The dark-haired boy sits beneath a sprawling oak on a rise overlooking Casper High, enfolded by the wings of the crystal night.
How many times has he sat here in the past week? He tries hard to remember, but it doesn't seem to have an answer. Sighing, he lets the question go.
He hasn't been sleeping well. He tosses and turns, and when he does sleep, his dreams are haunted by vague spectres and the fog of the approaching storm.
For a time, he wonders if the powers are tainting him. Driving him...crazy...?
His sister has noticed his lack of sleep, and has pointed it out in her usual, direct manner. He no longer cares.
She's so normal...she tries so hard to be.
How many times in his life has he wished he could be that normal? Fit in?
He finds the question morbidly amusing, and his self-deprecatory chuckle raises wingbeats from overhead. He looks up.
His pale, blue eyes catch sight of a large raven, blacker than the night itself. The bird's caw sounds, echoes, as it flies across the full moon.
He does not know the raven's association with death - he is not a scholar - but still, the raven's cry makes the hair rise on the back of his neck. Perhaps he catches an inkling of his own future in the dark bird's cold, hoarse scream...
Future? Can there be a future for him? What kind of future is there for someone who isn't even fully human anymore?
What is he now? What should he call himself? Is he half human now, or half ghost, or neither? Something entirely...other?
He hates the question. It gives him an itchy feeling in the back of his mind, and it keeps him awake at night.
Does he ever really want it answered?
He wishes he could tell his parents. But would they understand? Or rather, would they consider him a mere specimen, some thing to be examined, poked, and prodded? He finds it hard to think about.
It scares him; more than the night, more than fighting the ghosts. He is tormented by wild thoughts and half-formed determinations; perversely, his mind dwells upon it. Should he tell them, or shouldn't he? Should he, shouldn't he...? Over and over again, he asks it.
It is a question he has no answer to. But still, he asks it, every night. He is uncertain why; the answer never changes; he does not yet know about the perversity of the human species, and how easily one may become obsessed with that which most frightens.
He wonders if the rest of his life will be like this; hiding, grabbing at moments of happiness while he can. Never accepted. His normal classmates all but scream, "Outsider!" at him when he passes. And even amongst the outsiders, he is abnormal. Maybe they can instinctively sense the taint of death on him, and spurn him through fear. Maybe they can smell it on him.
That thought makes him shiver. Dying isn't something he wants to think about; he's still young enough not to have had that particular musing forced upon him by time. Perhaps he will never accept the fact that he, too, will someday die. Ironic, but not uncommon.
For no one, especially one so young, likes to think of himself as mortal.
Or...could it be that the infusion of death has granted him some measure of immortality?
Living forever...that is almost as frightening a thought as death, though he does not yet realize it. Immortality means watching, staying young while friends and family grow old and perish; it means being finally and completely alone.
But this revelation is many years away. For now, the boy can only hope and fear, dream and dread, wonder and weep, and wish, like any human boy.
Perhaps, if he realized that he does indeed still have these things in common with others, it would comfort him; but he does not. He does not yet have the insight, and there is no one with him who does.
And so, even as the night begins to fade, he continues to sit, looking up and seeking answers in the stars; alone, and afraid.