Nyx (ON HOLD)

First Day, Part I

I awoke from the nightmare just as dawn was beginning to poke its pearlescent blue fingers around the edges of the blackout curtains. The blankets were twisted from all my nighttime flailing, and somehow they'd managed to wind themselves about each of my limbs like tentacles. No wonder I'd dreamed about drowning.

And as for the other thing in the dream...

I shoved thoughts of the silver-haired girl aside, forcing myself to focus on the details of my bedroom to bring me back to sanity as I sat up, extricating myself from the labyrinth of bedding that was even now attempting to devour me. It wasn't hard; the hardwood floor was deathly cold, as though the planks had been hewn from ice. I found a pair of socks before anything else, and though they felt paper-thin, it was enough of a buffer to let me focus as I grabbed my towel and toiletries and crept down to the second floor.

My grandmother's bedroom door was closed, but the irregular sound of someone moving around echoed up from the first storey. I was already getting used to the pattern of her gait; it had to be her. Judging from the direction of it, Adaline was probably in the kitchen — and I hurriedly shut myself in the bathroom, not wanting to run into her until I'd at least collected myself a little.

The hot water was hypnotic, warming my chilled fingertips and feet after the chill journey downstairs, and under its spell I found myself unable to stop thinking about the girl I'd seen last night. She'd called me Melody, which irked me even more than usual; since it was my dream, after all, shouldn't she have called me Mel? I had to admit that she was beautiful, but I'd seen plenty of beautiful women before; glossily airbrushed magazine ads and commercials practically foisted nymphs on unsuspecting viewers wherever you looked nowadays. But the silver-haired girl was nothing like that; the telescope had clearly shown the proud way she held herself, and hinted at the strength in her slender limbs.

The telescope...a surge of humiliation stole over my skin, turning to nausea when it crept through my gut. I'd been a literal creeper last night; whatever had given me away, she'd known I was there, sensing my presence like a startled antelope.

That thought alone was enough to snap me out of my stupor, and I quickly shut off the water and dried myself. The huge oval mirror that hung over the sink had been shrouded in velvet-grey mist, and I swiped away a wide swath with the blade of my hand to regard my own ruddy-cheeked face.

"I am not a predator," I told myself sternly — but something deep twisted inside me, as though I knew I was lying to myself.

The only true predator in the house, the monstrous white cat with the eerie green eyes, was waiting in my attic bedroom. It was sprawled in my bed as I surmounted the last set of steps, probably trying to absorb whatever was left of my body heat — but as I arrived it gathered itself, rising from the bedding like a furry mushroom cloud and making the whole room shudder as it jumped down onto the floor.

I stared down at the cat stupidly as it padded toward me and took a seat beside the steps, like an overlarge chess piece that had come to life. Its eyes blinked slowly, and its pink tongue darted over the roots of its whiskers, as though cleaning itself from breakfast.

I checked my phone and a curse slipped from my lips as I saw it was far later than I'd thought. I must have dozed off under the shower's lullabye warmth — and I struggled into a pair of jeans and a striped grey-and-white shirt with a tiny pink heart embroidered just below my left collarbone. I pulled on my hoodie over that; if last night had been any kind of baseline, October here was positively arctic, and I wouldn't do myself any favors by spending the day freezing.

I unceremoniously dumped out the extraneous miscellany from my backpack, leaving only the essentials of notebooks and pens before grabbing it and hustling down to the bottom floor of the huge black house. It looked like it was sleeping in the daylight, the oil painting on the walls forgettable imitations of a forgettable original. The furniture was dark and ornately carved, but from the general careworn feeling of the place, they surely weren't recent acquisitions.