'An unusually bold girl mistakenly wanders into another dimension only to fall in love with a dangerous new world ... and the boy fated to fight for its survival.'
a few lines from FIVE-FIFTEEN post M-F on my instagram account: mech.morris
(Each day's post is added to the book here on the blog. Scroll down to read. Enjoy!)
(Each day's post is added to the book here on the blog. Scroll down to read. Enjoy!)
FIVE-FIFTEEN
Chapter One
Chapter One
Cheyenne Livingston-Long circled the lamp post, round and round. Snow frosted her hat and the shoulders of her coat in thickening layers of creamy white. Numb toes, numb fingers; she could kill for coffee. But as luck would have it, the nearest Starbucks was three blocks away. She didn't dare walk it. Her reasons were many, if convoluted:
a) she'd been kept after school [may Ms. Visner rot]
b) she'd failed her Chem final [hello, social life]
c) she'd taken an elbow to the jaw in P.E. [assailant unknown]. But they'd pay. Probably.
Cheyenne stopped. She brushed the cold fluff from her clothes and, feeling somewhat nauseous, glared down the darkening street. The bus was late.
Crazed for caffeine, she continued to trudge. Twenty times around the post became forty. Forty became eighty. She passed two hundred and wondered, briefly, what kept her there, turning a narrow ring of once knee-high snow into icy gruel. It was anybody's guess.
Three hundred came and went and still she circled, moving counter-clockwise like water round an unobtainable drain. She looked up into the falling snow. Counter-clockwise seemed so natural. She was in the Northern Hemisphere, after all.
A car passed, its bright taillights disappearing in a strange fog. Silently, she cursed her stubborn faith in public transit. "Where is that worthless bus?" The words turned white and shifty then vaporized as they were spoken. Another car passed, then another. Cheyenne took this as an omen--a good one--that some unknown traffic artery, somewhere up the line, had received at least a temporary stent. It was about time. She had just finished five hundred and fifteen turns around the lamp post and her stamina was temporarily shot. She stopped, pulled her grandfather's relic watch from her coat pocket and flatly stated: "Hello weird." The watch read 5:15.
She looked up, her grand-daddy's watch growing warm in her hand--and saw trees. No street. No bus stop. No light post. No cars. Just trees. Lots of them.
A pock-faced sliver of moon pour light through naked branches. The moon seems farther away than usual. Or maybe brighter. Cheyenne didn't know; she'd never been a moon person and anyway, she had more immediate problems. Or so she thought.
Not quite ready to panic, she dug her cell phone from her back pack. It was her window on the world, a fabulous screen-sized link to humanity. She used it sparingly, fearing the battery loss. Now it was blank, save for the reflected trees. Unresponsive. Dead as a door nail as her mother used to say. Cheyenne didn't really know what her mother had meant. Door nails, after all, had no claim among the living.
The trees, which at first had seemed normal enough, lengthened suddenly, their branches tapering. In its indigo universe, the moon divided like a massive cell--two orbs over-lapping. Then four. Fear shot through Cheyenne as feftly as an Olympian's arrow. This was alien. Even for the corner of Jasper and Baird.
Something hooted. An owl? Cheyenne didn't know--she'd never heard one up close and personal. The hoot came again, louder this time, and decidedly menacing. So Cheyenne hooted in return. It seemed the obvious thing to do.
Then through the trees she clomped, toward what seemed a broad, expansive plain. Or perhaps it was a meadow--traversing knee-deep snot and dodging strange trees has been known to confuse even the most hardy of folk. An odd rumbling accompanied her; a noise not unlike water moving over loose stones. She had no idea what it was. There was no water, not that she could see. Just moonlight and snow.
Being new to the environment, Cheyenne was cluelessly unaware of the growing throng behind her. But a throng there was. As she clomped on, the pack grew until countless hungry beasts drove from every corner of the near acreage toward her. Had she known she would have run, and thus been devoured immediately. But tromping was foreign to the small and clever animals forming her trail. It made them curious. Uncertain. They followed Cheyenne to the meadow, content for the moment to track her, but salivating in anticipation of an easy meal.
Their pursuit sounded much like water, rushing over loose stone.
