The Shadow Prince

Disclaimer

The Shadow Prince is an original work freely inspired by the theme of “journey” found in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. However, the journey narrated in this book leads to different, more modern meanings, exploring themes such as inadequacy, depression, and suicide. Its symbolism and content are the expression of a personal, introspective path and bear no direct connection to the original work. This book is in no way affiliated with, authorized by, or approved by the rights holders of The Little Prince.

To those who feel lost in the noise of the world,
to those who seek themselves between shadows and light,
to those who have the courage to love what they cannot reach.

Leon Faesulis

Chapter 1

When I was a child, I made a drawing. I tried to sketch improbable animals, but soon realized that drawing wasn’t my path. A few years later, however, I discovered I was better with words. And so, I began to write.
I had watched a TV series about great poets and writers and was fascinated by the idea that, with ink and a few words, one could make a heart trembleTo make a heart tremble is no small thing — it means you've touched the invisible..
Thus, I wrote my first poem:

I left the window open
to let the darkness fly away.
But the darkness stayed,
and the curtain slipped away.

With those lines, I wanted to capture, in words, the failed attempt to expel the melancholy I carried inside me, the sense of inadequacy that often overcame me, only to discover that I had simply let slip away the innocence covering that sadness, making it now feel even sharper and more present.
When I read the poem to others, everyone said it was a pointless nursery rhyme and that curtains don’t move on their own. Some nodded indulgently; others shook their heads, as people do with things they deem unworthy of attention.
So I tried rewriting it with more poetic words. They answered, “Don’t waste time on such sad things.” And so, I stopped writing and learned to hide what I felt.
I adapted to the world of others, who prefer not to see. They talk of work, money, duties, but not of emptiness, nor of the desire to be truly seen. I became an adult like all the rest: home, job, family, responsibilities. I never let anyone read my poem again; they seemed all too busy to ask who you really were, more interested in what you owned.
Years later, by chance, my car broke down among the Tuscan hills. There was nothing on the horizon, only woodlands, vineyards, and the shimmering heat of summer. It was a fierce heat, the kind that won’t let you think. I had little water, no signal, and a car to fix. I tried to figure out the problem, but I’d never been a good mechanic. After a while, I gave up. The nearest town seemed within walking distance. I set off.
I don’t recall how far I walked. The hours blurred, and with them, my thoughts. Perhaps I was seeking just a bit of shade. Then I saw it.
A darkened storefront, set into an old building, as if forgotten by time. There were no signs, no objects, only dust and silence.
I stopped.
And there, in the dull reflection, between my face and the shadow of the town behind me… him.
He didn’t look like a child. He seemed more the idea of a child I had long lost. And he didn’t speak as a child, but as an echo.
“Write me something that doesn’t exist.”
His hair was raven-black; his eyes large and blue, with an ageless melancholy.
“How did you get here?” I asked, astonished.
He didn’t answer. He pointed to my notebook, poking out of my backpack’s side pocket, and repeated,
“Write me something that doesn’t exist.”
It was an absurd request, not just for its content (who asks for something that doesn’t exist?), but for the moment. We were in a half-asleep town, under a scorching sun, the worst place to discuss poetry.
Yet, perhaps because he was a child, perhaps because I’d wanted to write again for years, I decided to indulge him. I wrote down my first poem, the one about the curtain, which I still remembered. He read it in silence for a long while. Then he looked up and nodded:
“I don’t want a poem about melancholy! I want something that doesn’t exist.”
I was stunned: until then, no one had understood my poem and suddenly a child, appearing like a shadow, had interpreted it correctly. But apparently, that wasn’t what he wanted. So I tried again: that child was a mystery, but also a challenge to my words.

I seek calm within me,
but never find it.
It’s not a shadow to chase,
nor a dream to grasp.
It’s a locked door,
a distant light.
For those who walk without rest,
peace does not exist.
There is only the journey,
and the silence that speaks no words.

A wide smile spread across his ashen face.
“Perfect,” exclaimed the child with ash-gray hair, “that’s exactly what I wanted to hear!”
Then, as if the smile had never existed, he closed himself off in silence. He reread the poem once more and finally said, “Do you think others truly have found peace or are they lying to themselves?”
That is how I met the Shadow Prince.

Sometimes I think it was only a dream... or a nightmare.

Chapter 2

He said his place of origin was a threshold, a fragile limbo, suspended between what is dreamed and what is forgotten. A place that exists only when someone stops searching for it.
The Prince told me that, in that place, he was not alone. There was a tree.
“I don’t know if it was alive. It had neither grown nor died. It simply existed, like certain thoughts that never fade.”
I watched him in silence. The image struck me deeper than I cared to admit.
“Every morning, the tree spoke to me. It didn’t utter words, yet it never stopped talking. It cared for me, not the other way around. It watched over me, quietly, as if it had always known what I needed before I did.”
His gaze stayed fixed on emptiness as he spoke, as if still listening to that mute voice.
“There was comfort, yes. A kind of quiet closeness. Like the way you feel safe in a place that doesn’t change.”
“But if you loved it, why did you leave?”
He lowered his eyes and let a pebble slip from his hand.
“Because something inside me said I wasn’t in the right place. Even if it felt like love, I sensed a void. An unease. Voids aren’t filled by standing still. Even when you love, if you’re not where you belong, something breaks. It was a thirst that the tree could not quench.”
I listened, fascinated. He spoke like a child, yet in his words lay a whole world of experience and solitude.
“And where did you go?” I asked.
He raised his eyes to the vast sky, as if searching beyond the veil of clouds now gathering overhead.
“Elsewhere. I was seeking something that resembled me."

