Prologue
Pulling into the driveway, stepping out her truck Lyra took a deep breath, after ten years she was home. Her lodge set into the hillside, slightly away from the lazy country road, that took you into the rest of the town. Turning to take in the view, the expansive glistening lake giving way to a meadow with grasses as tall as trees. Surrounded by vast rolling hills and further back mountains still capped in snow. Taking in a lung full of the crisp spring air, grabbing her bags she headed into her new home.
The lodge had stood here unused and unloved for close to a decade, having been in the past the place where all the locals gathered for every major social event, the barn at the back having held more dances than one could count in its time. A large albeit pealing façade of wooden cladding once painted white, it was showing its age. The steps up to the porch were bowing with some of the decking boards missing or caved through. Lyra took a deep breath she had a lot of work to do to get the place up and running for the summer season.
Taking one last glance at the view Lyra felt that familiar twinge in her chest, a sensation she hadn’t felt since the last time she was here. The faintest feeling, she could only equate to an electric shock. Dropping her bags, she took a second to calm her breath till the sensation had abated, then carried on into the house, having to put her wait into pushing open the large oak door.
Thankfully she had made sure that electricity water and gas had all been sorted before she arrived. Not that the lights in the entrance way made but of a dent in the gloom. But she was going to get her own quarters at least livable first before tackling the house. The door to the side of the entrance taking her down to the basement which would be her home.
*****
After spending close to a week of sweeping floors, stripping ancient wallpaper off the shiplap, and varnishing to bring out the wood grain. Her wee home now furnished with her furniture from her old flat. The relief she felt to have a bed again and not the godforsaken blow-up bed. Lyra sat on the good side of the porch steps a steaming mug of coffee in her hands, it was just gone 7am and the residue or a glorious sunrise, the warm red glow disappearing behind the hills. It was a view she had seen every morning since she got here and couldn’t think of a time she wouldn’t be in awe of that view.
In the week Lyra had been here the strange feeling of an electric shock in her chest hadn’t abated and was now just like a dull ache, worse through the night getting a full night’s sleep seemed to be a thing of the past. In the ten years she had lived up in the city with her parents till they split, he hadn’t felt the pain ever. She had been tested as a child but with seemingly no cause and otherwise being fit and healthy it had been left with just some pills for indigestion and left to just get on with life.
