chapter one of a different fantasy novel

Consider this both an introduction to my writing style and a glimpse into another fantasy world I hope to bring fully to life one day. Let me know if you like it <3

LUSTRE, chapter one.

The air inside the café is thick with burnt coffee and cake. Sugar crunches quietly beneath Leta’s boots as she moves steadily up and down the wooden floor, her broom whispering over the boards. Soft indie rock crackles out of the overhead speakers. Outside, the rain beats down, a relentless metronome. It’s a swirl around her – familiar, repetitive; London outside and her in here, cocooned.

She’s tired already; so tired her eyes are burning, so tired her stomach hurts. She has clean-up to finish, then the wet walk home, and before she can even think about sleep there’s the essay due in tomorrow for her Public Sector Economics class, lunch to take with her to uni, another round of applications for jobs that she can squeeze in around lectures and coursework and the café, scraping for a few extra quid, a few more weeks of a lifeline. But, God, she’s so tired.

It takes her longer than it should notice the eyes. Then, as she’s circling the counter to find the dustpan, she stops dead. The hair on the back of her neck is prickling. It settles over her: the heavy, unavoidable feeling of being watched. Her head jerks round, nervy, and she peers into the wet street outside. Streetlamps glow through the deluge. There’s nobody stupid enough to be walking by with the weather this way; no cluster of drunk boys pressing up against the glass to make her jump. It happens sometimes on Thursday, Friday nights, big groups of them weaving past, sloshy with beer, one of them peeling off to cackle, Hey look lads! It’s a Tuesday, no chance of that. There’s not a person out there at all. But still that feeling lingers, creeping down her spine, tickling along her arms.

Her nerves urge her forward, her heart thumping too fast. Do something, do something. With quick, quiet steps she hastens across the café and checks the door. Locked. Still nobody outside when she does a quick sweep through the frosted glass. Maybe she’s just imagining it. It wouldn’t be surprising on this little sleep, this long living under the buckling weight of stress. Made-up problems, made-up eyes. It’s the last thing she needs. She takes a deep breath and swallows hard. Runs the flats of her palms down her forearms like she can magic the goosebumps away.

She finishes up her shift quickly. Unties the long strings of her jaunty pink apron and tosses it into the laundry pile, then turns off the lights as she leaves. Not for the first time, she wishes she had someone she could call to come collect her. But she has no-one. So after one quick, deep breath, she shoulders her backpack and into the night she goes.

As she turns off the main road, she’s blisteringly aware of how alone and small and female she is, here on a dark street, all the lights off around her. Still she feels those eyes weighty across her shoulders. She picks up her pace a little, not quite enough to be called a run. Even once she’s turned the next corner, the feeling doesn’t let up. Someone is out there in the amber wetness. They are following her. There are no footsteps, no shadows in the corners of her eyes. Just that feeling hissing down the bare nape of her neck below her blonde ponytail.

Please, please, please, she thinks, thumbing over the reassuring shape of her phone in her pocket. The police are just one phonecall away. Let it just be some idiot teenage boy playing a joke. Let it be a cat or a pigeon or something. She steps in a puddle, water seeping in instantly through the holes in her boots, and bites out a low curse without slowing down.

She’s through the barren community garden, her heart galloping, home only five minutes away when it starts to build. A strange, horribly familiar pressure. It radiates out from her heart, arrows down her limbs. Like there’s another her within, very slightly bigger, trying to push out from the inside. Her breath heaves out of her. Her fists clench. Not tonight, she begs, please not tonight.

It didn’t used to happen often, this strange feeling, just every now and again after her eighteenth birthday she’d wake up gasping with it, the sensation that she was about to be turned inside-out or perhaps to burst. She tried going to the doctor about it after the fifth time. They gave her a mental health referral that she’s still waiting for two years later.

It’s been happening more lately. Too often. The last month, it’s been once a week at least. She knows she ought to be more worried about it. But she’s just so tired all the time. Worrying takes up energy she doesn’t have to spare.

Her breathing comes fast and ragged. She fists her keys, slides them between her knuckles. The metal bites against her palm. It grounds her, holds the panic down. Like every time, she thinks, I should have been worrying about this more.

There’s a rustling behind her. Startled, she glances back over her shoulder – and breathes out sharply. She can see herself reflected back in the window she’s walking past. Bedraggled hair, narrow wan face. The usual. But what’s not usual are her eyes. Cavernous. No longer green but glowing gold.

‘Shit,’ she grits out, and takes off at a run.