Hey guys, I'm back! After a depressive episode, I am ready to write again. It feels good. Please enjoy my new story as I work on the previous ones, because it is definitely not in the same writing voice I used back then.

Cohesiveness is key.

I was successful in life.

I had an education, a career, a loving husband, and the idea of trying for a child was on the horizon, though I felt no rush to have one before I solidified my career as an engineer.

I was only 22.

I literally had all I could ask for, but there was a place in the back of my bright mind that kept calling me back down into a spiral of dark thoughts.

I was suicidal.

Only countered by my busy schedule and good marriage, I was still anchored to the reality that I could die and I wouldn't care if I did. I would care that my husband would be heartbroken, I would care that I left him no legacy to love anything else besides me in the world, and I would care that all that would be affected by my career in the world would never occur.

So, death would have to wait until I was ready to leave.

I kept myself busy with work and working out, only relaxing at home when I showered and slept.

Death never cared if one had a busy schedule.

Though it was not death that took me from my world, it must have been something much more twisted.

Whatever it may have been, it was more definite than death, but it had no name until it encountered my mind with a soul ripping attack.

I had been standing at the foot of our bed when it came, and my legs had no power to stand against the force that blasted into my very spirit.

Though I could not scream to get my husband's attention, he knew something of what was happening and the world that was turning dark had given me a second glimpse into the other side of the living where I had learned years ago where entities resided.

The figure before me looked humanoid, however it looked incomplete as far as looking like a human went. The horns that grew from its skull were wrapped in blood and muscle as some patches of its skin were simply covered in blood or the skin was absent. There was a new patch of skin growing around its chest like a glowing disk, but slowly adapting to the bloody figure. It was rather grotesque, but I knew who this one was for its eyes were the same as its living side.

If you haven't already guessed, it was my husband.

Long before me, he had developed a specific set of skills that gave him form here as a visible entity, however having a form here came at an unknown cost to humans on the flip side.

I never pressed the situation further, knowing that knowledge was forbidden to me at the time.

Now, it was free game.

He launched a bloody hand into my own translucent form where a blue-green gem was encased by white metallic vines and held tight to me using his other arm.

"Where you go, I go too."

His mind brushed against what was left of my damaged consciousness, a warm, soothing feeling, but it did not last once that vision vanished.

Everything was darkness and resounding pain for what felt like a long time. I supposed that is was it felt like to have your soul ripped from your body by what could have been anything in the flip side for what I knew.

I knew a lot about the flip side for being 22 and growing up in a small town in the Midwest.

I knew that even if I couldn't see entities floating on our side of living, I could still feel their energy as a small rub against my mind. I have had this way of feeling things for as long as I could remember, people who were like my husband I could direct myself like a compass to find them because they had echoes of power compared to normal people.

How else would I have found my husband? He would have seen me, different from those like him, but of the same capability.

"Inexperienced," he would say, "but women don't usually have the aptitude, they are too emotional, and that is dangerous. Entities feed on emotion-fueled energy like it is their only food source."

I was…different. It made me feel good and it made me do better in finding my purpose in the world. I recalled one of the first things he told me about the flip side.

"Humans all have gifts. Most are physical, the rarest and typically most powerful are fully spiritual. We are inbetween, but the Council doesn't like that. They don't like us because we are a new variable that changes all the time.

Something had you hidden for a long time, or else they would have found you once your abilities developed, like me. Now it is my responsibility to hide you. My gift belonged to someone else in the family tree, he died using it a very long time ago, but they managed to track his family tree to find me.

You are gifted to move energy to your, when practiced, will, which is the only foil to my gift, which is to produce astronomical amounts of the stuff.

We are what I would like to call, meant to be."

My injured soul did what it could to smile at the memory. We never actually practiced beyond learning to shield and protect myself using my own energies.

Which doesn't work against god-like entities, but, hey, not a lot of things do.

It took a long while for the darkness and pain to begin to subside, it's hard to tell time when your physical body is nowhere to be found, but when it did, there was actual forms to the world that were more…green. There were rock formations and puddles of water that I carefully avoided, noting that I had my body back again with absolutely nothing on.

Wherever I had been placed, there was no such thing as hot or cold. Or anything human. I saw balls of light that I recognized as wisps, but they left me to my wandering. There was nothing combative about my presence. I just wanted to go home to bed with my husband.

I realized with that thought that I didn't see my husband anywhere around, did he not make it with me?

I wandered on for what must have been miles of rock formations and water before I found something more than a wisp.

It was a bear, though it was deformed in a way that suggested it was not a good bear.

"Hello?" I said anyways, my voice was raspy and weak, "Can you tell me where I am?"

It peeped a golden eye open and yawned, "Don't bother me with stupid questions, human-but not-child."

Human-but not-child?

"Then what smart questions could I bother you with?" I asked, I know this place, but I could not think of it.

The bear-but not-bear slowly sat up to look at me with both golden eyes, "I enjoy riddles, answer me a few and I will not eat you, but I will also answer your question."

I nodded.

"What runs, but never walks, has a mouth, but never talks?"

Easy peasy, "A river."

"That was rather easy, a harder one. Thirty white horses on a red hill, first they champ, then they stamp, then…they stand still."

I was confused for a moment and bit my tongue. Oh. Bite.

"They are teeth."

The bear gave a yellow-toothed smirk, "You are not dumb, human-but not-child. My last riddle, and my hardest. If you pursue me, you will not have me, but if you stop looking for me, I will find you. What am I?"

I stood silent, the answer to me was obvious, but this was supposed to be hard?

"Are you…love?"

The bear-but not-bear laid back down, "Most humans never find love, but I see that extra piece of soul attached to your chest. It would have been so very tasty had you never known how you got it."

I looked down at the very visible white-silver wrapped gem centered between my collar bone and sternum.

"I would wish to meet you again, however as for your stupid question from earlier, I also do not. You are in the Fade, human-but not-child. Please leave me to nap."

I was slack-jawed, "You're Sloth."

"'It is obvious, I thought, now go before I change my mind about my next meal."

I walked away quickly, stumbling over rocks and puddles.

No, I thought, you don't understand. You're not supposed to be real, the Fade is…

Real. It was all very real now.

I was now a member of the Dragon Age fantasy of self-inserts.

"Fuck!"

I punched a rock formation, and unlike temperature, pain was very real here as well.

Please review, it has been awhile so I'm sure there are improvements to be made.