Chapter 1

boredom, And 'Dans park'

A normal day, per usual for Dan, the type of normal that drive the little brit insane. For probably the 12th time now he found himself just staring outside his small bedroom window, tapping to a random tune stuck in his head yet again... He would probably be vocalizing his boredom to his parents, if it not for the fact that they had to run errands today, and wouldn't be back until dark. He honestly hated being only twelve, he knew he was a weird child, knew he was a bit different from the kids he had grown with. It didn't bother him as much as you might think though, he actually liked his oddness, what he called it, it defined him, he ruled it, it was his, and his alone. stopping his tapping he remembered that their was plenty of things he could be doing instead of just sitting trying to sulk over his boredom. Standing from his desk chair he felt the blood return to his legs and feet in a rush, causing him to stagger slightly. Trying to catch himself he grabbed for a near object to stabilize himself. He grabbed a jacket from his bed post. "damn!" He said falling onto the floor, not so gracefully. He sat up rubbing his lower back, looking around his room out of force of habit. He spotted a small stuffed animal on his dresser, and gave it a glaring look, like it had been a real person. He was naturally a clumsy human being, so when he did do something potentially harmful of embarrassing he felt slightly embarrassed for it, causing his pale face to heat up to a bright red tomato colour. He hated tomatoes.
He stood up not so nicely throwing his now fully named 'The incident jacket' across the room, hitting and knocking down the stuffed animal staring him down. "it's what you get", he said making his way over to the dresser and pulling out a pair of... miss-matched socks?

"where are all of my pairs?!" he said digging further into his drawer, letting everything else that was not indeed a pair of socks fall to the floor.
"you've got to be kidding me!" he said slumping in defeat. He shrugged pushing all of his unneeded things back into his drawer not caring to pick up any that had fallen on his floor. He grabbed the miss-matching pair and stormed out of his room, and down the hall.

Heading to the living room, he was distracted by a large window in his kitchen looking over the city. It really was vast, and he knew that if he were to go adventuring there, he would undoubtedly get lost somewhere, crying thinking he would be lost forever. He was the type to want to do something, then realize the consequences after.

Drifting from his thoughts again he realized he was still terribly bored. So walking past the kitchen he headed to the living room. Family photos taken years before he was even born still hung from most likely the same hooks they had ALWAYS been on. The same dreary wallpaper he had remembered trying to rip off as a young child. The same old television set with games scattered out everywhere from,... once again his boredom.

He had sworn to himself, " If i have to save the princess one more bloody time from bowser, i'm literally going to throw this thing out the window!" He had also remembered three hours later showing up in front of the television battling a certain turtle king for the hand of a princess,... again. But at the moment he didn't really feel like playing video games, he had gotten to that one stage of boredom where you just want to aimlessly walk around not exactly sure what you want to do, but not just wanting to sit around like the lazy log he was turning into. He sat on the couch, pulling on his miss-matched socks, and locating his shoes under the coffee table, stuffing his feet inside. Standing up he located a piece of parchment and a pen, scribbling down where he was going, and an estimated time of when he would return, adding a drawing to the bottom left hand corner of the parchment a small dinosaur. Kind of like a signature, but unique. Happy with his note he grabbed a magnet off of the fridge and placed the parchment underneath it. He looked at the clock, it was going on 5:00 p.m. With that in mind he ran to the door, opened it, then remembered he just might need a key, so leaving the door standing wide open ( it was a bad habit of his as well) he raced back to his room, found his key, and raced back to the door. making a half-assed check list he locked the door, and shut it behind him. Now there was only one problem, Where to go?

His choices were limited knowing his age, and that he was easily lost, so going through the city was out of the question, but what did that really leave? He could go down to the nearby lake, but then do what? Look for snakes? ew.

He would never say that he was masculine, or that he was a girl, but he never really got into most manly things. He liked video games, but he also loved to do little fashion shows in his parents room with is mum. She had always wanted a girl, so he would indulge her from time to time with little things that pleased her, like said fashion shows. He might say, he wasn't completely... against it. He wouldn't openly talk about it though.

Sooo, the lake was out of the question as well, that left the park, or... well there wasn't really anything else other than the park, so without further delay he headed to the lift, punched the button as hard as he could, and waited impatiently for the lift to arrive. once down to ground level, he headed for the park.

There wasn't really anything impressive at the park that you wouldn't find at any other one, it was just the closest one around. This park wasn't really known for having a lot of people there, mostly because about a year ago, Dan had told stories about the park being haunted, and that if you went alone, you would be dragged and drowned in the lake not to far away by the woman ghost because she hated kids. All of the younger kids had stopped coming all together, then the older ones stopped coming because they 'didn't want to be alone' while they were there. So this eventually turned into 'Dans park'. Though today was different, he sat on one of the lower swings, he was pretty short for 12, and swung slowly, thinking about all the terrible things he had already done, like when he set all the clocks back two hours so he could sleep in, also making his parents late for work, getting them fired. Or the time he got into an argument with one of his teachers about his name not being a dinosaur, and that he should actually write his name out. That didn't end well for the teacher.

