By Raziel

She walked in and glanced once around the room, for an instant her eyes locked with his. For an instant the room became quiet and time stood still, for an instant it was them and only them.

The loose dress she wore elegantly wrapped itself around her body, red in the of the hotel lobby but shimmering black as she crossed the shadows of the bar, seeming to be one with her, simple, subtle, yet at the same time accentuating her figure in all the right places. Her eyes gentle and inviting yet with a hard edge to them, her lips slightly parted, full yet not so full as to attract attention, yet sensual in their own personal dangerous way, her hair cut short to create a neat orderly image, but left loose to dispel this as merely an illusion. And then there was he; he with his dishevelled look, dressed in a tailored suit but with the shirt left open and no tie, the stubble of a beard growing in accentuating the hard line of his jaw, his cold, questioning eyes for an instant brought back from the brink of intoxication into searing clarity to show the intelligence hidden within them.

Time stretched into eternity in that moment, their future laid bare, written in the very air itself, so tangible was the connection that anyone in the room could have simply stood up and read prologue to epilogue what would lay in store for them. Some would cheer, some would jeer, some would cry and some would hope, and some would call it a love story but in that moment there was no one else in the room, just he and she, and that one moment where fate’s wheel stood still, that one instant before the wheel began to turn again...

Glass shatters. The moment is broken. He looks down at his feet to see the glass he held in his hand just moments before, shattered into a thousand fragments spinning, a thousand reflections all looking back at him. The tinkling as the particles spread across the floor vaguely sound like the tiny laughter of a thousand mocking voices. Why? He doesn’t know. The glass fragments settle, the reflections dim, and the laughter fades, he stands and turns to the door to look at her again but see's the last flutterings of her dress disappear through the door. He gets up, hearing the crunch of the glass under his shoes and makes his way through smoke and the crowds towards the door, towards his fate. He reaches the door his hand just inches from its surface, he stops, turns and looks across the room to where he sat previously, looks right where he sat and feels a vast emptiness emanating from there, an emptiness that somehow seems to have a presence of its own, an empty presence, that felt comfortable, familiar, known. He then turns to the door, looks at its golden burnished wood, glowing with promises unknown. He had walked through this door many times before, chasing promise, dreams and happiness, yet always he ended up with nothing but the emptiness. Yet this time it felt different, felt more pure. He wasn't walking towards the door but being drawn to it, a voice pulling at his very being. He turned and looked one last time at his place by the bar, felt that comfortable presence of the known call to him once again, he feels himself hesitate, then turn to the door and push it open and steps through to follow her, towards their future, towards their fate...

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