Chapter 1 - Homecoming
Moon Phase: Full Moon (Night 1)
(Lìora POV)
I always forget how green East Texas is until I am driving straight into it.
Not the curated, campus‑approved green of UT’s landscaping, but the wild kind, pine needles thick as carpet, honeysuckle swallowing fence posts, and that humid, heavy air that wraps around you like a damp blanket. The kind of heat that makes your clothes stick the second you step outside. The kind that makes breathing feel like a part‑time job.
My Ford EcoSport hums along the county road, the engine giving that soft, stubborn rattle it’s had since the day I bought her used. She’s compact, bright blue, and judgmental in the way only a car with personality can be. The backseat and tiny hatch are stuffed with what I could cram in: clothes, shoes, my laptop, a box of books, and the essentials I couldn’t leave behind.
Everything else, the rest of my dorm life, is scheduled to be delivered in a few days. I have not told my parents that part yet. One shock at a time.
Home. I am nearly home. God help me.
I let the window down and the warm East Texas air slap me in the face. It smells like childhood, summers spent barefoot in the yard, swimming in the lake, and playing with friends. Like a place I swore I had outgrown but somehow ends up pulling me back in. It is like slipping into an old, worn‑out sweater: soft, familiar, comforting, even if it is stretched, faded, and does not quite fit anymore.
Austin never smelled like this. Austin smelled like concrete, sweat, coffee, politics, and too many expectations.
Coming home after sophomore year wasn’t the plan. I am not sure if coming home is a step forward or backward. I just know I needed a pause. A chance to breathe, to stop pretending I am fine. A chance to figure out why I feel like I am unraveling from the inside out. Like my skin does not fit or feel like my own. Like something inside me is stretching, testing the seams.
My phone buzzing in the cup holder pulls me out of my memories and back to reality.
Travis: He’ll see you at 3. Don’t be late. Jeff hates late.
I snort. That tracks. Jeff has been dramatic about everything since middle school.
Of course, Travis has already handled it. Travis has been my person since we were toddlers, the kind of friend who knows when I am spiraling before I do. He stayed here, went to Piney Hills Community College, works part‑time at The Pine & Grind, and somehow manages to be both the most grounded and most chaotic person I know.
I text back:
Me: Tell him I’m bringing my best “hire me” energy.
Travis: Bring your best “don’t sass the boss” energy instead.
Travis: Tell your mouth to behave.
Fair.
Me: No promises.
The Pine & Grind interview is at three. A job. A routine. Something to anchor me while I figure out whether I am going back to UT or admitting I have no idea what I am doing with my life.
It is barely noon, plenty of time to surprise my parents, get settled, calm them down, and mentally prepare.
I turn onto our street, a quiet loop of older brick houses shaded by towering pines. My parents’ place is the one with the Scottish flag hanging beside the Texas one, because my dad refuses to let go of the motherland even after twenty years in the heat.
I pull into the driveway and cut the engine. For a second, I just sit there, hands refusing to release the wheel.
I have not been home since Christmas. I have not told my college‑professor father I am not sure I am going back to college. I have not told them I feel… wrong. Like something inside me is not right and I do not understand what it means.
But they do not need to hear that right now.
Right now, I just know I need them, and I am praying they are happy to have their daughter home.
I grab my duffel, sling it over my shoulder, and walk up the front steps. The porch step announces me with its familiar creak, a groan that feels like a greeting.
I push the door open.
“Surprise!”
My mom appears from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. Her red hair is in a messy bun, and she is wearing her favorite scrubs with the tiny cartoon sheep. Her eyes widen, and then she’s across the room in three steps, arms around me, squeezing the air out of my lungs.
“Lìora! Ye’re early! Ye said tomorrow!”
“I may have overestimated,” I mumble into her shoulder. “Sorry.”
She pulls back, cupping my face like she is checking for cracks. “Och, lass… ye look a bit peely‑wally.”
“Thanks, Mum. Love you too.”
She swats my arm. “Dinna be cheeky. Ye know what I mean.”
My dad comes in from the hallway, glasses perched on the end of his nose, holding a stack of graded papers. He freezes when he sees me, then breaks into the biggest grin.
“There’s me lass!”
He hugs me too, slightly less crushing than Mom, but warm and steady all the same. He always smells like chalk dust and old books, even though he teaches at a community college now.
“Ye’re home early,” he says. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Just missed you guys.”
He studies me, the way he does with students he instinctively knows are not telling the whole truth, but lets it go with a soft, “Aye, well. Ye’re here now, that’s all that matters.”
“Come on,” Mom says, looping her arm through mine. “I made shortbread. And tea. And there’s leftover cottage pie if ye’re hungry.”
I laugh. “I’ve been home thirty seconds.”
“And ye’re probably starving,” she insists.
This is what I came home for.
Not the food. Not the familiarity. The feeling.
The feeling of being wanted and belonging.
I drop my bag by the stairs and follow them into the kitchen, letting the warmth of the house settle into my bones.
I do not tell them about the interview. I do not tell them about the dreams. I do not tell them about the strange heat in my chest during the last full moon. And I absolutely do not tell them the rest of my belongings are arriving on a truck in a few days.
I just sit at the table, eat shortbread, and listen to them talk about work and neighbors and the raccoon that keeps getting into the trash.
For a moment, everything feels normal.
But somewhere deep inside me, deeper than bone, deeper than breath, something seems to take a deep breath.
Something stirs.
Something is waking.
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