Prologue:
Thunder booms in the distance, followed by her partner, Lightning. They quarrel outside my window, and the Breeze flits around outside, stirring up havoc and breaking the peace. I smile, wishing I could talk to them, as I once did only weeks before. Thunder and Lightning had got in such a big argument, they had raged on for several months. They had introduced the Hurricane, the first time he had visited the peaceful Ireland. Other twenty people had been killed that summer. Sadness briefly fills me, than fades. I shake my head, reminding myself I have a much more important task ahead of me.

Chapter the First:
I wake up, feeling the familiar, intense cramps in my stomach. I quickly reach for my cell phone, which is one my bed stand beside me, and quickly call my mother. I am so weak at the current moment I have not even a little bit of strength to yell to her, even though she is only two rooms away. She picks up immediately. “What is it Ari?” she asks urgently. I jerkily tell her it’s just my usual stomach pains, and she tells me she will be over shortly. I hang up and throw my phone next to me. Tears stream out of my eyes, and by the time my mother gets to my room, I am practically bawling. She rushes in, concern painted all over her face, a bottle of prescription drugs and a glass of water in her hands.

She shakes one pill out and gives me the glass of water and the pill. I swallow it hastily, spilling water down my front. I am shaking so badly I almost drop the cup. As soon as my mother has seen I had taken the pill, she picks up my cell phone and quickly calls my doctors. There is a short pause, and my mother starts to speak. “Yes, this is Jordan Lynch.” Another pause. “Yes, she’s having stomach pains…. tomorrow? Yes, that would be great. Thank you.” She hangs up but doesn’t look at me. I can tell she’s just as worried as I am.

I have a large tumor in my body, and no matter what the doctors try to do, it just keeps coming back. The doctors say I have a year of less to live. But despite this, I am the luckiest kid in the world. Unbeknownst to my family, a strange woman contacts me almost every night, and each month she has a new task for me to complete, something that usually involves saving the world or something else dramatic along those lines.

I tried telling my mother this, but I’m pretty sure she just thinks I’m making it up, or hallucinating it because I’m taking so many meds. Believe me, it’s not easy trying to explain why your arms has a foot long gash on it, or why you look so tired in the morning when no one even believes a word that you say. But I know it’s true. In the mornings I feel the pain of the previous night’s wars, the excitement, the danger.

My pain is slowing subsiding, and I flop onto my pillow, panting and drenched in cold sweat. Cautiously, I raise myself up. It doesn’t hurt to bad so I go a little higher, until I am in a fully upright position. I peer out of my window, which is frosted with last night’s light snow. Unsteadily I get out of bed, wipe the frost off of the window with my palm, and stare out. What I see is the grassy rolling hills of Ireland, speckled with the sun’s early morning rays. I try not to enjoy it too much because the land is for sale… or should I say “sold?” I’ve heard some big-time architect has bought the land and is going to build a large shopping mall on it. That means I’m going to have a shopping mall right behind my house. Lucky me.

I blink and imagine a shopping mall in front of me. I can’t do it.
“What do you think about this shirt, Ari?” my mother peers at me. “Ari!” she says sharply, waving the shirt in front of my face. There are only a few situations where my mother is sharp with me, and the majority of them happen when we are shopping. I force myself to look at it. It has the ugliest orange color, and the most atrocious green stripes outlined in white. “I hate it. I hate shopping.” I mutter. Mother just looks at me in a strange way but doesn’t say anything. If there’s one thing I hate more than clothes, it’s being confined in a building that’s filled with clothes. I sigh and sit down on the little plastic box thing that store’s use to prop up those silly looking manikins dressed in the “latest fashions.” Shopping is such a waste of time. I think I would’ve liked it better if we all just wore brown paper bags. It would sure save a lot of time. My mind is hardly on shopping though- it’s on my next Quest.