~ Many Years Ago ~

I was about twelve years old when I met him. The first person to show me kindness, that is.

A young boy, about my age, thirteen years old to be exact, was sitting atop a tree in front of the bright, glowing moon in the deep, lush forest. The sky filled with darkness, but the moon acted as a spotlight, trained on him as he sat atop that branch.

It was like he was searching for something up there, though what, I did not know. I never truly asked him what he was doing there.

He was a regular-looking boy. There was not a single unique thing about his appearance. Just by looking, you could safely assume that he was only human. He had a normal, pale skin tone. He was also rather scrawny. At the time he had been a few inches taller than me. He wore a long, brown trenchcoat that cut off around his knees. He was also wearing a brownish-grey shirt and brownish-grey trousers. He never had worn shoes, most likely due to the fact that he didn't have the money to pay for footwear.

Oh, and he always wore a brown paper bag over his head, with two eyeholes cut into it so he could see. 

There he sat, living in a world away from my own. Our paths should have never crossed, but sometimes fate was funny in that way. Sometimes fate would bring two people who were worlds apart together.

I lived in a complete other section of the world, among a tribe of ancients known as the Tribe of Darkness. Adults in the world held much power, children being small and inferior. They saw us as empty canvases which were to be molded to their likings. 

I never saw any other children. Most adults didn't wish to have any, due to the fear of a one being born.

What is a one, you ask? Well, back in the day, when any child was born, they were assigned a number based on their potential for power, one being the most powerful and a hundred being the least. Most humans had a number in the eighties or nineties, while most ancients or magic users had an average of twenty to thirty.

There hadn't been a one born in the records since the Pixl Queen. They were marked as highly unstable and dangerous, so if one were to be born, the law would require that they be terminated immediately. Yes, it was quite gruesome, but that was the way the world was back then. It was nothing more than a safety precaution.

I was born a six, making me the lowest number the tribe had seen and documented in centuries, which yes, was a huge honor, however, it also made many people... suspicious. My father was a proud man, taking pride in my number, but also being extra protective of it. He was often curious about my potential, taking me in to see many doctors in the area so they could test on me, just to make sure I wouldn't grow to do anything crazy with my potential power.

There were a lot of strict rules I was to live by during my youth. My kind was under no circumstances to repulse with humans. We were to stay away from them, for fear of what mixing high and low numbers could do. The low numbers were to stick with the low numbers and the same with the high numbers. It was just the way of the world. 

I, of course being a child, never asked questions. When people told me how the world was, I always nodded along, assuming that the adults knew everything. They were older and wiser, so who was I to doubt them?

It was mid-fall after I had turned twelve, my powers had still yet to fully come to me. In fact, they hardly came to me at all, which was odd since I had been born and labeled as a six. I was technically the most powerful person around, yet I couldn't use any of these said powers.

Powers never came to anyone at birth. People were born with POTENTIAL for power, but it always took a few years for powers to be realized. 

Yet, at twelve years old I was still barely capable of anything, actually. If it wasn't for my appearance, someone might have mistaken me for a powerless human. So, of course, my father sent me to researcher after researcher, trying to figure out how to make my powers come. Trying to see and get ahold of my magical abilities. 

They held me in isolated rooms, injected me with strange liquids, left me alone for weeks on end. It felt like torture. Nothing any child should ever go through, but back then I hadn't seen it that way. 

Yes, it had hurt, but I was told that it was normal. I was told that it had to be done and that it was for my benefit, so who would I be to question anything?

I had lost track of how long it had been since I had seen my real father. I had no way to tell where he even was. The researchers would never speak to me. No one would speak to me. It was horrible. I had no way to pass the time, other than watching the moon outside rise and fall, and that was only when I was lucky enough to be placed in a room with a window.

I had no memory of the sun. I never even had seen it. There was just the moon and the night sky. Eternal darkness. If someone had explained the sun to me, back then I might have just dismissed it as a myth.

Perhaps because that's all the sun was to everyone. A myth.

About six months in, after I had gone through about five different scientists, doctors, and researchers, I was sent to an isolated cabin in the woods where a child hunter of the sorts was looking after me. He wasn't injecting me with anything or conducting tests. He was just... watching me. As if he was waiting for something to happen. Per my father's request, he kept me locked away. He left the house often, so I was alone most of the time. I had nothing to keep me company besides the rise and the fall of the moon, which I watched from the window of the room, which unfortunately was far too high for me to reach, so I couldn't actually see much out of it. Its only purpose seemed to be allowing the moonlight inside. So there I sat, every day, watching my shadows in the moonlight, entertaining myself.

I was probably there because they had no idea where to place me. I supposed it was like some sort of waiting room since the research and tests had gotten nowhere. Months in and my powers still couldn't be realized. So, they were just keeping me on hold.

