Relocation

by Stephanie Wright

She stands on the front porch of her new house in her new town and peers down Main Street through the halogen glow of the street lamps spaced at perfect intervals. The snow is light, less than a foot deep, and the roads are still passable if one drives carefully. Bundled in a plaid wool throw - direct from Scotland in the ever popular Black Watch pattern - she doesn't fear frostbite or brain freeze, and the scent of cedar from the venerable guard just at the bottom of the steps tickles her nose in a way she's coming to associate with words like home and peace. Half an acre away, a co-ed breaks the spell of sanctuary, walking past with her baubles and bells of technology, iPod clasped in her left hand and cell pressed to the opposite ear. The young woman's laughter chips the silence like an icicle falling from the eaves, brittle and a bit too high as she disappears into the mist. The front door opens, casting warm light onto the porch at her feet, and she turns, no longer under the enchantment of timelessness but welcoming the present with a secret smile.

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Stephanie Wright, author of Personal Demons, is a social psychologist on faculty at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. She is the author of The Witch War Histories, an urban fantasy series currently at four novels and counting with books five and six in progress. Triplex Coniunctio, the first in the series, was first published in 2004. A self-admitted flake and indecisive adolescent playing at being a grown up, both she and her writing can be found here, although she makes no claims to the sanity of any of it.