Shinelle first draft: Chapter Five

When it was dinner time she she was invited to eat with the family. Saffora had come out to tell her, and let her know they were having hamburgers and grilled veggies. It sounded pretty good.

Except she couldn’t eat meat. Pixies didn’t have robust enough digestive systems for it, and lived on plant sustenance alone. It’s how she’d always lived.

In the back of her head she knew she also wanted to avoid seeing Balaton. She was a full grown woman and had let him get under her skin with stereotypes and a smirk. She didn’t want to face him.

Still, she needed to eat something. She thought she could decline the meat without offending even.

Pushing through the door and down the hallway to the kitchen, she resolved she’d act as though nothing were the matter. Nothing happened that morning, she just didn’t like meat, and she’d been in her RV decorating all afternoon because she was settling in.

A plate had already been dished for her. “I appreciate you considering me and preparing enough for me,” She said, “but I really don’t eat animal products. It gives me stomach aches.”

The only response, at first, was Saffora nodding and moving the hamburger patty to Balaton’s plate. Once Shinelle sat down he decided to make a comment.

“Just another way your kind are weak.”

“Balaton, you will keep those thoughts to yourself.” Sir’s reproach was paired with a sharp look. His son just made a face at Sir and Shinelle both and took a big bite of hamburger.

The doorbell rang, and the guest walked right in. It made Shinelle think it wasn’t that different of a place after all. Until she saw who it was.

“Hello, Genta, what brings you here?” Saffora stood as she greeted the man with red skin and maroon hair. He was standing and clearly staring at Shinelle. “Oh, you haven’t met our new ward yet, this is Shinelle.”

She lifted her hand in a little wave that he returned. “I was just returning your soup pot, mom says thanks.” He handed over the pot. It was huge.

With a smile, Saffora took the pot and glanced between Shinelle and Genta, who was still staring at her. “I’m just glad I could help.”

Balaton had noticed the staring too. “Take a picture dude, then you can stop making Shinelle uncomfortable.” She looked at him and saw he looked annoyed.

“Sorry, you just look exactly like a pixie.” Shinelle could understand this, I guess, but she still didn’t like how his eyes felt on her.

“She was found with the pixies, but you can see she’s got a good amount of demon in her,” Sir said. “You can stay for dinner if you want. We have plenty.”

Shinelle wasn’t sure about it, but had found that most people improved after some time together. Still, she was glad when he shook his head. “Shame,” She said.

“You even sound like a pixie.”

“There’s a lot about me that’s like a pixie.”

Balaton snorted, “You’re supposed to be half demon too, where’s all your demon traits?” He turned his face back down to his dinner when both Sir and Shinelle glared at him.

Putting one hand behind his head, Genta said, “Well I better get going. The whole family’s here to visit.”

“Then we’ll see you another time,” Saffora said, sitting back down at the table. “Have fun with your cousins.”

He turned to go, but his face stayed towards Shinelle. “It was nice to meet you,” She said. There was no reason not to be polite. Even if he wasn’t.

She wasn’t quite sure, but she thought as Genta turned away he was blushing. She wasn’t the only one to notice. “He could do better hiding his crush, it’s going to be awkward when we have to work together now.”

“We have to work together, why not him too?” He scoffed and it rubbed Shinelle the wrong way. Somehow everything he did rubbed her the wrong way. “What’s your problem?”

He put his elbows on the table, intertwining his fingers and putting on a very serious face. “I don’t have one. Do you? Let’s talk about it.”

Sir looked over at Balaton and said, “Get your elbows off the table.”

“And leave Shinelle be, I want her stay here to be pleasant,” Added Saffora.

The rest of dinner passed with Balaton largely ignoring the discussion the rest had, but he glanced often at Shinelle. He’d look away anytime their eyes met. She wasn’t sure what it was really about, but it was much less uncomfortable than Genta’s staring had been.

The next morning, it seemed like it was still the middle of the night when there was a knock on the RV door and a voice yelling, “You better hustle if you want breakfast before we go to work!” Then footsteps away and silence.

