Lady Of The Lake

This is only a little extract of a scene in chapter 4 of The Heavenly Sequence. I would like people to review me on the style of my writting and if they find it easy to imagine and read.

Voices echo in her dreams.She recognizes each tone and knows who said it - Kurt, Wade, Kina and Erin.

‘Maybe in another life, but not this one.’

‘Nothing more than a Londoner.’

‘Purifier.”

“Ava!Tell me who did this to you!”

Her body twisted and coiled in the silk damp sheets of her bed. She’d opened her eyes a few times, but couldn't tell if she was awake or still caught in the trap of her dream. Their faces flash before her, like a Power Point she’d sit through during a college lecture. It was Wade’s face that wouldn’t ease or fade into the background like the rest did. Instead it stuck out more than the others. The vane arrogant look painted across his face when she first saw him in the lounge, followed by his quick change of emotion in Erin’s study. It was the pain and sorrow woven into his amber tinted eyes that stung, as she relives the moments Kurt forced him out of the room. Then it stops.

The faint screech of her bedroom door opening submerges her back into reality. Her eyes feeling heavy and gunky like they were glued together, but with some effort would open. The orange dim sunlight impaled through her bedroom window and reflects onto the bed. A large canvas of oranges and yellows splash across the duvet covers. At first the only thing her eyes allowed her to see was the blur of a slim woman. It wasn't until she spoke did she reveal her identity - mum.

“Faith, its four in the afternoon. When are you planning to make an appearance downstairs.”

Faith opened her eyes wide rubbing them with the sleeve of her jacket.Her mum appeared simple and clear-cut:stainless white blouse and denim jeans. A mug grasped in her hands exposed heat seeping from its contents.

Faith’s voice was croaky and hushed, “Whats that?”

“I made you tea, you missed breakfast and dinner.” Verity sits on the bed next to her and didn't look to pleased with her daughter, “You let me down.”

Faith doesn't say a word, and let her mum say what she needs to say. The look on Verity’s face was saddening. A mood she rarely saw her mum in. When Verity spoke again it was like a punch to the stomach, “Your aunt was downstairs with your cousins. I wanted everything to go well today, was it to much to ask of you.”

Faith bit her lip in complete let down, “I’m sorry, I forgot all about it.”

“I’ve been reminding you all week about it Faith?”

“Don’t stress about it, I’ll get changed now and come downstairs.”

“Don’t bother, they’ve been and gone. I told them you were ill and had to stay in bed.”

Verity hands the mug over to Faith. She took it and brought it to her lips avoiding her mum’s demon glare. How could she of forgotten about it? It was the one thing her mum talked about everyday since it was first planned. Faith didn’t care that she missed her cousins flying visit. She hated them. They hated her, but that wasn't the problem.The problem was that she made a promise that she broke and now she was feeling the guilt.

Verity swept a hand across her jeans. There was nothing there, but the movement was fierce and brought on the next topic, “So, tell me.”

Faith lowered the hot mug from her lips, “Tell you what?”

“Tell me what was so important that you sneaked out in the middle of the night, and didn’t come back until morning?” Verity’s voice containing a strict tone, but somehow came across calm.

“I told you, Lydia -.”

“No you told me Lydia had troubles and went straight to your room,”

Faith glances down at the bed covers, fishing around her mind for a believable excuse. Pulling the duvet back slightly, she notices she was still wearing her clothes. The night before, her body felt so drained of energy that she crept into bed still fully clothed.

“Lydia fell out with her parents and she called me. So I went to see if she was alright.”

“What was the argument over?”

“Jesus mum, what is this? Twenty questions?” Faith snapped back, feeling a spray of spit parting with her lips. Luckily, none of it made contact with her mum.

