Summary: A luminous human living in a frozen land of villagers cast off from the world desperately tries to convince a supernatural form he can feel just as everyone else does.

Rating: Very much M. Stick around for..ay, two chapters? It gets really M, I must say...I think I even feel proud of it...

Chapter 1

Forsaken

During the brief hours of daylight on Saturday, my best friend Pave and I took a walk past the small-boat harbor along the road to Monstrosgarden. Back behind, over the slopes of our connected shoulders from how close we were walking together, could you see the lighthouse screaming toward the dead sea. And dead sea – I mean, restricted under its thick skin of powder-white ice. It was all I ever saw, unless it was the awakening of some rare summer, and since it was stuck at the beginning of winter, it only made it worse for me and our jobs.

Our. Pave. An Englishman all wrapped up in his coat, nearly hiding inside his collar like a turtle peeking out. I wanted to shove that head down and see if his coat was actually a shell. But I wouldn't ever mention that.

"I want to know his name and such." I grinned over at him, numb hands shoved into my long, brown coat that reached down to my mid-thighs.

His leather shoes nearly tripped him over some uneasy rocks randomly placed on the side of the road. They knocked over and tumbled down the long, snow-covered hill that dove into the swallow of the ice. It was a miracle that people were hired to clear off all the ice and snow from the roads and walkways – we would've surely been dead by then.

"Clumsy boy," I chuckled.

He scolded, "Oh, shut it," before waving his wrist out in front of me glibly, then casting a serious expression at me. "We shouldn't even be talking about them anyway."

"Them?" Because it sounded like he was referring to aliens or contaminated forces. Draugar was contaminated for frozen road sake, but no one would ever say anything about it.

"Yeh, them. Them."

He didn't want to say it. I could, and with such facility that I realized I never said it, just like everyone else.

"The Somnus."

Giving a low hum of confirmation, he huddled his chin into his layers of scarfs.

"So?"

His eyes nearly glared over at me. "So?"

If only looks could kill, I'd let them, but I wasn't so mean. I just threw him a shrug. "His name. Identity. Freaking birth date, whatever. You've already told me about Melissa, everyone has. But no one ever mentions the boy with the purple eyes. I mean, Pave—have you ever seen a person with purple eyes?" The excess of ice crunched hard under one of my boots. He didn't glance over at me this time, so I continued, "No one has mentioned anything about him. If I had a Somnus, I'd introduce him or her to everyone—it's being polite. It's being human, for Moses sake."

"Well, the Somnus aren't human. They're freaks, Otto. I don't know why you suddenly see otherwise."

I frowned. "No one knows what I see."

Edgar and David were the work partners I wished I had. Such great teamwork, such great pluck; smiles on their faces even those it was freaking negative fifty-five degrees and their lips were trembling under the ghost of blue flesh. Plus, they knew everything about Draugar: every crook, cranny, corner, hook, lever. Just everything, and it made me extremely jealous, wanting to ask how they knew so much.

After boys hit seven, they were practiced survival skills in the freezing cold, using hard sticks pulled out of the snow around the schools and competing in competitive games with unmanned machines or thin ice ground to show them how it really was out in Draugar's ice. One would think they were training to survive the wilderness if they ever were caught in it, but it was severely restricted to even pass the church bells around Draugar. I remembered when I was a little boy, always wanting to play with my action figures, always wanting to glue spaghetti to the bottom of the kitchen table for reasons that were rational in my head, and then getting picked up by the collar one day during school and dragged out behind the chapel with that line of shivering, whiny boys with their marker-painted hands balled up fists at their sides. They didn't let us put on gloves if we forgot them, even the first day.

I never knew about girls. It was so unfair – shivering in the cold while watching them through the school windows raising their hands and shouting out answers in their high-pitched voices, those ass-kissers. Maybe they were forced to wash clothes after Year 3? No idea. The female species was cast out of our minds as tall men with gruff moustaches made us stand straight and run at full-speed across the snow-blanketed grass those afternoons I was supposed to be having school (and making up that work at home, might I add).

After men hit twenty-one, they were thrown out into the Draugar ice to drill for climate exploration, oil, and treasures frozen from centuries ago. And, since I was twenty-one, strong-boned and strong-muscled, I was the perfect victim of such grueling ice work.

As soon as I began to earn pride in my work at training people in Glíma and transporting gym equipment around Draugar to different instructors and trainers, they took away my gym badges and pushed me out there, where I spent years and years trying to impress Steinn, the sixty three-year old guard who didn't want to let down and retire, so just slapped a Draugar Restriktion Gällande badge over his small chest and drove on over to Unit 7—us.

I had been teamed up with Pave, the skinny Englishman with the nearly-white hair, instead of someone equally as strong as me, like David, or someone equally as driven as me, like Edgar. Plus, Pave didn't speak under his breath like those partners did; we were not allowed to speak, but Edgar and David always did under their scarves so skillfully, and I'd lean it on my shovel and listen to them every so often.

