Diamond Boy in the Rough - Helen Faul

What if he couldn't control it?, What if he didn't want to? Alfie Diamond, flat on his back, chilled to the bone in the freezing unforgiving snow. Shocked, dumbfounded but even so secretly excited, still tingling from the thrill, if that was the correct word to use, from his near death experience but then again maybe it was just the mind altering effects of hyperthermia, who knew? The images that had flashed before him during his "first" mind blowing Awakening were alien to him, jumbled, superfast messed up glimpses of things to come and things off the past but whose past, certainly not his, he would remember surely wouldn't he? The faces didn't register, the language fell on deaf ears and yet he inexplicably felt connected, suddenly his life gained a sense of direction, no more bobbing about like a cork in the open ocean, Purpose and motivation were coming his way that much he had acutely be made aware off as the nerve endings of his brain cells fizzed with adrenaline infused blood. He was on a precipice, he could lay there and continue to stare up at the descending snowflakes, let the raw biting cold take him or he could grab this adventure with both hands steam rolling into a new unknown future, a future born of a secret so far back so distant into the past it would surely send him to hell and back. Evil would seek to destroy him, Good would look to him as a saviour, him a naive curly haired East End boy, youngest of six children, average school grades, slight misfit on the outer edges of the obligatory social groups, not fit enough to be considered a "Jock," not clever enough for the nerds and certainly not fashionable in his tatty t-shirt, shorts and scruffy trainers to be one of the "beautiful people," a square peg in a round hole, well this square peg had been enlightened, today Alfie Diamond was re-born and if he ever got up onto his feet again, his first steps would be into a dangerous new world, a world he hoped included the beautiful stranger whose silken long hair trailed across his face as she hovered over him as he slipped in and out of consciousness, a world he hoped would not chew him up and spit him out.