I pushed against Fifth of the Mists' will, but we were both in the centres of our powers. And despite having a domain, I didn’t feel right using its power in this context, so it didn’t entirely work. Eventually, we came to a stale mate, the room around us cracking and dissolving, revealing a white void with distant stars sparkling a million colours.

  And we kept on pushing against each other, Fifth eventually saying, “How did you even know?”

  “Yes, telling the enemy how I beat them, so clever.”

  “Why do you always have to be so glib!” They retort.

  A wave of memories passing over me, and they started to settle, forming one of the memories.

  A drab hotel room that was somewhere in between a shady motel and a five star suite. Two other people in there with me, saying-

  I cut off the memory, my domain straining against me, but complying. Fifth of the Mist was looking at me, panicked, and I finally got a good look at them. They looked like a porcelain doll, except the skin was textured like the bark. With vegetation growing out of their head like hair, and long, pointy ears.

  “How did you…”

  I didn’t let them finish as I willed something, anything to happen to them. And I felt my domain twitch, it strained as it complied with my demands. But it felt more natural than before as a torrent of both my and Fifth's memories came over us.

  I was in a family living room made of wood and a red flesh like substance that gave me the creeps. A Christmas tree in the corner of the room next to a TV, and I was sitting across from it on the ugly yellow couch I got when I first moved out.

  A small group of humans and whatever creature Fifth of the Mist was, all on the couch, having a conversation. The words sounding like background chatter in a restaurant, despite the people talking being right in front of me.

  But I heard one audible sentence, “What did you do, Jacob?”

  I turned and saw Fifth of the Mist, dressed in a green turtle neck.

  “I don’t know, it’s your power.”

  “...Fair.”

  Then they sat down next to me, and I scooched away from them, creating a disrespectful distance between us.

  “So,” I said, “You know any way to undo this?”

  “I don’t know, it’s your power that did this,” They retorted, “And may I remind you that I have no obligation to help you, especially after what you pulled in the third phase.”

  I scoffed, “Fine.”

  I stood up and walked out of the room, pulling open the door. It was blindingly bright on the other side, but I stepped through regardless.

  Then I heard Fifth of the Mist say, “Didn’t you just…?”

  I opened my eyes and saw that I was back in the room, having come in from another door. I went back to the door I opened, trying it again, but the same thing happened again.

  “No, no, no, no.”

  I kept on running through the doors, the ‘people’ in the room not reacting to me.

  “Isn’t there some saying from your home about how insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result?” Fifth of the Mist said, taking a sip out of their cup, wincing at the flavour, “Why is this so sweet?”

  “Well, it’s better than just sitting on the couch. Also, it’s hot chocolate, it’s meant to be sweet.”

  “I’ve had hot chocolate before.”

  “Really, guess our planets aren’t that different.”

  “No, no. My home doesn’t have cacao beans.”

  “Then how do you know what it tastes like?”

  “There were four other contestants from your homeworld. Do you really think it’s my first time doing this?”

  “Oh, right…”

  I turned around, searching through the living room, but every entrance was either a dead end or looped back.

  “That won’t do anything,” Fifth said.

  “Oh, and how would you know?”

  “This is my powers doing, so I can tell this is a memory construct. It isn’t like anyone I’ve ever seen before, but it is one. And they don’t go beyond the bounds of the memory it’s based on.”

  “Do you have any actually helpful things to add?”

  “Yes, I know you have a hard time visualising the concept of someone else knowing better than you, but-”

  “Get to the point.”

  “This is memory, they aren’t snapshots, they're videos. And if you let them roll, you get to see more stuff.”

  “And how do we get it to roll?”

  “Play along, enact what you remember, and change will follow. Then, when we have more information, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “I thought we weren’t working together,” I snapped back as I walked over to the couch.

  “Yeah, well, I think this is a mixture of our memories. Some of the stuff I recognise from my world, and some of it is from yours,” they said, pointing at the Christmas tree.

  “Hmm, makes sense,” I conceded, sitting down next to them, “So how should we do this?”

  “As I said earlier, play along, and act like how you remember acting.”

  “What if our memories interfere with each other somehow? Like I’m supposed to take a left, and you’re supposed to turn right, for example”

  “Well…” they took another sip of their hot chocolate, grimacing at the taste, saying, “No idea, but I think we should go forward and deal with problems along the way, or else we’ll just get nowhere.”

