#i am rusty at digital art. lays down.

[defectzim]

IRKEN ELITE ZIM.

TRANSPARENT ART UNDER CUT

[phenomenice]

So excited to get to post these now! I’ve been working on art for @radiantmists​‘ wonderful fic, see fire in their eyes for @pilesofnonsense​ RQBB 2021 collaborating with @dedicatedfollower467. Please check out the fic and def’s art! The fic is a superhero AU so we decided to do comic-style works and def was a huge help laying them out because this was a GIANT challenge for me! Also, each row of panels is from a different section of a given chapter of the fic, so please check them out in context! Def and I worked on alternate chapters so there’s art for each one.

This was such a wonderful experience, thanks so much to Edgedancer and Def as well as the RQBB crew!

Image ID’s under the cut because they are CHONKY.

Panels for chapter 1:

Row 1: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring Amelie Rose from Rusty Quill Gaming. Amelie Rose, a white human with chestnut hair in a bun wears a purple jacket and holds a microphone. She says, "Amelie Rose, here live outside the Office of the Meritocracy ..." as she stands in front of a grey concrete brutalist building covered in plants. They sky is blue and the lighting is bright to indicate a sunny day.

Row 2: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) a supervillain, Zolf Smith and Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan from Rusty Quill Gaming. At the top of the image, a text box reads "Hamid had watched with creeping nausea ..." On the left side of the image, Hamid's television shows a cowering supervillain surrounded by a fire he set as a huge jet of water, deployed by Zolf, douses the flames. Zolf stands in front of the villain, commanding the water. On the right, Hamid, am Egyptian halfling man with a warm taupe complexion and deep brown hair looks on. His fingers are brought to his mouth and he stares in concentrated shock at the image.

Row 3: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Azu, Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan and Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam from Rusty Quill Gaming. Azu, a brown-skinned orc woman wearing a pink tank top and holding a purple athletic back, says "Hamid! Good morning!" as she looks with a slight smile at Hamid. Hamid, an Egyptian halfling man weaing a purple jacket, responds "Good morning, Azu!" Grizzop, a grey goblin with red eyes, is walking past Hamid to get on with his day looking focused.

Panels for chapter 3:

Row 1: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan, Oscar Wilde and Zolf Smith from Rusty Quill Gaming. Hamid, an Egyptian halfling man wearing a purple jacke, says "Erm ... happy birthday, Zolf." Zolf, a white dwarf with white hair and a braided beard, faces Hamid. He is wearing a dark blue coat and says "Pleasure's mine." Oscar, a white human man with brown hair stands behind him, with his hand on Zolf's back, smiling slightly. He wears a grey suit with teal highlights and an aqua tie. On the right side of the image, Hamid's hand with long green thumbnail passes a small gift wrapped in purple with teal ribbon to Zolf's hand. Zolf has short fingernails and white arm hair.

Row 2:  A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Sasha Racket, Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan, Azu and Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam from Rusty Quill Gaming. On the left side of the image: Sasha Racket, a white woman with dark hair and a scar on the side of her face wearing a dark grey jacket and trousers opens a trap door in the floor. Azu, a brown-skinned orc woman in a pink and purple costume and Grizzop, a red-eyed grey goblin in a dark grey tactical outfit gather around to investigate. The back of Hamid's head is visible at the bottom of the image as he looks on. On the right side of the image: Azu and Grizzop have climbed into the basement through the trap door. Hamid's knees are visible as Azu holds out a hand to help Hamid down. Grizzop says, "Oh -- sorry" as he looks up at Hamid as he's forgotten to turn on his flashlight and it is very dark in the basement.

Row 3: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Einstein, Eldarion, Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan, Azu, Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam and Sasha Racket from Rusty Quill Gaming. Einstein, a white man wearing a full-face Venetian mask with white feathers around it and a grey coat, stands behind Eldarion. Eldarion, an elf woman, also wears a full-face Venetian mask tied behind her dark brown bun. She is wearing a dark burgundy velvet sleeveless evening dress and opera gloves, with a watch under her glove around her right wrist. On the right side of the image: Hamid, an Egyptian halfling man wearing a purple jacket; Azu, a brown-skinned orc woman wearing a pink and purple costume; Grizzop, a grey goblin with red eyes wearing a dark grey tactical outfit; and Sasha Racket, a white woman with a scar on the side of her face wearing a dark grey jacket and her arms crossed face off against Einstein and Eldarion. Grizzop says, "And you worked with this person?"

