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The next day was Sunday, so I usually would have spent the whole day in bed, playing Tetris in the old console my mother had bought me a long time ago. I didn't have any other videogame, so of course it wasn't enough to keep me entertained. But somehow, I liked how all the pieces fell into their place, and how if everything made sense in that tiny work of sticks, squares and l's, it was because I had put them into an order. That was so different from real life.

That day I was bored and, even worse, uneasy. For some reason, the memory of the naked boy still haunted my mind; not because of his nakedness, of course, but because of the weirdness of his situation. I was wondering how someone like him might have ended up in the forest. And how he might have survived without wearing clothes. And where he had been all that time. But more importantly, I couldn't help but think how people from Coalfell would react when they saw the strange boy. It wasn't as if I was too worried about him, but I had to admit that the night before he had stirred my sympathy more than anyone had in a long while. I highly doubted the rest of people would be so compassionate, though. If most of the guys from Coalfell High I knew had met him instead of me, they probably would have been making fun of him for months. And, for some reason, there was something in that absolutely innocent, pure gaze that made me feel as if letting that happen would be a terrible crime.

In conclusion, there were too many things I didn't know, and too many things I didn't want to know in case they happened. Could I prevent those from happening? Maybe. Did I want to stand up from my bed? Nope. But I did.

After telling my aunt that I was going out (to what she replied with an exclamation of pure astonishment), I took my keys and went out. The air was clean and fresh, and even though the sun was shining brightly in the sky, the heat was not too unbearable. Summer was particularly gentle in Coalfell.

I decided to take a walk to the library. Not because it was the place in which I had seen him for the first time (of course not), but because I thought it was the perfect weather to read a book in the observatory, lying in the hammock I had placed on the balcony. Maybe drinking something cold as I did so.

Even when I was walking towards the library, I still didn't know if I wanted to see the now-dressed boy again. Thinking rationally, not finding him in the town would mean that he had went back to... wherever he had come from, and I wouldn't have to worry about him anymore. However, finding him would help me... to help him... in a way. I was still worried about him being made fun of by the other people my age. The only thing I wanted was to check everything was alright so I could definitely forget about him.

"You're early today, huh?" asked Miss Torrine, from behind the counter. She seemed busy trying to classify some old black-and-white pictures.

"What can I say? I love knowledge," I replied, ironically. Of course, that was not the answer the old weasel was expecting, but I knew she wouldn't ask again.

"Leave out naked friends this time, will you?" was all she said, and then went back to her pictures.

I quickly climbed up the stairs and got to the second floor. It was bigger than the lower one, and crowded with shelves that were at the same time crowded with books. In a way, Miss Torrine had put a lot of effort into that library, even though her grumpy attitude would make people think that this was some kind of punishment she was applying to herself. I had always thought she was fond of books, for she had opened a library after all... but I had never, ever seen her talk about a single novel.

After picking Gaiman's_Stardust_ from one of the shelves, I walked to my hammock and lay down, opening the book to a random page. I had already read that book a few times, and I always found it charming and silly at the same time. Even though the whole story ended up happily, I always wondered if love was really such a strong force to make someone swear they'd go find a fallen star. The different layers of my consciousness reacted differently to this: outwardly, I pitied the poor Tristran for being so naïve; inwardly, I was hoping someday I could feel a love that powerful. Or... just anything at all.

I was reading for about an hour, feeling increasingly bored. I had forgotten to bring something cold to drink from the vending machine in the lower floor, but I was too lazy to stand up again. The sun was nice and the gentle breeze caressed my fur; I was feeling pretty nice, although I didn't know what I was waiting for exactly. Probably that's why I almost jumped when I heard the noise below the balcony. Trying to keep calm, I put the book face-down on the hammock and looked down. I was surprised to see the boy I had met the previous day there, still wearing my clothes; and at the same time, it was no surprise at all.

"You really are a Romeo," I said, giggling. "Coming to look for me in the balcony and all."

