It was night, and it was cold.

Cora was sitting in her usual spot, wasting time cleaning a glass that by that point was so shiny someone could've thought it was made of crystal just to pretend she had something to do that didn't involve watching over the multitude of people sitting at the tables in front of her.

It was a tedious but necessary job, as they couldn't have any fights breaking out at the hostel. They'd had some issues with them in the past that had brought to the involvement of the count's guard, and they'd be forced to increase the security if they were to happen again, to the loss of half of their clientele.

The people in front of her were loudly talking to each other, laughing and shouting, bubbles of loud excitement fuelled by the one alcoholic drink too many at least half of them had consumed and the late hour. In the left corner a group of men were playing a game of cards she wasn't familiar with, a man on the right was standing on the table as he recited his latest adventure with a wondrous tone of voice that suggested it'd only taken place in his fantasy, while some girls stared at his bright indigo eyes with dreamy looks on their faces.

They would all go to bed soon, Cora knew that, and then the main lights would be turned off and she would stay there, pretending to clean that glass, until the first hours of the night, when her aunt would come back from downtown and take her place.

It was an easy task, one that she was certain she could fulfil. What she didn't know, though, was that something was about to happen that would make it much harder.

She couldn't tell what it was, if the sudden silence that fell on the room or the slam of the front door, that announced the arrival of a new stranger. What she did know, though, was that she looked up and he was standing there, comfortable in the deepest quietness as if it was his own home.

That was bad, and she knew it. She should've closed the door in the second the clock had struck nine, a gentle reminder for every lonely wanderer outside that the hostel was no longer allowing people in, but she'd forgotten to, and now he was there.

She could already hear her aunt's shrill shouts because of her failure to keep to their usual schedule. Nobody was to be given a room after nine, and most especially, nobody was to be given a room by someone other than her aunt. She knew how the rules worked. She had to do her part perfectly, or else the whole system would fall to the ground—that was what she'd been taught.

The stranger in front of her, though, was the proof that for once in many months she hadn't done what she should've done. He was her little personal harbinger of destruction, destruction that would be brought upon her by the sharp words of her aunt when she would find out.

He stood there, looking straight ahead, for some seconds, and then moved a step forward.

Just like the fall of a branch in a clearing makes all the birds fly away chirping, the voices all around him started again in the second the low tap of his boot on the floor echoed in the room.

She watched him approach the counter she was sitting behind, her heart in her throat for a reason she couldn't point out.

Looking at him, he was just like everyone else: a hat, a coat, even a little brown bag, big enough just to contain a few essentials, making it clear that he didn't plan to stay there for long.

But he wasn't. She couldn't tell how she got to that conclusion. She knew.

The stranger was tall, taller than at least half of the men she'd seen on that day, his height helped by the hint of heel under his black boots, that thumped gently on the wooden floor as he walked towards her. His hair was of a warm brown, slightly curly, peeking out from his feathered midnight blue hat and hiding part of his forehead as it fell to reach a little under his nose in soft waves. It wasn't long though, definitely shorter than some of the hairstyles in that room, and yet it managed to look effortless, as if all he'd done that morning was putting his hat on.

There was a blue coat on his shoulders, of the same shade of the hat, just tight enough to show his strong shoulders and thin waist. The flicker of many rings glinted on the fingers of each hand.

Cora had never seen anyone look so much like everyone else and yet be so different from all the others, before. She was intimidated by him, because he looked like the kind of person that could set her whole life on fire and laugh about it.

And maybe he would set her life on fire, with a torch made by the sentence that was about to leave his lips wielded by the capable hands of her aunt.

He reached her, his sharp green gaze focused on her in the warm light coming from the fireplace and the few candles here and there, safely protected from accidents by bracelets of glass. He couldn't have been much older than Cora, and yet, standing there at the fragile age of twenty-one, she felt completely helpless.

The chaos all around them had become even louder than before and maybe she should've told them to be quieter, but she couldn't even hear it, that transfixed she was by the mysterious stranger in front of her.

Then, in the break of a second, the tension shattered in a thousand little nothings as he finally spoke to her.

"A private room, please," he asked, or more like told her, and she was surprised to hear how deep the stranger's voice was. It was low, a bit vibrating, but it didn't lack of a younger edge, that let her know that she hadn't been wrong when she'd assumed his age.

