Your name is Thomas Rufus Patterson and you hate your name. To you it just sounds so out of date and this bugs you a lot. You are eighteen and a senior in high school. You live with your mom and two younger siblings; a younger brother named Peter and a younger sister named Stephanie. Steph, as mother sometimes calls her, is five years old and has just started kindergarten. Pete is nine years old and has been held back to the third grade. As for your father, he died in a car crash shortly after your sister was born.
Schools out for the summer and you're walking home alone. Your only real best friend has just moved away because his father was laid off from the local computer company; something they called 'Downsizing'.
Wishing that Joe was here so that you could have someone to talk to, you pause as you see lying in the gutter. This something is covered in leaves and dirt, but enough of it remains uncovered that you can make out a faint coppery glint as the sun light reflects off of it. Picking it up, you brush off the grit and look at it.
It's an amulet with a picture of a person that looks both masculine and feminine along with some bestial traits. On the back is one word, 'Zulo'.
"Zulo," you mutter as you look it over, running your hand over the person and marveling the different animals that have been combined into this one design; from foxes to cats, you can make out several different beasts.
You start walking again, still looking at the Amulet of Zulo, as you've started calling it, and after a bit, your foot snags on something. You pitch forward and instinctively put your hands out to stop your fall. As you hit the pavement, you feel something first dig into your palm and then slip out of it. Looking up, you see the amulet fly from you hand and bounce once and then hit a car someone has left parked and is hanging partway out of an alleyway.
Standing, you brush your hands off on your pants and seeing the rip in the knee, you mutter, “Just great.
Picking up the Amulet of Zulo, you see a large crack in the center of it. Thinking to yourself, "I wonder if a jeweler would be able to repair this?" you feel a prick in your hand, something that almost makes you drop. To you, it felt like a static electrical discharge; like what you got off the doorknobs in winter.
Shaking your hand, you slip the amulet on around your neck, adjust your backpack and head for home; sure that your mom is going to have chores for you and she'll want you to watch Steph and Pete when she goes to work tonight.