Boy and the Begining

Somewhere off the coast of Gran Caneria...

After a few more weeks of exploring the various islands such as La Palma, Gran Canaria, La Gomera, Fuerteventura, and El Hierro, though Harry was never able to spy the infamous ghost island, Harry decided that he would make Tenerife the last stop before he turned his eyes towards Africa (1).

He'd spent time traveling either by body bubble or by flying between islands so when he left Gran Canaria, he decided to again fly instead of going underwater, having missed the open sky.

This time, he flew as high as his lungs could take until the Atlantic spread out under him like a shimmering blue carpet peeking through the fluffy white clouds below.

He whooped joyfully, enjoying himself, flipping loop-de-loops, free falling, hard turns and even flying backwards or upside down.

He was having so much fun in fact that he didn't notice the commercial jet liner until it was practically on top of him.

Harry managed to dodge enough to avoid getting creamed by the large sleek airliner, and luckily didn't get sucked into the engine like some unfortunate bird, but he did get flipped and tossed around willy nilly in the plane's wake (and unknowingly started a rumor about ghost boys over the skies of Tenerife, as one poor co-pilot claimed he spotted).

Understandably, Harry lost control, and began to free fall, though this time not for kicks.

He was saved, though perhaps not in the most dignified of manners.

His magic, responding to Harry's panic, but with no definable direction except to induce the stopping of the current situation flared out from Harry's tumbling body in many invisible feelers until it caught onto something.

Something ancient, something magical, and firm under his magic's touch.

Harry was yanked moments from taking a nose dive into the Atlantic and jerked upward again in a stomach turning ricochet back towards the sky, as if he were attached to a bungee cord only to then slam like a bug in a window into the side of a cloud, adhered to the surface like a tree frog on glass.

He hung there against the side of the surprisingly solid cloud, or, as Harry noticed when he got his wind back and opened his eyes, not a cloud, as another cloud just finished passing by Harry's nose, but a solid invisible wall in the middle of thin air high in the sky.

Almost as if it, whatever it was, was waiting for him to come to that realization, Harry felt as if he were suddenly shot forward from a large sling shot as he slipped inwards through the barrier, perhaps more like being shot by a sling shot through jello, made of light, he added to himself, as his vision of the open blue sky disappeared, only to be swallowed in throbbing ribbons of condensed sunlight.

His speed eventually seemed to succumb to wherever he now found himself in, and he eventually came to a stop.

After that terrifying experience and finding himself yet again in a Hidden Place that could potentially hold some great danger, he had to admit, once his heart rate returned to normal and his poor eyes got used to the light, it was surprisingly peaceful in the light/jello-like world, watching the ribbon sunbeams weave, mingle and dance. He felt he could just float there forever and watch them.

Then Harry saw the man.

As if gaining his attention was enough, Harry felt himself being pulled forward, gently this time, towards the recumbent person until he was within touching distance.

Like Harry, this person seemed to be just floating, though he was in a more horizontal position as if he were resting on an invisible mattress.

He was long-limbed, wide shouldered and muscular with bronzed skin tinged in gold. His face was oval and slightly angular with definable cheek bones and slightly wild hair that held streaks of pale tan, rusty red, slate grey and jewel blue, reminding Harry of the prominent colours of the islands rocks and waters.

The man was also very tall, hitting close to 7 feet or so, and wore a rather simple animal skin loan cloth and a blanket like shawl wrapped around his shoulders. Otherwise he was bare of anything else.

At first, Harry was keen on leaving things were they lay, more interested in trying to escape the place, but every time he turned away to try to do just that, the man would be there in front of him.

Harry sat-floated, legs crossed as he pondered the problem.

What should he do? Should he wake the man up? What if he was grouchy? Harry had a sneaky suspicion that this Abnormal most likely had enough power to snuff out his life with an errant flick of his finger, given his current surroundings.

Still, it was quickly obvious to Harry that he was not going to escape his current predicament without help, and the snoozing Abnormal was the only one around he could ask.

"Well," Harry muttered to himself, "as the saying goes, needs must."(2)

First he tried poking the man in the shoulder, tentatively at first, then harder when that didn't do anything, and promptly regretted that when he nearly broke his finger on solid steel muscle. He grimaced; it was like poking a boulder.

Apparently it was like yelling at one to, as he also tried waking up the man at some point by yelling "Wake up!" as loudly as he could in increasing decibels. He even kicked the man in the shin and bruised his toes for his troubles.

Giving up for the moment, Harry returned to his sitting pose, this time crossing his arms as well and tried to apply his brain to the situation.

Here was a person who appeared to be in an enchanted sleep, or at least figured he was, that won't wake up to conventional means. What then did that leave him?

Then it clicked in Harry's mind, as his brain churned over a crazy but distinct possibility.

Harry groaned, cheeks scarlet, and sticking out his tongue with all the childlike indignation he possessed.

What was his conclusion? The only solution that Harry knew of too waking someone up from an enchanted seeming sleep that was a popular cure in a fair amount of the fairy tale he read left him blushing and muttering "blech!"

A kiss.

