A/N: New story! I'm not promising any length that my chapters will be, some will be long, some will be short. I'm starting college soon, so until I get a feel for how that works, I might not be able to update frequently.

But I hope that everyone enjoys it.

Disclaimer in profile!

Prologue

I've always been different. Supposedly, it didn't start until my early teens, but I think I've had it my entire life. It just took me time to develop it. Unlike others, who didn't feel this in them until later in life, and then had to develop it.

I have the ability to read people's thoughts, feelings, even going so far as to being able to see their pasts. I can also influence people's actions, which has come in handy for the last couple of years.

That last ability was only a recent development, though. Really, I started out with the most basic: being affected by other people's emotions. I was eight the first time I really felt some else's feelings. And don't get me wrong, that was not when I started feeling odd, this was just when I noticed it wasn't my feelings. One day, afternoon, I think, and a typical sunny day, my only friend, Kairi, and me were running around barefoot through the dirt streets in our small village, when she slowed down and eventually stopped. I turned around and looked quizzically at her--I'm told that's a very cute look--and when she looked up at me, I was bombarded with a rush of emotions. Fear, confusion, embarrassment, love. They came at me like waves, like nothing I'd ever felt before. The sheer amount of emotion she was putting off was near enough to make me faint. And suddenly it stopped, she smiled at me and ran down to the end of the street, and I never got the chance to ask her what that was all about.

Reading people's thoughts came next. That was...a very rough time in my life. At first, I had to concentrate very hard to keep all the voices out, but I made funny faces when I had to do that, so people thought I was even weirder than before. Eventually, I learned to quiet the voices with a minimum of effort. Now it rings in my ears like tinnitus. Still, Kairi remained my friend through it all. She never knew of my ability, or if she did, she never brought it up. I might be thankful for that. I haven't quite decided. When I got the voices under control, I made it a point never to read anyone's mind. I felt that I wouldn't like to have that amount of invasion in my privacy, so I wouldn't do it to others. But there were times that I slipped.

Most of the time, my slips were harmless, I'd get a secret or two from a classmate, nothing to worry about--our school wasn't that interesting anyway. But the worst time for my powers to rear its ugly head was when I was alone with Kairi. The absolute worst was when she was thinking about something that had strong emotions attached to it. That thing was usually me. So then I knew that my best friend was completely infatuated with me, and I still had to act normal around her, because, while I did not feel the same about her, I still wanted to be friends. Best friends.

By the time I was fourteen, I had been filled to the brim with religious doctrine and paranoia. I was petrified. If anyone found out about my power, they would surely bring the villagers with pitchforks and torches, or even worse, guns. And I had slid under detection for most of my life. But something horrible happened in the summer of my fourteenth year.

I believe it was the end of summer, at the time when the days were starting to get cooler sooner and the leaves on the trees were not as green and vibrant as they had once been, when I slipped. Before I was so careful not to use any information I got by means of telepathy. But rage had clouded my judgment. I was defending Kairi. A bully, about the size of a small hippopotamus, had accused Kairi of being something very awful. I could not just stand there. Neither could Kairi. She attempted to punch the guy, but even with his girth, he was quite fast. He might've even expected her to throw a punch. Needless to say, she missed and stumbled forward a bit, when the bully pushed her into the ground. He barely had time to give out a loud, grunting laugh when I hit him in the back of the head with the purse Kairi dropped. It probably wasn't the smartest thing, because then he turned his attention to me, and with that came his thoughts, and increased my own ire tenfold.

I clutched at my head, the emotions and thoughts proving to be far too much for me to handle. The bully was thinking about so much, not only about the fight, but also about his family life, wonders about his henchmen whom he considered friends, even back to a lonely little boy standing in the rain. All this information shot through my mind like bullets, and when the bully insulted me, I had no control over what came out of my mouth. I was so delirious by that time that I had quipped back with something that he was thinking about, that I shouldn't have known about.

The questioning looks came then. I had successfully pushed the bully out of my thoughts and regained my composure and then it hit me, what I had said, that I had just shown vengeful people the extent of my unusual personality. And the bully told. He told everyone. All the village elders, all the gossips, my parents. What happened next was a flurry. It took three days for the villagers to finally come after me. The elders had labeled me a warlock and had decreed that I should be killed.

Kairi was my only way out of that. She had come running up to my bedroom window tapping on it with the most urgency she could muster without breaking the glass or waking my parents. I hadn't slept in the last three days, and I wasn't sure that my parents had, but they were in their bedroom at the very least. They hadn't looked me in the eye since the incident, nor had they spoken one word. If not for Kairi, I would've gone insane. I hadn't had silence like that ever.

When I finally got the energy up to go over to the window, she was there, flushed and worried. I was too tired to prevent her thoughts from seeping in, so I got the jist of what was happening before she even opened her mouth. She must've known that, because she didn't talk to me at all when we were packing up the necessities--clothes, food, money--and climbing back out of my bedroom window. She was silent the entire way down the edge of the forest and to one of the side roads out of town. Only then did she open her mouth and let real words flow out.

"Sora," she said quietly, "I'm so sorry."

I must've looked shocked.

"Why?"

She didn't reply, but I picked up that she felt guilty for causing the trouble that forced me out of my home in the middle of the night and on an uncertain path that had no final destination. I sighed.

"Kairi, don't feel bad. Not for that, not for anything," I said. She felt awkward that I was reading her mind. I didn't expect her to get used to it so quickly. I shook my head.

"It was bound to happen some time," I continued. She only looked down and started to cry.

"But," she choked out, "you're leaving now."

"I am," I said curtly. I was perhaps a little less affected by the situation than she, I had been preparing for it since I was young.

She sniffled a bit and rubbed her eyes. Finally, she looked up with shining blue eyes and smiled brightly.

"You better not forget me, Sora," she said in a forced happy tone. She punched me lightly on the shoulder.

"Never." I smiled and pulled her into a delicate hug, she started crying again.

I left silently, under a blanket of star-dotted black velvet. I left that place to the torch fire and chaos that ensued. That place that was no longer my home.

A/N: Please leave a review, I'd love to hear what you think of it. I have Chapter One and Chapter Two written out, and they should be posted pretty evenly. Maybe a week. Hopefully, I won't be overloaded and can work on Three soon.

Also, this was a rather dramatic chapter, I don't intend to make it like this the entire way through the fic.