Disguised In Stardust ✔

Chapter One (Prologue)

First chapter starts out slow, as always. It picks up later on in the story.

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It was a rainy fall afternoon. My best friend and I had talked for hours that day, the both of us listening to the muffled pitter patter of the rain on the windows. The sun was beginning to set, and just as the last bronze leaf fluttered from the last living branch, I fell asleep beside him.

When I woke up, I was staring into icy blue eyes. Short blond hair slipped past his pale ears, and the same scar I ran my hand over numerous times, still lingered below his eye. It ran in a thin line diagonally, slowly trailing upwards to taper off above his ear.

Seth Freeman, my best friend for ages, and hopefully more to come, has been there for me ever since we were dumb kids. Our bond was unmistakable.

"Dain?" he called. I rolled over and groaned, crumpling up my face to take that stiff feel away. My forehead was slick with a cold sweat and my shoulders ached in a way I felt my bones would break if I moved them too much.

"There's a fire. We gotta go."

I shuffled out of bed almost immediately. The fearful look on his face was suddenly forced, and he burst into laughter. I flopped back to the pillows and kicked him with my heel.

"Told you not to do that," I seethed.

He wiped the corner of his eye hysterically. "Apologies. It is 7:32. When should I head home?" he asked me after taking a few breaths. He was always so nonchalant about the biggest things. Though his voice was flat and solemn, I could see the emotions in those cold eyes.

I shifted under the blanket some more. "I don't know.." I shrugged. My fingertips were growing cold so I stuffed my hands under the blanket. I sighed, "Turn the heat on, will you..?"

Seth crawled out of bed, stretched, then looked at me with narrow eyes. "The heat is already on. If you're exposed to too much heat, your body will cramp up. If you're lucky, you'll just become exhausted." he explained.

There he goes again. Seth and his scientific facts always pick a nerve on me. I never understood why. "Okay smartass." I retaliated, to which he chuckled.

"Of course. I have to stay top of my class in science. Once I get my bachelor's degree, I'll surely be able to investigate the wonders of space... I can practically feel the plaque in my hands already." he sighed, almost dreamily.

"You wish! You barely knew what a comet was your freshman year." I teased, throwing a pillow his way. It bounced off of his waist and plopped to the floor.

"What can I say? I'm a changed man." A wide grin stretched his pale scar.

Seth was a botanist. He studied, traded, and collected all types of flowers. But, even a glance at him could say many things. It wasn't his true passion.

For a long while now, ever since we were little boys, he's been talking about traversing the weightless void of space. The thought scared me a little. We didn't know what was out there.

But he seemed to be too passionate.

"Dain, do you think we'll find real life out there? What if another planet has an entire ecosystem living there, just like us?"

Even if he was a little weird at times, like that one long period over our friendship when he'd gotten posessive, I still loved him as if he were a brother. That one year was what we liked to call, "The Year of Secrets," when we were preteens.

Even so, I was proud to call him my friend.

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After school the next day, I was exhausted. Not only because our finals were just around the corner, but also because Seth, like the nerd he was, spent all day rambling to me about how fascinating it would be to get into space.

Like the good friend I was, I stayed quiet and let him talk until his mouth went dry. I didn't pay attention until he said something... disconcerting.

"I received an offer to study something today. Last night, I did some communications using the chemistry lesson from last week, and I actually managed to contact someone." He grinned expectantly, waiting for my reaction.

"Are you sure you weren't just hearing, I don't know, the air?" I chuckled. The chemistry thing involved strengthening the sense of hearing to communicate with the "outer forces." Seth was so deep in this stuff.

"No. The recorded wavelengths and audio signatures, when synced the right way with tuning adjustments, can actually flatten out into a voice answering me." He tugged a notebook out from his backpack and flicked through multiple pages, until he landed on a drawing of some sort.

It looked like a circle with hooks and a long tail in the shape of an "S." A symbol of some sort... But what kind? What did it mean?

"You're not tricking me again... Are you?" I asked cautiously.

"No! I'm serious this time."

"What is it?" I asked, leaning over the notebook. Little, sleep-deprived notes were made beside the symbol.

'Mate sign, of the zil-dee.. Zyldi what- oml'

I scoffed.

"You're joking." I went to turn away but he pulled me back.

"Keep reading," he egged on. I looked back at the notes. The writing was fainter this time.

'A son of an empire?? Keep him safe, mate is arriving. I know this person,, is it F'... It cuts off there.

I couldn't make any sense of this.

But when I looked into those eyes, the ones that I knew as my friend's, they were obsessed. His ear-to-ear grin was so distant and I didn't want to ruin the moment for him. I went along with his intent to toy with me... But I still wasn't sure.

I couldn't tell when he was lying.

The few days after that, I avoided him. He was way too into the whole space thing. I thought he had started to hallucinate. He even convinced himself that he managed to contact an actual alien.

I was so sure that I was the one in the right, that I'd still been sane while he fell into a pit of delusion.

That was until he proved me wrong.

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