The Raevyn’s Wing- Excerpt

The Raevyn’s Wing is a fictional novel Yvonne is currently working on. She started it over a year ago and finally got around to working on it again this month. This is the finished first chapter (pre-editing and proofreading). The story will be told in three sections: Before the Darkness, The Darkness and After the Darkness. Please leave a comment letting us know what you think, so far!

The Raevyn's Wing

Chapter 1

She woke up once again with the sun shining brightly in her eyes. She cursed herself silently for once again forgetting to close the curtains the night before, burying herself in her deep sea of blankets to block out the sun. Her fiery red hair was hanging in her face, somewhat annoyingly. Her hair smelled of cigarette smoke, which brought back random thoughts and visions of the night before. She quickly pushed those thoughts away and swung her legs off the side of her bed. When she eased herself up she also began to notice that both her arms and legs were very sore. She pondered for a moment why she felt so much pain, but that thought was interrupted by the ring of her cell phone. She could hear the obnoxious ring of her phone, but she wasn’t having any luck finding its whereabouts. The phone stopped ringing, finally, so she stopped looking for it. She remembered that she had much more important things to be doing right now, and she could go back to her game of hide and seek with the phone at a later time.

Onyx Raevyn Falls had always been a free spirit. When she chose the path of Paganism it didn’t really surprise any of the people in her life, friends or family. Then when she opened her own shop she found more of a welcome for her gifts and concoctions than she had expected. Onyx was a truly blessed woman, her life filled with friends and a career she loved. But it wouldn’t be so great for long. Something was coming. Things would be changing in the very near future, in fact this change had already begun to take place the night before. Onyx just hadn’t given herself a chance to remember yet. The spiritual path she followed kept her on the right side of karma, for the most part. None of this mattered right now though. Right now she had her store to run, and she needed to be there for those Black Friday fanatics that were probably already camped out in her tiny parking lot, and likely had been there all night. She showered, got dressed and hopped onto her bicycle and peddled on down the road. She had a few unique items in her bike’s basket to add to the store’s inventory. One of the things people loved about her store was the ever changing items that were always becoming available.

Onyx’s shop was conveniently located a mere two blocks from her studio apartment. This greatly helped with her attempt at a greener lifestyle since she had absolutely no need for a vehicle. Her legs and her bicycle got her everywhere that she needed to be. The shop, The Raevyn’s Wing, was basically a small hole in the wall of her little hometown, Fairhaven. She always got a lot of customers and today was promising to be an even busier day than normal. There were no parking spots left in her twenty car parking lot, and there were more people than that huddling outside in the winter chill waiting to get in. Onyx greeted everyone as she road by on her way to the back door of her little store. She hopped off her bike, unlocked the door, pushed her bike inside in front of her and shut the door behind her, locking it again. Flipping the lights on Onyx noticed something seemed different about her favorite place in the world. What was different wasn’t openly visible to her, it was more just a feeling to begin with. When she opened up the door to her office she let out a loud curse and jump back about a foot. There was a strange man sitting at her desk, someone she did not recognize at all.

At her startled reaction the strange man lifted his head from whatever paper it had been that he was perusing. He had an evil and twisted smirk imposed on his face, she thought, and his eyes almost seemed to glow with an otherworldly red hue. She really thought she must be hallucinating, but then the man spoke her name and it all became reality. “Onyx Raevyn, How are you my dear?” the stranger questioned. “How am I” Onyx retorted, surprise filling her voice. “I am angry and I am confused. Who the heck are you? Why and how are you in my store, in my office?” Her voice was now more shaky than surprised, but she somehow managed to stay strong. She kept her eyes on the stranger when she spoke to him, not even blinking. He said “I am hear because you need me to be here. I got in because you wanted me to be able to.” All Onyx could do was shake her head in disbelief.

Now the stranger pulled her back out of her paralyzed state with a few simple words. “ You need to open your store now” he said. Almost as if she were under someone else’s control Onyx turned on her heal and walked out of her office. She walked right to the front door and unlocked it, her hand shaking. The she flipped the sign to OPEN. She smiled falsely at each customer as they shuffled through the front door, each asking if she’d had a happy turkey day. She just smiled more and nodded at each of them, lost deeply in her own mind. When the crowd had all filled into the store she shut the door and suddenly remembered the new items she had tucked in the basket of her bicycle. She slipped to the back door quickly to grab them, forgetting all about the man in her office since the door to it was closed. She put the new items up by the checkout. There were some relaxation bath salts and some cold weather candles. She thought that they would be both great impulse buys and great stocking stuffers. It was 8am when Onyx opened The Raevyn’s Wing and now it was 10am and her sales for the day were already at $1,200. This was a record for Onyx, even since she’d opened just a year ago.

