Havania Forest is a work of fiction of my own that I've been working on for some time now, but this is only the first chapter. Havania Forest is a place where magical creatures roam freely as they live their daily lives. Blaise is the ordinary book-worm and quiet girl with an attitude. She meets the new guy in town, Shane, then soon encounters the notorious Malachi, well-known to the Forest as the womanizer-turned-recluse. Blaise's mild life is turned upside down, quite literally, at their hands as well as her curiosity as she stumbles upon a mysterious lake, its powers (unknown) to those who live in the Forest. Who knows what's in store for Blaise's new life as she enters a world she never knew.
Chapter 1: The Boy Next Door
Blaise lived in a tree. Yes, a tree. The people of the Forest live in all sorts of things from trees, holes, caves, ponds, you name it. But the thing was: whatever the person lived in could appear small on the outside but be the size of a normal house (like what humans live in) on the inside. Yeah, the people who live here aren't human. Anyway...
She lived in a tree. Being the Havania Forest, a tree was the most common thing to live in. Blaise had never been able to fit in at the Forest. She didn't think she was pretty or funny or talented, the things needed to be popular just about anywhere. She was the kind of girl people wouldn't look at twice. And she liked it that way. It kept her out of trouble. Not many people actually knew who she was. But she knew everyone. She was just a girl who occupied a tree.
Blaise had overheard people talking about some new person coming into the Forest for a few weeks now. It's probably a rumor. With a forest of people who look like teenagers, there's bound to be rumors, she thought. Blaise found out the rotten truth when she had just closed the front gate and ran into the new guy. From impact, she stumbled backwards and fell, red hair falling in her face. "Oh God, I'm so sorry! I need to watch where I'm going," she apologized.
"Nah, it's fine," the guy said. He put a hand under her elbow and helped heft her to her feet.
"Thanks." Blaise looked up at him. He was taller than her (she was a little shorter than his shoulder). His eyes were dark with gold flecked in them. The brown hair on his head looked as if he hadn't cut it in a while. His skin was slightly tanned form the sun, and his high cheekbones stood proudly.
"I take it you're new," she said shyly, looking away now.
"Yeah, I am. Don't really live anywhere yet. So I'm staying at the hotel. Haven't found anything I liked." Then, he gestured to Blaise's tree with its dark brown almost-black trunk and the strange white flowers it had for leaves. "Yours is an odd one. They say trees like that feel alive, once it trusts you, knows you."
Was this guy crazy? Trees didn't feel alive. They were just a home for people. Rayne, what Blaise called the tree, didn't feel that way. She'd lived in it all her life. She didn't even bother to ask who 'they' were or what his name was. If there was someone nuts, she knew the sensible thing to do was to walk away. And that's what she did.
She walked away.
"Hey!" the guy called after her.
Blaise looked at the ground and kept walking.
He caught up to her now. "You never told me what your name was."
"You never told me yours," she shot back.
"Point. I'm Shane Draciniti"
"Blaise Fireza." Why was he still talking to her? Maybe he was crazy after all. Or he was dangerous. Like those...Okay, she didn't want to think about that. Oh, well. She'd probably never hear from him again. While she thought, she wasn't watching where she was going. Blaise ended up tripping over an upraised root and crashing to the dirt ground, scraping her palms on tiny pebbles. "I'm such a klutz," she muttered, hefting herself to her feet.
By the time Blaise got up and looked where Shane had been standing, he was gone. She just shook her head.
Yep. Definitely crazy, she thought.
