My Longest-Lived Creation

20260504

Written for Bradley Ramsey's "Halls of Pandemonium", Day 4.

I lean back in my desk chair, reminiscence in my eyes. “Remember way back, when I first started telling stories with you?”
“Yeah.” The matte black, animalistic alien grins at me, nir glowing yellow eyes copying my own. “I was a Shadow the Hedgehog OC.”
“So weird to think about now.”
“Yeah. What’s really funny-”
“I didn’t even watch Sonic X. My brother and his friends were. And I thought that finale with Shadow was so cool.”
“Uh-huh. Your bro’s also the reason I live in a space opera.”
“Right. Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.”
“Mixed with everything you’d absorbed about Star Trek without really watching it.”
“And Red Dwarf. Which I honestly did love as a kid.”
“Ah, yes, I had some hilarious adventures winding up Rimmer.”
I snort. Take off my glasses and rub my eyes. The memories are half pleasant and two-thirds cringy, because emotions don’t stay in tidy separate packages.
“Plus whatever other characters you loved at the time.”
“Such a messy stupid crossover universe.”
“It was good practice.” Pois idly taps nir claws together in a beat I recognise as a theme tune but can’t remember where from. But clearly I never quite forgot it, either. “Trying on voices. Trying out settings. Exploring. Building. I wouldn’t be who I am now without it. And neither would you.”
Ne leans forward, head-tendrils rearranging into the ponytail I wore for so much of my tweens. A lightly androgynous hairstyle, though I didn’t realise at the time that’s why I liked it. Why it felt so natural to go from that to a one-inch crewcut. “I started out cis-het, too. Now that’s hard to imagine these days.”
“Yeah. I couldn’t even conceptualise other options. Yet it just… didn’t feel right on you. At all.”
“No more than it felt right on you.”
“Why was that harder for me to figure out?”
Pois shrugs. “You were a real person, in society, handed scripts. I was a rogue genetic experiment in a crazy crossover universe. I could do anything. Be anything.”
“Haha, yeah. I had to tone you down so much as I matured.”
“I kinda miss being OP, honestly.” Ne winks, nir snout wrinkling in a sly grin. “I know it makes for a less interesting character to follow around, but it’s fun.”
“Oh please.” I roll my eyes. “You’re plenty powerful. You got an entire army to stand down by intimidating them!”
“Sure, but I had to turn myself into an improvised nuclear explosive to do it. Used to be I’d somehow manage to mind-games them all at once. From the other side of the battlefield.”
“That’s… still kinda what you did. After blowing up their champion in his mech-suit during single-combat.”
“Ugh, don’t tone me down more!”
“Nah. I just… accept that you’re possibly not publishable.” I smile over the edge of my mug. “That’s fine. Even if I never share a single story featuring you, I’ll be writing about you for the rest of my life. You’re too important to retire.”
“Aw, shucks.” Said without a hint of bashfulness. The kind of careless, not-cutting flippancy only a close friend of decades can pull off.
“It does feel super dorky, explaining to people that I use neopronouns because I started using them in sci-fi, and then… finally realised why I found the concept of genderless entities so endlessly fascinating.”
“Ah, yeah, that scene where I was chasing a mysterious figure across rooftops, and you got annoyed having to clarify ‘genderless singular’ they, ‘plural’ they, and ‘unknown’ they.”
“Right. And all I could find were those xe/xym/xyr pronouns.”
“Which you now use for bug-like aliens.”
“Well, they sound like bug pronouns to me.” I look over at my monitors. “I wonder if that website’s still up? The one which demonstrated different pronouns using a section from Alice In Wonderland.”
“No idea. Check once this skit’s over.”
I laugh. “Got places to be, universes to save?”
“Well, yeah. Always. But I always have time for you. I mean, my whole reason for being was giving you a safe avatar. A mirror, with just enough distance and distortion that it didn’t feel weird trying stuff out. I only became my own person later.”
“I kinda remember it the other way around.”
“You would.” Nir confident dismissal is annoying. This is what I get for manifesting a genius.
I roll my mug between my hands. Thinking. “You’re definitely not me these days. Not more than any other character.”
“You don’t need a mirror anymore. You’re your you.”
“I guess, in some areas, you were me before I was.”
“I adventured so you could live, or something.”
“Or something.” I don’t bother hiding my amusement.
“Hey, you didn’t write me as a writer.” Ne sticks nir tongue out.
I return the gesture.
Ne sticks nir tongue out more.
I refuse to play that game - I know that ne has another metre to deploy.
“Soooo many hours studying xenobiology and obscure chemistry and stuff, once I decided I wanted to have your biology make sense.”
“And yet you wouldn’t let go of my blood being based on super-acid.” Ne rolls nir eyes. “I blame video games for that one.”
“Oh, shush! It’s come in handy.”
“But mostly it’s because you still think it’s cool that my injuries are signified by ominous sizzling sounds.”
I can’t lie. Not to nem. Ne’s spent too much time in my head. Instead I shrug and change the subject. “Speaking of ‘still’… I do one day want to do a graphic novel with you. Once I finally get the hang of drawing…”
“Or you publish stories about me, a talented artist falls in love with them, and wants to be part of it.”
I laugh. Then quietly admit “I don’t know if I could collab on this. It’s… too personal.”
“Aw. I love you too.”
“Even after everything I’ve put you through?”
“Because of everything you’ve let me be. Because of how we grew. Together.”

Prompt was “Write about the first person/figure you associated with creativity. Focus on the moment you realised what they represented to you. What did they look like? What did they make you feel? What changed after that encounter?”