She raised an eyebrow in surprise. Not many people asked for private rooms, mostly because they were way more expensive than the shared ones. At the same time though, she couldn't have imagined the man in front of her asking her for anything else.

She also knew that she couldn't give him a room. She really couldn't. It was against the rules. That was the moment in which she should've told him that she was sorry, but they were closed for the night. No rooms given out after nine, her aunt's rule was clear, and breaking it would be the epitome of a bad choice.

What she didn't know, though, was that her streak of bad choices was just about to start.

She shouldn't have given him a room. Ideally, she should've told him to go away, or at least asked him to wait in the main room until her aunt would come back.

But there was something in him, maybe the faint hint of tiredness that weighed down his limbs and his every movement, or the simple promise of a mystery that stemmed from the accent she wasn't used to and couldn't recognise, that didn't make it possible. And so, Cora did one of the few things she shouldn't have done.

She put down the glass and opened the drawer in front of her, the same one she'd seen her aunt open many times, and tapped slightly on the edge as she scanned the many keys in there for the right one.

It took her a moment to find it, large and dusty, just like every other key in there, with a number engraved in the bow. The keys were old, and so were the rooms. So was the hostel, too. It'd been a family house once—a long time ago, with many rooms and nooks for many people, but life had gone by, people had moved out and died, and so the only true residents had ended up being Cora and her aunt. Her aunt had transformed the house into a hostel some years before Cora's birth, when her uncle was still alive, and now, over thirty years later, the hostel was still there, and so was her aunt. And so was Cora, too.

"Room fifteen," Cora said, her voice trembling with the anticipation of what her aunt would shout at her for her decision, and she slid the key towards him on the desk.

The stranger looked at her, the corners of his lips turning up in the distant phantom of a smile. "Thank you," he replied before taking the key and going upstairs, disappearing as quickly as he'd arrived.

It was only in that moment that Cora realised two things: firstly, she'd completely forgotten to ask him to pay, and consequently, she was screwed.

She stood there, wondering if she should've ran after him or faced her aunt's wrath, and then decided to go for the second option, reasoning that the known threat was better than having to face the deep unknown the blue stranger brought with himself.

All of a sudden the man on her right shouted and slammed his feet on the table, and her attention was diverted from the mystery of the other man.

"Hey!" Cora exclaimed, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, and the culprit turned to look at her, a glint in his eyes.

"Sorry my lady, I got carried away," he told her solemnly, scratching his beard as he spoke, and she hummed, sending him a warning glance but deciding to let it slide.

She picked up the glass again and resumed the little job she'd given herself, and for a moment she forgot everything about the newcomer.

• • •

At around eleven everyone started retiring into their bedrooms, some people chatting away, others clinging to each other like penguins in the cold night, others on their own, moving silently through the shadows of the corridors, and by the time midnight came Cora found herself completely alone.

She glanced around the empty, now cold room, and finally put the glass down.

She threw three new pieces of wood in the dying fireplace, watching as the flames rose higher while the fire consumed them. It was the main fireplace of the building and in winter it had to be always on, since all the rooms would grow considerably colder if it died out.

That was one of the many nocturnal tasks of whoever stayed at the counter, if Cora or her aunt, it didn't matter. The door would have to be closed with the chain at one as to avoid any troubles.

The list of the essential tasks to run the hostel also included giving their guests a change of bedsheets every three days and an extra blanket whenever the weather got particularly cold, cleaning their room once they left for good and regularly cleaning every empty room every four days in case new guests came in. Dinner and breakfast had to be made and served, lunch only occasionally, and either Cora or her aunt helped the cook with the preparations everyday.

It was a long and boring job for a young girl like Cora to do, but she was fine with it. It was her future, after all. Once, she'd hoped she could be someone else and get out of the town she'd grown up in, but now she knew that there was nothing there for her, if not the hostel. It was what she was meant to do, and her aunt reminded her of that regularly, whenever she seemed to slack off. Now she knew, and she was learning to do her job well, and so she'd earned the luxury of sitting at the counter alone, without her aunt breathing down her neck. In a sense, she was free.

Cora swept the floor and wiped the tables clean. She'd already taken away the dishes at nine, when the kitchen officially closed, so it didn't take long. Then she went around the room, making sure the tables and benches were where they were meant to be and moving them back in their original place if they weren't.

By the time she was done, the main room was as perfect and clean as it'd been that morning, as if no hour had passed and no soul had walked those floors since then.

