Prologue: The Boy who fell to Earth

“Foxes don’t hunt in packs”

-Encyclopedia Britannica

Growing up is hard. But not as hard as being the protagonist of a Young Adult novel. Are those the thoughts wandering through juvenile minds? Or are they just blatant assumptions by a grown-up individual of what sort of comfort a Young Adult novel should provide, contrived as they may be? Well, I certainly wouldn’t know. But what I can say with absolute certainty is that growing up is hard. And this brings me to yet another story of unseen wonder and bewildering horror. The young master, having reached the questionably ripe age of eighteen, was sitting in a dark room, staring out the window onto a rainy landscape, wondering about purpose and reason and other such mysteries. He was very close to reach the conclusion that there was neither purpose nor reason. But that wasn’t quite right. This is the tale of how he got there. How he got to that tranquil moment in that dark room, looking at that seemingly spiteful rainy landscape. But be warned, this tale is perhaps even ghastlier than the last one. It all started when a certain girl happened to be late for school one morning. It was this the first day of her second year of high school. “If only my alarm clock wasn’t a piece of trash,” she thought to herself as she was rushing down the streets, eating her toast breakfast along the way, thus dropping bread crumbs all over the sidewalk. Having then finally arrived at her classroom, thirty minutes too late, only to be chastened by an exceedingly disappointed look given by her teacher, she was willing to leave again. But then something else caught her attention. Something that would change her life forever. As unbelievable as it may seem, she saw it with her very own eyes. A person crashing through the windows and landing on the classroom floor. “Why does this have to happen right after I entered the classroom?” she wondered, but no answer was given. The students left their seats, some of them hurriedly fleeing the scene. Most of them perhaps just happy not having to attend the class any longer. Even the teacher was startled and didn’t know how to handle this peculiar situation. This girl however dared to approach that being lying in the middle of the classroom, covered in shards and emitting smoke for some inscrutable reason. After a closer look she realized it was a boy of about her age and wearing the school uniform of her school.

“It is a student of our school,” she quickly proclaimed.

“Then why did he fly through the window?” the teacher sternly asked. The girl didn’t know if such a rhetorical question needed an answer. But judging by the teacher’s facial expression, he was very well expecting an answer. Confused she remained silent for a while. And in this very moment the boy began to move. Shocked by this development the girl took a step back. Sluggardly this boy moved his head and appeared as if he was waking up from a long slumber. Rubbing his eyes and yawning, he tried to get up on his feet. Like a newborn animal, his legs still seemed unstable and he supported himself with one hand on one of the desks, while he lifted the other one up in front of his face, presumably to protect his eyes from the sunlight. Speechless the girl and the teacher stood there for a while. Then the silence was broken by the piercing voice of the principal.

“What is all this ruckus? Why are the windows shattered?” were the palpable words spoken by the principal. But nobody was able or willing to answer. The boy lowered his hand and looked at the people around him.

“I wanted everything,” he then whispered before collapsing on the floor again.