The Anxiety

First, your heart speeds up. You can feel it racing as it smashing against your ribs, trying to break free from it's cage.

Then your lungs turn against you. The very air you breathe burns, and you have to take every breath deliberate and slow through your mouth, yet you still end up panting until it becomes full blown hyperventilation.

Next is that horrible ache in your jaw. The only way to satiate it is to clench your teeth together, and that works. For a few seconds. You try everything, biting, chewing, pressing against them. Nothing makes it go away.

After that, you start shaking. Your hands tremble as you focus on them, your feet tap, you absolutely cannot keep your fingers still.

The last part, the worst part, is your mind. It knows why you feel like this and it throws it in your face. It starts with a small thought and spider webs from there. What if this, you could have that. It's your fault. It's going to go wrong. This is going to happen, that's going to happen, they're going to hate you, YOU MESSED UP, THIS IS YOUR FAULT, NOTHING GOES RIGHT WHEN YOU'RE INVOLVED, IT WOULD BE BETTER IF YOU JUST STAYED AWAY.

Avery Drabble : Pears

Sometime in the 90’s, I discovered my love for pears. It was completely by accident, as mishap while grocery shopping. 

I could not tell you what I had meant to grabbed, but I was not paying attention as I bagged a handful of fruit in the market. I was rather distracted by a child who had been following me all throughout the store, so I was not quite watching as I reached down and grabbed four or five pears. 

Avery Fact Dump 1

5’7

Strawberry blonde hair, thick and wavy. It is just long enough to pull into a ponytail. The elixir stops all changes to the body, so if he ever cut his hair, it would be back to that length within seconds.

Because he was an orphan living on the streets before Master Gustav picked him up, he is almost sickly thin. This also does not change due to the elixir.

Avery, a few quick facts

I have a nasty habit if chewing my fingernails. It developed as a nervous habit in the late 1800s.
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I have a chest full of some of my favorite outfits, and sometimes I wear them around my apartment. 

Most of them are older than anyone on here. I have my old sailing clothes, what I wore while in China, the clothes I wore when I fled Italy, and the outfit I wore while fighting in America, among a few other treasured outfits. 

I also have leather pants and a leather jacket in there from the 80’s, and I do wear those around quite frequently. They are among my favorites.

Avery, Prompt: A story about a body part

The prompt was: I want you to look at a specific part of your body and tell us a story about it.

My wrists. I once spent a week tied to a man. He was my best friend, only man I ever fully trusted with who I am. We sailed together on the seas. We had run into navy men, French I think, or maybe Spanish. At the time, it was not a language I understood at all.

We were captured, because we were too drunk to fight. They tied the two of us together, back to back, with a mast between us.

Avery on his children

A note from Zayne: Avery did not know about his children. I've got a full explanation somewhere, but the short version is this: while Avery spent a lot of time in France with Evelyne, he did leave for months at a time. He may have sworn of sailing as a pirate, but he'd taken up a small fishing job, that sometimes took him all over that side of the world. Twice, he'd been gone for terribly long, once for 10 months, and once for a year. Charles and Ariel, the twins, were born during the ten months, and Jaylene the year.

Jaylene was 5 years old when we were introduced. She was not the least bit shy. When her mother introduced us, she walked right up to me and shook my hand. 

Avery on Evelyne's death

She was 30 that year. Two months before the wedding. Two months exactly. 60 damned days.

Disease, the doctors said. So many things wrong with her body. Her heart was weak, her lungs were weak. It was like her organs had aged too fast. HA, is that not ironic? While I never aged a day, she aged too fast.

They told me it might be an effect of the pregnancies, and that is how I found out about my children. I asked her after that, and she introduced them to me on her deathbed, before the disease went too far.

She…her mind went first.