In the middle of his thoughts however, he heard someone sneeze. It wasn't loud and drawn out, just a quiet, cute, little sneeze. He turned and looked around ignoring the fact that he had indeed called a sneeze 'cute'. In the sand pit not to far away from the jungle gym, he saw a small boy about his age, sitting alone trying to build a sandcastle with dry sand. He sat and watched the boy for what felt like twenty minutes, but was probably about three, before he got up and made his way over to the strange kid, with a winter beanie on and a jacket. (it was the middle of summer)

He stood in front of the boy waiting for him to say something, but nothing ever came from the boy, he didn't even look up. Dan pipped up after a few seconds of waiting, he really was impatient.

" You know you have to have wet sand to make the shape right?"
The boy looked up, slightly puzzled, and surprise. He didn't even notice Dan was there in front of him.

"hmm?" The boy said, setting his bucket and shuvel down.
" You need water, you know, to build something, you need water in the sand, here like this", Dan said picking up the bucket, filling it up with sand and taking the boys arm, standing him up and leading him to the beachy part of the lake. He scooped up some water from the surface of the lake, patting it down while walking back to the sand in the park.

"now sit, and i'll show you how it's done!" Dan said playfully, putting the open side down onto the dry sand, and patting the outside.
"You don't do this a lot do you?"
The boy was thoroughly transfixed with the bucket so when he saw that Dan was talking to him, his face turned red, and he didn't answer.
"Well then you don't like talking or something?"
"N,...no that's not it, I didn't hear your question, sorry"
"alright then i'll ask a new question"
"alright then"
"what's your name?"
" i'm phillip"
"hmm, would it be alright if i call you phil?" Phil's face turned bashful to excited, " I've never had someone give me a nickname before!".
"Well there you go then, your nickname is now Phil, okay?"
"k"

"..."

"..."
With their talking Dan had forgotten about the sand castle.
"So then what's your name?" Phil asked drumming his fingers against his pants.
" I'm Daniel... but you can call me Dan".

"Well then,... um.. Dan,... weren't you going to show me how to do it?" He said gesturing towards the bucket.
"oh right!"
Dan lifted the bucket slowly, showing a perfectly rounded shape of sand, not falling apart, like Phils last attempt had. Phils face lit up. "You're amazing!" Phil said marveling at the sand. "Will you help me finish making a castle?"
"sure why not".

The sun was starting to set by the time they had finished their castle. It really wasn't much to look at, knowing that their was a shoe print in the side of it from when Phil had tripped trying to get up, or the walls that were starting to come down, (maybe the moat wasn't the best of ideas) but it was done. The boys marveled at it for quite some time, before Phil pulled out a camera. "Could i take a picture of you and the castle?" Phil asked gesturing for Dan to set next to the castle.
"WHAT NO WAY!" Phils face fell.
"You have to been in the picture too, you helped make it!" Dan said.
" But how are we going to do that?"
Dan placed the camera on one of the swings, and set it to timer, and set it to take five pictures, so he could get one later too.
Phil set beside the castle, one knee on the ground, ams placed on his knee. Dan was going to run to the other side of the castle. He pressed the button and darted for his spot, little did he know that one oh his shoes had come untied. Once he was arms length from the castle, the unthinkable happened... He tripped. The camera went off when it was supposed to, but the picture would never go as imagined to the boys. Needless to say the castle was destroyed in picture one, in picture two, you see Phil laughing so hard he's almost crying, in picture three, you see an embarrassed Dan picking himself up off the castle, looking around, In picture four you see both boys laughing at the incident, and picture five you see Phil looking away face red, and Dan is flipping off the camera. Oh memories, Sweet memories.

"Where do you live, I'm going to want copies of those" Dan said pointing at the camera now in Phils hands.
"I actually just moved here, so I'm not sure of roads or anything yet".

"Oh really? Where do you live then?"
"umm, just across the lake, those building over there!" Phil pointed in the direction.

"okay, So then I'll see you here tomorrow then?" Dan said tying his shoe.
"Well where do you live?" Phil asked face turning red again.

"Oh, heh, i live riiight there!" He said pointing at the building almost right next to the park.
"K, so i'll see you tomorrow then, bye!" Phil said waving and walking away.
"okay, bye!".

"WAIT!". Dan stopped mid step and turned to phil, whom was rushing towards him.

"Yea, what is it?" Dan asked walking to meet the boy halfway.

"So, uhh, does this mean, we're friends?" Phil asked looking down at his shoes.

Dan smiled, " Of course!"

"great!" phil said wrapping his tiny arms around his new friend. " Then i'll see you tomorrow!"

"tomorrow it is" Dan said as he watched the retreating back of his new friend. Dan walked back to his apartment, feeling slightly tired now, and thinking it would be a great idea to just plop onto his bed when he got back to his room. Today wasn't so bad after all, he thought making his way into his apartment, and smelling his mothers cooking. Not bad at all.
To be continued~