Most days blurred together, but the loneliness hurt. It felt like a prison. I wanted something. I wanted ANYTHING.

This room. This lonely, horrible room, was where our paths first crossed.

______

I recall him, the main character of this story, mentioning a long hallway. One with nothing but a simple door at the end. He described something calling him to open it. He told me that he ran to it, but the world wouldn't let him open that door. It wouldn't let him reach it. As he ran, he recalled running in slow motion about a third of the way down the hall when-

The boy with the paper bag over his head lay on the forest floor next to what had appeared to be a shattered mirror, seeming to wake up from what had just been a... dream? A vision? He didn't specify.

I wasn't there with him at this time. I don't come into this story for a while, so I'm only going off of what he told me.

He was all alone. 

He looked at the shattered glass seeming to surround him. Then, careful not to cut his feet, he stood up and stepped around it, following the forest. Though when I later asked him where he was heading, he told me that it wasn't clear to him. He simply said that he was heading forward.

That's him for you. Always heading forward.

Through the empty woods, the moon continued to act as a spotlight, following him as he moved, fallen leaves creaking beneath his bare feet. His long coat gently flowed behind him as he walked against the gentle breeze, not at a hurried pace, but faster than one normally walks. 

Being a small child, he was fragile. His bones could be broken like twigs. It was easy to die in this world, and I think he knew that. But it didn't stop him from moving forward. No children other than him spent time out in the open. Not when adults were near. 

This was an isolated part of the world. The woods. Perhaps that was why I was being kept there. It was isolated, and the people here intended to keep it that way. Child hunters often patrolled, knowing what the children could grow up to be and taking them down at their youth. Sometimes at night, locked up safe, I could hear gunshots in the distance and screams of children being found.

I always thought that the adults weren't afraid of the children themselves, but what they could become.

The boy crawled through tree roots and jumped over rocks, eventually getting to this tipped-over log that was situated at the top of a small cliff. There, he sat and leaned over it, looking down the small drop-off to see a small girl, who was also the same age as me, sitting at the bottom, brushing her 'long, flowing, magical white hair,' as he described it.

There, he just waited, watching over her, longing to have the courage to speak to her.

But alas, he didn't. 

So he eventually left after a few more moments of watching her, avoiding the occasionally hidden bear trap set by the hunters. As he traveled through the forest, he occasionally passed by poor victims trapped in the set traps. 

They were all beyond help. If they weren't, he most definitely would have freed them. After all, that was kinda one of his hobbies. Freeing trapped children and helping people. But there was no point now.

He eventually came across the cabin I was locked in.

...When I asked him how he knew I needed him, he told me that he could just sense that someone was waiting for him. He said that he could... feel that I needed someone.

The door had been locked, so he simply slid through the open window. Of course, breaking and entering was not uncommon back then, but for a child to be doing it, well, that was basically suicide. I had no idea how he could possibly be so brave and idiotic at the exact same time.

But he slid inside and crouched down to the ground, the wood floor gently creaking as he walked around the disturbing little cabin. I had never really seen what it looked like since I had been confined to only one room, but he told me that there were bullet holes everywhere, as if the hunter shot any and everything that moved.

Luckily, the hunter didn't appear to be inside at the moment, so the boy quickly snuck through the house, sneaking through a few rooms until he found a staircase, leading down to a basement, where he could hear the gentle sound of breathing.

That was my breathing. 

He followed the sound to another door. The door to my room. Of course, it was locked, but the wood was rotting. 

Since the hunter had many, MANY weapons, the boy ended up going to the other end of the room, finding an ax and dragging it across the floor, as it was too heavy for him to properly lift. There, he used all his strength to swing it and break the rotting wood away.

This was where we met.

As I heard him beat down the door, I rightfully gasped and rushed back to the corner of the room in fear of what it might be. 

I couldn't see him yet. All I could see was an ax breaking my door down, so I was rightfully terrified. I had thought that maybe another hunter broke in and found me.  

But when he walked through and met my eyes, he did something I had never seen anyone do before.

His two dark brown, gentle eyes met my blue ones, and he paused. 

Then... the boy slowly walked over to where I was, kneeled down, and held out a hand.

Not to attack me, but to help me up.

Of course, I was confused. People simply didn't do that.

"Hey," He whispered, his voice sweet, like a ringing bell. This had been the first time I heard another voice in a very, very long time. "I'm not going to hurt you."

I looked at the paper bag covering his face, then at his hand. I wasn't sure what he was doing.

"You don't deserve to be locked up in here. Let's get you out," He whispered, still reaching out to me, waiting for me to take his hand. 

The door behind him was open. After spending such a long time closed, it was open.

So, I shoved him aside and sprinted past him, towards freedom.