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Chapter 1

"And so it came to pass, that Gaea, spirit of the earth, in her infinite sadness at mankind's cruelty and greed, abandoned her children. The elemental spirits of the earth grew vengeful and purged the earth of mankind. The world was reformed and reborn, filled with "living Totems," physical extensions of the elemental spirits. The Totems reclaimed the earth mankind had so cruely and foolishly forsaken. Although mankind no longer exists, we still hold in our archives an extensive history left behind. Technology, culture, art, and perhaps most important of all, lessons to be learned, from earth that was..."

The lithe young timber wolf Totem closed her most treasured of texts as sleep assaulted her senses. She tucked the tattered old book, aptly named: "The Falling Of Man" under her pillow before clicking off her bed side lamp and bundling up beneath her home knitted blanket, desperate for warmth in the chilly Nebraskan night. Her silky black fur quickly concealed her tired form in the absence of the artificial light. She knew she had to sleep if she had any hopes of getting up on time tomorrow. Tomorrow...tomorrow would bring a new day and a new home. It seemed like such a drastic change, leaving behind all she knew and loved in her quiet woodland community to move to an insignificant speck of a town in the middle of the Arizona desert. "Waterstone" it was called. A town so small you couldn't even find it on a map. (She had tried.) But if her mother's new job payed as much as she'd hoped, it would "all be worth it in the end." The young wolf wasn't so sure...and what of her new high school? How exciting could "Waterstone High" really be. So much excitement, and so much fear. What would the future bring? It was a question inevitably asked by every mortal...yet eternally unanswered...

The Arizona sun beamed down unmercifully upon the avian teen as consciousness slowly flooded his feathered head. "In dreary a stupor and melancholy a temper, I rose from my bed and wished for December..." the voice was dry and hoarse, prematurely dehydrated from the blistering afternoon sun. As the less than enthusiastic feathered teen murmured a morning prose he lost balance and fell in a heap of pearl white feathers and tangled limbs, in a mess upon his bedroom floor. "...In form less than composed and head more than screaming, I puzzled over these infuriating events for some meaning..." Slowly a distinctly avian head arose form the tangled mess of dirty clothes on the floor, greeted by the laughing, malicious sun. Large eyes blinked for several moments desperately trying to blink away the piercing blindness that accompanied the unpleasant intruder.

He stood slowly, yawning and stretching his full six foot even frame and consciously ruffling and extending his magnificent pearl white iridescent plumage. Next came his wings, stretched to their full twelve foot wingspan as he popped and snapped his sore bones into a reasonably comfortable state. The tired and irritable teen staggered his way out of his chaotic void of a room and made his way to the bathroom, clothed only in his feathers and his black patchwork pants. He clicked on the light and gazed into the mirror, his eyes narrowing at the source of so much grief...those damned white feathers and cold blue eyes. His name is Edgar With, better known as "Gar" and he is a common raven, with a VERY uncommon appearance.

He was hatched an albino, with iridescent pearly white feathers and piercing icy blue eyes. As a direct result he's at best cruely teased and at worse openly loathed by all who come into contact with him. Even the few avians that attend his school reject him for his "deformity." Pain however, does a lot of strange things to an individual...and what it's done to Gar may be a mystery even unto himself. Gar washed his face and beak and flicked off the light, lumbering toward the couch where he heard labored snores, the unmistakable sound of his father sleeping off another night of heavy drinking. Victor With was significantly smaller than his son at just five feet three inches tall, which was due to the fact he was a common carrion crow.

Gar was adopted as an infant by his father and his mother, a loving crow couple who had seen the last of their children off to college and wished for another baby. Gar was unwanted due to his color morph yet the Withs fell in love with him...the rest was as they say "history." Gar gently roused his father, carefully removing the half empty bottle of booze from his talon and setting it gently on the filthy carpeted floor of the decrepit double wide mobile home. "Father..." he said in a husky whisper. "Find your legs if only to carry you off to sweeter dreams..." With that Gar helped his still half sleeping father to his bed and tucked him in. At least he made it home safely last night... Tidying up the pitiful looking tin can they called a home, Gar sighed to himself in reserved sadness. Tomorrow would bring new pain...the one day of the year he dreaded most...the first day of school...

The young timber wolf sighed as she looked anxiously out the window of the weathered old SUV for what must have been the thousandth time, observing in ever increasing anxiety as her surroundings grew less and less green. This time her mother spoke up. "Harvy for the hundredth time, PLEASE stop with that pitiful sighing...I know this is hard on you but I REALLY need this job hun. You'll see, it won't be so bad. I'm sure you'll make some new friends. Who knows maybe you'll meet a nice handsome wolf!" The older graying timber wolf was non too discreet in her desire for her only daughter to acquire herself a mate. Seventeen years old and she'd never had a SINGLE one, always cooped up reading her books... The aforementioned Harvest "Harvy" Sellow, scoffed at her overly cheery mother. "Hate to break it to you mom but I don't think there are many wolves in Arizona..." Mrs. Sellow pondered for a moment and quickly retorted. "Well then find yourself a nice strapping young coyote then! You just need to find someone dear, or you'll regret it." Harvy rolled her eyes. She knew her mother meant well, but she also knew she was just projecting her own feelings of loneliness onto her ever since her father left her mother almost five years ago for some young red she wolf he'd met. Her mother never really recovered, she just threw herself into her work. Soon they had entered Waterstone city limits and were pulling up the driveway to their new, if incredibly modest, one story home. Tomorrow would bring the start of the new school year and a whole new set of fears...