Panels for chapter 5:

Row 1: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Azu, Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan, Oscar Wilde, Apophis and Zolf Smith from Rusty Quill Gaming. At the top right of the image, a text box reads "As the door before him had been wrenched open, his whole world had been washed in heat." The text is italicized. Hamid's arms, originally those of a halfling with a warm taupe complexion, have become dragonlike. He has brassy and orangey scales, and his green-pained nails have become more clawlike. He is clutching several test tubes which have broken, spilling neon pink liquid over his hands and throwing shards of glass into the air. To the right of the image, a huge burst of orange, red and yellow flame throws three figures into silhouette. Sparks and black specks of ash surround them.

Row 2: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Azu, Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan, Sasha Racket, Grizzop drik acht Amsterdam, Oscar Wilde, and Zolf Smith from Rusty Quill Gaming. Azu, wearing a pink and purple costume; Hamid, an Egyptian halfling man wearing a purple jack; Sasha, a white woman with dark hair in a dark coat with a scar on the side of her face; and Grizzop, a red-eyed grey goblin wearing a grey jacket all approach a set of bars. Grizzop says "Yeah, we're here, you absolutely idiot". On the other side of the bars, Oscar Wilde leans against the grey stone wall. He is a white man with brown hair wearing a grey coat with teal accents and an aqua tie. He is bruised and has blood on the right side of his mouth. Zolf, a white dwarf man, sits beside him. He is also a bit bruised and wears a dark blue coat. He has white hair and a braided white beard.

Row 3: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan, Oscar Wilde and Zolf Smith from Rusty Quill Gaming. Hamid, an Egyptian halfling man, is on the left of the image in extreme close-up. He wears a shocked expression and there are bright orange lines around his face to emphasize his shock. Wilde, a white human man with brown hair, is bruised and has blood on the right side of his mouth. He says "they want Hamid." He is wearing a grey coat with green accents and an aqua tie. Zolf is to the right, looking intensely at Hamid. He is a white dwarf with a braided beard and scar on hsi left temple.

Panels for chapter 7:

Row 1: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Eldarion, Oscar Wilde, and Azu from Rusty Quill Gaming. In the top part of the image, a black military boot and a copper stylish men's shoe stand on floorboards. Below the floor, Eldarion, an elf woman, Oscar, a white man with bruises, and Azu, a brown-skinned orc woman look apprehensively towards the upper floor. Wilde is wearing a coat with teal accents and an aqua tie. Azu clutches her morningstar over her shoulder. The background of the image is a dark reddish room in deep shadow.

Row 2: A digitally coloured comic panel featuring (left to right) Azu, Hamid Saleh Haroun al Tahan, Oscar Wilde, Apophis and Zolf Smith from Rusty Quill Gaming. Azu, a brown-skinned orc woman, is wearing a pink and purple costume and stands behind Hamid, backing him up. Hamid, an Egyptian halfling man, is in a purple and green suit and in a defiant stance with his arms out. He is addressing Apophis, an Egyptian man, and says, "As long as you're going to be transparent with us, and you're trying to make the world better ... yeah. We'll help." Apophis sits in a wingback chair in the middle of an indistinct, dimly lit red room. His fingers are steepled and he is regarding Hamid thoughtfully. He wears a grey suit, copper ascot, and red shirt. The back of Wilde's head with his brown hair is visible a the bottom of the image. Zolf stands off to the right, a white dwarf man with white hair and beard. His beard is braided with a golden ring set with an emerald. He wears a blue coat.

[ask-de-writer]

LOST TIME (part 1 of 3) A fantasy of Flocking Bay.

