From behind the fairy lights I saw him, twinkling like the stars that graced the night, and I froze where I stood, uncertainty filling every fiber of my being. I longed beyond anything in this world to go to him, to allow him to take me in his arms and spirit me away to a land beyond my own imagining.

His voice carried softly into my heart as he approached, smile climbing with the music that filled the air.

“Dance with me?” he asked, alluring and sweet, a balm to the broken soul that I am. I took his hand, and his grin reached behind the feeble walls I had built around my soul, snatching away the barriers that kept him out. “You look beautiful, tonight,” he murmured, and I melted in his arms. Yet all was good because he caught me as I fell in love.

Together we danced the waltz, never stopping, no matter what played, because we both knew that this was the only dance that I could manage with my clumsy feet. He laughed, and as the moon dipped beyond the horizon, signaling the approach of dawn, he closed the gap between us.

I froze, and his lips met mine, soft, yet unyielding. Passion surged through me, and I reached to take him into my grasp…but he pulled away,

and the ink I write this story with dries faster than my tears.