Page 2 of The Human Element (The Human Element Collection #1)
Lorelei
And then...a thud.
Lorelei’s eyes quickly open after she knocks her head into the window, her head having slipped off her perched arm that was leaning against it.
Wincing, she rubs her forehead where she knew a small bruise would surely form.
Rubbing it gingerly for a moment, Lorelei looks out the window to see the Scottish countryside passing by.
Clouds are hovering above the hills, barely caressing them, trying to cuddle up to the Earth for comfort.
The dream again. The same dream she’s had for as long as she can recall.
One she could never understand and that left her with a headache each time she woke from it.
It always went the same: falling into the desert, seeing the pyramids, knowing she must “Open them,” and usually it would fade out about the time she reached the pyramid.
She never got to the part of the dream where she could finally understand what it all meant, or what happened next.
But this one, this one was different. This was the first time that winged figure had ever been in her dream.
He was fascinating, with eyes that shone like a flurry of green that made her suck in air.
Was it an angel?
Lorelei shook her head.
I wouldn’t think an angel would have black wings.
She blinked as the headache sent a pang of pain across her head. Her mind couldn’t even comprehend what she had seen in her dream enough to allow her to contemplate it now.
I’ll come back to that newest conundrum when I’ve got more time. Besides, the psychiatrist said it was probably a mere fantastical dream. Nothing to read into. But then again, she always said that. She does say I have a very active imagination.
Either way, the dream was one of those perplexing things she dealt with throughout her life, one that never seemed to come with a full answer and always kept her feeling the worse for its existence.
Lorelei sighs, massaging her temple. Typically, she got used to the same dream for so long, she stopped trying to make sense of it.
She'd pop a couple of Ibuprofen to help the dull ache in her head when she woke, and tended to ignore it. But in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help wondering about its meaning.
Especially, with a new and strange figure popping up out of the blue.
Perhaps I should go to a dream specialist one day, see if what I’m seeing means something more, or if it's just the extra glass of wine I had last night that caused the sudden change in the annoying dream.
Deciding it wasn’t worth the agitation of deciphering the cryptic message of her nonsensical vision, Lorelei looks about her train cabin to see that she is no longer alone as she previously was when she first boarded.
Not completely unexpected of course, but seeing as though she is going to the small city of Inverness, Scotland, she honestly didn’t expect the train to be too full on this trip.
A satchel bag with the name “Addair” was etched into the leather strap that slung across the seat opposite her.
It wasn’t new, she could tell the strap had been worn down and one of the clasps on the front obviously hadn’t worked for some time.
Yet it seemed as though the owner kept it well cleaned and when it was bought, spent a good deal of money on it.
Perhaps some sort of business man? She knew Addair was quite a common name in Scotland.
Lorelei let out a long, drawn-out sigh before looking at where a large notebook lay upon her lap.
It was filled to the brim with pages of newspaper clippings, pictures, and articles printed from the internet, as well as small scribbles of half-cursive, rivaling a doctor’s, that any other person wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of.
For Lorelei though, this was her sanctuary.
Her notes were her way to make sense of the world, her thoughts and musings, the places she could go back to for comfort.
Although, too often, she herself had a difficult time decrypting the sloppy code she concocted.
She flipped to the current page. For it being one of the bigger stories she was sure to tackle, she didn’t have much but a couple of pictures.
Lorelei had been working as a writer for a small, obscure magazine called “The Mythical Truth” for about a year now.
After graduating university in London, she wanted a job that allowed her to write and travel.
The magazine was based out of London, but she was able to travel all over.
She mostly wrote about myths and legends in particular areas and then would go to “investigate” or cover the story at those locations.
This one was pretty exciting for her, as she has always been a bit of a history buff and believed that all myths had some essence of truth behind them.
A notion her father instilled in her from a young age.
Although often fantastical in nature, myths were an eyeglass into the past. How the people lived, their belief systems, what their woes were, and how people found comfort in the unknowns.
It was a motto she lived by: not everything is as it seems. There’s so much intrigue and lessons you can learn about human nature in these tales—which was often a fascinating topic of interest for her.
Also an ode to her studious, truth-seeking father.
She was tackling the famous “Loch Ness Monster,” which after a small amount of convincing, was allowed to go to Inverness to cover her own version of the story that so many know.
Inverness is a small town where the story supposedly originated, as it lies along Loch Ness.
Now, although it was highly unlikely she would find more to the story on the truth of an actual fabled lake monster that dwells there, her goal was to attempt to find a new angle on the legend that hadn’t yet been covered, which like the words of her boss ringing in her ear, would be a long shot.
But that was a fun bit of journalism, right?
Plus, this myth was one of the crazier ones she would ever face—and what a fantastically entertaining story it was nonetheless!
Either way, it was a chance to travel and write, which was always Lorelei’s favorite things to do.
Mr. Fletcher, her boss, started The Mythical Truth about 15 years ago.
He was a rough, staunch looking man in his 50s who always had a glass of bourbon on hand.
Lorelei didn’t actually know a lot about him or his past, but it was hard for a magazine—even an odd, down and out one—to take a chance on a new, young writer.
So she was grateful to him for that. He allowed her to write about whatever myth or legend she wanted, as long as she was okay with just a small compensation on meals.
Seeing as Mr. Fletcher himself lived in the flat above the office, and the fact that their magazine only had about a few hundred copies around London and a few other minute places around the globe each month, he didn’t have much to offer in terms of money.
After her father’s death, she came by some inheritance he'd surprisingly saved over the years, that allowed her to maintain her flat in London and keep her living expenses in check, despite the lack of income from her job.
On the side, she often wrote articles on varying subjects like travel, food, and life as an American living in England to several other online blogs who pay per article a fair price, which helped.
She lived cheaply though, putting most of that inheritance away for savings.
Her hopes were to buy a cottage in the English countryside one day.
A dream that at this point, was years in the making.
But she was content with her situation for now.
Lorelei wasn’t the only employee at the office.
There were two others. Paul Evans, a 35-year-old who has been with Fletcher since he opened.
He was Fletcher’s nephew, and resembling his uncle’s adage of keeping bourbon on him, Paul always had some new diet craze he was trying out.
He once asked Lorelei if she wanted to try his new protein shake he got in the mail that he swore was the tastiest protein shake on the market.
When she tasted it, she smiled and nodded in eager agreement of its deliciousness as he then chugged one of his own, and then quickly spit it into the nearest trashcan when he turned his back.
The other employee was Walter Cooke, 18, scraggly-haired kid who was as clumsy a person Lorelei had ever seen.
Walter constantly had bangs and bruises on him as he knocked into the printer, the water cooler, the chair, and even tripping over thin air was a common occurrence for him.
She wasn’t particularly close to either of them, most of the time Paul annoyed her and Walter stared a little too much, but all in all, their company didn’t bother her.
Especially since she traveled as frequently as she could.
Working there wasn’t what she intended to do forever, but it was cushy and she enjoyed the research and historical conspiracy aspect of it.