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

LOST TIME

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

5556 words

© 2020 by Glen Ten-Eyck

written 2003

All rights reserved.

Reproduction  in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the  express written consent of the author or proper copyright holder.

//////////////

Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users  of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in  my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical   compositions. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge   for their images.

All sorts of Fan Activity, fiction, art, cosplay, music or anything else is ACTIVELY encouraged!

///////////////////////

It stands out even in the dark ... It shouldn’t. It’s just a house. A damned old house. Not even that old really, not for New England. It’s a two story salt-box style with an observation deck under a cupola at the peak. It is probably just the setting. Rusty old iron fence, gnarled elderly trees, unkempt lawn not quite out of control, windows that the neighborhood kids haven’t broken. It should be a witch’s house but it isn’t. It is mine. I just closed on it yesterday.

The kids are going to have a field day this time. I don’t like the daylight... been on night shift as far back as I can remember. That’s a longish way back. But I’m not a witch, nor vampire. Nothing exotic that I know of. I’m just one of those people (you probably know one or two) who don’t show their age. If you envy me, think again. YOU try to explain to a traffic cop why your ID has you pegged for seventy+ and you don’t look over twenty. I carry a copy of my fingerprint record from the military, because they can check that.

Funny part of it is, I really don’t have the slightest idea how old I am. Traumatic amnesia the doctors called it, during the war. The head wound was minor, they said.

That is a matter of opinion. It robbed me of my past, my name, my identity, my loves and hates but left my skills intact. I was an empty shell. I am still trying to find my past.

The name that I use comes from more or less modern myth. Vandervekken. The Flying Dutchman. Wandering Dutchman would be more accurate. He sails the seas off the Cape of Good Hope until Judgment Day. He can’t find his home either. I bought the house because it is the first place that I have seen in over fifty years where I want to stay. You explain it.

The rusty gate opened silently, thanks to the bit of oil that I put on the hinges. Going up the uneven walk, between the looming trees is an experience. The door lock is old-fashioned but still works smoothly. Covered furniture could have made ghosts to haunt the place, if I were superstitious or given to being easily frightened.

As I said, I like the night. I even enjoy things with a bit of a spooky atmosphere. I also like antiques and handcrafted things which is why, if I ever find out who did it, I will cheerfully throttle whatever philistine covered the finely inlaid hardwood parquetry floors with battleship gray paint.

Stripping and refinishing those floors was on my priority job list. Actually, I shouldn’t beef too much. Pointing out the problem got me a price reduction of nearly $2000 on an already underpriced house with all of its furniture as part of the deal. Estates can be wonderful when you are on a tight budget. Too bad that someone else had to die to create my good fortune.

As I pulled the dust covers from the furniture, I saw that my good fortune was been complete. It was all sturdy, hand-carved hardwood with Chinese silk brocade upholstery. The furniture alone was worth what I had paid for the house and contents. The tops of even the smallest hall tables were inlaid with rich veneers, ivory and mother of pearl. You couldn’t buy furniture like this any more. Besides the cost, the ivory in the inlays is no longer legal to obtain. I could get as much from the sale of just one or two pieces as I could from a year of writing if I could bring myself to part with any of this treasure. It just feels like the house would not be complete without it.

Whoever it was that had died and left this for me to have has whatever blessings it is in my power to bestow. The only wonder is that this place stayed on the market long enough for me to find it. Usually, deals like this get snapped up by the real-estate brokers before people like me ever see them.

When I got to the kitchen, I received another little jolt. I knew that it was fairly up to date, but some thoughtful soul had stocked the fridge and set out a bit of a snack for me. Just cookies and a glass for the milk, which was staying cold in the cooler. Thoughtful. I wondered who did it.

While munching on the cookies, I opened a few windows to air the place out a bit. Going out to my car, I saw that the flags of the walk needed leveling because of the weeds that grew up between them. I drove around to the alley behind the place, opened the garage and parked Lilitu, my classic pre-war Packard touring car. She looked right at home in there. Few, even of modern garages were big enough for her. I ferried my few personal goods up to the house. On my last trip, I saw a couple of wide-eyed kids looking over the back fence.

