Creative Writing

The morning was crisp, the kind that carried the faint promise of autumn. As I approached Lady Chatterley’s Tea Room, I found myself straightening my tie and brushing an invisible speck of lint from my coat. The quaint establishment had become a favored retreat of mine, a place where the world seemed to slow, and the chaos of modernity was held at bay by the comforting hum of clinking teacups and low murmurs. Today, though, the purpose of my visit lent it a weight unlike any other. ...

It was, in truth, a most alarming prospect. After a mere 2 months of being her “Gentlemen Friend” as she put it, Jessica had extended the invitation with an eagerness that I suspected was fraught with a certain peril: “I’d love for you to come and hang out with my friends, Percival. It’s just Blake and Ruby, who you’ve met, and one other guy. We’re meeting at a small pub this Friday. Come along. I think they’d really… well, enjoy you.” ...

After three weeks of dating, Jessica had finally reached her limit with the endless back-and-forth involved in coordinating plans through my answering service. “Percival,” she had declared the previous evening, her tone light but pointed, “if you can master a double Windsor knot and recite Chaucer, you can learn to use a phone.” I had protested, of course. Tradition, I argued, demanded dignity, and there was little dignified about clinging to a glowing rectangle that demanded constant attention. But Jessica, ever practical and persistent, had recruited reinforcements, ironically by interrupting a call Aunt Beatrice who had called to arrange our next tea. Aunt Beatrice, unshockingly, had sided with her. ...

After the movie picture, she pointed out this quaint, if not quirky, café off of a side street near her apartment. The café was unassuming but lively, with mismatched chairs and a chalkboard menu offering everything from flat whites to avocado toast. Jessica had insisted on this place, calling it “perfect for a afternoon tea.” I would have preferred something more traditional, perhaps a tea room with a sense of gravitas, but her enthusiasm was disarming. ...

There are moments in a gentleman’s life when the familiar contours of one’s existence begin to chafe ever so slightly, like a well-tailored suit that has inexplicably become snug. This evening was such a moment. I had just departed from Mr. Bernard’s esteemed tailoring establishment, the final adjustments to my winter wardrobe having been made with the usual precision. The late September night air was crisp, carrying with it the faint scent of rain and the distant hum of the city’s relentless energy. As I walked along the cobblestone streets-my preferred route, avoiding the harsher glare of modern thoroughfares-I couldn’t help but notice the world around me with a curious detachment. ...

I hated playing the piano. I really did. I had no talent for it, and compounding my lack of talent was my complete lack of interest. Naturally, I did not spend a lot of time practicing. There was a problem though. Every Tuesday we’d have to go for our weekly piano lessons with Mrs. Lin. I was going to be exposed as I had most likely not practiced all week. This also meant that, if we were going home directly after the lesson, my mother was going to be pretty angry. ...

Luis Hernandez always said the campus was alive. Not in a mystical way, like those poetry professors liked to pretend, but in a practical way. It breathed through the ventilation ducts, groaned when it rained too much, and buzzed with secrets. And Luis? He was the guy who kept it running. If the campus was a body, he was the immune system—quiet, unnoticed, cleaning up messes no one wanted to see. ...

Prologue: A Gentleman in Transition The University library was quiet except for the faint scratching of pens on paper and the occasional cough muffled behind a polite hand. Outside the mullioned windows, the university courtyard stretched in manicured symmetry, bathed in the soft amber glow of a late autumn afternoon. Freshman Percival Nigel Humphreys III sat at his usual table, his back ramrod straight and his textbook open to a chapter on international economics. The faint scent of old leather and fresh ink hung in the air, comforting in its predictability. ...

In the frozen stillness of the North, where wind howls like the dead and ice never fully melts, the bells of Winterkeep rang only once—for the fallen. Lord Eddard Stark, Warden of the North, was dead. Betrayed not by blade, but by betrayal in the court of southern kings. His body was returned not whole, but marked—burned, fractured, shamed. The message was clear. Yet it was not silence that followed. From the moment his body crossed the gates of Winterkeep, a new sound echoed across the ice: hammer upon iron. ...