Flashback

Chapter 1

This book is dedicated to my best friend and co-writer. Thanks Sofia!

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The blackness is all that exists. Everything is black. My vision, my hearing, my sense of everything. Even my memory. Nothing. Like my entire life story was written on a piece of paper, then burned, and now I live in the ashes. Black, dreadful ashes.

Just one thing remains. My name. Ren. The fire has not eaten that, and that alone. The last scrap of paper, and it only holds that one word. That one last spark of hope, and I will not let it burn with the rest.

I float in the blackness, unable to move. It feels like my entire body is numb. If it's there at all. I can't even feel myself breathing. I wonder if this is what death feels like.

Just as I'm about to give in to the blackness, it appears. A tiny, pinprick of light. As stared at it in wonder, the little light exploded. It bloomed and blossomed into a breathtaking flower. The petals bright white against the darkness, lines of all colors yet no color at all spread as it bloomed. It grew and grew and grew. Until it enveloped me.

Have you ever woken up to a bunch of random, strange looking people standing over you? Well, I can assure you that it is quite odd.

Right above my head was a very tall, very muscular, and slightly hairy guy. He had short black hair, hewas extremly tan, and his dark eyes glittered with concern beneath his furrowed eyebrows. He was wearing a dull red shirt and a dagger was shoved into a sheath on his belt. Highly contrasting with his masculinity, there was a tatoo of a pink tulip on his shoulder... weird.

Looking over to my right, there were two girls, both with red hair like a flame that can't be extinguished, eyes as blue and as sparkly as the sea, and the exact same expetant look on their faces. One was taller than the other and wore a necklace fashioned out ofivory to resemble a fish. The smaller one of the two wore a simalar one, but it was shaped into a conch shell instead.

I looked past them to the left side of me, down near my legs. There stood a short man, only about three and a half feet tall. He has a long beard and eyes that look like black pebbles. He was idly carving a small peice of wood with a look on his face that could only mean he was grumpy, annoyed, or constipated. I hope it isn't the latter.

Then I see him.Small for his age and wiry, his stature hides his strong muscles. He has blonde hair and sky blue eyes, but his eyes are only blue in the center. As the irises spread out from the pupil, lines of silver infiltrate the blue, until his eyes are the color that of precious metal around the outside. The clothes he wears are diffrent too. He's wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and black pants. Both seem a little too small for him, like he's outgrowing them. But his wings. HIs wings are just like a bird's, but silver, matching his eyes, and almost insubstantial. His expression however, does not go with his features. His face is a mix of confusion, love, sadness, and behind all of it, anger. It is a face that seems so familier, yet I cannot recall...

"Honey, can you hear me?" A tentative voice asks. My eyes tear away from the boy and turns towards the source. It's the taller girl, the one with the fish necklace. "Who are you" She asks. I open my mouth to utter the word on that last scrap of paper, when someone says it for me.

"Ren. Her name is Ren." The boy with the bird's wings, the one who looks so familiar, gives me one more, strange look, and turns and walks away.