“Told ya, told ya so!” one of them chanted. “There’s somebody sneakin’ inta the ol’ Vekin place!”

“I wouldn’t call it sneaking, to move into your own place,” I answered as civilly as I could manage. “I just bought it. Why do you call it the Vekin place?”

“If ya ain’t sneakin’, why ya goin’ in the back way? An’ after dark, too?” she shot back. I could now see that they were a girl and a boy. She was obviously in charge.

“I like nights. I’m a writer, so I can keep any hours I like. Why is it the Vekin place?” I asked again.

“Dun’no - Crazy guy named Vekin used to live there,” she contradicted herself.

“Lot of folks tried to buy the place since then,” the boy piped in.

“But nobody ever stays,” the girl finished for him firmly.

“So, this is the neighborhood’s haunted house?” I inquired jovially.

“No,” was as far as the boy got.

“Its down the street, on t’other side,” she cut in.

“I looked at that one,” I said thoughtfully. “The old Victorian. Somebody’s broken out all the windows. Not like here. If the Vekin house is so bad, why hasn’t some kid chucked rocks at it?”

“‘Cause we’re not THAT crazy!” exclaimed The boy, getting out a whole thought. The girl gave him a push, and they ran off into the night.

I got up about noon, after the most restful night’s sleep that I’d had since the War. After my breakfast and a quiet tour of the place from attic to basement, I went out. My goal was the local newspaper. THE FLOCKING BAY VOICE was sprawled across the plate glass window in Old English style letters of gold leaf and black. Smaller letters proclaimed Est. 1841. I pushed open the door. My nose was assaulted by the multiple odors of printer’s ink, paper and grease. The VOICE occupied one large room. An elderly web press crouched at the back of the space, behind several rolls of newsprint. Cubicles made offices in the middle of the room. An old oak counter that had once seen duty as a bar had several signs suspended over it on thin chains. They read ‘submissions’, ‘advertisements’, ‘subscriptions’, ‘billing’.

There was a bell on the counter. Some wag had put a sign on it, “Please ring bell, it won’t help but it will give you something to do.” I gave myself something to do, energetically, a few times.

A trim little blond lady answered the bell’s summons. She wore a green eyeshade and a pin on her sweater announced, ‘Lois Martin - cook, bottle washer & EDITOR in CHIEF.’ “What can I do for you, today?” she asked.

“I came to see what I can find out about the Vekin place,” I answered, trying not to stare at her.

“Just a moment, I’ll get the file out of the morgue. I was going to get it anyway. Somebody went and bought the place again.”

“Wait a minute,” I protested. “Someone buys a house and that makes news in Flocking Bay? This town must be even quieter than it looks.”

“Oh,” she retorted, “it can get downright interesting around here when the old Vekin place sells. You’ll see.” She disappeared among the cubicles and I heard her feet clattering down a flight of stairs. I heard a file drawer creak and slide, then slam shut. It wasn’t long before she reappeared, a rather fat file clutched in her hand.

“If you’d like, we can have lunch over at Mike’s Soda Shop,” she proposed. “He makes decent submarine sandwiches and real ice-cream sodas.”

“Well ... ” I pretended to hesitate, “I haven’t been invited out by a beautiful blond in a long time, so, yes.”

“I hope that I haven’t just made a fool of myself,” she remarked, laying aside the eyeshade. “You are Mr. Vandervekken aren’t you? The man who just bought the place?”

“Too true,” I said.

“Then I’ll make it an interview and deduct it from my taxes,” she smiled.

“You make enough to pay taxes?” I asked, looking back as we crossed the street.

“I have hidden assets. The paper is a tax shelter.” She opened the door of Mike’s and ushered me in.

As I was seating her, I just couldn’t help blurting out, “Your assets seem to be pretty obvious.”

She grinned, “Go ahead and stare. I don’t mind. If I did, I wouldn’t wear a snug sweater and put my pin just here.” She pointed, then added, “Looking at it will keep you off your guard while I ask my questions.”

