Author's note: This is in no way a 100 accurate representation of anything that I make it to be. Just read, have fun and review, all right? Cheers!

Chapter 1 : Wales is Not Made up of Green Dragons, You Hear?

NYC 88. Rowan Quincey owns this place. She's a nice woman, but the restaurant is arguably nicer. Don't let her know that we all think like that though, yes, all three of us: Cesca, Solange and me, Lizzy. I'm actually Lisbeth, but I hate the half-baked sound of it; you must have noticed the missing 'E', and that there should be a 'z' in the place of the 's', and there should be an 'a' between the replaced 'z' and the 'b' that will give you popular nickname 'Beth', which some people have adopted to 'Bess' but now no one uses that name much except for cows, you know, like 'Bessie the cow' with their cute little tinkling bells - how long has it been since I've been to Uncle Nally's farm? A long long while; and dang how I miss it! Let me see, 1, no, 2 year and - oh wait. What was I talking about? Something about names - aha! Right: Lizzy sounds much, much more normal. I thought at first that it's a type of malady that only Londoners go through, but look at Rowan... Rowan? She doesn't come from a long, long line of druids like I am (if my great grandmum Eleni was to be believed). But I'm Welsh anyhow. Not the Morgan Llewellyn-type of Welsh but the Swansea-and-transportation-problems-galore Welsh. Nothing to be proud of, really. But I like it when I tell people that I am Welsh and immediately people conjure up images of green dragons (thanks to the Triwizard Tournament). And I like it better when I tell them, no, we don't have green dragons but we do have lots of grass...

Sadly, I don't have the same effect on New Yorkers, my current (most probably, possibly temporary) residency. I tell them I'm Welsh, and they blink. Yes, blink. Like in Rowan's case. I'd just touched down in the Big Apple and my knees were reeling from choosing a reasonably-priced restaurant to catch a breather before I head off to my new flat (more like a loft, and, all right, I'll be honest, I'm sharing it with its owner). The plain, black letters of 'NYC 88' stood out like a beacon against white plastic and the ceiling-to-floor windows with a-wood-table-and-two-cushioned-chairs combo standing right behind it wooed me at once with the smell of not-so-blessed coffee. But I was hungry, and at that time, my mind made a strange, jumbled-up reasoning that where there was coffee, there's bound to be cheese cakes and a proper, functioning, clean toilet so I just what-the-hecked the place. Suffice to say, I went into the restaurant.

Which was so cute and proper (don't ask me how I came up with this) that it had little tinkling bells when I pushed the door open. The floor of the restaurant was sturdy chocolate timber and so my trainers didn't make much noise as the other customers and waitresses shuffling about in clackers clack-clacking across the floor (men don't wear heels, or do they?). There was an island of a bar right in the middle of the restaurant, and that was where the coffee scent was coming from. It was actually a very good, extensive bar. The shelves were all of chocolate wood and each shelf was filled to the brim with glass containers of coffee beans, tea leaves, tea bags, cocoa powder, sugar and a particular bottle of milk (just like the ones making rounds in England) and each container was labelled in Arial font with no caps. Delightful. And there was a small fridge in which they kept fruits. At the main counter, there was an espresso machine, deluxe jumbo-sized coffeemaker, juice extractor, and, hanging on the wall, various cups, mugs and glasses of every imaginable size. And beside those, were hanging utensils such as a tea strainer and all sorts of spoons. A medium-sized kettle sat on a small stove and beside the stove was a small, metallic sink.

And, not satisfied with being just a bar, there were also cakes on display. Yes, real, live cakes! They were placed in those glass shelves that were built into the outer counter of the island bar, a mini fridge of sorts to chill the cakes, and to add to the sumptousness of them all was the absence of several slices. On top of those display glasses were small plates with serviettes already placed on them. Surrounding the little island were high metallic bar-stools with brown cushions atop them.

Everything just reeked of cosiness.

"Hi there!"

"Holy smokes!" leapt out of my mouth - it was really sudden and - and don't you ever try it at home! I have a weak heart (okay, okay, emotionally speaking). It turned out that it was a waitress that had startled me. Waitress, but not quite... waitress. Do you know what I mean? She wore a fitting brown blouse (am I in Cocoaland or what?) and a plain body-hugging black pants. and she had lovely, loose, BROWN curls. Goody, more brown. But the waiters, I noticed later, were all wearing cream-coloured aprons over their white-blouse-brown-pants. And she wasn't. But who else would greet someone who'd just walked into their restaurant like that? Unless... ah yes. I finally noticed a thin silver strip sat just over her heart and it read, 'I OWN THIS PLACE'. Yes, literally!

"You own this place?" I asked stupidly.

The woman pointed at the thin silver strip. "You can read, don't you?"

At this point I was quite offended. I'm a potential customer, for heaven's sakes! And I told it to her. "Excuse me, but is this how you treat your potential customers?"

"No, but you're a unique case," she replied with a smile. "I've never had someone who walks into the restaurant and gapes at the island bar. But I could see the intellect hidden in your eyes. You're tired and hungry, so let's go to the bar together, shall we?"

