01. Welcome to Blackridge

Okay, I lied. I couldn’t help myself, so here’s the first chapter, I hope you like it. Please feel free to comment.

It began in a small town, as stories often do. It was a quiet place for the most part, a town on the Lachlan River in NSW, Australia. The town was friendly as little towns ever are to strangers, but even so when they saw certain people.. well, they believed their reasoning for not liking them on sight was justified by the odd things that seemed to follow them.

You see, the good folks of Blackridge had the unfortunate delusion that magic, for better or worse, was nothing but fiction. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter-Is-A-God type fiction. So when things that could not be explained away by reason and science occurred, they blissfully ignored it. Because if they ignored it, who was to say it was real? Certainly no one else in the Western World could still believe in those childrens tales, could they?

So yes, they did notice Raina Tibbits when she moved into the old Williamson house just outside of the main area of town, but if you ask them they’ll deny it. Because she’s too strange for them to acknowledge her existence without admitting that perhaps those old stories aren’t as fictitious as they previously thought. And this is where we meet the lady of the hour, Miss Raina Tibbits.

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The little grey kitten balancing precariously on a flower pot outside of the back door meowed, swiping at the fly screen and trying to get the attention of the woman inside. She was a pretty woman, dark hair, darker eyes and plenty of smiles to go around. Tutting good naturedly at the kitten she moved across to the pantry, pulling out a box of cat biscuits and moving to go outside and pour some on the cement for the little creature. In the kittens excitement at seeing the food it topped over, taking the flower pot and it’s violets with it. The kitten wasn’t hurt, but it stood, startled for a good minute after until Raina pointed out it’s food to it, after which the kitten was quite happy to cheer up and settle down to fill it’s tummy.

Shaking her head, causing her long hair to fall over from behind her shoulders, Raina smiled and returned to her cooking inside of the house. ‘Cats,’ she said to herself. ‘Silly things, they are.’ But despite herself she couldn’t seem to help her love of them. She was an animal person, she supposed.

Of course, that’s when she noticed she was burning her lunch. ‘Oh buggery!’ she exclaimed as she hastily pulled the baking dish out of the oven, though the heat seemed to pass through even the mitts more than it should have. Despite the faintly burnt smell it seemed that the dish was mostly alright – it was only shepherds pie, and if she trimmed the burnt pieces off Raina figured it would be fine. So she let it sit on the wooden chopping board on the bench to settle a little and cool enough that she wouldn’t burn herself… not that it even mattered, she supposed. She could heal anything, after all – but it didn’t mean she’d cherish burns until they were healed. Though she had known more than one person that would have enjoyed such pain.

On the wall, outside the kitchen there was an ancient mirror, the frame wrought in only slightly tarnished silver and various gems that were so… strange looking that that alone was enough for most to realize that the mirror wasn’t quite normal. There was even a series of diamonds along the frame that, upon closer inspection seemed to have real, live butterflies fluttering around in them. Not that many people even came into her house, let alone that close to any of the beautiful possessions within, of course. But it was this mirror that decided the break the quiet with a rather loud cry of ‘Rainy! Must you keep burning the food?!’

Raina snorted loudly when she heard the mirror speak, rolled her eyes and teased softly ‘You can’t eat, love. And you have no nose in the useful sense – don’t complain.’  Raina had stuck her head around the corner of the door when she said it, and after a moment she said ‘And don’t call me Rainy, please. It makes me sound terrible. Or, at least it makes me sound terribly depressing. Which I’m not, mostly. So shush.’ The mirror simple snickered at her, which ruined her good temper and made her slightly angry.

Moving further into the room, Raina crossed her arms and started saying the magic words that most people only knew from fairytales… ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall…’ she paused for a moment than said ‘Why do you care about food at all?’ Because of the nature of magic mirrors of this sort, the mirror couldn’t help but respond.

‘Lady Raina, thin and tall – I do not care about food at all.’ Oh, the joys of rhyming mirrors. of course, it only rhymed when it was activated by various versions of ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’. Thankfully. Raina’s mirror also seemed to have more of a sense of humour than most, and had picked up on her more and more frequent use of more modern language.

‘Why then, Mirror dear, do you make your opinion clear?’

The face on the mirror, a very manly face that it was smiled cheekily, but was forced to respond in rhyme again. ‘Because that is my job, you see. A mirror shows the truth to thee.’

With a shake of her head, ‘Speak freely again, Mirror.’ was proclaimed, the rhyming spell deactivated and his eyes flicked to the woman in front of him again and while he didn’t thank her, his smile warmed a little.. at least. Until she spoke again.

‘I haven’t a clue why I keep you around, you might scare the neighbours.. well, provided they don’t already think I’m dangerous.. for some reason.’

‘I’m a good little mirror when you have guests over.’ he said, it sounded pouty even to himself, but he couldn’t help it. He’d been owned by Raina.. well since before she was Raina. He had hoped she thought better of him by now, and nearly muttered something rude about her but she gave him a look. A very, very unfriendly looked and her eyes slipped from their human appearance when she did it.

‘Don’t start on me, please.’ she said, keeping her tone kinder than her eyes were. They had changed from a deep, rich brown to eyes that were silver around the edges of the iris, it melted into a rich blue and little flecks of violet were to be seen if one looked close enough. Despite the beauty and strangeness of it all, there was an unmistakeable hint of anger, hurt behind them. And it wasn’t really the Mirror’s fault. But the mirror sighed when he saw that look in her eyes, and a wave of sadness washed over him.

‘As you wish, milady.’

Turning away from him Raina went back to the kitchen and looked at the shepards pie. She was suddenly not very hungry at all and she placed a tea towel over it so that no blow flies would try and get in on the action and absently walked towards the back door and out into her yard.  Just beyond the yard the bush started. Above her the sky was an almost too bright blue, the sun stil strong and only getting higher. Oh, she missed the isles, so badly. She may have been here for two hundred years and change, but this could never compete with Europe, with Ireland, Wales, England. Even Scotland.  In the distance a kookaburra laughed and it seemed to echo in her mind.

Raina fell to the ground. The ground was hard, dry, unforgiving and it hurt.. but she didn’t care. She barely even noticed that she was bleeding… and where she bled the grass began to grow rapidly, cushioning her against the harsh ground. She cried, and the grass grew with flowers that belonged in fairy. Silver tulips and daisies, a single golden rose.

From behind her the little kitten saw this and wondered what was wrong. It did not understand, it only understood Rainia needed someone. The kitten knew that it was someone and it wandered cauiously over to Raina, who hidden behind her hair and the ever growing grass and flowers didn’t see the kitten coming and it jumped onto her lap, curring and rubbing against her. The effort by the ktiten to comfort her only made more tears come, but she patted the kitten gently and together in the thick, soft grass and amongst the strange flowers they both fell asleep after a little while. Each unsure if they were the comforter or the one needing comfort – but they both knew one thing: this was as close to home as they may ever get. And for once, the thought didn’t hurt.