I ate one too many edibles and spent hours typing out a general storyline for Sen, as I've written it, I've tossed a few concepts and kept a few. It's my first time posting here on FFnet and sharing outside a class setting, so if anyone wants to beta? I need you to reassure and/or critique me, please.

My first memories as Sen began on the beach.

I remember writing roman characters in the sand from the moment I began to remember my life from Before, and then watching the sea take it away over and over as my father fished within a close distance in case I wandered off. This was the routine for months now. I spent many days at the beach the older I got for numerous reasons provided by my new mom.

On the most memorable day, my mother was hanging laundry at home and needed to finish a commission, so she insisted on my father taking me along to find dinner along the coast.

"Stay here, Sen-chan."

It wasn't hard to sit there and watch my dad's muscled form pull many fish from the sea, including several shellfish. If I began to feel bored, I would play in the wet sand and write down my old life to avoid forgetting my education.

I was smart, not a doctor or a scientist, but I learned many things in many areas.

I was adaptable.

Each time the sea erased my words, occasionally I would wait for it to happen if I ran out of room in my spot, I would keep writing out my life as if it never ended. This was just another chapter, another adventure with a new character sheet, and I sensed something new in my bones as Sen.

Magic.

It's something that wasn't there Before, like an echo of my own heart beat or when I'd gotten really high off of edibles I could feel waves of something following in every movement. It wasn't tangible before, but now, when I could grab little eddies of the stuff I felt a different type of high. An upper type of high, where nothing felt impossible.

I'd fallen asleep using it as magic exhausted me, but I couldn't stop playing with it. It distracted me from the memories of Before and the feelings that accompanied them.

Longing, loss, and anger. The stages of grief are not linear. I sometimes regressed when I was particularly upset at the incompetence my young body. Especially before potty training for what I remembered of that time period. My death was not peaceful, I fought tooth and nail against the men that broke into my home when instead it should have been the neighbors that sold them laced drugs. They killed my cats before they came after me to top off and finish my suffering.

I shivered in disgust at the thought as I let wet sand dribble between my fingers to make little towers. The sea water and sand probably wouldn't do any favors to my skin if I soaked like that for hours while my dad gathered enough fish to sell and eat ourselves.

Walking was a difficult task at whatever age I was, maybe two or three, but I distinctly remember my legs tingling as I pushed them to waddle me up the shore where the sand was warm and dry. The sky was gray and cloudy, perfectly overcast, but I knew better from Before. UV rays were not going to trick me.

I buried myself into the deep into the sand like a blanket on my stomach, with my back to the sky. I laid my head into the crook of my arms and relaxed.

Whispers of magic brushed against my mind with a sense of dread. Why dread, of all things?

"Sen! Sen, move!"

The tingling feeling that permeated my legs before flashed through every nerve in my body as I did a push-up of sorts but flew straight into the air like a scared cat instead of all fours on the ground.

Did I do that?

Below, where I was, there was a large figure that took my place. Looked an awful lot like a man looking around for where I used to be.

Then my dad, a good deal bigger in all ways powered by fatherly instincts, took the man down with a single right jab to the jaw.

The jaw came off?

THe jAw cAMe OfF.

THE JAW. CAME OFF.

In the few seconds this transaction took place, gravity finally began to control my descent, and I began to scream for more than one reason.

1. My dad was so strong he punched a man's jaw off his face.

2. I was free-falling.

3. A man just tried to kidnap, or possibly murder, me.

Any one of these were something that was a lot for even someone like me to handle.

Shortly after my dad caught me in his arms, I passed the fuck out.

Fuckin' A, man, why couldn't things be simple anymore?