Alive At Crepusculum ✓ [TPL Book One]

XX

The hot, moist, and moldy climate of Jonchin in July welcomed a ship into its coast hailing from Koltsland. Spanky and Cricket McGuire took a ship to Lwendolen, to Koltsland, and then down to Jonchin without rest. 

The McGuire brothers were now trekking up a long, dusty hill under the smoldering heat. Despite the promise to his daughter, Spanky had to ditch the scarf. His shirt stuck to his skin, and he tasted sweat on his tongue.

At the top of the hill was a collection of villages overlooking the red wood forest and the swaths of brown hills that sloped down to a yellow river. Auntie Betty lived in one of these villages, but the tourist guide didn't know of her name. There was a chance she changed her name to a Jonchese one. The only thing they could do was ask around for any suspiciously Arcan-looking Jonchese. 

Neither Spanky nor Cricket could speak Jonchese, but they were in luck. There was a famous Lwennen woman living here. The tourist guide who left them at the bottom of the hill said that they should look for Ella Chui.

No one knew, of course, that Ella had a brother named Richard. Not even Ella herself knew that Richard was alive and immortal, contracted with a demon, and preparing to invite the demon's subordinate into the mortal realm. Of course, she wouldn't suspect such a thing as that. 

Besides, Ella wasn't religious, neither did she believe in the existence of demons. Yet, she respected the ideas of others and would never put anyone down who thought demons were real.

Today, Ella Chui had just taken her children to school in their rickety little carriage with the one squeaky wheel. As the only Lwennen woman of Jonchin, she was something of a celebrity in the area, and one of the few fair-skinned ladies that didn't mind the searing heat and the constant mold. Also, one of the few foreigners that could speak fluent Jonchese.

Over the dusty paths and dusted houses, a gather of gargantuan rainclouds threatened a squall of rain and they had been all morning. Ella sat back in her chair in the family room and considered the clouds, debating whether to start the laundry or wait until the storm unleashed its fury and subsided.

The phone rang.

"Wéi?" she answered, in somewhat of a startled, disoriented tone, but there was no answer and the phone clicked at the other end.

"Gen!" she cursed. Since yesterday, she had been getting phone calls at random times of the day, but there was never any answer. She was seriously considering changing her number.

"Who are you?" she scoffed and held in the urge to throw the phone to the floor.

At that moment, there was a knock on the door. When she went to answer it, it was identical twin brothers. Identical, except for their hair. The shaved one looked like he was about to faint and the one with brown wavy hair looked like he was the one that kept them sane the whole way up the hill.

"Are you Ella Chui?" the wavy haired one said. Ella detected Arcan accents right away.

"Yes, what can I do for you?"

"I'm Cody and this is my brother Steven. We're looking for Betty Moore. She's usually calling herself a medium. You know her? She lives here, in this village, or one of these. We're her great nephews."

Ella did recall in few villages away lived a strange foreigner with a small following of 'devout whatevers'. She never thought the strange woman was Arcan. Like Ella, the old woman spoke perfect Jonchese, but her skin was dark, tanned and maybe natural, so it wasn't easy to tell where she was from.

"You must be looking for Ying Yue. I will take you there," she said.

A few moments later, she saw them disappear inside the little hut at the end of a curvy dirt path. Ella looked on, curious why they would come all this way, but the curtains were closed tightly, and it wasn't proper to spy.