The Cause

1: Coffee at Darby's

Darby's Coconut Hut didn't serve coconuts and was located in a converted warehouse overlooking Wells Bay.  It was decorated in what could be called "Tiki Hut Chic".  Rather than mai tais it served coffee, the best in town.  Rana Smith breathed in the burnt, sugary aroma as she stepped into the shop.  

"Hey, Rana!" shouted Darby over the pulsing rhythms of reggae over the store's sound system, "Usual?"

"Thanks," she shouted back and dropped her bag on a table in the corner facing the window.  Sitting in the chair with her back to the wall, Rana could see the whole shop.  As usual, it was full on this Monday morning.

Eyes closed, Rana listened to her own heartbeat and forced her breath to match each beat, bringing her body into complete stillness.  She felt, rather than saw,  Darby place the steaming brew on the well worn table.  Rana sniffed and smiled opening her clear blue eyes.

"Thanks.  Busy this morning?" she said and wrapped her hands around her cup.

"Yep, top and bottom," he answered pointing to the ceiling.

"I'll be sure to stop up," Rana answered sipping the hot liquid.  

The ground floor was for humans.  Regular humans.  The sales people with earphones tethering them to laptops, the mothers grasping wriggling toddlers, the students highlighting more text than not, to them Darby's had only one floor.

To Rana, Darby and others who kept the secrets of Wellsville, it had two floors.  

Grabbing her mug and waving to Darby who was busy in a burst of rastafarian wiggling while creating a latte, Rana made her way to the second floor.  The second floor wasn't for humans, at least regular humans.  It was for other creatures all together.  The only thing in common between the extraordinary on the second floor and purely ordinary on the first was an addiction to caffeine in all it's glorious forms.