Chapter 1
Morning slid into the town like a held breath.
The fog hadn’t lifted, not fully. It curled between the pines and clung to the gravel roads, shrouding power lines in ghost-white coils. Nya Aheri stood barefoot in the doorway of her studio, a chipped mug cupped between her palms, watching the mist roll through like it had somewhere to be. Her fingers were stained with dried clay under the nails, her thumbnail chipped from wedging too roughly yesterday. A sliver of steam lifted from her tea, sweetened with clove and the last of the honey.
The air smelled like pine needles, damp stone, and the faint sharpness of woodsmoke—some neighbour down the road lighting their stove for warmth. Even inside, her toes curled against the cold. She hadn’t lit the space heater yet. The silence made it easier to think.
A record played quietly from the turntable tucked into the corner—crackling old soul, one of those thrift store finds with a woman on the cover wearing a golden dress and an expression like she was done with the world. Nya liked her. She understood her. The woman hadn’t smiled, but she meant something.
The studio was the size of a small garage—because it had been one. Years ago, the landlord had thrown up drywall and told her it was “artist-ready.” The light slanted in from high windows she couldn’t reach without a ladder, hitting the wooden table in patches. Sculpting tools were scattered across it, half-dried slabs of clay wrapped in plastic sheets like wounded things waiting to be mended.
Nya set the mug down and pressed her palm flat to the center of her newest piece—a rounded, shoulder-height form that looked something like a torso and something like a wave. She didn’t name her sculptures. They simply were. Half the time, she gave them away. Quiet offerings, pressed into the hands of people who needed them. Some had ended up in gardens. One had been smashed in front of her by a man who said art was indulgent. She hadn’t picked up the pieces. She left them in the dirt like bones.
Her hands moved without thinking. She rolled a coil, added to the base, smoothed the seam. She worked in rhythms—roll, score, press, smooth. Her mind wandered, as it always did when the silence stretched long enough. Thoughts swirled and settled. Sometimes they were about her mother, back in Nairobi, who didn’t understand why anyone would move to a place like this. Sometimes they were about that aching space in her chest that no one could name. Most days, she thought of nothing. That was the goal.
The old analog clock ticked louder than it needed to. 8:43 a.m. She needed to fire a batch by noon if she wanted it cooled by Friday.
Nya paused. Stood straight. Cracked her neck to one side, then the other. The braid she’d tied the night before was loose now, fraying down her back. She wiped her hands on the towel tucked into her waistband, then walked to the little shelf by the door where she kept her finished pieces. A tiny crescent moon, smooth and glazed in deep blue. A hollow, faceless woman with ample hips. She turned the second one over in her hand. Too heavy. Not for selling. Maybe for giving.
Giving made her feel too much. Still, she kept doing it.
She didn’t look out the window often, but today she did. The fog had begun to thin, just barely. Enough to make out the road. Enough to see the first flicker of movement from across the street—a truck parking, someone stepping out. Denim jacket, dark braid, tall and slow-moving. A stranger.
Nya blinked once, then turned away.
The record ended with a hiss. The silence returned.
She turned on her feet, already thinking about the next song she’d play when her train of thought was interrupted by her phone buzzing. She dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. The screen lit up. It was her mother.
Nya wanted to ignore the call. It would’ve been easy—later, she could say she was asleep, or working. However she thought of her mother back home, staying up late to call because she knew the time difference was great and she didn’t want to impose on her daughter’s schedule. With a sigh, Nya swiped right and accepted the call.
“Hi mummy,” her mother’s excited voice filtered through her phone speaker.
“Hi!” Nya said back, trying to mimic her mother’s tone. It came out stiff—like her mouth remembered the shape of joy, but not the feeling.
The conversation proceeded with the usual niceties between mother and daughter. She made sure to tell her mother only what she wanted to hear, even if it was a lie.
Are you eating enough?
She told her about the hearty stew she’d made last night—lentils, carrots, the works. Total fiction. She’d had toast.
Are you going to church?
She spun another story about going to a nonexistent church down the road and joining the choir. Her mother was duly impressed.
When are you going to bring a nice man home?
It was here that she stuttered. It was almost reflex now for her to clarify that she was a lesbian, that the closest thing to a man being in her home would be her male cat, Salem. It was in moments like these that she remembered her reasons for leaving home. The crushing weight of her parents’ expectations, some which she could never meet.
“Well?” her mother asked, that familiar tension curling in her voice. Nya glanced around the room, as if the right words might be written on the walls.
“I-I mean I’ve been on a couple of dates,” she stuttered,” but none of them worked out. Plus I’m not really interested in relationships at the moment. You know that.” That’s the response she always defaulted to. She wasn’t interested in a relationship. She just hadn’t met a man good enough.
Her mother huffed in disappointment – or was it anger? – and Nya prepared herself for the stream of complaints that would follow. All picking at her shabby appearance, her unreasonably high standards, or her cold avoidant personality and how she really needed to ‘put herself out there’.By the end of the call Nya was feeling worse than she did before the whole ordeal, like she often did after talking to her mother. Maybe she should’ve just ignored the call. She never learned.