I soon noticed he was willing to climb the wall again. That set off all my alarms. He was dressed that time, but that didn't prevent him from being spotted by any bystander, or from falling down to the ground.

"Wait!" I shouted, just loud enough for him to hear me. I still didn't want Miss Torrine to come out the library with a broom or something. "Wait for me there." I pointed to the ground below his feet, which made him look down as if he was trying to find something he had dropped. I couldn't help but smile. "That's right, there. I'm going down now."

Surprisingly, he seemed to understand this time and, even when he raised his head to look at me with those deep, black eyes, he remained there without moving. Still smiling, I quickly turned back and entered the building again.

"Leaving so soon, too?" Miss Torrine asked, raising an eyebrow when she saw me going down the stairs. "You really are a weird kid."

"That I am," I answered, with a faint smile.

He was waiting for me outside. His expression seemed to brighten up a bit when he saw me, but that was it. He didn't come any closer or try to greet me in any special way. In fact, he didn't even smile, although I could see it in his eyes. He just remained there, looking at me intently. There was something cute in that pure, innocent behavior.

I opened my mouth to say something, but he did it before I could.

"Hhhh... here," he muttered, with a terrible effort, but still smiling his strange way.

I think I looked at him with awe, as if he was the first person I had ever heard pronouncing that word. For some reason, I had guessed that he wouldn't be able to speak with me, at least not in the same language I did, so I hadn't expected him to learn so quickly. It seemed he was a really clever Mowgli. After a few seconds, I managed to shake my head and give a proper answer.

"That's... right. You waited here. You," I repeated, pointed at him. "Waited. Here."

I gesticulated in order to make clear what each word meant although, truth be told, it didn't turn out very well. However, he seemed to get stuck in the first gesture and pointed to himself with one of his paws. Those, too, were at the same time very similar to mine, but slightly different in shape and size.

Then he said something I didn't understand.

"What?" I asked, trying my best to give some meaning to the sounds he made.

"Kabdhilinan," he said, still pointing to himself.

I had to shake my head and, with a confused look, turn to look at him again.

"Kabdhilinan," he repeated, insistently.

Maybe it was the way in which he pronounced that word, but it sounded as if he wasn't trying to imitate sounds anymore. Instead, he was speaking confidently, and something told me that it was a word he knew, in whatever language he spoke. Finally, everything made sense in my mind.

"Oh!" I said, excitedly. "That's your name! Kabdhi... Kabdhilinan!"

I could tell he was happy and proud by the sudden light that seemed to flash in his eyes. His happiness was somehow contagious, and I was soon smiling too. I couldn't help but feel proud too: after all, I was more or less managing to communicate with him.

"Christopher," I said, placing my paw on my chest. "Christopher," I repeated, a bit slower.

He tilted his head and tried hard to pronounce my name as I had. But it was as difficult for him as it had been for me. He struggled with the initial "Chr" sound, and as soon as he had got past it, he staggered in the "st". I wondered what would happen if I let him get to the "ph", but I didn't let him go that far. It was better to make it easier for him.

"Chris," I pronounced, pointing at me. I hoped he would get why I had changed it, instead of getting even more confused.

"Ch-Chris," he managed to say, placing his paw on my chest, to my initial alarm.

I wasn't used to being touched by others, let alone those whose intentions I didn't know for sure. However, his innocent behavior so far made me feel calm. If there was a thing I knew for sure at that time was that he was clearly harmless.

"Chris," he repeated, this time more confidently. There was a shine of curiosity in his eyes, then the sparkle of an idea. I could almost see the gears working at the back of his mind as he moved his paw to his chest and said, slowly. "Kab."

"Kab," I repeated, pleased with the abbreviations we had come up with.

He seemed to smile, for the first time, too; I mean, curving his lips.

It was then when I thought for the first time that, to some extent, he seemed to be learning from me. The previous day, he had tried to speak, but had barely known how to do it and had just let out some weird noises. Today, however, it seemed as if he was finally getting the hang of it. And now he was really smiling too.