No one was ever paired up with the Somnus in the Units—it was a general law that you weren't allowed to work with them, though it was that you had to help them out in strenuous work that they couldn't handle.

We didn't have any Somnus until today, until I had lifted my eyes at least one time from my shovel to wipe off the frost from my eyebrows and stare out into the mountains that my vision was met with a figure shoveling snow about ten feet away from me.

I had never seen him before in Unit 7—that figure hunched over in a gray jacket, dark blue jeans, black boots...I wanted to see his face, to see if I could recognize him from somewhere around Draugar, but he was so hunched over I couldn't see it. Plus, he had a black beanie covering his head, no hair sticking out.

Soon enough, Pave noticed I stopped shoveling, stopped his, and stood up straight to look in my direction at the lone shoveler. Then Edgar. Then David.

Trapping my shovel between my boots, I looked over my shoulder to check if Steinn was watching, looked back, and cupped my hands over my mouth to shout, "Hey!"

He didn't look up.

"Hey! You!"

I hoped Steinn hadn't noticed, but the stranger's head snapped up quicker than anything, and I could see a man with a boyish face, eyes wider than the hole he was digging. He looked like a rabbit caught.

"What's your name?" I shouted in the cold skin of my palms. Someone nudged me hard in the side, and I scowled over at Pave. "What the h-...what?"

His angry eyes glared at me before sliding back over to the stranger, hissing. "Stop it, Otto."

"What?"

I ripped my eyes up at Steinn, but he was too busy lighting one up on the top ramp to see my distraction.

I didn't really care about shoveling snow; I did it every freaking day, so I hauled up my shovel, crossed the snow in my big boots that numbly crunched against the ground, and made my way to the figure who had shook off his own distraction and went right back to his shoveling.

Hey. I'm a friendly dude.

Over my shoulder did I hear Pave spit, "Otto, stop! Stop!" though I just ignored him, jamming the end of my shovel hard down into the stranger's small dent of snow he was working on.

His head snapped up again, but this time I got my best view of his face from standing right above him. Well—at least a foot above him. My heart came to a violent stop inside my chest at the sight of the young pair of wide, purple-colored eyes first.

Holy crap. Who has purple eyes? Seriously?

Small gusts of air spewed from the part in his panting lips, his gloved hands tightening noticeably around the stick of his shovel hard, hard, harder, and I could see the portrait of flushed freckles peppering on his cheeks and under his...

"Otto, what are you doing, man?"

The bar code tattoo under his left eye.

Teachers had taught us what they stood for long ago, back when I was in, like, Year 5.

The purple eyes darkened at me. Vowels and consonants slurred together through the chilled air and rubbed out across his pink tongue, "Hvað ertu að gera?" in a light, gentle voice that my ears caved around inside my beanie.

I grinned because I had no idea what he had said and I really liked that voice suddenly. My boots shoved me forward to the edge of his dent, a foot away from him, and I stuck my shovel into it, welcoming like a gentleman, "Otto Cronström," my gloved hand extended out towards him. Whether or not he was human—because we were taught that the Somnus weren't human—didn't matter to me at all. I just wanted to stay glued to those surreal purple eyes.

However, he just stared at it, looking sorta confused. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but before I could open my mouthful of words, Steinn was there to jack my shovel away and chuck it across the snow next to Pave, his eyes full of undeniable fury.

"Cronström, I suggest you get back to shoveling with your partner," he growled at me, his face a carved volcano, red either from its eruption or from the harsh slap of cold air coming against us.

Between us, the purple-eyed stranger gave a hoarse, keen laugh that wallowed through the slush, and surprised both of us, though it was not one of enthusiasm or kid, but a sad amusement hollowing out his vocals. Cocking his head over at me, the stranger said in perfect English, "I cannot be forsaken," and his eyes gleamed with it, too. I noticed the cloudy Icelandic accent behind it.

"Shut up," Steinn grumbled at him. "Get back to work, you swindler."

Bastard, I mentally groaned, following the righteous path of my shovel back to my own work.

"What'd I tell you?" Pave muttered under his breath as we resumed work.

My face felt more red by embarrassment than it did the cold. "Zip it."

The tired eyes in the holes of my skull that throbbed from too much exposure to the cold couldn't help but glance up at the stranger every other second, now knowing why he was digging alone and now wondering where he came from.

A few hours later, when we had encountered a couple of old pipes, a rock-solid crayon, and a whiskey bottle, I leaned over next to David and asked, "Who is he?"

For the first time ever did both David and Edgar hush me.

Oh, and yeh - if you read this, and you like it, hate it, subscribe to it, whatever, PLEASE make your mark. If there's no reviews for first chapters, NO ONE reads the second chapter, I SWEAR to GOD. Yes, GOD. I mean it. Pleaaaase at least just put, like, one word. I'm begging you. Pathetic, ay?

Yes, I agree with you, too, my beloved reader. But I'm experienced with Fictionpress so...yeah. I know when someone skips over a story on the Fictionpress pages.

I'm trying not to be that guy.

Thank you very much. Love you.

-Chester.