The Life Thief:
A/N: (Modified to be a 21st century sort of story, not a fanfic or anything, just so you know!)
Song Of The Chapter: "I Want Something That I Want" By Grace Potter & Bethany Joy Galeotti

Once, a long time ago, probably before the English in England were well… ENGLISH, people in sands and deserts were family and tribes, all the way. Nothing could bring them apart unless…

You were him.

The single person to EVER be kicked out, to be alone in a desert.
Was just 6.
Well, not really.
He actually was what? 27? Maybe older. I don't really remember, it was so long ago.
He was already different from the others.
For one thing his skin was white while everyone else's were well… red? I'm not sure if that's the right color though, again this was LOOOOOONG ago. Anyway, he was white and they weren't basically.
He had blonde curly hair, everyone else had straight black hair, and it use to be rare for it to be just BROWN.
Blue eyes, freckles. He had those too.
Already by appearance he was an outsider, but this! That! Oh my, he was more different than his tribe thought.

Drawing! A boy! Not hunting! Not even wanting to LEARN! Doing a woman's chores!
Now don't think they were sexist, it was tradition. Boys hunt and do their thing, girls plant and do their thing. Boys drew, but they grew out of it fast enough, those who didn't drew what happened that day and told stories. All HE did was draw things that no one had ever SEEN! One thing was sure in this tribe; the chief did NOT like change.

So what happened was sadly, predictable, he was kicked out, abandoned, left to fend for his own.

And it didn't help the tribe go on his side when he stayed looking 6 while his family and siblings grew, had (more) children, and then die.
Eventually, the tribe DID want him to leave. He was young, he was 6, they thought he would "steal" their youth, they wanted to keep it while they had it. In a WAAAAAAAAY, you COULD call him an early version of the vampire. OR you COULD go "Oh my gawd he has eternal youth, what a cliché story" or "A vampire? Heck HE'S no vampire, a vampire is like Edward! -siiiiigh-" (me: BLEH! This is NOT a Twilight ff people! XP) and click the back button! Your choice, but if you read through the whole thing and don't like, remember! I didn't make you read it, YOU just continued reading while I gave you the choice. Just making it clear!
They would run when he took a step, none of the newer kids wanted to play with him, no one would come to see his drawings in the dirt, heck even if he drew on something you could HOLD they wouldn't touch it in fear of something like cooties.
But just IMAGINE! You're a young adult in a 6 year old's body, left to fend for yourself! And in a DESERT?
He just wandered through the desert, if he knew how to hunt he could've gotten a jackrabbit. If he was taught how to use a knife he could've gotten some cactus juice. If somebody taught him he could've been able to find an oasis or two to get a drink, but him? He had NOTHING, nada, zit, zero, el no-thing!

And the fact that people who rescued you and then left when they found out you were the, and I quote, "Life Thief" didn't make it feel any better.

Sigh, and this continued for weeks, years, and eventually CENTURIES.
The only GOOD thing about all those centuries was that he could age about a year before being kicked out or abandoned in a lonely house.

Be found, get found out, be abandoned. Check, check, and double check.

Then once, after a long period of wanting, watching, and being left out, the "Legend of the Life Thief" was just that, a legend.
The boy was excited, ecstatic even! I don't know what he was hoping for though; that he would become looking older? Finally become one year older and become a "teenager"? Listen to the legends from his newest grandparents about himself?
I don't know, I may be the author but I'm basically just winging this one. I know about as much as you do. Besides, this was originally an Avatar: The Last Airbender Fanfiction, now I'm trying to make into a 21st century short story? Oh gawd help me.

One day (has anybody other than me noticed these two words are being used WAY too often? I'm changing it! XI)

Someday soon (no…)

Someday in the near future (Nuh-huh!)
In the long run (YES! :D) the child had gotten a new pair of parents long enough to figure them out. The father cared what his neighbors thought, what the town though, but he didn't care dum-squiddly-squat what his own wife and adopted son thought.
The mother? Aaa-aaaa-aaa-aah… I guess you could say she was an audience at a movie theater. She would stay silent, root for her favorite character, wanting to help but unable to. Forced to watch things unfold.

The boy, the child, the almost teenager, didn't care about his father's lack for family opinions, but what MATTERED to him was that he had found something that became his world.
Windows.
Stupid I KNOW but just hear me out, remember when he would draw abstract? (a polite way of saying "things that didn't exist no matter how hard you may dream? Like people putting this story as a favorite?") Well these windows, whether or they were "windows into HIS world" is up to you if you like that kind of stuff, made spirals when there was light shining through them, changing completely when you even just tilt you head the tiniest bit. But when PEOPLE were on the other side, he couldn't see them and they couldn't see him, a perfect arrangement for a while…
Until his step-dad got some guests.
They would coo at him, they would pinch his cheeks, ask him questions that SEEM to have whatever answer you want but they really only want THE answer.

(i.e. "So what do you want to be when you grow up?" -thinking: an artist, maybe an entertainer?- SAYS: "I want to inherit the family business someday if dad thinks I'm good enough.")

That was good if the guest were expected, guests that just popped in the middle of nowhere would find him looking out a window where THEY certainly can't see anything. And eventually think he's "special" or something. You can guess how his dad felt about THAT.