She decisively set her phone to DND in case her mother tried calling again, although she knew that probably wouldn’t be happen. Her mother, thankfully, only called once a week. With that horrible start to her morning, she set to tidying up her room. There wasn’t much to tidy—just dust, unfinished pottery, and the quiet reminder that this wasn’t a home, not really. She dreamed of moving into a better home, an actual apartment with a bigger floorplan. Somewhere she didn’t fall asleep breathing in clay dust, or wake up with smudges on her laundry from work that never stopped. Somewhere she could actually live. It was actually ironic how she had basically run away from home to do that yet boxed herself up in a different set of limitations.
Her dreams were sadly unattainable. She didn’t make much from selling her pottery. Not enough to consider it a steady income. She worked shifts at a botanical shop in town that paid most of her bills but that wasn’t enough to save up for a new home.
When that was done, she made a start on her breakfast and putting some cat food out for Salem. The wisp of a thing slid out from some unknown hiding place as soon as he heard the pour of the dry pellets hitting his metal bowl. Nya paused to pet him except he casually ignored her fingers and slinked over to his food.
Ungrateful little thing. She smiled fondly.
Her meal wasn’t anything great. She warmed the last of her tea that was still in the kettle and topped her mug off, then made some more toast and an omelette. The toast was awfully dry and the eggs tasted flat, but it would have to do.
Even though it was a Saturday she had nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Her first months here, she’d wasted her days scrolling through her ex friends’ posts. They didn’t talk anymore, not since she’d graduated uni and left the country. Still, she’d insert her presence into their pictures and pretend she was there, living life with them.
God, wasn’t she pathetic. She laughed, but the sound was void of any humour.
She got up and went back to working on her sculpture.
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The air had shifted.
It wasn’t just the hour—though the sky had gone from ash-grey to a washed-out blue, the kind of colour that signaled the day was almost over, but not quite gone—it was the kind of chill that settled in quietly, threading itself into your sleeves, your hair, your thoughts. The kind of chill that made silence feel heavier.
Nya pulled her coat tighter around herself as she walked downhill, the damp gravel crunching beneath her boots. The call with her mother still echoed somewhere in her bones, tucked between her shoulder blades like a bruise she couldn’t quite reach. She hadn’t planned to leave the house today, but the stillness of the studio was unbearable. Every corner felt like it was listening. Judging.
So she walked.
The streets of Carndale were quiet this time of day. Most people had retreated indoors—nursing coffee mugs, counting coins, arguing softly in living rooms. Nya liked it this way. No strangers trying to smile at her. No one asking how long she’d lived here, or whether she liked it.
She wasn’t sure about that yet.
Everything here felt unfinished—streets dissolving into mist, thoughts fading before they formed. Late afternoon had a way of folding the town in on itself, turning color down like a dial. Just that hour in between, when the world exhaled and nothing demanded anything of you.
She tucked her scarf a little tighter as she stepped past the half-shuttered barbershop. The sign above it had lost most of its lettering, so it simply read ERSHOP, the paint flaking like a sunburn. The air carried the scent of distant woodsmoke, and her breath came out in white wisps.
She dipped into the corner shop out of habit more than need. The place always smelled faintly of wood polish, wet paper, and cardamom, and the shelves leaned inward like they were conspiring. Still, it was quiet, and the fluorescent lighting was kind on her tired eyes.
She grabbed a tin of cat food—Salem was picky and refused the cheaper brand—and then a few other things: instant noodles, a pack of gum, a bar of soap she didn’t need but liked the scent of.
The cashier barely looked up as she set the items down, the bell above the door jangling faintly behind her. Two older women hovered near the stand with the daily paper, plastic-wrapped and a week out of date. Nya didn’t mean to listen, but the store was small and the voices soft and close.
“Have you seen the new girl they hired down at the auto shop?”
“Mm. Tall one?”
“Yeah. Real quiet. Tattoos all up her arms. Keeps to herself mostly. Moved into that back unit above the laundromat, I think.”
“Oh, her. Dakota, right? Something like that.”
Nya froze mid-reach for her change.
“She’s hard to miss. Braid down her back, like a rope. I saw her yesterday, crouched over one of those ancient pickups, arms all grease and ink. Looked like she belonged under the hood, honestly.”
“She’s new, but the boys down there already like her. Say she doesn’t talk much, just gets things done.”
Nya’s hand closed around the coins on instinct, but her mind was elsewhere now—locked on a name. Dakota. Her skin prickled. It wasn’t an uncommon name. It didn’t have to mean anything.
Still, the description sat heavy in her chest. The braid. The tattoos. The silence.
She stepped out into the dusk, the bell’s echo still clinging to the back of her coat. Outside, the air had grown colder. The sky had shifted to an even deeper navy, and the streetlamps flickered to life one by one with a soft buzz.
She held the plastic bag in one hand, swinging slightly with her stride. In the other, she held the image of someone crouched over a bike, ink curling down her arms like ivy, eyes full of something sharp and quiet.
She didn’t know why it stuck in her chest like that.
She just knew she’d walk past the auto sho tomorrow.
Maybe not stop. Maybe just glance. Maybe just…look.
Just once.
.
