Author's Notes for first arc:

Fonts
Normal : Bastian Narrating/Eventually Everyone
Italics : Characters in the Real World
Underline : NeverEnding Story
Bold : Very specific characters down the line.

A story always starts somewhere, right? It has to begin and end somewhere, right? Sometimes two or three stories can be woven at once, into one glorious tapestry. I am the one who brought the land together, the one who watched it fall, and disappear, just to bring it back together again. It was my destiny to pick up that book in that book store I had no idea existed in the first place, but happened upon by chance, or even luck, if you will.

So, hello, I am Bastian Silver: Champion of Fantasia. Maybe you've heard of my previous name. Maybe you haven't, but it's Bastian Balthazar Bux. I came from a world very much like yours, probably. Maybe this world and yours were one and the same. Who knows? I haven't been there in years. This place, Fantasia, is my world now. I'm almost certain that you haven't heard of any of me, or my friends, and our adventures.

It all began one fateful day, nothing out of the ordinary, right? But that couldn't be further from the truth. My Mother, who had the most wonderful name, MoonChild, had just passed away a few days before. I would have vivid dreams of floating through clouds, that looked like bright smokey mists, with my mother. Sometimes we wouldn't even be in the clouds, but in places that were far more beautiful than the world I had left behind in my sleep. There were unicorns, dragons, fairies, mermaids, and she would be the Queen, and I her little Prince. ...But sadly, you eventually have to wake up, and face Reality. You can keep holding on to a person's memory for only so long, before it slips out of your fingers like the sands of time.

My dreams of that world clearly distracted me in my waking hours. I was drawing unicorns on my math homework, talking about dragons, and every butterfly was a fairy. I would get bullied, and teased all the time. One day, three boys, dumped me in a dumpster because I wouldn't give them my lunch money. I mean, who does that? First off, it was dark, and it was nasty. Yuck. So when I attempted to get out, I thought the coast was clear, because I didn't see the boys. Talk about false senses of security, right? Because the next thing I knew, I turned around and the boys were chasing me.

I ran into the first shop with an unlocked door. Little did I know, that this would change everything. The boys ran past, allowing me time to breathe. Then an older gentleman shouted from the back for me to get out. As if my day wasn't already bad enough. I had told him I only ran in here to escape from the bullies, who thankfully never got my lunch money. Didn't work out in the end did it? I had just realized that this was a book store, as volumes upon volumes of books were neatly; well, some of them anyway, stacked throughout the room. This is where my story actually began.