  “I don’t like it,” I said, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

  “Well, do you have any better plan?”

  “Fine.”

  We sat on the couch for a couple of minutes, but nothing happened. I looked towards Fifth for any answers, but my eyes caught on his cup of hot chocolate, it was filled to the brim despite him taking the occasional sip.

  “Hey, can you give me that?” I said, pointing towards the cup in their hands.”

  “Why?”

  “I think that was mine. I drank that stuff like water on days like these.”

  They handed it over, and I took a sip from it, “Oh, that’s why it’s so sweet.”

  “Hmm, why?”

  “I usually put some extra sugar in mine, around a tablespoon, or three… seven usually.”

  “How do you not have diabetes?”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  I did my best impression of my kindergarten gym teacher, “I ain’t no sissy.”

  Fifth snorted.

  I looked up towards them and realised I was a lot shorter than I was a moment ago, everything had shrunken, and most of the alien stuff had disappeared. Except for Fifth themself, and the occasional patches of the flesh looking stuff on the wall. And, in the back of my head, I noticed something, my domain, I could feel it again. Then I saw the calendar, and I recognised the exact day.

  Oh, god no.

  “Wait a moment,” Fifth said, “I can’t feel anything.”

  “What?” I said, sitting up straight.

  “My powers, they’re all just cut off!”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  I noticed the room was slowly changing back to what it was before, and my powers started getting cut off as well.

  Then Fifth of the Mist let out a sigh, “Oh, I can feel them again.”

  “Jesus, don’t scare me like that.”

  “Sorry, sorry. But, uh, do you know why that happened?”

  I thought back to when I felt my own power again, when the memory was more like mine, and then lost them when the room was more like Fifth’s.

  “No,” I said, “No idea, well not a good one. My guess is that the connection’s just unstable and shifting around, you know.”

  “I could see that.”

  Then there was silence for a moment, that I awkwardly broke with “So… I guess we just continue with what we’re doing. Role playing and stuff.”

  “I suppose so… well, I don’t think it’s role playing if we’re just reenacting our memories.”

  “Semantics.”

  There was another awkward pause as we sat on the couch doing nothing.

  Fifth of the Mist sighed, “We’re not going anywhere like this.”

  “You relive one of your most awkward memories in front of a complete stranger who’s trying to kill you.”

  “Do you think you’re the only one going through that?” they snapped.

  “Geez, sorry.”

  “No, you’re right, but we have to start somewhere.”

  I perked up, “The hot chocolate.”

  “What about it?”

  “When you handed it to me, the room changed. I think because the drink was originally mine, and since I didn’t have it, the thing couldn’t progress until I got it. Maybe we should start with little details like that.”

  “Good idea.”

  We started arranging the room the way we remembered, he messed with some of the alien decorations, and I arranged the Christmas decorations. But we came across one problem.

  “Where am I supposed to sit then?” I complained.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s only enough seats for me and constructs; you can go sit on the floor,” Fifth replied.

  “It doesn’t make sense that there isn’t enough room for all of us, especially since I remember where I sat, and it’s right there,” I pointed at one of the alien children on the yellow couch.

  “I’m sorry, but that's where my son was sitting.”

  “We’re the only ones that can move this memory forward, so I think it’s more important that I get the seat.”

  “We’ll see if that’s true.”

  I clasped my hands together, “You know what, I have an idea,” and I plopped myself right in the child's lap.

  “Please don’t do that.”

  “Don’t do what?” Both me and the son said the room losing more of its Christmas decorations.

  Fifth and I looked around the room in surprise. I didn’t feel my power become more distant, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Then me and Fifth looked at each other and came to an understanding.

  “First of the Ash, you’re messing with your food. I don’t want to have to clean it up,” Fifth of the Mist said.

  “You clean it up?” another alien said, sitting right next to Fifth, “We both know I'm the one that’s going to clean it up.”

  “And I couldn’t be any more grateful, Tenth of the Night.”

  I noticed the room reverting back to the in between state, but I didn’t point it out. And the scene went on, the lovey dovey family exchanging gifts and just generally being a healthy family. But for some reason, the room never went farther into the alien style, my powers growing distant with every second this kept going. I contemplated what to do, but I landed on a direct approach.

  “This isn’t how it happened, isn’t it?”

