Chapter 1: Is This Love
(oi... -_-" this part is supposed to be italicised... i suppose ill just add in (i) and (end i) when its supposed to be cause i dont know how else to do it)
(i) A young boy lay face down on the ground, two tranquilizer darts in his leg and a man's boot on the back of his neck.
Struggling to break free, Hiroshi fell to his knees, his eyes filled with tears at the sight of the boy's agony. "Let me go, you bastards!" he shouted at the men who were attempting to restrain him, "Don't hurt him! Let him go! He hasn't done anything! Why are you doing this?"
The boy struggled and yelled less and less each passing moment until he lay seemingly lifeless on the ground. The men hauled him up into a truck. As Hiroshi watched the truck drive away, a great wave of intense sadness and hopelessness swept over him. (end i)
Hiroshi sat up, gasping. He found himself in an unfamiliar setting. His whole body was wet, from the rain or. . . no, from sweat. He was safe in his bed. As his senses returned to him, he began to realize what had just happened. He looked around the room to find everything calm and placid. Everything he had just experienced seemed to be nothing more than a mist now, passing in the night, a dream and nothing more, but at the same time, it was much more than that.
(i) But who was that? Who were those men, and who was that boy? It all seemed so real, but I can't remember now. (end i) Hiro didn't know what to make of it. He felt he had a strong emotional connection to the boy in the dream, but he was sure those emotions could not have been love. Hiroshi tried to put it out of his mind as he climbed out of bed and put on his slippers and a robe.
It was a beautiful night in early Spring. Hiroshi stepped out onto the balcont. The full moon shown brightly above him. The moonlight, reflected by the snow, made it seem bright as day, even in the midnight hour.
Hiroshi's mother had not yet returned from her date. Since his father moved away, Hiroshi's mother had a tendancy to get into trouble. She had told him she might come home late, but it still worried him.
Looking out over the snow sprinkled forest, Hiro leaned on the railing of the balcony, his chin resting on his crossed arms. A slight breeze picked up, blowing Hiroshi's shoulder length blond hair across his face. He shivered as he looked up at the pale moon, and pushed his hair from his eyes.
There was a red star above him, a shooting star. It twinkled as it made its way across the sky. As it drew closer, it appeared to be sphereical. It was a round flaming object. It grew closer and closer, and Hiroshi eventually realized that it was going to land somewhere near his house. He stood up and watched it as it crashed in the woods only about a mile away.
Chapter 2: Save Me
A pale figure, panting, climbed from the smooth, black ship. His lily-white skin glowed under the light of a foreign moon. He found himself in a winter forest of unfamiliar species of trees. The ground was soft beneath him as he fell from the escape hatch of his little vessel. Snow melted and boiled around the edges of his ship as it cooled. Smoke, rising from the scorched leaves, aggravated his breathing, causing him to cough.
(i) Where the hell am I? (end i) “Mother? Father?” he called out in his native tongue. There was no answer. The painful memory of his parents’ murder returned to him. He rolled over onto his back, trying to situate his black feathery wings beneath himself. The sky spun above him. He winced in pain, grabbing his right shoulder, as a great burning ache filled his neck and upper arm from the wound. (i) Damn. It’s infected already. (end i)
He lay there a few moments on the cold ground thinking of what he should do. He hadn’t brought anything with him on the ship. He had left in such a hurry to escape his own death. Accused of a crime he had not committed, he had run away. (i) I’ll die of alien bacteria on this barren alien planet. But I can’t die yet. I don’t want to die yet. There are still things I need to do in this life. And yet . . . I should be dead already, but I was too cowardly to face it. (end i) Self pity and determination filled his thoughts for the minutes before the fever set in.
Eventually, he decided that he should do something more than lie there waiting to be consumed by the earth. He struggled to his feet, shivering in the cold night air. (i) I might as well choose a random direction. (end i) Having no idea of his destination, he wondered east, hoping somehow he would be saved from the cruel hands of death.
