Livia Llewellyn

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And here’s a small sample from the first chapter. Nothing too complex or weird, just some descriptive language that will probably have to be cut in the final draft.

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And not long after the mountains slipped away, telephone lines crowned the high blue skies, racing me through towns too small for names. I tasted it in the air, dry and sweet. Ellensburg drew near. The freeway lowered, lowered, and the foothills of the Cascades melted down to flat plains as though sung by rocky strata sirens into dark pockets of the sleeping earth. Orchards and fields spread out beyond blacktopped lanes, not flashing by quick but flowing in slow vegetable rivers of undulating green.

But I still wasn’t near enough to see the town, and only one building rose visible and free above the low lay of the land, far off in the fields. ANTIQUES FRUIT STAND, proclaimed red block letters across the whitewashed front of a barn as large as a hanger. I felt the engine’s whine lower a notch before I knew my foot was rising from the pedal. Smooth freeway gave way to pebbled dirt, and after ten minutes of bumpy maneuvering down a single-lane road, I parked the car outside the stand in a cloud of grey dust. Silence pummeled me into a temporary immobility. As the engine ticked down in the heat, I watched tall stalks of corn sway in the distance, and wisps of clouds drift across a pale blue sky. This was the middle of nowhere. I stared out the front window, mesmerized with the image of me stepping out of the car only to fall up into the air, tumble and float away into the vast silence. Even in the stifling heat, I shivered.