This is how any good story should start.  A boy, a girl, an awkward high school romance, and a perfect romantic story just beyond the horizon.  Oh, it has all the wonderful trappings of any good romance:  emotional baggage that the two will have to resolve together, a depressed hero whose newfound love will pull him out of his agony, a struggling heroine whose passion for her love will push her to achieve new heights and discover herself.  He’s the somber lone wolf in the corner of the class; she’s the nerd situated at the front.  For the love of Father they even have Chemistry together!  In the literal and figurative sense! 

My laughter echoed through the vast halls on a plane no one else in the room could understand. I laughed in a twisted world where eons and seconds were one and the same, yet this bout of laughter was the longest I had ever experienced emotion.  This was not how it was supposed to be!  For the hero to become so attached so near to his premature departure from this world! For the hero to choose another girl over the incarnation of Nature’s Bounty herself! 

At some point in orchestrating the creation of the heroes I had realized that nothing made a hero quite as strong as tragedy.  The strongest heroes knew the greatest pain, for the greatest pain led to the greatest purpose, and the greatest purpose led to the strongest will.  Such Was The Way Of Things.  But for a hero doomed to tragedy to so effortlessly waltz across the lines of fate?  How could I, an omnipotent being who had studied time and fate since I my creation, not cry in surprise?

*          *          *

I was shuddering in anticipation as I sat in the morning.  I had convinced myself this morning that I had to confess today, lest the emotions swell even more or worse yet, dissipate.  The cold winter’s air was not helping in the slightest, as the biting cold and nagging anxiety wore my barely calm countenance thin.  I saw him, his thin visage deftly moving through the doors into school.  I followed him subconsciously, but when he arrived at English I shamefully continued moving, desperately delaying the conversation for another few hours.

Not that I could think of much else for those few hours, as three classes passed by without so much as a wit of my attention.  Thankfully, I was a good student, so the teachers chose to leave me be even if they noticed my lacking participation when compared to usual. 

Then Chemistry arrived, as unceremoniously as any other class or any other day yet much, much more important.  He was in this class, and she had to do it now. 

The class drawled on as one of her professors talked about the different classifications for Acids and Bases.  I could barely keep my eyes forward, only stealing glances behind her to make sure he was in class.  I also tried to spot where he was looking, but that didn’t help much; he seemed to be attentively watching the board, following along with the Lewis definition of acids and bases.

*          *          *

I was still trying to under Lewis bases when the bell rang.  What did donating a pair of electrons have anything to do with being a base?  I got the Bronsted Lowry bit fine – a hydrogen atom was a proton, and acids and bases revolved around hydrogen atoms.  But electrons?  Where did they come in to the picture?

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Future questions for a future time, I guess.  However, as I walked out of class I was stopped.  Stopped by an odd site.  Jesanne, a fellow classmate, was standing there to the side of me staring intently.  The rest of the class, except for the teacher and his goddamn pet, filtered out.  We were not far from them; a few meters at most, but the teacher was oblivious to the two stragglers supplementary to his pet.  She looked at him for a good minute, the most interaction I had ever had with her. 

“Want to go to the park afterschool?”

It took every single neuron and muscle in my face to prevent my eye from twitching.  Emotions roiled in my head as if I had been thrown headfirst into the edge of an offshore hurricane, and all the words I had ever known fled my body, leading to a solid minute of staring. I was barely keeping the explosive emotions off of my face, and I could feel that she was too; her face suggested that the barely concealed anticipation was not just some passing fancy.

What interrupted this timeless teenage moment was something just as explosive as our emotions; the ignition of the natural gas supply.

I was thrown out of the room before I could even react, a 140-pound projectile flying out of the third story window.  She was pushed onto me in our first and most likely only embrace, and before I knew it, I was out.

That was, until I heard what I would later learn was the Way Of Things.

*          *          *

I do not know when I became aware of my new existence, just as one is not aware when they enter a dream or even when they fall asleep.  I just slowly yet surely became aware of the indistinct, blurry, and rolling swaths of color all around me like a newborn child gifted with sight.  I quickly noticed that although none of it was in focus, I could see all around me, yet could not experience anything else save a guttural droning in my ear.  I lived on like this for a quick eternity, my sense of time having gone with my sense of taste, touch, and smell.  Finally, I noticed a change in the indistinct blobs; the green and red hues started to recede and flow out, as if squeezed out by the glowing blue tide.  Then a sudden flash of green clouded my vision, and I regained another sense – pain.

I blacked out immediately.

*          *          *

I giggled daintily – if I do say so myself – after catapulting the boy’s poor soul out of the cycle of reincarnation towards Father’s world.  His soul was already strong, and his valiant effort in the last moments of his short life had made him unimaginably powerful in any other realm.  It was worth putting him through the ordeal of death. 

However, when I struck him something seemed slightly off.  He had reacted just the smallest bit, yet he was an unattached soul, one that had gone through death.  How in the name of Father did he have a shred of consciousness?   

*          *          *

            Again I meandered into consciousness, but this time, I saw an even odder sight.  I once again had human vision, and my human body back but the world around me looked, felt, sounded, and even tasted vibrant.  I was on a white tile floor, which felt numbingly cold.  My skin felt every draft of wind; my ears heard thousands of whispers that reverberated around me like crickets chirping in the night.  Most of all, everything was coated in the colors of the rainbow like a kindergartener’s art project;  I saw in front of me in shades of purples and blues, each bursting with a different hue.

            I turned around and almost turned blind.  There were three people, each as bright as the sun and of similar color.  They radiated a presence the likes of which I had never felt before, shining so bright their lights merged into one presence.

            I stared for a solid minute.  Then, the color slowly left the world I was watching until it resembled the one that I came from.  I promptly lost consciousness.

End of Chapter 1