Shinelle knew whoever it was wasn’t kidding around and found that a stack of clothes had been left at the door when she opened it. Demon clothes, probably Saffora’s.

She gratefully brought the clothes in and picked out a dress to go with her regular leather pants and boots. Something that felt more like herself than anything else in the pile. Before she left for the main house, where she assumed breakfast was, she put the clothes neatly in the shelves of the bedroom area.

This seemed to be what pushed her past the time limit because a glass of juice was shoved in one of her hands at the door to the house, and a rolled up pancake in the other.

“Eat fast, we’ve got work to do,” Said Sir as he gave them to her. Behind him was who she had to assume was his son.

The son was well built and looked about as alert as she felt. He grunted as he passed her towards the field across the road in front of the house.

She shoved as much of the pancake in her mouth as she could and poured in the orange juice after to make it easier to chew and swallow, all the while listening to the instructions Sir was giving her.

“We need to weed the corn field and get the wheat watered. You’ll weed with Balaton and when I’m done watering I’ll be doing inventory in the cave.”

She was expecting more, but with that Sir walked off in one direction and the son, Balaton, walked in another. She followed Balaton and choked down the rest of her food. The realization that she’d have to be figuring out what was expected of her on her own was unsurprising, but not what she was hoping for.

Apparently she wasn’t the only one who was disappointed. “You just drink your juice, I’ve got some work to do.” Like she was five.

“I’ll bet you the whole glass of juice I can finish a row before you.” After all, she ran the garden in the tower. It would only take a little magic even on this larger scale and he wouldn’t be able to prove she did it.

“How old even are you?” Work gloves were pulled out of his pocket and onto his hands. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. That juice is mine.”

Sometimes a little competition was all a person needed to perk up. And this was a competition Shinelle knew she’d win. It looked to her like it was one Balaton was just as sure he would. He didn’t have illusion magic on his side, though.

They each took a spot at the start of a row of corn and looked at each other. It was difficult for her to tell where he was looking with those pure black eyes. She imagined he was looking her over.

Taking advantage of him not knowing where she was actually looking either, she strained to look at the ground and make a game plan. “Ready?” She asked.

“I’ve been doing this since you were in diapers, let’s go.” With that he was off.

She wasn’t originally planning on it, but she decided to give him a bit of a head start as she felt the earth beneath her thin soles. She softened it, and reached out with her magic to make the corn stalks mirages.

Then she got to work. All she had to do was dig her fingers through the dirt and the weeds basically clung to her fingers. She let the stalks behind her solidify while walking straight through those in front of her.

Soon she was next to Balaton, who stopped to stare at her for a few moments.

“You’re going to watch a little girl beat you? Interesting choice.” It was said with a laugh but seemed to make him mad.

By the time she got to the end of her row, Shinelle could see that she might get through one more before Balaton got through his. She considered it, then decided instead to get the juice and sip it while walking next to her competitor.

“You could get more work done and we could finish early.” The grumble was just a little resentful.

She had other ideas. “I’m going to enjoy this orange juice. Maybe when I finish I’ll take the glass back to the house and you’ll have caught up.”

“Just like a kid to take a break before we've even finished half the job.”

A kid, thought Shinelle. She was 28, and thought Balaton couldn't be more than 23 even by demon standards. “And how old are you? To be calling me a kid?” He gave her a side eye.

Standing and brushing the dirt off his pants, he answered, “I just turned 20, which makes me an adult. My mom said you're 19, so yeah. You're still a kid.”

She'd forgotten that she had to pretend to be younger so she could pass as half demon. Demon enough to have the black eyes and subtle lines across her skin.

Wishing she could tell him he was a full eight years younger, Shinelle almost started telling him they weren't that different in age when he said, “Figures the girl raised by pixies acts like a baby though.”

“Say that again.”

His eyebrows raised as his lips turned into a smirk. “You don't think pixies are immature and lazy?” There was a more serious challenge in his eyes than who could weed faster. One she so wanted to take him up on.

“Say. It. Again.” The hardest working people she knew were pixies.

