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"Good morning class," our teacher greets us as she walks into the classroom. Oddly, a young man walks with her, a few steps behind, his head slightly lowered, hiding his eyes. "I am happy to introduce a new student today," our teacher stops and motions toward the young man, who steps forward right beside our teacher.
He looks about my age, pointy ears, similar to an elf, except he has black skin, his silver hair glitters in the well lit hall, obviously well kept, about waist length, in three tightly wound braids. He’s got to be a good six-foot tall, as he’s taller than our teacher who is five, five. He currently has a odd little frown, which he’s worn since I first saw him.
"Why don’t you introduce yourself?" Our teacher asks the young man.
"Hello, I’m Sauron Ellenroh. It’s a pleasure," He looks up directly into my eyes. A feeling of dread passed through me for an instant as those pale purple eyes gazed into my eyes across the meeting hall.
"Well, thank you Sauron, I hope you enjoy your time here. Why don’t you go have a seat. I think there is an empty one by Sheila." Our teacher motions toward me.
Sauron walks up the steps to the empty seat beside me and takes his seat without even the slightest glance toward me. Our teacher begins her lesson on temporal physics or some such nonsense, I wasn’t really paying much attention.
I guess before I go on I should describe myself to you. I am Sheila Stoneseeker, only daughter of Corin Stoneseeker. I am currently seventeen, I have emerald green eyes and scraggly, mud brown hair. I’m a junior in ‘Etherway High School’ which is on a no place planet in the inner part of the arm of the Milky Way, past what’s left of the great space barrier. I’m a short four foot, ten inches. Well at least I’m skinny.
Back to Sauron, he sat there during the entire lessen, I don’t think he moved once until he was asked a question by the teacher, which he answered with his cold, lifeless voice and returned to stillness. I caught myself staring at him many times during that first class. I couldn’t figure out what attracted me to him, maybe his silver hair. I don’t think I know anyone with silver hair.
When the bell rung everyone but Sauron and I hurried out. I was in the midst of one of the times when I blocked everything but him out. He snapped me out of it when he stood up. Initially I was horrified, no one stands up in class! Then I looked around almost sheepishly as I saw almost no one in the room. Sauron was walking purposefully toward the main exit from the lecture hall. I quickly stuffed my school gear into my bag and ran after him. It didn’t seem so at the time, but I tripped while trying ot chase after him and sent the contents of my bag flying every which way. Quickly standing back up and starting to gather my stuff, Sauron surprised me by handing me all my papers that were between him and me. After I took the papers from him, he helped me collect the rest of my belongings. We then walked together up and out of Lecture Hall P. Knowing this was a small school with only one lunch period, I asked if he would like to join me for lunch. He nodded slightly after a moment of thought, and I lead him through the winding corridors to the lunchroom. The two of us got in line for our lunches, farthest back I think I’ve ever been in the line. After we paid for our lunches, I realized we had only half an hour left to eat. I had the feeling I would be eating part of my lunch in my next class. I lead Sauron to the table I usually eat at with my two friends, Eric and Angela.
As we sat down, Angela to my right, Sauron to my left and Eric across the table, Angela whispered to me, "Who’s the cute guy?"
"Eric, Angela, this is Sauron. Sauron, that’s Eric, and this is Angela." I alerted my friends, answering Angela’s question.
"Cute is a very general term, you should try using more specific terminology," Sauron starts eating.
"You heard me!" Angela squeaks, her face flushing deeply.
"Angela, you look almost as if you just asked him to a prom or something," Eric laughs, spilling her drink. "Oh shoot!"
"Serves you right," Angela’s face returns almost to normal.
Eric placed her hand over her spilt drink and the liquid moved back across the table into her glass. Angela rolled her eyes at Eric’s grin. I, again concentrating mostly on Sauron, noticed a look almost of envy cross Sauron’s eyes.
I realized suddenly that he was almost done and I had just barely started. I quickly threw the food that would survive a ride in my bag and gulped down the rest, to the surprise of my two friends. Sauron didn’t seem to notice. As soon as Sauron finished his meal he gave us a slight nod and left the lunch room. Being the curious type, I swallowed what I had in my mouth and said a hurried farewell to my friends and rushed after him.
