The two kids stared at each other from opposite ends of the lunchroom. Amidst the chaos of an elementary lunch period, the two first-graders could sense across the span of the cafeteria that each of them was more than their outward appearance suggested.

Simultaneously, each child picked himself up and stepped solemnly across the room. The remaining couple hundred kids continued talking, yelling, eating, joking, screaming, and generally behaving as ordinary school children. These two, however, were engaged on another plane of thought.

They met somewhere in the middle.

“Are you Dysello the Wise?” asked one young boy, with thick, unkempt hair and eyes as green as emeralds.

“I am,” the boy replied, his dark brown eyes deep and bottomless. “Are you the Grey One, otherwise known as Absouliere?”

“I am,” he said.

“Then we are enemies,” Dysello replied.

“I suppose we are,” said the Grey One.

Dysello slid his small hands into the pockets of his jeans and the Grey One folded his arms across his diminutive chest.