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He had been walking a long time now. The trees seemed to go on forever, one patch of trees no different from the next. “Does it ever end?” he muttered to himself, “I’m so hungry, and I’m tired and dizzy.” He stumbled over a fallen branch buried in the snow. His legs were numb from the knees down, and he couldn’t feel his wings or his arms at all. His fever was very high now, and his long black hair was wet with melted snow.
Finally, he saw a clearing ahead of him. There was a large structure in the clearing. It had a path leading to it. The path was barely visible through the snow on the ground, but it was there. He began to run toward it, but his legs crumpled beneath him. His vision blurred as he climbed to his feet again, and half walked, half fell toward the building.
He didn’t know what his fate would be, if he entered that building, but he knew it was the only choice he had. Finally reaching his new found destination, he leaned against the entrance. It must have been so warm inside, because even from the outside, the entranceway was warmer than his own flesh. He slid to the ground, his fatigue finally getting the best of him.
Chapter 3: Fallen Angel
Hiroshi had settled in bed again. Lying there unable to sleep, Hiro waited to see how late his mother would return. It was almost two in the morning when he heard a sound downstairs. They didn’t own any pets. It had to have been his mother. He rolled over and covered himself, tucking the blanket under his chin and pretending to be asleep. After a minute or so of laying there in silence waiting for his mom to creep up the stairs and look in on him, Hiro realized that he hadn’t heard the car pull up in the driveway either.
Hiroshi slipped out of bed and back into his slippers, then out of his room and quietly down the stairs. The house was silent as it ever had been in the still of a lonely January night. Hiro cautiously approached the front door. The air was deathly still. Hesitantly, he turned the door knob. The door fell open. And there on the floor at Hiro’s feet lay a very large bird he thought. But it wasn’t a bird, was it? Beneath its enormous black wings was the body of a young boy.
Hiro just stood there in shock, wondering what he should do. (i) Is it an angel? It’s so gorgeous. (end i) Even in this tattered state this ‘bird-angel-boy’ was a glorious sight. His wings, a deep black, shone in the light of the moon like a deep glassy lake. His skin seemed perfect and new, like that of a newborn child. He wore a thin black cloth that seemed similar to silk. His long jet-black hair lay across his back between his matching wings.
A cold wind blew through the open door, bringing Hiro’s mind back to reality. (i) What am I thinking? I can’t just stand here and gawk. (end i) Hiro knelt beside the bird-boy. (i) What is it those heros always do in the movies again? Oh yes, I should check his pulse and breathing. (end i) Hiroshi held his hand a short distance from the boy’s mouth and nose. He couldn’t tell if the air he felt was part of the wind or the boy’s breath. Next he checked for a pulse. But because of his inexperience with such things, he was unable to find that either. “Damn it,” Hiro cursed as he pulled the boy up by his arms and drug him in out of the cold. (i) Let’s just hope that he’s alive. (end i)
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Carrying him up the stairs proved to be more difficult than Hiro had hoped, but he somehow managed. Hiro set the boy on the floor of Hiro’s room, and went to get some towels and some bandages for the wound Hiro found on his shoulder. Hiro wasn’t sure how delicate the boy’s wings were so after he had tended to the boy’s wound, he decided to use a blow drier on those beautiful wings and save the towels for his hair. Hiro was a bit confused about what he should do. He didn’t think it was a good idea to take a bird-boy to a hospital. He had noticed the boy’s fever while he was carrying him and he was a bit worried.
Once Hiro had finished drying him, he put him in his bed and covered him up. His limbs had been ice cold when Hiro found him. Now they were almost a normal temperature, but the boy’s head was still burning hot. (i) Maybe he’ll sleep it off. But what if he doesn’t? And what’s Mom going to think when she comes home and there’s some bird-boy in the house. (end i) Hiro could just imagine his mother’s response to the sight of it. (i) “Now Hiro, you know what I’ve said about bringing home stray animals.” (end i) The though almost made Hiro laugh.
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Hiro brought a cool wet rag from the washroom to cool the boy’s fever. He felt the boy’s arms and legs again to be sure he was getting warm. Hiro spoke to him as he slept there. “I hope Mom gets home soon. Hopefully, she will know what to do for you.”