  “What was that First?” Fifth asked.

  “I’m not First of the Ash or whatever, I'm Jacob.”

  “We’re supposed to be moving this forward, just play along,” they hissed

  And with their words, a part of the wall dissolved.

  We looked at it in shock, Fifth saying, “Look what you did.”

  “Tell me,” I said, ignoring them, “Why hasn’t the room changed further to one side since we started?”

  “The room doing what?”

  I looked at them. Their body language wasn’t as alien as a wasp's now, but it was still alien.

  So I bluffed when I said, “You’re a horrible liar, you're tells all over the place.”

  They looked back at me, but my poker face was rather good.

  “I think,” Fifth said, “That the rooms are trying to reach a balance between our memories. They’re similar enough that they merged like this. So we should try to work together to get out of this.”

  I laugh, “This scene is nowhere near what happened in my memory.”

  “Then maybe I’m wrong.”

  “Then why don’t you give me the chance to balance it out with my own memory?”

  I sat up, walking towards them.

  Fifth scoffed, “Is this about not being able to sit where you wanted?”

  “I’m not that petty, well… it’s not important. But I think I got this figured out. Your wife is my mother in this situation. That dude’s my great uncle,” I pointed towards a wheelchair bound man, “That’s my Older brother,” I pointed towards First of the Ash, “That leaves three people in their wrong place.”

  “Us and my son?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then where were we?”

  “First is where I was, and you’re where my brother, or First of the Ash, was.”

  “Then where was I… I don’t see any more seats, unless you found some?”

  “I think you know.”

  “Yeah…”

  Fifth hung their head, and the scene around us changed to what I presumed to be an office. Not a single piece of human architecture around, just that eerily flesh like stuff and wood, most likely because I had no idea what my father's office looked like. So I couldn’t supply any of the memories creating this place. And I felt my powers were stronger than ever despite the scene being completely alien.

  “You lied about not being able to feel your powers earlier, didn’t you…”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you do it? Why did you do this?” I asked in a wavering voice, gesturing to everything.

  “My family needed me, the economy was never good. It’s a commonality between our worlds from what I’ve seen of the other earthlings' memories.”

  He let out a half hearted laugh, but I didn’t react to the joke, remembering what they did to get those memories.

  “How many holidays in a row have you missed at this desk?” I said.

  They winced, “That isn’t…”

  I glared at them, and they changed their answer, “Most of them.”

  “How many ball games or whatever your equivalent of those have you missed,” I spat out, venom seeping into my words.

  They didn’t answer for a while, “...I’m not going to lie and say it felt just as bad for me to miss those games and holidays. But at this desk, on this night, I ran out early to get to my family, I didn’t even bring my coat.”

  “Then what happened? I know what happened in my memory. I remember hearing my mother say to me that my father loved me, and he would make it. He didn’t… and you said that these memories are rather similar.”

  Fifth of the Mist took a deep breath in, “There was a storm, it was a rather bad one, a couple of pieces of infrastructure were knocked over, making it dangerous to make it back. So I had to crash on a friend's couch for the night… I only made it back the next morning. And the next morning, my wife, she…”

  I was a good foot shorter than normal, hiding behind the staircase railing, having gone down for a midnight snack. But stumbled upon my parents sitting at the dining table. Seeing both of them together usually meant an argument, so I had hidden in case I needed to get away. But they were silent, my father- Fifth of the Mist, signing a piece of paper. My power feeling an inch closer to my reach.

  Then Fifth of the Mist turned their head towards me, “I think you know what happened.”

  “It wasn’t the night after, but yeah… It was the last time I ever saw him, good riddance."

  The power felt more distant.

  “Well,” Fifth said, “I reached out a couple times, but up until the day I was taken by The Great Debate, I never really knew my own boys.”

  He put his head in his hands. I looked at him, now sitting next to me at an airport bench. Then he looked up, looking surprised at the new surroundings.

  “Isn’t this the airport where you last met your brother?”

  I sat up straight, looking around.

  Crap, he’s right.

  “Why are we here?” Fifth continued.

  “We aren’t supposed to be.”

  “What? I think we are, I can feel my power closer to me than ever before.”

  “We’re not doing this!” I yell.

  “Huh?”

  I cover my ears with my hands, shutting my eyes, and humming under my breath to block out any more noise. Feeling my power pull away from me.