So over the visits and in-between there was a mental struggle from the two over if the windows were to be replaced or not.
Guess who won?
The one with the money to replace them. = =

The boy watched hopelessly as one by one the windows came down. Soon the last window was only the bathroom and overnight it too had disappeared.
Our favorite character fell onto his knees and felt broken. His one place. His ONLY place that didn't care if he was immortal, or that he might steal people's youth, that he might be just a rock, frozen in place, while everyone was moving forward.
And he wanted to join them. He wanted to join them BADLY.
And now,
his thoughts had gone to suicide.

His only question was, COULD he die from other things beside age?
Not sickness, he remembered he had gotten the small pox once and had stayed alive, in pain, and without the help from their "cures" (back then the "cures" were cutting a slit through a main vessel, or -this was only for small pox- eating the metal: Mercury), but he had stayed alive while his family had passed out like dead flies.
Could he go into a duel?
Nah, even though when he had started he looked 6 and now looked 12 he was still too young to DUEL.
But on the good side of the problem he DID notice (in the back of his mind, but hey! Still noticing isn't it?) was that he could age, just VERY slowly.
Suicide?

Okay so maybe not THAT far into ideas of death but you get it right? Good 'cause I HATE gory scenes. -shudders-

Our favorite little immortal began bawling, blaming himself for the unbalance inside him. While the mother watched with her lip curled into her mouth, forced to just watch things unfold.

Luckily, for both you and me since I hate gory scenes and I'm pretty sure most of the world does too, the boy DIDN'T do suicide. :D
Instead he was sit in the backyard, underneath a tree, randomly picking stuff out of the Earth and letting them go; grass, flower petals, dandelions, and once he just tossed a small rock around in his hands.
Eventually he began drawing in the air, drawing the spirals from the windows. And soon a blue liquid, which he later learned was an energy, came out of his fingers and became his paint.
He blinked, it stayed in the air. He touched it, it shocked up to the end of his finger, but didn't travel any further. Then it fell into a golden dust upon his clothes (some would even call this SAND *wink wink*). He smiled and began drawing again.

He soon began experimenting. Could he push the lighting into things and would it stay? He drew a heart with the inside reading "GP + RD FOREVER" and pushed it into the tree. It stayed as ash, it could be wiped away, or you could leave it. How the art survived was up to the people who see it.
And quite frankly, it rained later than day, causing the letters to vanish.
Soon the father saw, he ran and grabbed the boys hands and demanded in a low voice what he was DOING.
Out little boy wonder answered truthfully, "I'm drawing with lighting sir."
Soon the boy was under constant watch. If he drew with lighting he was to be hit. If he was using lighting or drawing (doing either separately) he was to be hit. If he entered the backyard he was to be hit.
One inky night, the mother woke her beloved artist awake. She said nothing to give the suggestion for him to follow her but he did. He followed her to the kitchen, he watched her put food into a bag, he followed her to the coat room, he stayed still as she put one on him, he followed her to the hallway, and then to the door. He looked as she pointed for him to leave. Not in a way of disgust but in a way, trying to save him.
The boy stepped out and took one last look at his favorite mother underneath the candlelight streetlamps. She waved and he waved. He turned and began gratefully running, and she watched as a story her grandmother told her came to mind.

"A young boy; blonde with white skin, came to my house once. I later found out with your grandpa who he was. He was the…"
But she couldn't remember what the last words were.
Just that, these two years had been wonderful with her dream son, even if he was a "demon" as her grandmother said.
He was still her son.
All her's.

Years later, the mother was dieing and the elderly father was at her bedside.
He would silently curse his "son" for leaving them, forcing their bloodlines to end since they were both only children born from only children or that he had left without sending a single penny to help his parents, but whenever he said them aloud the mother would whisper hoarsely for him to be quiet and shush up about the boy that they (in my opinion that's a typo, SHE should be there instead) had raised.
One night at her bedside, the mother smiled with her frail blue lips, remembering a secret.
Her husband wondered what it was and was about to demand to be in on it, but thought his wife was too tired to argue so he kept quiet.
And with her last breath she let him in on it, smiling her last smile since she had let their son go.

"Mmm mmmm…"
But thanks to his old hearing he heard different words something like "Knife beef" or "Rife leaf".
So, what seemed right up his alley, he told the police and demanded that they file it and solve it.
They did the first part, but they weren't able to successfully decipher the last part.

But last Sunday, a young, brand new, blonde police man came into the office.
He looked through random files, figuring them out for fun. The chief smiled at him. He always liked this academy-fresh boy, he had been watching and he had especially liked his blue eyes.
They looked old, wise, as if they were his deceased, fairy-tale telling grandfather.
One day he came up on the old file, it telling a brief summery, and past poilice men's notes.

"Fife Chief
Wife Reef
Strife Sheaf
Lowlife Fief
Recite Brief"
He seemed to smile the Police Chief noticed as he added his own note, and then tipped his hat to his fellows, and left.
And he didn't come back.
At first he thought nothing of the files he had been writing in, until yesterday.
In big letters, and THE best handwriting the man had ever seen, circled, written in red pen red two words which clicked in his mind.

Life Theif.