Omar woke with a start.

Why does my bed feel harder than usual? But then again, my bed always feels hard.

Omar swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Suddenly, he was on an incline and was sliding down.

What's happening?

He groped around with his hands, arms, and feet, but there was nothing to grab onto. Suddenly, he was falling. Omar screamed. He couldn't see anything, hear anything, or feel anything, except for the wind. He was terrified.

It had seemed like an eternity to him, although it had only been a couple of seconds, before he hit the ground. The breath came out of his lungs in an explosive "WHOOF".

Omar lay on the ground, desperately trying to suck air back into his empty lungs. He heard somebody laugh. "Freaky blind boy climbed up onto the orphanage roof in his sleep again!"

Omar sighed. At least they didn't know how he actually got there. This was bad enough.

"He didn't even notice that he was on the roof!" Came the voice again. It was followed by wheezing laughter.

"I'm blind! How was I supposed to see that I was on the roof?" Omar exclaimed.

Please, just stop annoying me.

"Maybe, since you like to climb roofs, we'll just make you clean the chimneys every day." The other boy was obviously having fun. Omar could hear it in his voice.

I don't want to clean the chimneys. Please don't make me clean the chimneys. But he can't make me clean the chimneys. Can he?

Just as the boy, Beneguay, was about to make another statement, the teacher, Ms. Silveski, walked outside. Omar smiled contentedly. He knew Ms. Silveski always supported his side of the argument in one of these daily, tiring disputes.

Ms. Silveski called out. "Beneguay! Just because Omar is blind you don't have the right to tease him about it!" She frowned, towering over Beneguay. Omar smiled. Things were looking good for him.

But Beneguay didn't notice. He didn't care, either. He simply put his hands on his hips. "I don't go by Beneguay."

What procrastination.

Ms. Silveski gave an exasperated sigh. "Fine. Ben. But I won't tell you again! Don't. Tease. Omar."

Ben snorted. "What are you going to do about it?"

"If I catch you teasing Omar again, then you won't get dessert for a month!!" Ms. Silveski told him. And with that, Ben finally gave up.

"Okay." He gave a long sigh. Ben basically depended on dessert to live. Teasing Omar wasn't enough reason for him to give up dessert.

Omar stifled his laughter. That's so ridiculous! He'll stop teasing me just for dessert! Sometimes, I'm glad that he loves dessert so much, even if it rarely leaves any left for the rest of us.

Omar wished he could look gratefully at Ms. Silveski, but he knew he couldn't. "Thank you, Ms. Silveski." Was what he said instead.

Ms. Silveski nodded. Right after she performed the action, she realized that Omar couldn't have seen it. She hurriedly adjusted her reaction. "You're welcome, Omar."

Omar got to his feet, brushed the dirt off his knees, and went back inside the school. Several people standing in the doorway jumped with surprise as Omar strode across the hall, quickly and making almost no sound at all, traveling the full length in merely a few seconds.

Omar heard somebody mutter "Freak." As their papers went flying up into the air as he passed.

Omar appeared to ignore the comment. But if anybody had bothered to look into his pearly-white eyes, they would have seen the sadness that lay deep inside. Omar wished that there was someone who loved him; someone who cared about him; someone who wouldn't care that he was blind, or that he could move like the wind and control it to his will. Tears filled his eyes at the thought. He couldn't remember his parents. He didn't know what had happened to them. He assumed that they had died when he was very young, for all he could remember was living in the orphanage. And all he could remember was being an outcast; not loved by a single person there. Tears formed in his eyes. But they didn't have time to fall.

Suddenly, a sixth sense warned him of something moving through the air, fast, towards him. With a speed that no one else could have matched, he dropped flat on the ground as an immense object whipped the air just above him, right where he had been standing.

Unknown to him, a group of kids at the orphanage in Moraindia who thought that he didn't belong at the orphanage had prepared a huge hammer. They had then proceeded to swing it from the ceiling as a means to knock him over when he came through the door.

Omar wasn't shocked that a huge hammer had come swinging through the air at him.

Some of the kids in the orphanage connived twice a year to prepare something that they could use against Omar. Most of the time, they didn't do something quite as big as the hammer that had just gone through the air. Usually, they all gathered outside to throw rocks at Omar, or they would drop a large basket of candles onto Omar.

That was why Omar was still a little surprised. The hammer that they swung at him could have killed him, had he not moved in time. Lately, they had been trying to kill him, rather than just to annoy him. And yet the teacher still had not noticed.

The two things that they had tried this year had been a set of drawers which they had tried to drop on Omar, and the huge flying hammer. How they had gotten the hammer, Omar had no idea.

Maybe they have a supplier. I wonder if the supplier knows me somehow. I wonder if he knows my past.

The thought sent a glimmer of hope through Omar.

Everyone in the group that had sent the hammer towards Omar were standing stock-still in surprise. Their jaws had dropped as they saw the speed at which Omar had reacted to the hammer. They had thought that because he was blind, he couldn't have seen the hammer, but somehow he had. And even if he hadn't been blind, it was nearly impossible for somebody to react that fast to anything, let alone a super-fast, immense, petrifying hammer. But it would be especially hard for somebody who was blind.

