Empire of Dreams
Written by Doggiegal
Chapter 1: Butterfly Wings
My best friend, Shiek Harkinian, isn't your average everyday guy. His rather strange crimson eyes attest to that fact—although his jeans and long-sleeved shirts are normal enough. Shiek plays basketball and does gymnastics. In fact, he's so thin that girls are envious of him—and that's saying something. When Shiek is interested in something, he OBSESSES over it. Take his Star Wars frenzy, for example. He took it so far as to record a show entitled Star Wars: Empire of Dreams and force me to come over and watch it. He even has all of the action figures. He prefers the original trilogy because of Princess Leia Organa, the princess with an attitude. Unlike all those prissy Disney princesses, Leia is a talented fighter (with a blaster!) and isn't afraid to speak her mind. She calls Chewie a "walking carpet" during one of the movies (I do believe it was in A New Hope). The best movie, we both agree, is definitely The Empire Strikes Back. No questions asked.
Also, neither Shiek nor I have ever dated. Considering how I'm seventeen today and he's seventeen tomorrow, that's rather unusual. I'm not sure, to be honest, why we haven't been interested enough in a girl in order to ask her out; we've had a few crushes (2 for Shiek, 5 for me), but never anything big. I wonder if either of us is ever going to date. I mean, schoolwork's always been number one with Shiek and me. You see, we get close and personal with books, not girls.
Despite all this, however, I ended up choosing Shiek—my quiet, mysterious neighbor—over joining the popular crowd. Honestly, the two of us have been friends since we were ten! You really expect me to choose stuck-up, spoiled rich kids over my best friend? Hell, it took me over a year to befriend him—it took me a whole day just to learn his name. Why waste all that hard work? They tried to reason that, since he had gotten one-hundred percent on the entrance exam, he was a nerd. And a kid like me, who had the potential to raise his social status, was squandering his chances by hanging out with aforementioned nerd. Yeah, like I'd rather have a bunch of friends who secretly wanted to kill me instead of a few friends who were sincere.
Anyways, now that I'm done with my ranting and raving, I'm going to talk about today's agenda. Like I mentioned before, today's my birthday. I'm a day older than Shiek, also mentioned earlier, give-or-take a few hours/minutes/seconds. And, because our birthdays are so close together, Shiek's mother usually takes us to the arena football game that occurs closest to our birthdays. It just so happens that the game we're attending this year falls on my birthday. I know the concept of attending an arena football game in order to celebrate birthdays is strange, but it's just our thing. Shiek and I hate the NFL, though. We find it pointless and annoying—at least in arena football, they can actually score a touchdown. There are much fewer touchdowns in the NFL than in the AFL.
"Link, Shiek, are you two going to have your usuals?"
My usual is a hot dog with mustard and relish, while Shiek's is nachos with double cheese. Impa, Shiek's mother, usually just shares the nachos with Shiek. I suppose she doesn't want to spend more money than necessary.
Impa Harkinian is the one whom Shiek inherited his unusual red eyes from. I'm pretty sure she also passed down her knack for secrecy. I've been trying to find out what their lives were like before they moved next door, but neither the silver-haired woman nor her son ever tells me anything about it. What I find strange is that she keeps a well-polished suit of armor in her room. Shiek showed it to me once, so I've seen it with my own eyes. What could their lives have been like for Impa to need armor?
"Link, our seats are over here. Haven't you been paying attention?"
I walk over to where Shiek is sitting, giving him an apologetic smile. Things like that don't matter right now. It's my birthday, for heaven's sake! All that matters is that I, Link Forester, am going to enjoy my seventeenth birthday.
Pushing down negative thoughts, I took my seat.
Author's Note: Okay, so I originally didn't plan to have this up this early. But since today, at exactly 1:02 A.M. and 3 seconds, it was 01:02:03 04/05/06 (for the Americans, at least; the British and other folks will see this occurring on May 4th), I decided to post this in celebration. I hope to update this story once a week; I already have most of the second chapter and part of the third written, so it shouldn't be too difficult.
By the way, if you didn't notice, the story itself was named after the Star Wars show Shiek taped. It's a real show; I watched it. It was pretty interesting. The chapter title this time was named after two songs—"Wings of a Butterfly" by H.I.M. (His Infernal Majesty) and "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" by the Smashing Pumpkins.
Lastly, I know (now, at least) that Shiek is really supposed to be spelled Sheik, but since in all my other stories I've spelled it "i-e", I'm just going to keep it that way. I was only following that "'I' before 'e', except after 'c'" rule.
-Doggiegal