She always made sure everything looked fine whenever bedtime struck, as she had no intention of listening to her aunt complaining. It was her aspiration to be as flawless as she could be in her tasks. She strived to prove that she was exactly where she was meant to be, as the more people she convinced, the more she convinced herself too.

Happy with her result, she went back to the counter, resuming her spot behind it and waiting for her aunt to come back so she could finally go to sleep after that excruciatingly long night.

She was sitting there, tracing the lines in the wood of the counter, when she heard the soft tap of steps down the stairs.

She looked up, and her breath died in her throat.

The mysterious stranger that had so gracefully slid out of her mind in the last few hours was back and approaching her with a daintiness in his step that made her head spin.

He stopped in front of her, and Cora froze in her spot. In that moment, alone with him in that big room, she was even more intimidated by him than she'd been before. Earlier that night, the chatter of the people around her had helped her to ground herself, and now, completely alone with him in the deepest silence, she could feel it even more than before.

She couldn't tell what it was, if something in the way he carried himself, as if he knew the answers to questions she still hadn't asked herself, or in the aura of mystery that surrounded him. He looked like the kind of person that never walked by unobserved, and she couldn't help but feel as if she should remember his face.

"Can I offer you something?" Cora asked him, her politeness finally striking, the perfect quality of a good host. He had come too long after dinner and she didn't know where he'd come from, so she was open to giving him at least something to drink in case he hadn't dined.

The mysterious newcomer gave her an unreadable glance, putting his elbows on the counter, his green eyes at her same eye level at last. "A cherry whisky, please," he said, and Cora stood up, instantly, as if his presence had burnt her.

She searched the bottles behind her, and when she turned around with her hands wrapped around the correct one, the cold eyes of the stranger froze her for a moment. How could someone sound so polite but so detached? She didn't know, and it scared her. She felt as if the slightest mistake while interacting with him would be the end of her, and she couldn't understand why. He was just an enigmatic man that had walked in there asking for a room, after all.

She took the shiny glass that was already on the counter, the one she'd been cleaning for the past four hours, and uncorked the bottle, pouring the liquid in it before mutely sliding the glass towards him with her finger.

He took it, the hint of a laugh in his eyes as he slowly raised it and sipped the liquid inside, his eyes not leaving hers.

Cora looked down, feeling that it was starting to become too much for her to handle, and closed the bottle, putting it back on the shelf.

She turned around again but made no move to sit down, preferring to stare at the man in front of her while standing close to the wall.

He didn't seem to be particularly phased by her eyes on him, as if he were used to being stared at, and kept drinking his whisky at a slow and controlled pace, taking breaks between each sip to either observe her or the room around them.

After what felt like a thousand turns of the arrow in the clock at the end of the room, he finished and put the empty glass down, tapping against it with agile fingers.

Cora kept staring at him, free of his gaze, tension flowing through her nerves like lightning. Everything about that situation felt surreal, and she didn't know how to handle it.

He looked at her, seeming to be silently evaluating her back, to the point that she wondered if it would be impolite of her to leave and wait for her aunt in her own room.

"Do you accept flowers as payment?" he asked, each syllable gently rolling off his tongue in that warm but detached tone of his.

"Flowers?" Cora echoed, a wave of panic rolling through her. She'd given that man a room and he wanted to pay with flowers? She could already hear her aunt screaming at her for not having checked whether he had enough money before giving him the key. She should've known that whole situation was a disaster waiting to happen.

He opened a black pouch he kept tied at his belt, hidden by his coat, and took something out that Cora couldn't quite see. He put the mysterious object on the counter. "Thank you," he murmured, walking back up the stairs before she could say a word.

Cora followed him with her gaze until she couldn't see him anymore. Then, she looked at the mysterious object he'd given her and her mouth fell open.

There, in front of her, a bit bigger than a coin, was a rose, that seemed to have been carved directly out of a dark yellow material, that shone in the light of the candle next to her.

She picked it up and brought it closer to the source of light, observing it more attentively. It was definitely a rose, the petals seemingly soft and almost fragile, and the material it was made of was definitely gold.

It alone was enough to pay for the room and drink, and a bit more too.

She shook her head in disbelief, but put the precious flower into the money drawer anyway for her aunt to put into the safe chest later that night.

I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! Please let me know what you think of it so far x
Miki