Harry grimaced. He hadn't particularly thought anything much about his first (platonic) kiss coming from the storm deity; there was nothing much to it other then an odd, power bestowing greeting, and Dudley only ever tolerated such things when there was a crisp 20 pound note in his hand for his troubles. Still, if it was the only way, then he would just suck it up and do it.

"Do or do not, there is no try," Harry recited to himself in a grumble (3).

He leaned forward until he was practically nose to nose with the man (broken he noticed ideally as if he were in some big fight or something) then scrunching his eyes closed he leaned over and gave the man a quick peck on the forehead then hastily backing away, his face scarlet.

At first, he thought it didn't work, after all, the man wasn't exactly a sleeping princess, and maybe that was why it didn't work? Harry certainly was neither a prince nor princess, maybe at least one of them had to be a royal? After all the man wasn't moving…

Then an eyebrow twitched, then another. Then the both of them furrowed in a deep line as if confusion.

An arm twitched, fingers flexed, coiling and uncoiling as if missing something to grasp, Harry sincerely hoped it wasn't his neck.

A bare chest rose, a deeper breath taken in then relaxed in a puff of air.

Nostrils flared, lips frowned, legs twitched and toes curled and uncurled.

A back arched, and then a torso rose upward into an upright position, legs curling inward then straightening.

Then the eyes snapped open.

It was like looking into the Atlantic from the shallows of the island beaches, or the luminescent bottom of a cave grotto.

The two stared at each other for a beat, before the man reached out one large hand towards Harry.

Harry, thinking this meant no good for him, unable to decipher the odd look in the man's face, he felt his magic gather inside him, as he raised his hands to protect himself, he wished very strongly to no longer be where he was.

There was a blast of glowing red light that erupted from his feet and Harry, with a rather befuddled look of shock on his face, was suddenly blasted away, not hearing the man's calls of "Wait!."

He erupted abruptly from the golden world and back into the deep blue of sky still traversing at the speed of a rocket.

It took some time for Harry to get his careening trajectory under control. By the time he did, and then finally figured out how to stop, Harry was left panting, hovering over the tree tops of what appeared to be the canopy of some sort of jungle below him.

"I guess that could work to."

He grimaced when he noticed that his shoes were nothing more than a few filaments of cloth, attesting to whatever had happened wasn't formed strictly through his hands, and judging by the long stretch of green that disappeared into the horizon both behind and in front of him, he was no longer in the Canary Islands either.

"Well," Harry finally said to himself a little shakily, "that was different."

Harry just hoped that wherever he was he'd get more of a break before something else happened.

Ooo ooo ooo

Meanwhile, back in Harry's previous location…

He had been asleep for a long time.

So long in fact that even his dreams had become old and not worth the adventures they presented him.

He had gone to sleep as many old gods went to sleep as their believers changed in their beliefs, or disappeared, or immortals grew bored or uninterested in the ways of the world and/or refused to change as well.

Sometimes deities will take on other forms, become new gods. Some would aimlessly wander the world of mortals and carve out countless of temporary lives, mimicking mortal existence.

Some gave themselves into new beings, sacrificing themselves on the altar in the name of creation.

He, the great Achaman, defeater of the demon Guayota who kidnapped Magec, and shut it up in the Teide, plunging the world into darkness, he the humans had prayed to save their light, and he answered their pleas, saving Magec, and instead locked that Light stealer, that bloody demon Guayota up in the Teide (4).

He was the supreme god…well, the supreme god of his people anyway, when they were still many. There were a lot of creator gods and supreme gods out in the world at the time, but as far as his believers were concerned, he was the eternal god, who had created the land and the water, the fire and the air, and all creatures of thier little world that derived their existence from him.

In the golden days of his reign in the hearts of mortals, Achamán lived in the heights and sometimes descended upon the summits of the mountains, where he would look fondly upon those he created and even answer a prayer when he felt like it. He had enjoyed watching their brief existences and watching the land grow and fall and grow again.

But then belief in him began to fade, until there was no one left to call him into battle, no one to share stories with or to have his stories shared. Even the demon (who made the occasional prison break) grew tired and went to sleep.

He eventually began to lose his power as people lost faith in his existence, and while he was still powerful from a mortals point of view anyway (he was a god after all), he to begin to grow bored of his existence, so eventually, like some of his fellows, he went to sleep, curling within the womb of his hidden sacred palace of sunlight and power, a pocket world of his own creation hidden from any incursion. There he remained for along time, dreaming old dreams. (5)

Then He had arrived, a boy, a mortal, with hair wilder then the fur of the Tibicena and deep verdant green eyes. (6)

The boy had power. It had erupted with a fiery blast like the heart of Teide, and the force of a volcano's first wrathful awakening from his feet. It had had sent the boy careening faster than a dolphin through calm waters from his world and, he presumed, very far away back into the mortal realm.

It had ruined his favorite vestments and singed his eyebrows, but oh! The feel of the boy's raw power! It had made his skin sing! To think such things were roaming the world of mortals again! Change was here, a change and a call.

He was awake now, and he was no longer interested in sleeping. That there was a being out there, a mortal child no less! Who had the ability to stir a god from his slumber, and with such beings perhaps it was a world that would, perhaps, be worth knowing again.