At the northwest corner of Damor City Park, forming the boundary between the woods and the upscale hotel district, a wide spring rises within a circular boundary wall of ancient sea-stone. In daylight, the magnifying shields on the street side of the pool give a close view of the waving fronds and wriggling creatures making their home on its submerged rocky walls. At night, the welling abyss was black and deeply reflective, moving with a ponderous shimmer towards its little spillway and the rest of the west-side fountains.
It was here that I sat. After making my way across the grassy hillside and slowly through the woods, I'd come out the western gate and followed the fountains to this corner. The mosaics on the Park's walls reached the height of their complexity nearby. Their patterns and colours blended down into the flower beds that encircled the spring. In all, it was an over-decorated and busy part of the city.
I ignored all that, just as I was ignoring the thick crowds of tourists that passed in every direction. It's true, I felt a glow of pride at my small part in the race they'd come to see. But my brain still sang with Windfall, even if it sounded softer now. And I was looking at the water.
I dipped my hand slowly in, feeling the surface tension break over each individual hair on my fingers. Then withdrew it incrementally. Drops slid down, disrupting the reflection of Roxi in the water's shivering surface. I moved my hand over towards that fat orb of light intruding into the pool. Seemed the water should feel different here, but it didn't. I held my half-submerged fingers still, willing the image of the moon to calm and focus around them. Wanted it sharper. Sharper enough to see, even if I couldn't be there.
But the little eddies spiraling past kept disturbing the image. I swirled my fingers around, reducing the moon to streamers of white. Caught one in my hand, lifted it out. It was only wetness.
I had the strangest feeling of being looked at.
Roxi watched everyone impassively, so it wasn't her. I glanced up ahead of me, but no one else near the stone rim of the water pool appeared to be noticing. And then, turning my eyes towards a colourful spot to my left, I saw her.
She was watching.
Her unflinching elegance, and the barest amusement in her expression, struck me first. But rolling in behind and overwhelming them both was her beauty. It kept coming at me in ever-deepening shocks. There was nothing to hang on to. Not the wide angled cheekbones, the flat sweep of her eyelids, not in the shadows of the black braids piled high on her head. Her sunlight-coloured dress complemented her skin so perfectly, it seemed a part of her. She was quietly, piercingly, the most exquisite person I'd ever seen.
My breath finally returned, and I grinned at her.
She separated from her circle of companions and walked towards me. The breeze from the ocean blew her yellow dress against her body, and she knew it. And she knew that I saw it. And I wasn't going to look, and then I did.
She was standing right in front of me sooner than I could handle, smiling in return. Up close, I could see the jewellery draped artfully through her hair, and the delicate braid that lay in front of her shoulder, also wound with gems. She looked me over like something she'd seen before and was glad to have back.
"Hello," I said to her.
She inclined herself slightly towards where I sat. The lines of her body threatened to stop my heart. "Are you having a good night?" she asked me, in an accent I couldn't place.
"Fantastic," I said. It described everything. "You?"
She shrugged and tilted her head. I could almost feel the weight of that glossy hair. "It's only begun," she replied. "Could go either way." But she said it calmly, already satisfied.
Everything about her appearance was pristinely modern. Yet the planes of her skin shimmered with a hundred years or more of ancestry, and she seemed to carry herself like a comfortable disguise. I longed to know what was under there.
"You should join me," I said.
A little teeth in the smile now. "And what would I do," she mused, "with a boy who's already been through the Park?"
Straight to the point. "You could kiss those kisses away," my lips said, as I stared at hers.
She laughed at me, delighted. "No doubt." Then she reached out and plucked something from my hair. It was a small green leaf, I saw, as she held it teasingly in front of my face. Then, slyly, she tucked it into the front of her dress.
This wasn't simple lust. I couldn't feel anything but my cold, wet hand. And yet we floated over the City, alone, just for one moment. One trip, more pure than chemistry.
Her eyes flickered, and I knew someone was calling her. She straightened, smiling more calmly now, a parting gift. And then she was turning away, turning away, taking part of me with her. That part of my inner substance stretched out farther and farther as she walked back to her friends, stretched like taffy, pulled thin, as her pale back disappeared into the night.
And I was left there, feeling somehow wide awake, the stone of the fountain pool cutting into my thighs. Everything looked the same. My hands, the leaf-strewn flagstones of the walkway. I was more. And also less.
I could have joined her. My instinct said foreigner, though, and who knew how that might give offense? A lone man, a stranger, and one who was having trouble remembering his own name, at that. I bit my lip, and stared down the street where she went. I knew it was too late the moment I stood up. The massed human beings crossing the western road, flowing by from all sides, erased her steps. I started walking anyway.
For the first four blocks, the only thing I felt was my own awe. I peered in the wide-open doors of hotels and clubs, thinking how easy it would be for her group to have stepped inside. For them to be right there, to find her, for me to be found again. I was a fool, but only as much as anyone else would be. I told myself that I'd only seen Windfall, that she was just a girl. What a lie. I searched for yellow, and saw it everywhere. More than I'd ever noticed before. It angered me, barely enough to grate, as I turned another corner and headed farther west down a block of expensive bars. None of it was her. She had evaporated, as insubstantial as the handful of moonlight I'd failed to hold.
It was a test with no resolution. Skimming over the ocean's endless surface, reaching for knowledge, for luck, finding neither.
Finally I was lost in a city I thought I knew. The intimidating spires of posh hotels lifted into the night sky around me, and I felt as if I could drown in the sea of strangers. It was a feeling I usually enjoyed -- the chaos of urban patterns, the movement, the noise.
But now there was a different experience I wanted. And I couldn't clear the cobwebs from my tired brain enough to figure out what it was. I took one final look around, hoping the vibrant night was making her happy. Then I called a cab back to the port.