I panicked when I couldn’t see him in the crowded halls outside the lunch room, even though I was only a few second behind him. I caught a glimpse of what looked like a silver braid and the chase was back on. I followed him silently through the school, it was pretty easy, he stopped at each classroom checking the room numbers. Must be looking his next class. I couldn’t believe it when he entered one of the classrooms and it was my next class! I moved up to the classroom door and tried to listen in. Something about new here, this class on list, not much else. I quickly retreated as I heard someone coming out of the classroon. I waited, out of view, for Sauron to come out. The main bell rung and students started entering their classrooms. I decided I might as well go to class on time for once and headed into the classroom. A couple people were already there, I recognized the class nerds already in their seats. I also saw Sauron sitting beside the teacher at his desk.
As I take my seat, my surprised teacher comments, "Shiela, aren’t you a bit early? You usually don’t show up until five to ten minutes into the lesson."
I blush slightly, seeing Sauron’s glance in my direction, before resuming his ‘spaced out’ position. I watch the students coming in ones and twos. Less than a minute before class starts, Angela rushes in, obviously out of breath, and walks by my seat dropping a folded slit of paper by my desk. I quickly step on the note and slide it under my desk. Dropping my book I bend down and pickup the book and the note, careful to hide the note. Its not that I was afraid someone might try to read it out loud, Angela and I have our own note-code. Anyway, I carefully unfold the note, skimming the markings before refolding it and slipping it into my bag where I discover my forgotten lunch. As I pull out the dessert cookie, the teacher calls the class to order and introduces Sauron to us. He has Sauron sit up by Angela in the seventh row, four rows, six seats away from me. Again I catch myself looking back at Sauron quite often. The teacher yells at me a couple times so I pull my makeup mirror out of my bag and use it to watch Sauron. He sits just like out previous class, perfectly immobile until the teacher specifically asks him a question.
Personally I find it interesting that he has two out of two classes with me so far. He appears highly intelligent, he hasn’t missed a single question the teacher has asked, even though he doesn’t look like he’s paying any attention. Yet he seems to lack greatly in the social skills area.
After this class I have one last class, these two-hour classes are murder, but hey, I only have three classes this way. Interestingly enough, my last class and Sauron’s end up also being the same. I think he’s the only person that shared an identical class schedule.
Again this class he portrays the same antisocial behavior. In this class he sits one seat away from Eric and two seats away from me. I sit beside Eric. Through out class Eric passes me notes telling me we should ask Sauron to join us after school to hang at the sugarbowl. I passed the class period causing little paper wads to orbit each other, slightly above my desk.
I wonder what went through his mind when the three of us asked him to join us at the sugarbowl? Three screwball girls asking if he wanted to go with them to a teen hangout. I probably will never know. He accepted, and followed us when we took the short walk from the school to the sugarbowl. I treated him to my favorite drink, a Strawberry Shake with Vanilla Ice cream. He was quiet most of the time, nursing the drink I had gotten him, but he offered the most informative tid-bits of information, relating to our conversations. I never realized anyone could hear as well as he could. Maybe his powers were in his senses. Myself, I can move small objects through the air and have a light telepathy, Eric, as you may have noted earlier, can move less solid objects around as well. Angela, well, she has this neat ability to polymorph into any shape she wants! She promised to teach me as soon as she figured out how she does it. What I find interesting is I can usually sense what abilities any person has, yet with Sauron I don't feel anything, he’s almost a void, drawing my powers in whenever I try to extend them into his persona. The four of us split up after about three hours of hanging at the sugarbowl. As I walked home, I couldn’t help but think about why I wouldn’t be able to see Sauron’s abilities. I came up with two things before I reached my apartment, one, Sauron has really powerful abilities and he uses them to block out their knowledge from others, and, two, Sauron has absolutely no special abilities. I immediately threw the second one out, no one has been born in the past century without abilities of some sort. My inability to sense his abilities can only drive me to watch him closer and ask him countless questions.