I forgot all excuses to be rude back to her, for my stomach was growling as if someone was mixing up boulders in it, with an electric mixer. Or a hairdryer. I'm a blurcase.

So I sat on one of the pretty stools while she went into the bar and asked me what I wanted. I told her I'd like a cup of iced lemon tea and, after surveying the choice of cakes, a slice of lemon cheese cake.

"Ooo, someone's in a sour mood," she commented.

"Are you always this 'friendly' with your customers?"

"I take what I can get," she replied as she proceeded to get my order for me. "Am I offending you?"

"No - actually yes - no, not quite. Well, I'm a bit offended, but just a tiny bit, because yet there's something that makes me want to go on talking to you. And that's - well, I kind of like you, I think. Because if I didn't I would have walked out. And, you know, I'm that kind of person. You know what I mean?"

"Not really," she replied, coming over to me. "But here's your cake and iced tea."

"Bless you," I muttered and instantly dug my fork into the cake.

"Where are you from, anyway?"

"I'm Welsh."

Blinking of clueless eyes.

I sighed. "Which means I'm from Wales..."

More blinking.

"...which is in England. which in turn is in the United Kingdom of Great Britain."

"Oh! Well why didn't you say that earlier? How am I supposed to know what 'Welsh' is?"

I groaned a bit. "You weren't thinking of green dragons, were you?"

She seemed to hesitate. "Well, as a matter of fact, I kind of do."

"Harry Potter," I said through gritted teeth, "all he does is polluting everyone's mind." Later when I reminisce about this scene, I realised with a smack of my forehead that I'd forgotten to insert the 'no-green-dragons-but-lots-of-grass' punchline. Dang.

"My niece, Dierna, loves the dragons part," she said with a sort of apologetic smile. "So that's how I came to know about it. You know children; when they're obssessed with something they can't stop quizzng you about it and asking you to explain it to them all over and over again."

I laughed shortly as I attacked the last of my cake. It was fantastic. Lemon, cheese - I'm a fan of cheese cakes - and lemon tea, ICED, at that. Life can't get any better than this.

"I'm Rowan Quincey, by the way," she said suddenly, offering her hand.

I shook her hand with a big smile, feeling much much better after polishing off the simple meal. "And I'm Lisbeth Scott. Do call me Lizzy, won't you?"

"Of course. And let me be the first to say to you: Welcome to New York!"

And at that moment, came a brief piece of big band jazz and Frank Sinatra crooned out: "Start spreadin' the news..."

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

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And after that, as they say, is history. (Cliches galore! Cheers!) During the first few weeks in New York, I must admit that I underwent mild culture shock; the abundance of coffee and Starbucks for instance. Everywhere I went just had to have some sort of coffee outlet, or people balancing foam cups of coffee as they pecked away at their laptops (or in most women's case, yak into their cellies). When I went to look at the small studio-cum-office that I had planned to rent, the landlord turned out to also possess a foam cup of coffee in one hand, and a bagel in the other. And he smiled at me and said that could I please wait while he finished his breakfast because he was not capable of doing any talking or negotiating with me until he had had his round of coffee. I smiled, of course, the good and loyal tenant-to-be, while in my mind I was wondering why he ever bothered to show up at all. I could have waited. Bear in my mind that I had not eaten my breakfast yet at that time. Groan.

When he was done, he chucked the foam cup away ungracefully, the very same thing that had given him the edge and energy to deal with me, as if it meant no more. My eyes followed the cup as it rolled down the corridor and came to a halt just a few centimetres away from a rubbish bin. I caught my breath in my throat. Suddenly my heart beat faster than I could have ever imagined. So close - yet so far!

Should I...? Oh God, yes yes yes!

I ran towards the foam cup, properly startling said landlord-to-be who was in the process of unlocking the doors to the studio, and picked the cup up gently and safely deposited it into the bin. "There!" I muttered to myself. I turned back towards landlord-to-be. He was gaping at me as if he had seen a frog do a cartwheel.

"Are you... okay?"

My jaw dropped. "What? I am perfectly all right!"

He grinned, but I knew he wasn't convinced. "Yeah, okay..."

"Why do you think that I'm sick?"

"Nothing nothing, Miss, er, Cooper... nothing at all."

"Oh for heaven's sake, get out with it." For all I cared, I could have been rude. But at that moment, I just HAD to know. I HAVE to know and rectify that mistake. What did I do? I'm not feeling feverish. I just ran over and picked up an abandoned foam cup that wasn't even disposed by me.

And that's where it... OH. I slapped my forehead and groaned. "Oh gosh, I am so, so , sorry..." I realised what had happened to me. Stupid bout of... GRR.

"Y-y-yes?" stammered landlord-to-be, now clutching at the lock so tightly as if he would like it to suddenly take off through the door and bring him with it.

"No, no... it's just that..." I don't know if I can tell him. Well what right does he have to find out. He does. No he doesn't. Do I really need to tell him? No I don't. Just shut up and let him forget about it. But - it's - not - RIGHT. Conscience, sit down! Do I look like a child to you? No no no no! Shurrup! No you shuddup! AAARRR -

"I have OCD," I blurted out.

- GGGgghhh... (poof)

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