RockStar

Prologue

"Here you go, honey," the waitress said as she set down the café au lait beside the bizarre young man. When he glanced up to say his thanks, the light reflected weirdly off his strange clear grey eyes and she gasped. In her startled state, she tensed and wound up sloshing two of the other drinks she held over the sides of their cups. She glanced back at him once more before turning away and going to clean up the cups and refill them.

The faint smile that was on the young man's lips fell and he quickly dropped his gaze. He'd forgotten for a moment how humans reacted when the light hit his eyes. As they were better adjusted for darker environments, they reflected the light similarly to those of nocturnal creatures. It unnerved them and made them wonder at least for a moment if he were something other than human. It was true, but they didn't need to know that.

Rather than focus on his inhuman eyes, he turned his attention back to the current bane of his existence. A raw opaque blue gem that was dark in its dormant state, but upon the eve of his twenty-first birthday should have begun glowing a brilliant cerulean clearer than the skies of this Earth. It should've long begun to awaken but wouldn't. Not in his hands. As the firstborn, it was his birthright to be in possession of such a precious gem made pendant tied around his neck. However, because of his male gender, the second part of this birthright was denied.

Back home, his people feared that his being male was an omen for the worst things to come. His mother tried her best to reassure the people and him that nothing terrible would come of this, despite how unprecedented it was. When his great-grandmother passed not long after his birth and his mother was proven unable to have more children, their people were more convinced that he was an omen and should be dealt with. It was through his mother's declaring that the royal line would be broken—thus further disrupting—if not absolutely destroying—their only means of being. Their downfall would not be because they fell victim to their fears of the unknown. She suggested that when he came of age, he would marry and sire a daughter.

That then brought on another slew of problems as noble families from across the lands came to present their daughters to him. This influx of self-serving female attention was what drove him to flee. His running took him to the very edge of the furthest outskirts of his homeworld. It was there that he found himself a way to this place called Earth, though he wasn't entirely sure how. He could remember a cave and a spring, but nothing more.

The first few days, his eyes had to adjust to the sunlight. The days after that were him just understanding the culture and trying to blend in. It was a blessing that the Earth language of the place he found himself was like his own. Their writing was different from his own world's, and their colloquialisms based on current popular culture threw him. Still, he managed to find himself some clothes, procuring a loose hat that came down enough to cover his ears first. The beings of Earth had soft round ears that were much unlike his pointed ones. A bat, a child had said when he stumbled upon civilization. When he discovered what the creature was, he had to laugh as the child wasn't wrong. His ears were rather large and came to a point at the ends.

It was a learning curve for sure being on Earth, but he appreciated the newfound ambiguity the world granted him. He didn't have to be around anyone who might know who he was, or of the blight being male had struck him with. He didn't have to be prodded at by women who only saw him as a means to gain status by birthing the next female heir. He could almost forget who he was and what was at stake, but then he'd feel the chill of the stone or its jagged edge against his skin. The weighted reminder was a noose that he could never pull himself free from.

Not wanting to think more about his accursed fate, he shoved the pendant back under his shirt and reached for his beverage. The warmth from the mug was comforting, but in his haste to forget his troubles, sipped much too soon and burned his lip, tongue, and chin. He dropped his cup and spilled the remainder of his drink over the counter and his lap. He yelled out and jumped from the counter and stumbled over the stool he was sitting on as well as his feet. He crashed into the dessert display and was quickly covered in an assortment of chocolate, cream-based, and fruit-flavored sauces and confections.