“OK, Ms. Martin, but let me look at the file first. You can order for me. You know the food here,” I said, reaching for the file.

“Lois,” she replied, “call me Lois, everyone else does.” Then she hollered to the man behind the counter, “Oh, Mike! Two butterscotch sodas and a big turkey sub! Divide it in half!”

“How did you know that I liked butterscotch?” I asked. “It’s not that common a preference these days.”

“I just had a hunch, that’s all. You looked like another butterscotch type person.”

I was leafing through the file on the rather beat-up table while we waited. I couldn’t resist snorting with amusement at the name of the house’s builder. Capt. Von Der Vekin. The house had been built in 1894 by the Capt. and his elusive son, Charles. Nobody had ever seen Charles until he came into town, on April 1st, 1900, to report his father’s demise and burial on the property. He ordered a headstone hewn of the local limestone. Charles had returned from WW I with honors and lived quietly, claiming to be a writer, though nobody ever saw any of his work in print. When asked, all that he would say was ‘Pseudonyms are great for privacy’. He was not so lucky when he volunteered to assist the French resistance in 1939. He never came home.

Next==>

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

[tomislavartz]

🎨 Arcanine - Swipe to see the progress, keep reading for a written guide on how to do this yourself. ✌🏻 It turned out pretty well I would say, I am a bit rusty when it comes to traditional art since I'm usually working digitally but I like this. To do this yourself make sure you find some references online, or if you have figurines or toys they'll work great too. Start sketching the basic structure, make sure the proportions are all correct and definitely don't press down too hard on the paper. Once your basic shapes look good you can slowly start to add more details, draw the face, the fur or whatever is interesting and unique about your character. Don't spend too much time on details, they should just be a guided on where things go. You can see my final sketch here too. Once you are done sketching take a fineliner, a pen or a ink brush, whatever you have laying around, just make sure it's not smearing too much I guess since now you have to erase the sketch beneath it. ✌🏻 Check out my Story if you want to see what I have done instead! After you have all thr outlines done you can take whatever colors you have. In my case it's alcohol markers but it can be colored pencils too. In my case with case of alcohol markers, like copics, I started with the brightest color in the fur, and shaded it with 2x slightly darker tones. So highlights went first, then local color and then the darker shading. Same process for any other part. After that you will have a colored Artwork, I believe the 3rd image shows my result. Once I've finished colors I go back to my fineliners and make some stronger outlines, add details, add crosshatching and sometimes I take a white gel pen and add a few more white highlights (check my Captain America piece for that). ✌🏻🎨 That's it, it's simple all you need is practicing. Don't buy the most expensive tools, use whatever you have. Trust me, I put my Copics aside and am now only using knockoffs markers from china. They cost 300$ per box less but aren't noticably different. . . #pokemonart #arcanine #pokemon #pokemongo #pokemonshieldandsword #pikachu #howtodraw #drawing #art #sketch #illustration #painting #copicmarkers #copics #artist (at Graz, Austria) https://www.instagram.com/p/By4_hRTCP0S/?igshid=4s69jpwpfyzj

[archafic]

ARCHA 1.

“A dark force is brewing just beyond humanities reach. Behind the scenes, Crowley plots something sinister, unbeknownst to the Winchester brothers. Gabriel had been in hiding, he didnt expect to believe that anyone knew he was alive, and yet, here he was, front and centre. Gabriel was now nothing more than trapped and seemingly powerless, and swept up with him was that stupid girl, who had so accidentally been thrown in his world of angelic crazy.”

Word Count: 1500+ per chapter

MASTERLIST / ABOUT

FIRST / PREVIOUS / NEXT

“What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god, the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.” - William Shakespear

CHAPTER 1: DREAMS

My skin felt keen against the icy ground. Sharp articles slightly protruded into my back, as a biting chill melted over my body. I lay flat, something median sat against my chest, it too was cold, metallic cold. I dug my fingers into the ground around me, it crumbled, like earth. Dirt. A sharp, brisk breeze shook through the air surrounding my icy body. I could hear trees, branches scraping and tearing against each other, they were close, just out of arm's reach, so it sounded. I opened my eyes, bright moonlight piercing through them. As my sight balanced I continued to lay still. I looked up. I found myself distinguishing branches. The tops of needle like Pine pricked the sky above. Pine trees painted as silhouettes against a dark blue sky. I was in a wildwood. A dark figure loomed over me, the mood light and darkness casting a shadow, masking their face My hand began to burn.