By lunch time, when Onyx always closed the store from noon to 1pm, each of the new items she had put out in the morning were sold. In just four hours of business she had made nearly $5,000 and her head was full of happy thoughts. The happy thoughts all withered away when she remembered the stranger who had surprised her that morning in her office. She opened the door with some trepidation, only to find the stranger was mysteriously gone. There was a piece of paper on her desk with a brief note written upon it. It read: Meet me in Death Alley at midnight or I will not be able to help you. “Help me what?” Onyx asked out loud to no one at all, since she was all alone in the store for the first time since she got to work the morning of this crazy day. Then suddenly she remembered that she had a lunch date, and she was glad to realize it was at the deli on the corner, which was only three doors down from her store. This was good, she wouldn’t be too late.

Onyx’s mom, Spirit Dawn Falls-Warnier, was waiting for her daughter and smiled when she walked into the door of the deli. Her mother, who went by Dawn, a slender red head, just like Onyx herself, had just gotten remarried on Samhain after a whirlwind romance. Onyx’s father had died just twp days after she’d opened The Raevyn’s Wing. Onyx was heartbroken at his passing, and so was her mother. The store stayed closed for two weeks after only two days of business. This might have killed someone else’s business, but it didn’t seem to have hurt hers now that a year had gone by. After her father’s death and the mourning period, it was obvious that life had to go on again. And then, just as quickly, love blossomed again for Dawn. Her new husband, Basil Warnier, was just as free spirited as Onyx and easily accepted all of the odd quirks of the Falls family. Onyx loved him and was happy her mother had found someone so suitable. During lunch Onyx and Dawn spoke of the upcoming Yule holiday, as Dawn was being slowly introduced into the world of Paganism by her well versed daughter. But time flies when you are having fun, and lunch was over. Onyx hugged her mother and headed back to work. Onyx hadn’t told her mother about the strange visitor. She was afraid that she would sound crazy or something, or that she just might put her mother in danger.

As she walked back, her mind filled with fear and horrible thoughts, Onyx pondered her reasoning for not sharing this mornings strange events with her mother. The fear of possible disbelief and fear that bringing her mother into it would put her in harm were the main reasons for keeping her mom in the dark. But she wondered if she would have been better to tell her, give her some warning that something odd was going on. But then she didn’t even know if there was any possibility of harm to anyone or what was really going on. This lack of knowledge and answers was also another reason she was afraid. She hated not knowing. She wondered if this was all just a dream. She opened the shop back up and never stopped thinking about the midnight meeting, right up until closing the store at 10pm.

Customers had begun to come in less and less throughout the afternoon and in the last couple hours of business she only had about three people come in just to browse, but no buyers. But with a total days sales of over $10,000, which was more than her little store usually even made every other week total. She was happy for the silence in her closed shop and she was able to get some much needed dusting and organizing done while she attempted to clear her mind of thoughts of her pending midnight rendezvous with the stranger. She double checked that the door was locked and the sign was changed to CLOSED. She then shut off the lights, pulled her bike out the back and locked up. In a hurry to get home and have some time to relax and eat, she quickly hopped on her bike and quickly sped down the two blocks to home. She ate some leftover turkey and mashed potatoes and relaxes in front of the television set to watch her DVR’d episode of “The Secret Circle,” from the night before. Slowly time began to creep up on her and she waited nervously. Ironically, the meeting place, Death Alley, was right behind her apartment building so she needn’t leave until about ten to midnight. She turned of the television at around 11:30pm and decided she should be as prepared as possible, safety-wise, for this meeting. She had no idea what kind of trouble she’d be walking into and she wanted to be able to defend herself. Onyx changed into a dark pair of jeans, a black turtleneck (to fight the chill of the night) and she slid on her black leather combat boots, lacing them up tight. She topped her ensemble with her black leather trench coat. She was feeling, and looking, very “Matrix” at the moment. She found her trusty dagger and strapped it to her hip, after checking it for sharpness. Lastly, she grabbed up a protection talisman from her jewelry chest and placed it around her neck, then she headed out with door, within minimal confidence.