Its Friday, Hurray! Having the exact same classes with Sauron is still intriguing, its only the second day I’ve known him, but I still don’t know more than a minimum about him. I know what he looks like and that he is very knowledgeable about everything. He doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it’s direct to the point and concise. Unlike me, I like going on and on. Basically today was no different from yesterday, except Sauron didn’t leave lunch early to find his class and he walked with me after each class to the next. He actually got me to class after lunch on time. Angela and Eric again convince me to ask Sauron to join us after school at the sugarbowl. To my great dismay, he politely declined this time and disappeared into the throng of students wandering the corridors.
I tried to follow him after I realized I didn’t have his phone number, or address, which didn’t allow me to contact him over the weekend. I can’t believe I’ve walked these halls looking for him for ten minutes! Eric and Angela aren’t having any luck either. The three of us give up after another five and head out to the sugarbowl. Eric gave me a hard time while we were at the sugarbowl, acting as if I was trying to hog all Sauron’s attention. We talked about him and told jokes deep into the evening.
I spent all Saturday morning with Eric and Angela looking for Sauron’s phone number or address so we could invite him to go to the roller-skating rink with us. We gave up at eleven and headed out to the rink. We checked out of skates, being regulars we just smiled at Fred and he when and got each of our shoes.
When he returned with our shoes, he comments, "We have a visitor at the rink today, why don’t you girls go and introduce yourselves?"
"Guy or girl?" Eric asks, giving her best imitation of a serious face.
"Guy, wearing all black, there," Fred’s hand points to a young man wearing all black , currently skating away from us.
"Ok!" The three of us chime together and rush over to a bench to put our skates on.
"Look how he keeps pace with everyone, yet is with no one." Angela breaths, in respect for the talent that must require.
"I don’t know, he seems to just be enjoying himself. Maybe after we introduce ourselves we can convince Fred to run one of the skate games." Eric’s eyes sparkle at the prospect of one of those games.
"Why do you enjoy such odd games?" A playfully punch Eric in the shoulder.
"You know you enjoy them too… Look he’s coming back this way, can you see if you recognize him?" Eric reaches out and grabs me causing me to mess up my shoe tying.
"Give me a second," I breathe in sharply as I feel that strange emptyness that Sauron generates, "That’s Sauron!"
"Hi, Sauron!" Angela calls from her perch, waiting for Eric and I to finish tying our skates.
Sauron skates over to where we’re still tying our shoes and holds out a hand to Angela. Angela blushes slightly before taking his hand and skating off with him.
"So I’m hogging all Sauron’s attention?" I grin at Eric, who gives me a disgusted look.
Eric and I stay and watch Angela and Sauron on the skate rink and I notice that Sauron seems to be whispering something to Angela. She blushes again and nods before Sauron breaks away from her and skates out closer to the center, and does a kind of dance in the center. I’m mesmerized by the swirling patterns he generates and suddenly realize the slight shifting of his clothing, sparkles gleam brightly on his originally plain black outfit and he dances superbly for a while before skating back to Angela and pulling her into the center with him. I’m amazed to see Angela dance so well on her skates with Sauron as the two of them form extremely complex movements and patterns. Suddenly music fills the air, sweet, flowing, and filled with emotion, I glance over to see Fred watching the duo from the sound station of the rink.
When the song ends, Sauron and Angela skate back over to where Eric and I are waiting, with the sound of applause echoing all around them. Seeing Angela blushing I burst out laughing. Eric slaps me in the belly and I choke on my laughter, and slip into a slight giggle. Sauron still has an odd half-smile on his face, I realize suddenly that this same half-smile crossed his face when Angela called to him. Angela sits beside Eric and Sauron moves out of the way of the rest of the skaters off the rink and stands beside me, looking back to the center of the rink.
"Would you let me dance with you too?" I ask Sauron, standing up to look into his pale purple eyes.
He gives me a slight nod before taking my hand and skating with me toward the center.
"Wait, come this way first," I lead him around to the sound booth, where Fred, waiting patiently, smiles at me.
"Fred, could I get something up beat?" I ask as we slow down by the booth.
"Sure thing, Shiela," Fred turns to look through the piles of disks scattered around the booth.
Sauron and I head out toward the center of the rink. we stand there for a second until a rather high speed beat starts being pumped out of the speakers. Knowing I’m going to be tired after this, I let Sauron start as lead. He leads with a few quick speed building dashes and does a beautiful triple axle on the skates. He quickly skates around me and the two of us start some more basic patterns around the center.