Which were the limits of that? Could I teach him to speak like me? How long would it take? What stories, if any, could he tell me? Those questions fluttered in my mind, as I involuntarily shivered as I felt the shadow of the unknown answers.

And then, I knew.

I wanted to try. I wanted to help him, to get to know him, to find a way of being his friend. Was it his starry fur? Or was it the sparkle of innocence in his eyes? I didn't know. But I hadn't felt attached to anything for a long time and suddenly, there, I had found something that caught my attention.

Maybe I was like Tristran and I was chasing a shooting star after all, but... I definitely wanted to try. The mere thought of losing that chance, of letting things as they were, filled me with a frustration I hadn't felt in a long, long time.

When I looked at him again, he was still staring, trying to smile. I must admit it was as cute as it was creepy, but for some reason I just smiled back.

"Come with me," I said, grabbing him gently by his wrist and starting to walk towards the woods.

He calmly followed.

* * * * *

I remember that as one of the happiest days in my life.

For the first time in a long while, I felt committed to something. To someone. It had been a long time without anyone getting my attention, and the change was extremely refreshing. As if suddenly, I had a purpose.

That morning, hidden between the trees, under the warm rays of sunlight that slipped through the leaves, I tried to teach him how to speak my language. I was receptive during the whole time in case he wanted to teach me how to say anything in his language, too, but he never said anything besides trying to repeat what I was saying. After a while, I concluded that he should be more interested in learning to speak with me and the others than making me speak in his own language. I was still thinking over his name; it had a familiar sound for some reason, but I couldn't really tell why. It sounded somehow Indian, maybe Arabish, but I had no clue to be honest. It didn't matter at that time, though.

At first, it was an extremely simple process. I would point out to the strong root we were sitting in and say the word out loud, clearly enough for him to understand. I would repeat it a few times and then pick up a different object, like a flower or the whole tree. He would try to repeat those and it would often take him a few tries, but after that he would never forget the word. I checked, going back to some of the words I had already taught him when we had been there for a while. He never failed a word he had learned before. I secretly started to feel jealous of his memory.

A funny situation took place when I pointed a leaf and said its name out loud. He slowly stood up and left, with a sad look in his face. I had to go after him and try to teach him the difference, a bit alarmed at first. It took me a while to understand he still remembered the previous day, when I had told him to leave. Later on, we would laugh a lot at that linguistic confusion.

Before I knew it, it was already time to have lunch. By that moment, I had already been thinking about something for a while.

It had to do with where exactly Kab was living, and more specifically where he was going to stay from then on. For the remnants of leaves and mud that I could see in his clothes, I had deduced that he had slept out in the cold, maybe in the forest. And the last day, when he had eaten my chocolate popcorn, he had seemed very hungry. I was worried at the possibility of him having nowhere to stay anymore... if he had ever had a place to stay. There were still a lot of questions around him that I didn't fully understand. There still are. But at that moment, the mere thought of him spending a single night out in the open again filled me with grief and guilt.

I could always speak with my aunt. I didn't have such a close relationship with her, but I knew she was a good woman. However, telling her the story of the weird, naked creature that appears at the library in the middle of the night was out of the question.

If I wanted him to stay over, I'd need to come up with a good excuse.

* * * * *

"An exchange programme?" asked my aunt, blinking several times.

"Mhm. He was initially going to stay with Ian, but you know how his father fell ill last month and he hasn't been attending classes that much. The teacher asked us if we could let him stay in any of our houses, but no one was answering, so I decided to volunteer. After all, we have two houses, right?"

The excuse of the exchange programme suited my needs perfectly. Besides, the fact that Ian's father was actually ill with cancer (everyone in town knew that, even I did) reinforced my lie and made it sound even more plausible. I felt a bit bad for using Ian's father as an excuse, since he was probably already having enough, but as they usually say, desperate times call for desperate measures.

My aunt, however, was still a bit skeptical.

"Where is he from?" she asked, suspiciously.

"I don't really know. A little town near Tanger, I think. I'm not very sure, it had a weird name and the teacher just told me once."