Her mother leaving for months at a time despite the danger it put her in, just to save as many of her people as she could. Her aunt making it so she couldn’t use her magic for convenience because she was keeping the tower intact.

The woman who lived three floors above her who watched all the children while the rest of the adults worked, the man who made furniture for people to make things easier for her aunt, the teenagers who kept the garden going when maintaining and shuffling the forest became a full time job, the couple who worked as trauma therapists for the entire tower.

There wasn’t a pixie who didn’t work hard. They just did it in a way that made it seem less like work.

Balaton clearly didn’t know what he was talking about. Still, anger flared through Shinelle when he said, “The reason pixies never get adult bodies is because they never become adults. They play all day and only survived as long as they did because of their magic and luck.”

“If you don’t stop right now I’m going to teach you to leave me alone.” Shinelle didn’t have a low voice, it was one that sounded like bells when she laughed and sounded like talking when she was yelling. In this instance it sounded like danger.

Balaton didn’t seem to notice. “There’s nothing you could teach me. You don’t know anything worth learning.”

That. Was. It. She grabbed his arm, bent down, and pulled him onto her back just to rise and drop him on his. He was quick enough to grab her by the hair and pull her down with him.

“You really think you want to do this? Fight me?” There was a laugh in his voice that pissed Shinelle off even more.

She elbowed him in the face and rolled off him. This didn’t keep her from ending up flat on her stomach with him on top. His muscles were rippling against her, she could feel the laugh in his abs and his arms and shoulders swelling. He had berserker magic.

If he was going to use magic, so was she. She lifted the ground under them to throw him off and get on her feet. “I think I’ve been in real fights and you haven’t, so maybe you should consider whether you should be fighting me.” She snarled.

Making the dirt at his feet hard and rumble like an earthquake, she knocked him on his ass. Then she jumped on him and shoved him down. The earth reached up and pulled his wrists and chest down, encircling him like manacles.

“Hah,” She said, leaning over him with her arms over his. “Try getting up from this.” It was so satisfying to know she’d pinned him and there was nothing he could do about it. She could hold him there until he learned respect if she wanted to.

She almost didn’t notice how his cheeks flushed. “Okay, so you’re creative with your magic.” His eyes wandered her face and she realized just how close they really were.

His breath mixed with hers, their noses almost touching, their chests pressed together. She was straddling him over his stomach and she could feel his muscles returning to their normal state.

In a whisper that almost felt like a caress, he said, “Not that I’m complaining, but are we going to stay like this all day?” It was Shinelle’s turn to blush.

Sitting up and releasing him, she said, “Sorry, I guess I got carried away.”

“And now it’s my turn,” Balaton said. He pushed himself up, causing her to slide to his lap, and slipping his fingers around her head and through her hair, he pulled her into a kiss.

Her eyes widened as his closed. She was very aware of her hands against his chest and how her breath hitched despite her dislike of him. How soft his lips were against hers. How butterflies erupted in her stomach. Her eyes started to close just as his other arm wrapped around her waist.

He pulled away and said, “Was that okay?”

“It was…I mean…Why?” He’d never even been nice, there’d been no indication that he’d even considered something like this.

Again his eyes wandered her face, a soft smile replacing his typical scowl or smirk. “Well, I don’t know how to explain it. It’s just, the attitude, and just…You. Would it be bad if I just…” He leaned back in for another kiss when another voice sounded behind them.

“That’s not quite what I thought I’d see.” Both Balaton and Shinelle whipped their heads to see Genta, toolbox in hand, on the other side of the still broken fence. “I came to fix the fence.”

“You came because you’re obsessed with-”

Shinelle didn’t wait for the end of Balaton’s sentence. She ran. She climbed off him and ran towards the house because she realized she was disappointed Genta showed up. That he interrupted Balaton kissing her again. And she didn’t know how to feel about that.

She was sure there were a million other things that needed doing and remembered how the storage cave looked that morning. She could fix that while getting her anger out. Or whatever it was she was feeling.

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This is a first draft chapter from my upcoming book, Shinelle. If you like this, you'll love that! Preorders available now.