A tear trickled down my cheek as the sun knifed upwards, cresting the horizon. I hadn't cried in years - but then, the last day of my life seemed as good a time as any to change that.
The ornate metal thing hung heavy at my belt, and my fingers tightened reflexively around the lacquered, charcoal-dark wood of my staff as jeering voices echoed across the narrow inlet. I forced myself to relax as I found the source: just a couple of local lobstermen heading home from the morning's run, stumbling along the docks toward the village. Their catch would've been just as scant as it had been during the past weeks - worse, even, contributing to their foul moods; my clothing and bearing wouldn't be helping matters, standing sentinel as I was on the opposing clifftop. A girl in funny-looking clothes holding a funny-looking stick was an easy target.
"Go home!" one of the men yelled, his words slurred from drink and distance - but I was already home.
So many years of moving place to place, but I'd found it at long last, and I wasn't going to lose it. Not now. Not when I finally had something - someone - worth fighting for.
The smudge-dark lines of thunderheads began to gather over the distant sea, but I knew they were more than clouds.
The darkness was coming. And I was the only one who could stop it.
💙
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NEXT TIME: Mel's tragic past revealed as she arrives at her ancestral home in Marblehead, Maine, and we meet Zoë, a longtime friend of Mel's mother, who reveals a serious matter in her mother's will.