Shelter loomed ahead. Or so Cheyenne hoped. Because despite her cumbersome but steady progress, she felt an uncanny need to take cover, and fast. She tossed her back pack, committing to return for it at dawn. She had homework due on Monday, after all. The shelter was near now--twenty feet. Ten. Covered in bizarre symbols, it was much like a dolmen. Not that Cheyenne had remote notions of such things.
a) she'd been kept after school [may Ms. Visner rot]
b) she'd failed her Chem final [hello, social life]
c) she'd taken an elbow to the jaw in P.E. [assailant unknown]. But they'd pay. Probably.
Cheyenne stopped. She brushed the cold fluff from her clothes and, feeling somewhat nauseous, glared down the darkening street. The bus was late.
Crazed for caffeine, she continued to trudge. Twenty times around the post became forty. Forty became eighty. She passed two hundred and wondered, briefly, what kept her there, turning a narrow ring of once knee-high snow into icy gruel. It was anybody's guess.
Three hundred came and went and still she circled, moving counter-clockwise like water round an unobtainable drain. She looked up into the falling snow. Counter-clockwise seemed so natural. She was in the Northern Hemisphere, after all.
A car passed, its bright taillights disappearing in a strange fog. Silently, she cursed her stubborn faith in public transit. "Where is that worthless bus?" The words turned white and shifty then vaporized as they were spoken. Another car passed, then another. Cheyenne took this as an omen--a good one--that some unknown traffic artery, somewhere up the line, had received at least a temporary stent. It was about time. She had just finished five hundred and fifteen turns around the lamp post and her stamina was temporarily shot. She stopped, pulled her grandfather's relic watch from her coat pocket and flatly stated: "Hello weird." The watch read 5:15.
She looked up, her grand-daddy's watch growing warm in her hand--and saw trees. No street. No bus stop. No light post. No cars. Just trees. Lots of them.
A pock-faced sliver of moon pour light through naked branches. The moon seems farther away than usual. Or maybe brighter. Cheyenne didn't know; she'd never been a moon person and anyway, she had more immediate problems. Or so she thought.
Not quite ready to panic, she dug her cell phone from her back pack. It was her window on the world, a fabulous screen-sized link to humanity. She used it sparingly, fearing the battery loss. Now it was blank, save for the reflected trees. Unresponsive. Dead as a door nail as her mother used to say. Cheyenne didn't really know what her mother had meant. Door nails, after all, had no claim among the living.
The trees, which at first had seemed normal enough, lengthened suddenly, their branches tapering. In its indigo universe, the moon divided like a massive cell--two orbs over-lapping. Then four. Fear shot through Cheyenne as feftly as an Olympian's arrow. This was alien. Even for the corner of Jasper and Baird.
Something hooted. An owl? Cheyenne didn't know--she'd never heard one up close and personal. The hoot came again, louder this time, and decidedly menacing. So Cheyenne hooted in return. It seemed the obvious thing to do.
Then through the trees she clomped, toward what seemed a broad, expansive plain. Or perhaps it was a meadow--traversing knee-deep snot and dodging strange trees has been known to confuse even the most hardy of folk. An odd rumbling accompanied her; a noise not unlike water moving over loose stones. She had no idea what it was. There was no water, not that she could see. Just moonlight and snow.
Being new to the environment, Cheyenne was cluelessly unaware of the growing throng behind her. But a throng there was. As she clomped on, the pack grew until countless hungry beasts drove from every corner of the near acreage toward her. Had she known she would have run, and thus been devoured immediately. But tromping was foreign to the small and clever animals forming her trail. It made them curious. Uncertain. They followed Cheyenne to the meadow, content for the moment to track her, but salivating in anticipation of an easy meal.
Their pursuit sounded much like water, rushing over loose stone.
Shelter loomed ahead. Or so Cheyenne hoped. Because despite her cumbersome but steady progress, she felt an uncanny need to take cover, and fast. She tossed her back pack, committing to return for it at dawn. She had homework due on Monday, after all. The shelter was near now--twenty feet. Ten. Covered in bizarre symbols, it was much like a dolmen. Not that Cheyenne had remote notions of such things.