-----

Cold. All she could remember was the cold, overwhelming, shattering, It made her feel alive. 

Her dream, like a fleeting memory of another world faded away as the sound of  a manic alarm pierced through the quiet sounds of morning. She lay for a moment, keeping her eyes shut and state of mind dreamy, attempting to recollect what she could from the night before. It was so familiar, the overwhelming feeling of cold that she could recall. It was so vivid, like no other dream she could remember. Shuffling forward, she felt around her bed sheets, when her hand met it’s metallic cold touch she quickly snatched up her phone. The alarm, that had so annoyingly been blaring through the quiet sounds of morning, was shut off with no lack of haste. It was then that the girl went to open her ‘notes’ on the device, this was where all of her peculiar dreams were kept. She typed down all she could recall, her fingers missing some letters as she wrote with haste.

Cold 

Laying down

Windy

Night

Her memory was fleeting, escaping her mind, she typed quickly.

Person

How hard she tried to remember this stranger, however her memory was so quick to disappear, all Wren could recall now was a blur of a face. She rested her phone down, she was done, annoyed at the fact that her subconscious couldn't find the strength to recall the strangers face. The bed was warm, it’s soft homeliness calling, “stay, just stay.”. That’s all she really wanted to do, just to sleep the day away and pretend that she didn't have a single care in the whole wide world. Sleeping, of course, was one of Wrens favourite pass times. She found it was where reality had no place, where she could wander her own unconscious mind and have no need to worry about such useless thing’s as money, or college, or work. As much as she would have liked to stay, she couldn't. Sitting up, she rolled herself out of bed, each muscle aching after yet another restless night. Her right shoulder, in particular, ached a sharp pain. It was nothing she couldn't handle however, sleeping in peculiar positions seemed to be something she had always been particularly skilled at. Her little bedroom was messy to say the least; shorts, jeans, shirts and more scattered across a shag carpeted floor in a manner not unlike a child’s bedroom, since she had finally had a home of her own, small as it may be, Wren had become particularly more slack in cleaning department. Not having caretakers or roommates breathing down her neck to clean every five minutes had led to an exceedingly more lax version of what she already was. To be honest, her room wasn't too far from becoming a bit of a nightmare. Her feet squished into the carpet on top of the floor, the shag had been mostly worn away from so many years of different feet pitter pattering over it. In its current state, the carpet sat as a dirty, old imitation of what it once was, soft and warm. The previous tenant mustn’t have kept very good care of the place. She thought. Wrens short hair lay slightly messy, the night before leaving it voluminous with few kinks and knots, she quickly changed into casual dress. Her greenish eyes darted toward the phone, its digital clock skipping to the following number. Not wanting to be late, the girls internal overdrive engaged as she began to speed around her tiny apartment. Grabbing her old satchel, she rushed into the apartments kitchen, a white laminate bench top opened out to the main living area and the floor became a white, cold tile, it was small, but for the first time in all her life, it was a real home. Running to the fridge, Wren shoved a day-old sandwich into her satchel and headed for the front door, only to turn around again realising she stupidly had forgotten her house keys. Without the shortest moment of haste she rushed back inside. Running around like a madman, stumbling back into her messy little bedroom, tossing the mess around in search of her house keys. Finding no luck she ran back to the kitchen to search, this was when she had noticed the old keys sitting on the bench, had they been there before and she simply hadn't noticed? Realising that time was skipping by, she made a leap for the thick, rotting, wooden front door, locking it behind her. Jaunting towards a faded blue, rusty old bicycle, she took off down the winding main road.

