

The earring felt warm to the touch and I could feel a sense of familiarity from it that went beyond it being an item I’d gotten from the old man. I peered a little closer into it and sure enough, there it was. Thin golden cracks that showed the object was breaking. I wasn’t too surprised about it since it was a goblin artifact, and more so, it wasn’t designed to store Fairy magic. I probably only had one or two days before it lost its capacity to hold my magic and blew up like a giant bomb.

Not to flatter myself or anything but I figured it could probably take out at least half of the entire witch lands. Not that I had any intention of waiting long enough for that to happen. I needed to get us out of here, and that wasn’t going to happen without my magic.

Not just that but the emptiness in my mind was deafening. While sparring with Ion was fun, I had no intention of doing so for the next three months. It was time to attempt to merge with myself again. This whole play of having three of me was getting tiring.

While it might not be stable, it would be a better start than working blind like I was currently doing. I couldn’t merge with the other sides of myself if I was the only one here.

I tightened my grip and with an anticipatory breath snapped the earring in half, letting the magic flow into me. Unlike the ambient magic that floated around in the air, my magic couldn’t be absorbed by anyone else, unless they were strong enough to steal it, or I gave it to them.

It flowed into me like a stream of water, and I felt my chest begin to warm as the magic flowed back into me. I waited for it to settle and to hear those two voices again but my chest began to grow even warmer until it felt like it was on fire.

I felt myself falling but couldn’t feel the impact of the floor against my inflamed skin. With more effort than it should have taken I sealed my lips shut and tried to sort out the aggressive magic that flowed into me.

Unlike a lot of my important moments, I stayed conscious and could still hear everything around me.

I heard the sound of the door open and the sloshing sound of someone walking in with wet clothes. I heard the angry sound of yelling and could feel someone gently shaking me and trying to wake me up.

It was here that I gently let go of the shores of consciousness, this time, I was sure I could come back.