rough draft - start of Artemis novel

Figured I should post something here, this is the first draft of the start of my first novel, working title "Question of Spirit"... I'm not writing it linearly, I write the scenes that come to me when they come to me, and I have a (still only mental) outline of the plot that I'll fit them into once they're worth saving and keeping track of ;)

SO

(edit - tried to send this twice already, not showing up... third time's the charm?)

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click the button to hear me read it for you:

Laying on my bed, fingers curled into my hair, I flip through the pages of one of the photo albums from the stack on my nightstand. Images of familiar faces in settings I don’t recognize flit before me, experiencing emotions I don’t understand but can’t deny. Lives that seems so alien, intangible.

The papers and layouts, chosen with such care, give details of tales stored in my body memory yet inaccessible to my own power without this external trigger. Like a gun, it fires holes in my perception, filling the room with the smoke of yesterday and stinging my eyes until they tear. Letters interspersed with the photographs scribble out excitement I cannot share, sorrows that fail to tug at my heart. I reach out and trace the lines, trying to feel some lingering bit of the spirit that wrote them. The connection has been lost to time; they are now just cold words on a page.

Sighing, I roll over and look out the window. Night has fallen but the streetlight in front of the house blocks out the twinkle of the stars. The tattered lace curtains suggest the outline of a form against the frame, ghost image of one of the inhabitants of the photographs, but then I move and the thought disappears. I feel the sudden, desperate need to feel the starlight and the bite of the cool spring night air on this flesh. I move swiftly through the small, time-weary house, grab my keys off the dingy kitchen counter, and rush out the back door to the car that waits like a stallion, impatient to be ridden.

I know where I’m going. I’ve been there before, but as someone else. Something calls every cell of my being to this spot, magnetically. I take the same route she did, but with more care. I would walk there, but I don’t know any other way but this high-speed road full of twists. I revel in the thrill of the sharp circle turn that takes me westward, my foot willing itself to press harder on the petal toward a more daring speed my predecessor used to feel alive. My nerves and muscles become alert for the outward force the turns of the road exert on the less cautious. I will myself to lighten up on the petal, to go at a more sane speed, though there really is no point. Mine is the lone car on the road at this hour, just as it was that other night. Every sense is reliving the experiences, though it is less bitterly cold tonight. The bitterness is internal now. I wonder briefly if the taste in my mouth will ever change as I pull off the exit ramp and into the parking lot for the pier.

Leaving the car behind me, I walk up the solid stairs and toward the cold metal railing. The lights of Cleveland’s skyline play in friendly competition with the brilliance of the stars over the lake. For a second I feel the slap of the waves below across my face, angrily telling me to turn back and remember the lessons this form has already been taught, but I shrug it off. That’s not why I’m here tonight anyway.

“Hello, Artemis.”

The croaking, rasping quality of her voice surprises me momentarily, but then I wonder why it should. Of course she’d know I’m here. “Hello, Hecate,” I respond, formally acknowledging her presence with a slight bow of my head.

When I look up again, she is scruitinizing me. “You aren’t here to end your existance.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, not a question. “Have you found what you came here for?”