Nameless Children's Chapter Novel: Chapter 1

Chapter 1



Any good story needs a good setting, and a good setting is a very specific thing. A good setting is one with purple-tiered mountains and black-walled caverns; sunrises of rosy grey and sunsets of fire-licked orange; forests of most striking green and seas of most intense blue. Of course the absolute best of stories is set in the absolute best of places -- that place where the air glows with fairy wings, and earth flowers to elfin kisses, and hidden places shimmer by virtue of dwarfish hands. Oh to look up, and see a dragon embrace the clouds! It is a place to seek, for only eager fingers can reach out and take this beautiful, magnificent world.

But what if one cannot see the purple, or the orange, or the blue? What if for one the air does not glow, and earth does not flower, and hidden places do not shimmer? No fairy, elf, or dwarf does he see. Yet above the dragon still flies. If not a soul sees or hears or feels him, he flies just the same. Such is our story: a story of childish mystery and delight and splendor, but a story where color and form mean naught. But have no fear. The mountains tower, and the caverns wind. The fairy sings, and the elf dances.

And of course the dragon flies. Heaven, how he flies.

So our story begins. From frozen peaks the snow glides downward, and downward, and downward, melting into icy water, which flows into a stream. This stream flows through a cave. A jagged, rocky, and in all ways inhospitable cave. At least it seems so. Some have reported a strange scent and a strange warmth, rising from cracks in the floor. After emerging from the cave the stream meets a sea. This sea plunges unfathomably, and chills cruelly. Its wind beats like a lash, and few leave it. On the other side of this sea the stream thrusts back out on its own, as pure and clean as ever, into a rich forest. What can be trusted in a forest? Its wanderers may twist about in search of escape a thousand years. But those whose home is not home, who yearn for relief from what most cling to with desperation, the forest soothes and helps. At the center of this forest is a town.

The town coughs and wheezes with its own stench. Its people breath deeply of this stench, and their lungs relish it, and they push and shove to save more foulness for themselves. Only a few despise the air, and these few are hated. The wicked people easily spot them, because they cannot thrive in the town. Even before birth they are damaged, in some way, because their good spirits need more than what can be supplied in wombs of evil. Something must die, for a good spirit to live. Limbs must shrivel, or ears deaden, or eyes go black.

And so begins our story.