THE BALLAD OF MIDWINTER || TOMMY SHELBY

PROLOGUE

The air was oddly warm for an early November morning. It was just before sunrise, a woman amber eyes had to adjust to the small golden rays of sunlight trickling over the rooftops like treacle and the birds were surely breaking out into their morning song. There weren't many people out in the streets at three o'clock in the morning; only the odd drunk pulling an all-nighter or sometimes the local factory workers heading out for an early shift. One could almost call the scene peaceful, a single few hours in the day when smoke was hanging in the air from the clanging factories there wasn't a thick cloud of Small Heath and the streets were filled with a serene silence rather than the screeching of a mother.
Today was different though. Today was the day that her and many others would depart from their homeland to serve in the war effort. She had dressed herself in a black high neck lace bralette, with a forest green cardigan that draped over her shoulders. Her skirt went all the way down above her ankles and placed her golden cross around her neck before wrapping her long curly hair in a delicate twist making sure none of her curls poked out. She didn't bother dusting her face with makeup or eyelashes in a thick, black wax and applying a blush lightly to her rounded cheeks like she normally would do on a Saturday night. Today she just added some eyeliner around her eyes and called it done. Her fingers traced over the crooked cross around her neck.

She wasn't rich nor was she poor. She had run away from her Grandfather who lived in Manchester to Small Hearth in Birmingham. Her Grandfather was a self-made man. He never shied away from that. At almost every dinner party he hosted with the likes of royalty or the upper classes he would brag about how he started as an immigrant worker that rose through the ranks. Although, She had come from a wealthy immigrant latino family and had been left savings from her parents when they passed. Without the savings that her parents had left her she would've been still in Manchester relying on her Grandfather's wealth. Doing so she cut all financial ties, coming to live in a small terraced house in the middle of Small Heath when she was barely seventeen.

She had emptied a basket of clean clothes on her bed and began to fold them when she felt his steely cold gaze on her. She could feel his aura that clung to him, far before his shadow even over the threshold of her bedroom. Her suitcase leaned near the doorway. She didn't bother to look up from her skirts, blouses, undergarments and some of his shirts that she stole. She could feel the low breeze following behind him; she felt the atmosphere appear to shift once his footsteps tore through it. Even in his youth when she felt the cast of his sudden appearance spread across her back as if it were the beam of the rising sun, that it was his presence that made him a force in each and every room he found himself occupying. For a City known for violence and bloodshed was as routine as the vert raising of the sun over a cold canal. Selena didn't bother to acknowledge his appearance in her doorway. His demeanor transcends the razor blades sewn into the peak of his cap or the golden watch she got for his birthday hanging out his waistcoat pocket. The trust was rare to most men, but all he had to do was step into the room for it to fall silent as she could hear the tiniest mouse feared to squeak. The intimidation and contaminated seepage of power, that some men found when they aimed the blade of their sword at the face of their enemy, came from the bare glance of his iced gaze. His face should be completely unflappable as if it were chiseled out of ice by the very hand of God himself, and yet his eyes of unalloyed and untouched icy blue that belonged in a place far from the smoke and smog of Birmingham commanded a forced which even leave Satan himself shaking. But there was one woman in England, Scotland and Ireland together who dared to battle with Tommy Shelby. She is dangerous alluring, one that could draw you in, only to drown you in a single shift in expression similar to siren and her song luring all who hear it towards them then dragging them to the bottom of the sea to be either eaten or drowned. The lucky ones crash their ships into rocks perishing long before the songstress could get to their body. But Tommy used his strong appearance in place of bloodshed when he could. It reminded her of who her grandfather was, intensity that came from that man of such composed and unnerving calm dignity
"You ought to start locking your door up at night," his voice broke through the void of silence that had settled over the morning engulfed shadows of her bedroom, listening to his words meld within the warm marigold glow of the nearby flickering candlelight. "you never know what kind of bad men and drunken scoundrels might come strolling right on in". The softest ghost of a knowing smirk tugged at the edges of her lips, as her fingers continued to work against the fabric of clean clothing she folded, setting them down against her crocheted quilt. She quickly made the smirk disappear from her face making sure no trace of it existed. She knew he hovered in the doorway, leaning his body weight against the deep stained maple door frame, nearly making it creak with its olden age and worn wood. The smoke that trailed from his cigarette creeped into the atmosphere of the quaint bedroom, seeping in a compact of friendly smell into the slightly humid air that curled itself around her senses. Forcing her lungs to inhale a deep breath tainted with the strong and unforgettable scent of Tommy Shelby.