As it turned out, Omar was just as surprised as they were. Somehow, he had been able to tell how big it was, how fast it was traveling, and somehow gone from standing up to laying on the ground in less time than you could say the letter a.

So Omar got up for a second time that morning, brushed off his knees, and continued on his way to class. But despite his calm demeanor, inside he knew that he would have to escape the orphanage very soon. He knew that he might not make it past another one of those hammers.

As Omar strolled down the hallway, an image appeared in his mind. It was strange, for he couldn't usually see things. But as soon as he tried to focus on it, it went away. But then he didn't have time to think about it any more as he walked straight into a metal pole. He groaned.

Why did that happen? Usually my "Sixth sense" tells me when something's approaching. That vision must have really distracted me.

During class, Omar saw the vision again. He tried to focus on it, but it went away once more. Then it returned. He tried to swat at it with his hands, but it was no use. Suddenly, he realized that Ms. Amarange, the teacher for his current class, had stopped talking. Omar could feel her staring at him.

"What?" He asked. He heard Ben laugh from a corner of a room.

"You've been swatting in the air all around you, stupid blind boy!"

Omar slumped in his chair, put his head in his hands, and groaned. He wished that just for once, people would stop harassing him around all day.

The teacher started talking again. "Who knows six to the third power?" She asked.

Omar raised his hand. Two hundred sixteen.

But suddenly, the vision came back. Omar tried desperately to focus on it, but it wasn't working.

"Omar?" the teacher asked. "What do you think that the answer is?"

"Oh, um. Thirty six?" He said hurriedly.

Ben and several other students laughed at him, and he could hear Ms. Amarange's sigh of disappointment.

For a few moments, he wondered what he had done wrong. Then he realized that the answer had been "Two hundred sixteen". He sighed. The vision had distracted him once more, and he had given the wrong answer.

I have two choices. Shut out the vision, or find out what it's telling me.

Omar considered which to do.

I'll try to shut it out first.

Over the course of the week, Omar attempted to shut out the vision. In all his classes, he concentrated fiercely on what people were saying in class, so that he wouldn't get bothered by the vision. However, he still often hurried his answers when he focused on the vision. Even though he tried his best to not look at it, it was very compelling. After all, if you couldn't see anything for the first fifteen years of your life, and then you suddenly could, you would have a hard time not looking at what you're seeing as well.

The vision still was not completely clear, but Omar could faintly make out part of it. It was a place in the desert, with dunes. There were letters in the vision, forming a word that he couldn't quite decipher.

But every day, as he resigned himself more and more to the vision, the words became clearer and clearer.

Finally, in the second week after first having the vision, he could make out the words. "Denecay Dunes". As soon as Omar saw them, he had the urge to run to the library in the middle of class and find out where they were, but he knew that he would simply get dragged back to class. So he waited as patiently as he could throughout the rest of class, though every few minutes, he would bounce up and down impatiently in his seat.

Come on, come on, come on. End already.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, class ended. Omar ran like the wind – literally. Even though the library was all the way on the other side of the orphanage, he made it there in less than a minute, such was his excitement.

Omar sped through the shelves, having already memorized where all the books in braille were and which ones were in which position. He almost immediately arrived at the book he was looking for. He took it out and flipped it open, skimming through the pages until he reached the letter D. Then he scrolled at a slower pace through the chapter, looking for where the Denecay Dunes might be mentioned. Finally, he found them. He gave a small cry of triumph, which gained him multiple angry stares from around the room for disrupting the silence, though he didn't know it.

Omar checked to see where the location was. But it wasn't in the book. The book didn't give that much information, in fact. Simply that the dunes were deadly, large, and you shouldn't go near them.

Omar looked everywhere in the library, but he couldn't find a map of the Denecay Dunes.

How strange. I would think that there would be a lot of information about the Denecay Dunes, given that it's a prominent area of land on this planet, Zenaria.

Omar went back to the one book that he had found to check if there was anything that he had missed. Suddenly, he felt a page that was loose. It slid out of the book and Omar felt it. It was a map.

He gave another small cry of triumph when he learned that the dunes were quite close by. However, along the map, there was a warning. "This map will help you arrive at the dunes, but beware. The dunes are all identical and strange. They shift and change, and storms ravage them at sudden times. It's easy to get lost; I can't help you there. No map will help you through the dangers of the Denecay dunes." Omar shuddered at the thought of being lost in the desert and unable to find his way. But something told him that he must go to the place in the desert.

And, he thought, it would give me an excuse to leave the orphanage and the imminent danger of getting hit by flying hammers.

Omar smiled grimly at the thought. His mind was made up. He would go to the Denecay Dunes. So the next day, he started to pack.

He knew that he would have to travel light. He wore a white turtleneck and baggy, white pants, which matched his pearly eyes and stood out in contrast to his light brown skin.

He prepared four water bottles and hung them on the sides of his light brown belt. He didn't really have any matching shoes, so he took one white shoe and one red shoe from the shoe box, for those were the only shoes that came in his size. They looked quite like slippers.

