Today I finally got to introduce one of my favourite characters (at ~45K words). I rather like the way I introduce him (wrote this pretty much just now), although it definitely needs a lot of work. In this, Emily and Adira are out shopping at the market. The tildy is a scene break.
[...] In near-silence, the pair went through the shopping list uneventfully.
With one item to get, something happened.
Emily misjudged the distance between herself and someone else and nearly knocked the short, hurrying man off his feet. He turned, his face in almost complete shadow from his hat, which was tilted low over his forehead, partly in an attempt to recover his balance.
In the process, his gaze fell on Emily.
~
I hate crowds. Someone bumped against Neil for the second time that morning, and he glanced up, ready to let loose a verbal tirade against the disturber of his peace, then let it go out of sheer exhaustion. This day of all days I have no patience. He pulled his hat down lower over his face, hoping that no unlucky chance would make him meet anyone he’d once known. Something he had feared ever since…. He cut off the thought halfway.
Now he could barely see. Great. But still, it was better than the alternative. Head down low, Neil charged through the crowd, his small yet surprisingly solid frame ploughing through the people. Maybe I should go to a different market; this one’s getting horribly busy now.
The last item on his list was got, his small robotic shopping trolley running obediently behind him. It crossed his mind that the manufacturers must have had a sense of humour; no sane person would have constructed a shopping trolley with the ordinary structure, but adding on a head to give instructions to, and short legs to allow the device to run after its owner, instead of wheels or traction pads. He was faintly aware of surprised and sometimes annoyed glances as his trolley followed him. That make was from long ago, well, eleven years ago. No one had those any more.
Neil didn’t care. He just wanted to get his supplies for the month and get out again. Once more he inwardly cursed the deliverers and their determination that being out on an island, he could hardly expect them to deliver food and other necessities of life to him: he had to leave his home and go there. His lips turned down at the remembrance, and it was followed by a whole host of inconvenient memories.
This was definitely the wrong day to come: the eleventh anniversary of the day his life stopped.
Another person knocked into him as he charged towards the exit, with no other thought than to get out of the place. In stumbling to get his balance, Neil looked up through the shadow cast by his akubra and looked straight into a pair of eyes that he knew.