Faith’s an awful liar, she knew that. When people suspect that she is hiding something and question her on it, the only way she deals with it was to loose her temper. Not the best way of slipping through suspicion, but its either that or twitching every two seconds. Verity gazed down her short nose at Faith, radiating imaginary heat from her eyes. Finally, just as Faith couldn’t look her mother in the eyes any longer, Verity rises from the side of the bed. Faith felt the madras below her bounce back, as her mum stood.

“Listen, I know your seventeen now, and your old enough to make your own decisions,” Verity slips towards the bedroom door, “But I’m still your mother, and like it or not I need to know where your going -.”

Faith interrupts, “But I told you where I was.”

“The truth next time,it may make things a lot easier.”

Knew it, thought Faith. Was it her temper that gave her away or the unnerving willingness to look her mum in the eyes. How about, she’s your mum and she’s born with the talent of unraveling her daughter’s lies. She swallowed a mouthful of tea, as Verity steps out of the doorway and peaks her head back around, “It could of been worse, you could be grounded right now and begging for your phone back.” Then she leaves.

Without a second to waste, Faith digs her hands into her badly creased jacket pockets, fishing around for her phone and almost forgetting about the tea she nearly spilled in the other hand. She finds it and lets out a sigh of relief.

“I’ve out grown the stage of being grounded. I’m seventeen not ten!” she yells out to her mum.

There’s no sound of her mum’s voice echoing up the stairs to her, just the tune of the kitchen radio playing a meatloaf classic ‘bat out of hell’. Rolling her eyes Faith places the half empty mug onto the bedside cabinet and sits up straight, sinking between two large feathered pillows. She doesn't do much for the next ten minutes, she just gazes at her bedroom window in a daydream. Strangely, she finds herself remembering the tall hooded figures she saw when she first walked into Erin’s study. The atmosphere had been thick and uncomfortable to walk in on. In a way she suspects that they didn't want their meeting with the owner of the Cupola to be disrupted, which was exactly what had happened when Faith and Kurt barged in. The image of their pupil-less blue eyes was playing over in Faith’s mind. No emotion, no feeling, nothingness leaking through the crystal blue.

Before she knows it, shes reaches under her pillow and pulls out a smooth pale stone. It still glows with a vibrant teal blue, illuminating her fingers in shades of sapphire. The beauty and charm that seeps from its hard yet flush surface, entwines itself with Faith’s eyes. Erin words circulates Faith’s mind, her voice unchanged even in her head ‘It acts like a tracking device, signaling your every location. Thats how we managed to find your were abouts. Fascinating is it not?’Faith closes her fingers in over the stone’s body. Cracks of light pierced through the gaps between her fingers. Small pimples spread up Faith’s arm as the terrifying memory surfaces. The stone made it clear where she lives in London, not only to the Fay people back at the Cupola, but to the creatures made from the dusky shadows hiding in street corners, hunting like wolves - Shades.

Her eyes widen with panic, as she reads the time displaying on her bedroom clock; 4:20pm. Verity’s family get together wasn’t the only thing that slipped her mind today, as she recalls meeting up with Kurt and the others at five. Damn it! Sliding the impulse stone back under one of her pillows she swings the duvets of her and jumps out of bed.She catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the way to the cupboard; wavy strands of hair stands out from her head, sleep lines visible across her face, and black bags sit shallow below her eyes from tiredness.Moving on into the cupboard, she paws through neatly folded t-shirts and any other clothing, pulling them out untidily into a heap on the ground.After finding something decent to wear: red checked shirt, jeans and a plain white t-shirt, she begins work on her hair. Resisting the urge to tie it back and be done with it, she brushes away the knots and tangled patches of hair. She combs her fingers through the finished result, letting it natural curling to shoulder hight.Faith’s hair is one of the features she shared with Verity, they both had naturally curly hair.

Author's Note

This is only a little extract of a scene in chapter 4 of The Heavenly Sequence. I would like people to review me on the style of my writting and if they find it easy to imagine and read. Dont worry to much about the setting and other details as the previous chapters have covered it. Thank you.