The lie came quickly to my lips, possibly because I had been practicing for a long time in my mind, as I taught Kab how to speak.

"Hellu," he said, with that weird smile of his, looking at my aunt. Then, he waved his hand awkwardly. It seemed my lessons were working better than I expected, although we still had to practice a lot.

"But... why are you telling me this today?" she asked, genuinely confused, turning back to me. "It's Sunday. You should have known in advance."

"I..." I muttered, looking down as I tried to pretend being terribly ashamed. "I did, but I forgot to tell you. The teacher told me on Thursday, but... you know that I'm a mess. I was initially going to tell you on Friday, but..."

"You forgot. Of course you forgot! And of course you're a mess," my aunt complained, crossing her arms over her chest. She looked at me, then at Kab, and then back at me. He finally let out a long sigh. "But it's not this boy's fault. I guess we'll have to let him stay here or otherwise the neighbors will start talking." She stopped for a few seconds, looking a bit stressed. "But, if you had told me in advance, I could have prepared you Annie's house for him..."

"It's okay. I'll prepare the bed and everything for him," I reassured her, trying to look more confident and willing to help than I usually was.

Even though she tried to hide it, I could see I had surprised her. I could just imagine why. She wasn't used to me trying to make friends or participate in school projects such as exchange programmes... let alone, bringing anyone to our house. Besides, I never offered myself to help her with anything related with my mother's house, except keeping it warm when no one was staying there.

"You'd better do as you say," she warned me, however. I knew she was trying to act stricter than she usually was because there was someone around. She soon turned to my 'exchange partner' with a kind, warm smile in her face. "Sorry about this, sweetheart. You must be Kad... Kabi... Christopher, what was his name again?"

"Kabdhilinan," we both answered in unison.

"Right. Kab," she said, finding the same struggle I had encountered before. "I hope you'll have a great time here in Coalfell and meet lots of friends. Don't let Christopher's shyness hold you back," she said, glancing at me briefly, "and feel free to talk to whoever you want. Oh, and if you ever need anything... just tell me, okay?"

"Okeh," Kab replied, nodding slowly.

I was starting to feel proud both of him and myself.

That night, he looked at me as I prepared the room he would sleep from then on. It wasn't my room, just in case I wanted to sleep there some night, but the guest room that my mother had kept unused when I was younger. I remember I always wanted to play in that room since it was larger than mine, but my mother specifically told me not to. She would say it was for guests, and so it had to be perfectly tidy for the day when anyone was paying a visit.

But no one ever did, and I grew up wondering who exactly my mother was waiting for. My aunt told me my mother had argued with my grandparents, shortly before I was born, and they had never spoken again. I always thought it had something to do with my father, but since my mother had never told me or my aunt about him, it was impossible to know what had happened exactly. In time, I no longer asked myself who my father was. I had got used to the fact that I would never know, even though I always had the theory that my mother might have been keeping that room tidy for him in case he wanted to return.

Since my father returning was quite unlikely and my aunt had never understood why she had to protect that room so much, the room was rented with the rest of the house to the people who needed a place to stay. At that point, the guest room had lost the aura of mystery that had surrounded it in the past.

We took a walk afterwards, and I even dared to bring Kab through the heart of the town. I knew many people would see us walking together, but they probably wouldn't say anything. As much thrilling as the appearance of someone new in the town might have been, if Kabdhilinan was with me, no one would say a word to him. I was counting on that, on the other hand. He wouldn't have been able to hold a conversation with most people I knew.

During our walk, from time to time he would point with his paw towards anything that caught his attention, silently asking me how he should call that thing. It took a while before I helped him realize that pointing people was a bad thing to do. It would take even longer to teach him what politeness exactly was.

When we returned, I performed a short tutorial trying to show him how to shower. It was easier than I had expected. I was afraid that in the next day I would find the bathroom completely soaked, but I learned in the following days that he always kept it clean and dry even when he showered regularly. I had to do the same with the bed, showing him how to get in and out and what exactly he was supposed to do with the sheets and the blankets. In any case, he was an excellent learner, and never needed me to repeat things more than once.

