Drifting Time Misplaced *Non-Canon*

Jealousy’s parents were fighting… Again. The young red panda couldn’t help but to hide in his room as the fight got more and more intense. His parents always have fought like this, for as long as his memory could go back for. He felt like… He felt like he was misplaced in the wrong family. As if his family wasn’t meant for him or didn’t deserve him at all. It hurt. It really did. And plus, who would want to be in a family that fought all the time? All the other families in his village of red pandas were normal, none of them ever screamed at each other or threw glass vases across the room or scared their children into their rooms thanks to their constant fighting. Well, not that he knew of at the time. Heck, they even named him after a negative emotion of all things. Why did they have to name him that? Even he didn’t know why. And all this fighting had caused Jealousy to keep his greatest secret away from them, in fear that they’d fight over him being a mistake again.

                What is that secret, you may ask? That secret would be, well, magic. He was taught by his parents to despise magic, to fight against it. As someone who was a mage himself, he couldn’t see why magic was so bad. It could be used in so many cool and interesting ways! Like, he could make a blue campfire! A BLUE campfire! What wouldn’t be cool about a blue campfire?!

                But, back to the point. 10 minutes felt like 10 hours and after that time, the fighting eventually stopped and Jealousy could heard the front door slamming as his dad left the house. He could also hear his mom rushing into her downstairs room, sobbing all the way there. It broke his heart to hear her like this, as she was the closest person he had in his life, aside from his best friends, Peace and Compassion. Yeah, they grew pitiful over him because of his current situation but that doesn’t mean they’re all friends, right?

                Because of how upset Jealousy was because of the fight that just went on, he went downstairs and snuck out of the house and wandered out towards the nearby forest, walking through via a path he had found when he was around 8 or so. When he reached his destination, he walked to the edge of a slightly steep slope and he sat down, looking out towards the land of Media that he could see so very clearly. The magical purple barrier was visible even from here and it was still as vivid and awesome as it was the last time he saw it.

                Jealousy had always dreamed of going there and building a life of his own, especially considering that would mean getting away from his parents. Yeah, there were practically barely any red pandas there but what does it matter? Media was Media and Jealousy had always wanted to go there. Every time he escaped to this place in the woods, he always liked to envision and imagine what it would be like there. He thought it would allow mages into its borders with open paws.

                Oh, how wrong he was…

                Jealousy eventually awoke in the cave he made his home, the rainstorm from the previous night having fizzled out into a slight drizzle. It had been a few years since he moved away from his village and became known across Media as “The Mage of Roaring Flames.” It had been so long, that a lot of his childhood memories drifted away and were seemingly misplaced, like a lost toy. He was surprised he wasn’t caught yet by the Median authority. Though, one thing he couldn’t deny was that he was pretty good at lying low. He knew the strengths and the weaknesses of a lot of higher ups thanks to studying from a distance. AT least this was a better life than it was back when he was a child.

                But there was still something that even he wanted to know. What about his childhood best friends? Peace and Compassion? How were they? Did they miss him and have they heard about how he was a mage in Media that cause all this fear and commotion like the Shadow Advisor and the Jester? Even he didn’t know. But in all honesty, he didn’t want to go back to his village and find out what had happened. He didn’t know if they were dead or alive. But that was ok. He didn’t want them to know the horrid truth anyway.

”Here’s to another day on the run…” Jealousy muttered to himself as he got up and stretched in his bed of moss, linens, and other soft materials. “Come at me, Media… Show me what you’ve got.”