Chapter -1: A boy lay there

A boy lay there, on the damp dark sand. The moon observed from up high, wrapped between a patchwork of dishevelled grey clouds. They floated silently pinned to the shifting diorama of the sky. Crawling ever so slowly.

The boy coughed and then coughed again. Each cough jolted life back into his small body. He wasn't too tall, he wasn't too small, for his age, at least. He had thick deep folded nylon black hair, reflecting silver beams from the celestial being above. This hair splayed over his peckishly featured face, in wave like fringe, sweeping just below one of his eyes. The other was buried in the sand alongside half of his face. For now, the boy looked peaceful, his head resting in the sand like a pillow, facing right, on its side.

He had long set in eye bags, sagging far beside his shortish nose like tear smudged mascara. He looked as if he was completely calm, or at least like he hadn't been able to rest for a while now.

His breaths were barely even wisps yet were long and relaxed. Water, whose home land was so far away yet oh so close, had been spat out before him, seeping into the sand. It formed a puddle as it sifted itself through, quaint in all dimensions although his lungs would not have agreed with such an assessment.

Not too far up the beach, there was a road, a long straight road, taking a stroll right beside the edge of where grass has risen out with the alliance of soil against the sand.

There was no gentle lull of late night traffic, only the company of buzzing, stoic white street lamps, beaming down at the road below them.

A gentle breeze fluttered by, barely audible, only a slight sway in the crisp, chilled sea night air.

He lay there, motionless save for the rising and falling of his breaths. An audience of waves looked on. Rising and falling to a different rhythm, creeping onto shore to grab a quick look, before backing into the stirring ocean with a hush, returning to soft silence.

this silence was not preserved for long.

The chut chuttering of an engine flickered into earshot. Like a sunrise it grew, slowly, gradually, and with it came light. More white light flooded the still night air, cutting through with rising dissonance.

The boy's eyes lids flashed to life with a murmur of movement before being reclaimed by stillness.

The engines cacophony started to fade like a sunset, but then it stopped. Like time had staggered back in disbelief, the engines puttering and the light that it called company flowed into a reverse sunset. Rising. Then time failed completely. The engine and light got taken like a shadow in the dark.

The light had found the boy. Cast down on him from above with brilliance that would make the sun cry.

His eyes fluttered. A groan escaped from his lungs. His hair jostled. His head moved. The boy was waking.

A mellow crunch of sand approached the boy. Rising in a growing beat.

The boy lay there on the sand. Moon hung in the starlit darkness. Waves not too far below him. He was exposed to the judgement of the impartial night sky.

He revelled in this fact, that he could feel the ground beneath him as he had finally awoken.