Chapter 3

He stayed silent for a while.
I absolutely had to try to find a mechanic for my car, but I felt disturbed by that unusual presence beside me. I was about to turn to him, to ask what he was doing here now, and where he thought he was going, when he began to tell me about his travels. Of strange places and disarming encounters.
Having abandoned the safety of his threshold, he had begun to visit his world. The first place he came across, along the way, was a deserted square, where time seemed to have stopped and the walls whispered forgotten stories.
There was a small wooden theater, faded by the sun, and in front of it, a lone man sitting on a stool. Every day, at dawn, he would raise the curtain and make his puppets dance. They laughed, cried, fell, and got back up as if they had a soul. But there was no one to watch them.
No one to hear the lines.
No one to applaud.
The Shadow Prince stayed silent for a while, in the darkness of the empty auditorium, watching the man manipulate invisible strings with delicate fingers.
“For whom do you make them dance?” he finally asked.
The puppeteer did not turn around.
“For no one. Or maybe for myself. When you’re alone long enough, you learn to tell yourself stories so you don’t forget you’re alive.”
The Prince nodded quietly.
The puppets moved flawlessly, but something in that perfection was broken. Like a dream too orderly to be true. “And you never talk to anyone?” asked the Prince.
The puppeteer shook his head.
“The strings are more reliable than wordsBehind every move, an invisible thread guides us, and we pretend to dance freely.. No string lies, no string betrays. They just break.”
The Prince looked at the empty theater, the lights on with no spectators, and felt a similar emptiness in his chest.
“They look happy,” he said, pointing at the puppets.
“That’s the secret,” the man replied. “Pretending to be happy to forget you’re alone.”
The Prince turned toward the exit.
“But by pretending too much, you forget what you really feel…”
He got no answer. Only the creak of the strings and the dull thump of wooden feet on the stage. He left silently, feeling a different kind of cold on his skin.
Not the cold of the air, but that of stories that no longer remember whom they belong to.

Chapter 5

The Shadow Prince looked exhausted.
Telling his story must have cost him greatly.
I watched him sit on the ground, his eyes clouded, perhaps by a tear, perhaps by the reflection of his own melancholy.
“One day,” he said, “I came to a place made entirely of mirrors. The ground, the walls, even the sky reflected my image. There was nothing else. Wherever I turned, I saw myself. But I was never the same: in one mirror I looked joyful, in another empty. In one I laughed, in another I wept. Yet none matched who I truly felt I was.”
He looked at me. “Have you ever felt that no one truly sees you?”
I nodded in silence.
“There it was worse,” he continued, “the mirrors stared back without understanding. They showed faces I had been or might have been, but there was no one to speak to me. No one to reply. Only me, multiplied infinitely, like an echo that never finds its silence.”
He paused. The breeze around us seemed to listen.
“At first I sought the right reflection, one that matched my true self. But the more I searched, the more I lost myself. In the end I sat down and watched my own face vanish into the cracks of silence.”
“What did you learn?” I asked.
“That by searching for myself so desperately, I forgot to simply be.”
He lowered his eyes. “And that not every reflection returns your image, some consume you.”
“And then you left?”
“Yes. But something of that place stayed within me. Sometimes, when I look in a mirror, I fear I may not find myself anymore.”

Chapter 6

A few days later, in a silent grove, he met a girl wearing a fox mask.
She was an elegant, distant figure, her gaze both inviting and repelling.
“Hello,” said the fox-girl.
The Prince did not respond at once. He sat on a stone, his eyes fixed on a barren horizon.
“Are you lost?” asked the fox-girl, as if the answer did not matter.
“Perhaps.” said the Prince. “Who are you?”
“Someone passing through. Someone who sometimes stays a while, but only a while.”
The Prince turned to face her.
“Do you want to stay with me?”
The fox-girl smiled, a crooked, warmthless smile. “Perhaps. If I feel like it.”
For several days, she remained a constant presence. They walked side by side, speaking little. Every gesture hinted at hidden meaning; every glance contained a promise of companionship. Slowly, the Prince began to believe he might no longer be alone.
Then one morning, the fox-girl simply turned and walked away. She was leaving. The Prince chased after her, but she made her intentions clear with her posture and her eyes.
“You knew this would happen,” she said. “It was a destiny you knew but chose to ignore.”
“I regret it,” he murmured. “I thought binding myself to someone would fill me. Instead, I carry a deeper void; each moment with you seemed to dig it deeper. Perhaps I too only pretended it was real, perhaps I sought only that which would not hurt.”
“Then seek no bonds. Yet do not lament your solitude,” the fox-girl replied.
With that, she departed without looking back.
The Prince stood still for a long time, then spoke to the wind: “Why did you draw near, knowing you would depart?”
From that day, every face he saw resembled that fox-girl’s mask.