"Let it go," a voice suddenly reverberates through my head.
Startled I falter, forcing Sauron to catch me as I slip, my concentration broken. Looking into Sauron’s eyes as he holds me, preventing my fall, I suddenly feel his power, a true telepath! I could feel something else hiding in the background, but that one feeling was almost overwhelming. It seemed an eternity before he released me back on my skates, I almost wish he hadn’t released me, I could have stayed in his arms forever. The feeling of his power faded quickly after he released me, and I try to finish our dance, but am too deep in thought to dance well.
After our dance, I apologize rigorously to Sauron about the slip and my inability to concentrate on the dance. He nods an acceptance and disappears behind the sound box. Still out of breath I slump heavily on the bench as Eric jumps up and skates after Sauron. She reaches the counter to find Sauron’s skates neatly lined up beside the other turn in shoes, but Sauron himself is nowhere to be found. Eric return to where Angela and I are still resting gloomily.
"I wanted to skate with him too," she whines as she sits back down with us.
"Well, maybe he’ll skate with you next time," I smile weakly, still feeling a bit drained from my experience.
"Well, I want to get some skating in. See you!" Eric jumps up and starts doing laps around the rink.
Eric and I spent the night at Angela’s at her request and so we order a pizza. We spent all evening and most of the night talking about skating with Sauron earlier while snacking on the pizza. Eric is still unhappy about not getting a chance to skate with him. We all kept coming back to the fact that his skate/dancing was so intricate, Eric comments on her inability to remember it clearly scare me, she’s usually so good as remembering things like that. Probably why she gets such good grades. There’s still something odd about Sauron.
"Did you notice that Sauron never appeared out of breath?" Angela’s question interrupts my thoughts.
"Yea, I didn’t consider it strange at the time, but yea, he should have been horribly out of breath, You and Shiela were almost ready to collapse." Eric nods, which allows her loose hair to fall into her face.
"Angela, did you feel like you were being drained while skating with him?" I ask suddenly, knocking over a couple empty glasses.
"No, I didn’t feel anything but the grandest sense of fulfillment and enjoyment I’ve ever felt." Angela flops back on her pillow dreamily gazing at the ceiling.
"You felt like you were being drained?" A look of concern crosses Eric’s face.
"It was just for a moment, right before something told me to ‘let it go,’ it was kinda odd. I think he’s a telepath." I sit up to show Eric that I’m serious.
"Well, everyone’s a telepath to some point. It’s just an advanced state of mind." Eric replies, maintaining a serious voice.
"No I mean a true telepath, though messages, mind reading, the works. Maybe even mind draining." I shudder slightly at the thought.
We fell asleep about this time, or at least I did. Sunday we went back to the roller-skating rink and skated for a couple hours before each heading to our own homes.
Monday, when I arrived at class, Sauron was already there, as expected. I gave him a warm smile before sitting down. He offered the little half-grin in reply. I tried watching him during the entire class but didn’t notice anything different and I fell asleep twice. Sauron gave me a hard poke with his pen to wake me both times. I think I’m going to have two bruises on my right side, right above my hipbone. Oh well, so is the price of sleep in class beside Sauron.
After class he walked with me to the lunchroom, but today he didn’t buy a lunch, he just went over and sat with Eric and Angela, beside Angela like we arranged when I first invited him over. I purchased my lunch quickly and headed over to our little group, wondering why Sauron didn’t get anything.
"So how’s class for you so far, Sauron?" Eric asks as I approach.
"Slow," Sauron looks at Eric for a moment and returns his gaze to the empty table in front of him.
"How so?" Eric persists.
"Too easy," Sauron doesn’t even look up this time.
"All of them?" Angela tries to look into Sauron’s eyes.
Sauron turns to look at Angela, giving her the glimpse she wanted, before saying, "Just the first two."
"Well you could try to test into Angela’s and my first class, it’s the advanced version of Shiela’s." Eric gloats as I stick my tongue out at her.