He packed a pair of purple pants, the only ones he could find, and another white turtleneck. He packed most of the food that he had taken at lunch. He had purposefully asked for a lot more food than he would normally consume at a sitting, so that he could pack it for the journey. He put the food in a canvas bag and tucked the map into a leather pouch that hung on the side of his belt. He pulled the strings tight on the pouch and stepped out into the open. It was fall, and leaves fell from the trees, flying in the wind.

A cool breeze blew through Omar's shoulder-length, wavy brown hair.

"Omar!" came a voice. Omar spun around, surprised at the sudden noise.

He called out. "Who's there?"

"Oh, I'm Monise, a girl from your class!" She said cheerfully.

"Oh." Omar replied. He knew Monise. She was always cheerful and often helped him out. She was the closest thing to a friend that he had. But she still stayed her distance, for she didn't want to be teased herself for hanging out with Omar.

"What are you doing?" She asked him.

"Oh. Ummm." Omar wasn't sure how to answer.

"Were you escaping?" She asked.

"Uh, maybe?" He responded.

"That means you were. Don't you think that you're not old enough to be escaping?" She asked.

Omar was starting to get tired of the questions but he responded anyways. "No? How old are most people when they escape?" He asked.

"Most people don't escape." Monise said.

"Oh."

"You're only fifteen years old, Omar! Most people who escape, and there aren't many of those, escape when they're... well, older than you!" Monise told Omar.

"Okay..."

I didn't know that there was anybody else who escaped.

"But I feel like I'm ready."

"Okay. If you feel you're ready." Monise told him. "Don't worry, I won't tell anybody."

Omar laughed, a tight, nervous laugh, but it was a laugh nonetheless. "Thank you, Monise."

"You're welcome!" she said, still maintaining her earlier cheerfulness. Omar gave a sigh of relief and took off down the road. As he was about to round the corner of the orphanage, he turned back and waved.

He hoped that she was still there to see it.

Then he turned back around and took off down the road once more, clutching the map in his hands.

Omar had been walking for fifteen minutes.

Wait a minute. What am I doing trying to walk all the way to the desert!? I'm never going to get there by walking without collapsing on the ground of exhaustion. I guess I was just so intent on my mission, I forgot about all the useful other ways of transportation. Like those new things on three wheels, that you must wind up a crank to make run... what are they called? Oh, yes. Trijalopies.

Omar felt along the map.

There should be a bunch of er... trijalopies... waiting just down this road here.

Omar ran down the street until he heard a few of the vehicles pull up by the side of the road, and heard someone shout "Trijapoly!". Omar did the same, and a trijalopy came up in front of him. A man opened the window.

"Hey! What're ya doin' here, kid?"

Why does this person have such a strange accent? Nobody around here talks like that. I wonder where he's from.

"Um... well I was hoping that I could get a ride in this trijipily." I said that wrong, didn't I?

"What money do you have?"

"I have twenty-three crecents."

"All right." The driver clicked a few buttons on a device. "Where to?" The driver opened the door, and Omar stepped in.

I can't tell him I'm going to the Denecay Dunes. He'll never let me ride. Where's the nearest station?

Omar checked the map. "Albony station."

"That'll be two suns."

Omar had a confused expression on his face.

"Twenty crescents." The driver specified.

Omar sighed. That's nearly all the money I have. But I need this trijalopy.

He took the two sparkling gold coins out of his pocket. Each sun is worth ten crescents and two moons. I should try to remember that.

Omar handed the coins to the driver and stepped into the carriage.

Omar arrived at Albony station and stepped out of the trijalopy, turning to thank the driver. But he had already driven off.

Oh well.

Omar strode down the street at a fast pace. He could hear the train - at least he was pretty sure that was what it was called - arriving, and knew that he wouldn't be able to cross the road to get to the dunes if it arrived. But it was coming fast. He sped up, not caring if others saw him speed through the streets.

But he wasn't quick enough. The train sped across his path, and Omar slid to a sliding stop.

He groaned. Dang it. I couldn't make it in time.

But then he spotted a pole that reached just above the level of the train.

Hmm... I've got an idea.

Omar swiftly climbed the pole and leapt off its tip, shooting over the top of the train, boosting himself forward with blasts of air so that he would make it to the other side.

Omar gave a sigh of relief as he landed on the other side of the tracks.

I can't believe I actually just did that.

Omar stepped forward. He felt his foot slide on the soft sand. He could feel the warmth of the sand through his soft-soled shoes. He ran forward, feeling the softness and warmth of the sand underneath his feet, a feeling he had never experienced on the hard wooden floors of the orphanage. He dropped to his hands and knees, his fingers sliding through the sand. He threw some in the air, and it showered down on top of him. "I love sand! It's coarse, rough, and it gets everywhere!" A grin lit up Omar's face.

Suddenly, he suddenly remembered that he had dropped the hair tie that he used to tie up his hair right before he had stepped onto the sand. But when he ran back in the direction he came, he never reached the stone path he had landed on. He went in other directions, but to no avail. He tried to use his "sixth sense" to detect the large buildings of the city, but he couldn't detect anything.

He was completely surrounded by desert. The city was gone.