An icy fog hooded the coastline that morning as she made her way down the winding seaboard. A blue sky meekly peaked through the thick white fog overhead, car after car rushing past, heading down the coast. The wind whipped in the girls face, she gripped tightly to her bike handles. A lump sat in her enclosed fist, the house keys that were still gripped tightly in her hand, they continued to rattle while she road along the winding asphalt, Wren thought for a moment of the day she received them;

I arrived to the lot, the building was small and stubby, weeds and dead plants riddled its front garden. It was small, very small in fact. A musty white colour and weedy front, the squarish apartment sat on the ground floor and looked out to a quiet street in Halifax Hills. It’s front door was old, rustic and wooden, it sat with a pale stain and a musty coat of paint that looked as though it hadn't been fixed in many years. The previous owner wanted to get rid of the property as quickly and as quietly as he could, which was how I found his offer; through a somewhat sketchy, classified advertisement site. The seller’s particulars were odd, but I didn't want to miss the chance;

FOR SALE  (3/3 Pepromeno Street, Halifax Hills, OR) $150 / 1br   AM MOVING OUT URGENT TENAT NEEDED

I had been particularly giddy in the weeks leading up to my move into the dodgy old building. It was really the first time in all my life that I finally had a place of my own, when I had previously been in and out of grotty motel’s with even sketchier owners. To put it shortly, I was no newbie to the world of sketchy realestate. It took me a while to find “Pepromeno Street”, I drove around the unknown town and became somewhat lost. I ended up asking a tall man, lingering along the sidewalk where the building I was looking for was, he informed me that it was actually right in front of the place.

I knocked on the ancient door, small bits of its aged old wood splintered out of a dent where many others had apparently knocked before. I heard the creak of footsteps run up to the entrance from the other side. With a couple of clicks the door slid open slightly, a brown eye peaked out at me for a moment, ‘Hi, I’m here to get the keys for the building?’ I asked the owner. He opened up the door slightly further, revealing his roundish face and blond locks, he stuck out his head and observed the street behind me, seemingly looking to see if I had been followed. He then reached out his hand from the half-open door, something slightly jingling in them. For a brief moment, our skin touched when he passed the keys over too me, the keys not only to my new home, but to a new life.

Wren powered on down the winding road, rugged and hilly beneath the coarse screeching of her bicycle tires, when finally she reached the threadbare buildings of the local community college, sea sprayed paint peeling off each building's white walls. She quickly parked her bike and raced toward the lecture hall, managing to slightly trip as she did so. The building was large, sea spray from the ocean below had chipped away at the paint after so many years of low maintenance. This building functioned as the largest hall on campus, it was nothing spectacular, but it did the job it was given, as any good thing should.

Entering the hall, she sat down near the front of the room. The hall was built in an amphitheatre type manner, each chair placed on a downhill angle so that each student could view the lecturer on the stage at the front of the room, it was as traditional as a thing could get, and was really quite dull too, Wren thought. The Professor, who’s name she could not recall, arrived. He began to do his job, strangely, he kept a occasional darting eye toward Wren as her attention dozed in an out. He continued to lecture on and on about Art history that honestly bored poor Wren to death. For whatever reason, her thoughts lingered on the vivid dream from the night before. Her eyes wandered out to a large window looking out to sea to the left of her, she had noticed that the thick morning fog was beginning to clear.

Dreams, like echo’s, so slightly out of reach that it hindered and frustrated her very much so. She could recall remembering a figure standing above her in the strange dream, so familiar, yet so unknown.

Her thoughts wandered for some time, half an hour or so had passed, through that half-hour Wren kept having to remind herself to pay attention to class. As the clock ticked on, she found her eyes drifting out to the window yet again, her thoughts deepening, the tick of the clock lulling her into a state of deep thought. It was then that a sudden chill fell over her body, her hairs stood on their ends, tearing the girl away from her deep pondering thoughts. She was suddenly abruptly aware, a subtle sense of panic lingered about. She looked around the hall, nothing seemed out of the ordinarily, an ocean of bored students faces peppered the amphitheatre, nevertheless, Wren knew something was off and was determined to find out what.

---- CHAPTER 2