Suddenly I find I can’t pull my tongue back into my mouth, looking down I see that Sauron as grabbed my tongue with his index and thumb. Whining and trying to pull my tongue back in, I suddenly realize he was still looking toward Angela, there was no way he could have seen me stick my tongue out. Eric starts laughing mercilessly and almost falls out of her chair.
Sauron turns to see what Eric is laughing at and suddenly lets go of my tongue as if he didn’t realize he had grabbed it. "Proper young ladies don’t stick out their tongues in public," Sauron’s voice drifts across the table, silent, yet heard above Eric’s laughter.
"So, what special things can you do?" Angela is ignoring Eric and I, attempting to concentrate solely on Sauron.
Sauron looks back at Angela with a very dark gaze, causing her to cringe back, before standing and quickly leaving the lunchroom.
Eric stops laughing suddenly as she sees Sauron departing rapidly, "Angela, what did you say to him, he looks so angry!"
"I just asked him what special ability he had," she stammers looking near to tears.
Interestingly enough, when we went to class, Sauron wasn’t there. A note with Angela’s name on it sat on her desk though. She picked it up as if it might bite her and opened it slowly, a look of startlement crossing her face.
"Shiela! Look at this!" She offers me the note, which I look at reading:
‘Angela, You want to know what my abilities are? Well, go to the skating rink we skated at Saturday at 4:15 and I’ll show you. SE’
The interesting thing about the note was it was in Angela’s and my secret note code. We hadn’t even shared it with Eric yet!
Angela decides to go like he requested, and asked if Eric and I would go too. Eric declined because of homework she supposedly had. I accepted and we arrived at the rink at 4:10 just to be on the safe side. To my astonishment the rink was completely empty except for a solitary figure in the middle of the rink and Fred, who stood at the front counter.
I recognized the figure to be Sauron, his back is currently toward us.
"Sauron, I’m here!" Angela calls to Sauron, attempting to run across the rink to him, but only manages to slip and fall in the rink. Sauron turns just in time to see Angela hit the floor. Skating over to her slowly, she regains her footing as Sauron reaches her. I remain standing off the rink, knowing I would have a very hard time walking on that highly polished surface. I look closely at Sauron, concentrating my abilities as well as my regular senses on him. His special abilities still seem a void. Physically he looks the same, black jeans, black, long sleeved shirt, ebony skin, and silver hair in three braids down his back. His pale purple eyes seem to sparkle slightly in the well-lit rink.
After Angela regains her balance, Sauron takes two steps away from her before coasting to a stop about a meter away.
"I have no natural ability, but I can do this…" As he states these facts, Angela turns horrified to me as I start screaming in horrible agony. It feels as if my body is engulfed in flames, yet won’t burn up. It stops as suddenly as it came and a feeling of weakness passes over me and I collapse in a heap on the floor. Angela looks as if she attempts to run to help me, but doesn’t move. Sauron however, skates up to Angela, behind her now that she’s turned and whispers something in her ear. A look of shock crosses her face before she starts running for me. She almost immediately slips again, but is caught by Sauron who was standing right behind her. He helps her over to my side where I’m still cringing from a moment ago. Sauron places a hand on my forehead and I feel oddly calm, as if I were immune to the universe. Angela looks relieved as the feeling of peacefulness crosses my face. Slowly, like waking from a dream, the world around me comes back into focus and I find myself gazing up into a pair of pale purple eyes, seeming to be floating in midair. Startled I attempt to sit up, only to be restrained by a pair of strong hands and a pair of lighter hand, similar to Angela’s. I remember a second later what had happened and I move my head slowly to look for Angela. I find her sitting on my right side, opposite of Sauron, whose eyes I first saw.
"What happened?" I ask, sounding almost sleepy.
"Your mind received some echoes of what I was sending to Angela," Sauron replied, in his slow monotone voice.
"Echo? So why didn’t Angela collapse from the force?" I ask, feeling my strength ebbing slowly.
"Because echoes are stronger than the source and the impulses weren’t aligned for your mentality." Sauron explains standing up and dropping off his skates with Fred as he passes on his way to the door.
"Wait, I still don’t understand!" Angela cries out right before Sauron reaches the door.
Sauron just turns and gives Angela his half-grin, and blows her a kiss before disappearing through the door.