Beginning of a Dawn

'The man's name was Balthazar, the king of the world. He-'

"What? What man? What does king mean here? What world?" The voice sounding next to Mal's ear breaks his concentration.

"I don't know man! You just told me to write something fantasy like!" Mal flounders a bit, having been shot down on his first sentence as a fantasy writer.

"Dude, why are you even getting into fantasy writing? We both know you have basically zero experience with genre fiction."

"Okay Luke, you know that's not right. I used to read a lot of fantasy as a kid!"

"...you're kidding me right? You're 25 now! You haven't read a single fiction book since high school like 8 years ago. You told me last week!"

"Well, yeah... but there's got to be something still there!"

"Oh c'mon. Just take a job as a coder or something, would probably be easier for you."

"Nah, nuh uh. Code is not my specialty." Mal shakes his head, his brown hair tickling his eyebrows. His blue eyes instantly looked away from the other man in the room with him, Luke. His closest friend since they were both five.

"Neither is writing. Yet here we are, aren't we?" Luke's mouth is quibbling, trying not to smile.

"Okay, wow. Not appreciating the negativity." Mal chuckles. Somethings never change, especially not the ribbing these two give each other.

"I'd like to consider it realism, my friend." Luke's green eyes stare at his best friend. "I'm going to get another beer. Want anything?"

"Yeah, some cider would be cool." Luke nods his head then walks out.

Mal stands up and starts to stretch his arms up. His hands scrape the ceiling of the apartment he's lived in for five years. Always a bit taller than everyone else, he's gotten used to it by now and runs his fingers along the rough paint, trying to stretch his back out more.

At 25, Mal has hit a wall. Not being able to keep up with every assignment he's had to do, he had to drop out of college late in his third year, hoping to keep the damage down as much as possible. Unfortunately, he hadn't taken a job during that time, but thankfully he hadn't had to worry about paying off his tuition fees, since he was able to toss them to the government for that time. Even getting a, painfully small, cost of living wage.

Mal had taken four years off of school to do his "short stint as a sailor." Joining the navy, he had done nothing but sail around, take orders, and pretend he knew how to fix a radio. After getting out, he had told Luke he needed something better to do with his life, and took his suggestion of biomed.

He had taken every STEM class he needed, Calculus, Cell Biology, Physics,

Organic Chemistry, even finished his first semester in the major, getting an A in Synthetic Materials. Then, signal analysis caught him. His first week in the class and he already knew he would fail the course if he tried to go through it. None of what he learned as a radio tech helped him. If anything, it hurt him. He dropped out of college the week after, citing mental health issues as his primary reason for the sudden drop.

Afterwards, Mal had invited Luke out for coffee at the local shop they went to to catch up. When he told him about his reasoning to drop, Luke had just nodded his head and sipped his coffee at hearing this. Mal thought he had disappointed his friend, but Luke just said it was a better decision to drop than force himself to take the fail.

Then Mal decided he wanted to try a new hobby, writing. Seeing as how he hadn't read a book for fun in the 7 years since high school, he decided it was time to try again. But he also knew he didn't have much time before his funds dried up, and he'd have to move out, possibly back to his parents. He wanted to avoid that for as long as possible.

When Luke came back, he tossed Mal his bottle of cider, and gulped down his own can. Then, he looked right at Mal and said, "Hey, I've got an idea. Want to be a guinea pig?"