If I had told anyone that I had taught a complete stranger how to shower and get into bed in the same night, I'm sure I wouldn't have gone so unnoticed anymore.

* * * * * *

Time passed by.

At first, I was too afraid that Kab might talk to anyone else and make a fool of himself in front of the wrong people. Fortunately, he seemed to have developed some sense of shyness; or at least, of dependence. He would always stick by my side, except when I was in classes. However, he would accompany me to the high-school every morning, taking the walk from home to the recent building, and then disappearing into the woods until the end of the classes. We would spend the rest of the day together.

Consequently, the library stopped being my regular hideout. Not because I couldn't bring Kab in, he did actually come a few times and even talked to Miss Torrine, to my own apprehension. It was just that the library had been the place where I had been able to cultivate my own loneliness; now that I wasn't lonely anymore, it kind of felt wrong to go there to do what I had been doing for so long. Gazing at the stars didn't appeal that much to me anymore, although Kab and I did that a few nights in which the sky was clear enough. There was a dreamy sparkle in his eyes then.

I started watching TV with him, more than I had ever watched it. We would do it in my mother's house, for my aunt preferred to be alone when translating (she worked better when the house was as calm and quiet as possible, she said). There weren't any sofas or chairs in there unless the guests asked for them, so we would just sit in the floor with our legs crossed and watch it from there, sometimes with a bowl of popcorn. He would often point to the screen from time to time, asking for the word for everything. At first, it was a bit tiring to repeat the words for him, but I got used to it almost as quickly as he learned. I was always impressed by how fast he would register the new words into his brain, and how deeply ingrained those would get, as if it was completely impossible for him to forget a single sound he heard.

However, he had a lot of trouble trying to distinguish fiction from reality when it appeared on TV, or to put it another way: films and shows from the news. Once, we were watching a terrible broadcast about starving children at the other side of the world and he started crying because he thought it too sad. When I mentioned that it was actually happening and that it wasn't just a made-up film, I had to keep him from going out to "help those children".

"Why?" he asked, with tears in his eyes. "How can all you happy when they are dying there?"

I didn't know how to answer that question, so I mumbled something about being too apathetic since the day I had been born. He wasn't convinced, and somehow I ended up hugging him for the rest of the evening as we watched a silly comedy, in a futile attempt to make him smile.

I... liked it. Hugging him. The comedy was terrible. However, it made Kab smile and that was enough.

Things were going well, but I wasn't a fool. I could feel the admiration, the attraction slowly building up inside me, the bonds of affection that were slowly being tied between us. Day by day, this feeling would only increase, and I was scared when I realized I smiled unintentionally whenever I heard him speak, or whenever I looked at him for too long. Burning like lava, spreading like poison, suffocating me. His intelligence, his sensitivity; the aura of mystery that surrounded him. The need to look into those deep black eyes that seemed to mirror all the galaxies that swirled far in the skies. The feelings for something, for someone, again.

I buried it all. Not under a layer of cold indifference as many would, which can only be counterproductive. Ice is only useful when solid; when it shatters to pieces, you may cut yourself. I was cleverer than that. I hid behind our companionship, in the innocent teacher-student relationship we had established long ago. Friendship was the dirt I shoveled on the coffin of my true feelings.

There were many reasons why I would do this. To begin with, I could feel there was something wrong in getting so attached to someone so fast. I had only known him for two weeks when I caught myself giggling at his attempts to catch a fish on the TV screen and thinking it was irresistibly cute. Besides, there were so many things I didn't know about him. The aura of mystery that attracted me so much also repelled me to some extent; Kab was extraordinary, sure, but what did I really know about him? One day, when we were watching a documentary about languages, I asked him about his and he didn't answer.

There was one last reason why I wouldn't accept that, though. He had arrived suddenly, appeared from out of nowhere as if he had fallen right from the sky. Almost like a breeze of air, like the wind.

And if there was something I knew about the wind, is that it arrives unexpectedly... but it also leaves when you least expect it.