Silent fox departs,
shadows swallow fleeting trust—
void grows in her wake.

Chapter 7

The Shadow Prince attempted to return to his threshold.
“But it lay too far away. Or perhaps it no longer existed. Maybe it changed, or perhaps I changed.”
He halted, uncertain where to go. Silence surrounded him differently now, no longer mere emptiness, but as though listening.
“The tree waits no longer,” he said. “And I no longer know who I am.And I? Who am I, really?
Have I ever truly asked myself, or have I been too afraid to?”

Chapter 8

One evening, as the sky faded into ashen tones, the Prince heard a noise among the vineyards. He wandered pensively among the rows.
It was not a threatening sound, but soft and almost soothing, like a voice calling your name without moving lips. It appeared without haste. It did not slither, but floated in the heavy air of a late summer’s day.
“You are lost,” it said, its tone seeking no confirmation.
The Prince did not turn.
“I am not lost. I have simply stopped seeking.”
The dark line regarded him long, its eyes seeming to have witnessed everything, and then forgotten it all.
“I can offer you peace,” it hissed. “A place where no weight remains. Where no one departs, and no one returns.”
The Prince closed his eyes.
“Is that place dark?”
“There is neither light nor darkness. There is nothing. And nothing cannot hurt.”
Silence fell between them. The Prince sat on the freshly turned earth, his hands trembling, not from cold.
“I have loved. I have lost. They left me… or perhaps I was never enough.”
The voice of nothing drew closer, each word softer and more logical, like a sleep grown necessary.
“You do not have to stay. No one does. I offer you the only certainty that exists.”
The Prince opened his eyes. In them lay no fear, only weariness.
“And if I stayed a little longer?”
The fissure in the ground did not move, yet its gaze seemed to crack.
“For whom would you stay?”
“For myself, perhaps. Or for someone who does not know I exist, but one day will understand the void I felt.”
The Nothing recoiled into itself.
“Then stay. But know I will return. I always return.”
“I know,” said the Prince. “But next timeI reread this passage again and again— each time, the silence between the words weighs heavier, that fragile moment suspended between clinging to stay and the quiet pull to let go. Maybe it is in that empty space, in that aching pause, that the true courage to live quietly reveals itself. … I hope to have a different answer.”
And with that, it vanished, as though it had never been there.

Chapter 9

Night was falling. The air grew colder, and the light faded into muted shades.
Unable to fix my car or find an open mechanic, I had thought to call roadside assistance. But the tale of that small soul, searching for itself, had completely distracted me from time and reality. I knew I must return home.
“What will you do now? I must head back to town…” I asked.
He shook his head slightly.
“This is not my place. I miss my tree… and my threshold. But I cannot return to them. And what I sought… I first found, then lost.”
He spoke with a serene expression, as if sadness no longer frightened him. Then he added, gazing into the dark storefront:
“You know, when you lose yourself, you cease to belong to this reality. Yet you remain here, like a shadow, only for others… until someone or something comes to take you away.”

Chapter 11

Silence descended like a veil. Not even the wind dared speak.
I remained motionless, as the night grew blacker and the sky deeper.
I thought of all he had said, of the places he had crossed, of what he sought…and what he lost. I thought of the melancholy we shared and how I remained while he departed.
As I slowly made my way back to my abandoned car, I felt I was no longer the same. Perhaps I found no answers. But I found something that resembled meaning.
I have never seen the Prince again.
Yet sometimes, when I pass a darkened window, a mirror, or a wave upon the shore, I think of him, of that lost soul who searched elsewhere, never stopping. Of the child who never ceased feeling out of place, yet kept seeking until he could seek no more. Even when each step carried him farther from home. Even when the search hurt more than solitude.
He left me with an unanswerable question:
Do we search because we hope to find or because we cannot stop searching? Maybe we were never meant to find anything. Maybe the search is the punishment.
He searched for a place that matched his heart. He searched for someone who could understand him without asking why. But every time he found something beautiful, he feared losing it. Every bond was a wound waiting to open.
Perhaps that is why he left again, forever. Perhaps he understood that those who feel too much sometimes belong nowhere.
I thought of nothingness and how it took him away. Yet I do not believe in an end, I believe in transformation. I believe he went beyond, where pain no longer weighs and love needs no restraint.
Now, whenever I see a shadow, I pause to look. Not because it is darker, but because it seems uneasy, like it too is seeking what it lost…or seeking itself.
If one day you walk among empty storefronts and see, in the glass, a child sitting with knees to chest and eyes full of questions, sit with him.
And do not ask who he is.
Ask what he is seeking.

Acknowledgments

This book was born from my silent search, from moments of solitude, fear, and hope.
Thank you to those who have been able to listen to the silence between the words, to those who welcomed the shadow without judgment.
Thanks to the web3 artist community that encouraged me to step out of the shadows and share this journey.
And finally, thanks to the Shadow Prince, keeper of dreams and melancholy, who has guided me step by step.