Prolog:

Velar Selent Esk was his name, although it took me a long time to learn it. For the first several months, I just called him “Stillness” which will make more sense to you as you get further into my story.

I would attempt to describe him to you, but were I to try such a thing on these pages, there would be enough volumes to fill a library to its brim, but I do need to tell you of our world. I won’t say much, for it would reveal too much of what is to come, and I don’t want to bore you, and have you flea from these pages I have put so much effort into writing.

This world is much like yours: It’s full of people that base who they are on their businesses and occupations, and children who beat up others kids for their lunch money. There are cars parked along the streets, and murders dealt in dark alleyways. There are husbands who bring their wives flowers and women who greet their men clad in almost nothing as they come home from the work day. But this is the surface world, the one you know, it’s the world down below that is different. The hidden world beneath yours is strange. We look different than you do, and we live differently. We have our ears on top of our heads, and all of us that are younger are naturally tall and agile. We live by older costumes than yours too. We don’t use DVD’s, or CD’s, we use tape players and records. We do have electricity, but we are more careful about how much we use, and will often go a whole day without switching on the lights. We don’t live in your sewers, or your catacombs. No, we have forests, and fields of flowers where we watch the clouds go by. But beyond this, in our cities, there are a couple alleyways that lead back up to the “Charade,” what we call the human world.

We don’t call each other “human” like you do in reference to yours fellows. We call ourselves the “Complexities.” We often visit your world, and to you we appear just like another human, as long as our ears are covered. We’re usually those kids and teenagers that don’t head to their homes at night, and those of us who decide to go against the rules of our world and are forbidden to return to the “Façade, what we call our world, they turn into what you call “gangs.” Their ears slowly fade, and they become nothing more than a human, like you.

This is our world, my world, and although I’ve said it’s quite different from yours, there are many similarities. We have to eat and drink, we have to sleep, and we also dream, we even live and die at the same rate humankind does. A couple humans have accidentally stumbled into the Façade, but they are taken out immediately, and made sure they can never find their way back again.

Stillness wasn’t thrown out though. He was one of us, a Complexity, so why did I find him in the Charade? Why was he there that day, right outside the entrance to the Facade? It was a long time before I learned why, just as it was a long time before his story began to unfold. Stillness is a story I can’t explain here. There’s too much to say, and it would take far too much time to attempt. I don’t have the time. I must return to him. Even now, I hear someone knocking at the door. I must extinguish my candle before they burst through the door, demanding for my attention once again. I have to return to my duties.

But I must say one thing more to you, dear reader. Keep reading. I always thought having an outsider know about us was dangerous, threatening, fatal, but this is an exception. I hate to think what might happen if I die soon, and the Facade falls. I need someone to know about whom we were, and our story.

You are my world’s only hope.