TYSM for 25 follows! Here's chapter one of the book I'm writing to celebrate. Max was walking to his forest. He planned on staying there for a few hours to avoid being overstimulated and stressed. Though he was very clever—and all his friends said it too—he’d rather stay in the woods for a while. Max stepped toward the creekbed where he usually crossed. There was no log, so he began to walk along the bed to find a different crossing point. Eventually, Max found a log parallel to the creek and pulled it across the empty creek. Max put one foot in front of the other to cross the log like he had done countless times before. He decided to lie on the soft leaves along the ground. He stared upward at the trees that created a strange sense of calm. It was fall, so the colors of the leaves were orange, red, and yellow–all of the colors you would see during fall. There was no need to sleep indoors because his parents said he could sleep in the forest that night. He had to wake up early tomorrow to get a haircut. Max started to gather sticks and twigs to build a small fort along the base of an uprooted tree. He then cleared an area to make a fire for cooking hot dogs. He went to grab the fire starter from his bag to cook the hot dogs he brought. He went to the cleared spot and threw a spark with the starter as the fire grew. He pulled out two hot dogs and put a small twig through them to cook them. After that, he crawled into the fort and lay down. As he drifted into a deep sleep, he was staring upward and looking at the full ~1~ moon. In his dream, he was in a pine forest, a dirt path stretching what seemed to be perpetual. A strange person was standing in front of him on the path. He could not tell who he was, but a bright white light flashed at him. All that was there was a wolf. A strange voice started, “Hello, we are the…” It cut off as he began to see the real world again. He lay there, staring at a flat stone roof, a daylight-tone light shining on it. He could hear the calming sound of birdsong. What was that voice? He stood up and saw that he was in some kind of tower and was lying on a bed, which seemed to be a groove put into the wall on a raised segment with a pillow on one end. He walked over to the only window and realized the tower consisted of stone-grey bricks. What is this place? He thought to himself. He persisted in looking out the window and could see seven other stone towers. They had red cone-shaped roofs. He assumed They had windows like the one on the tower he was in, the rounded rectangle with an outcropping of bricks around it. There was a center pavilion with eight stone rings—one facing each tower—with solid white circles inside them. They had smaller stone circles on top of them and seemed to have pictures on them, but Max could not tell. The one facing him appeared to be larger than the rest as well. Everything seemed to be on a giant floating island with massive spikes made entirely of different kinds of rock. There were grey segments, black, white, tan. A plethora of colors all painted onto the bottom of the island. A massive bridge made from the same material as the towers led to a smaller floating island with another stone ring. ~2~ continued in notes and credits.......
A wooden door was to the window’s side, across from the bed. Max went to the door to see if he could open it, but it wouldn’t budge. He tugged at the door to see if it would open, but it still would not. Behind the window was a wooden table with some yellow-white paper rolled up. Mark walked over to it and started to unroll it. It read: * * * Dear Max, I would like to inform you that you are part of a prophecy. I will be with you as quickly as I can, and I will explain more. Sincerely, * * * No name was on it, so he thought there was a trick. He ran over to the door and pulled as hard as he could, but it still would not open. Let me out! He ran to the window to see if he could climb out of it, but there was no way. Let me out! He ran back over to the door and began tugging even harder. “Open the door right now!” He yelled. The door swung open. It collided with him and flung him towards the window, hardly avoiding falling out. He could see a small gash of blood on his arm as he lay in the position he landed. But after he got up to see someone standing inside a dimly lit spiral staircase with their jaw dropped, staring, and breathing so lightly that he looked like a statue. The person seemed to be wearing black robes. ~3~ “Hello?” Max asked. There was no response. "Hello?" Max asked again. No response again, but the strange person’s eyes rolled back as he fell backward. Max ran over to catch him and barely caught him by the robes he wore. He slowly laid him down on the cold stone floor, waiting for him to wake up. As his eyelids opened, revealing his deep blue eyes underneath, he started, saying, “Max?” It sounded like someone had just forced him awake at midnight and pulled him out of bed. He continued, now seeming as if he was just fine, “Sorry,” he began to stand up, “that just surprised me.” “What?” Max asked. “The door, it opened on its own,” He replied. “Max, I have a lot to tell you,” he said. “Listen, you are special.” ~4~
