Prologue
The air around me was hazed. Shifting white gases encircled me as two hands grip my shoulder. They held me still as men began loading my father’s things onto a ship. My mother looked to me, a smile on her face but sadness in her eyes. She simply stared, standing on the deck of the ship in a pearl white dress. Her beauty fluorescent even in the sky’s damp and gloomy blue; her black hair foraying against the wind.
A man suddenly stood in front of me, it was my father. He bent down to my height. My childish eyes meeting his. I wanted to hug him, to hold him, but the two hands kept me still. Unable to hide in the confines of his beard, to secretly follow him wherever he went. I cried. But my tears did not reach him; he looked at me sternly. His eyes held regret, of the crystal crown on his head, of his gold, silver and white garments; his people; his future and most of all, regret for what he was about to do.
“I have to leave you,” he tells me, his voice dampened by heartache. He spoke solemnly, “I don’t want to............., but bringing you with me will put your life in danger. Someone or is trying to control my people from the shadows, someone powerful. I have to find out what and why. And I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to be caught in the crossfire. I won’t be there for you...... there’s no excuse for that but I’ll leave you with something. Treasure it. It will help you in a time where you are in need of great aid”.
He pulled out a white crystal necklace and wore it over my head. Stepping back from me and turning away. It didn’t matter how many times I called his name, he ignored them all. Boarding the airship and crossing to hold my mother. Embraced in his arms, she cried on his shoulder. The last words my father yelled out to me were,
“I hope we meet again, my son.”
His voice then becoming faint as a whirl of mist-covered my view. Everything seemed, quiet, the only sound being the engine of his airship as it flew into the distance.
I awoke...
