ROMANTIC FRIDAY_FORGOTTEN?_WITH THE SOFT VOICE OF TWILIGHT (388 words)

Once again, it is time to be romantic in a challenge. The challenge this time from Denise and Francine

is to write on the theme : FORGOTTEN.

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My entry is entitled "WITH THE SOFT VOICE OF TWILIGHT" from my urban fantasy, FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE

(a review of which can be seen on the gracious Wendy Ewurum's FABULOSITY NOUVEAU :

http://fabulositynouveau.blogspot.com/2011/06/french-nocturne-book-review-by-roland.html )

Samuel McCord and his best friend, the vampire priest, Father Renfield, are walking across the Katrina-damaged Tulane campus on their way to a rendezvous with Death ( an old tradition with the two old friends.):

With the soft voice of twilight, ghost music sang in my memory. It was accompanied by the chorus of the whispers of the wind from the listening sky.

I closed my eyes. New Orleans was timeless, especially to me with the blood of Death in my veins.

My transformed eyes only told me the truth, and the truth was not what I wanted to see. So I closed my eyes, and for a moment the truth was what I wanted it to be.

Meilori was back in my arms, supple and vibrant, the peach velvet of her cheek nestled against mine. She pulled back to murmur "Beloved."

Slanted eyes looked up into mine, seeming like jade quarter moons waiting to rise.

Her smile was a promise of wicked delights to come in the evening hours before us. And my heart quickened.

Her hand lightly squeezed my gloved one. Her head bent forward, and soft lips tickled my ear.

And we were dancing, dancing as if our bodies were the wind given life. It had taken me a hundred years,

but I had learned to be a damn fine dancer. The firm body in my arms had been ample incentive.

Some moments lose their way and grope their way blindly back from the past into the present. Such a moment swept me up now.

Meilori and I were dancing across this very grass. I had paid a prince's ransom to pry King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band out of Tulane's old gymnasium to play out here under the stars.

Renfield rasped beside me, "Sam, are you doing this?"

"What?"

I opened my eyes and went still.

The speechless shades of a long-gone night whirled and wheeled all around us.

That long-ago evening was replaying itself before our eyes. Renfield and Magda were laughing as they danced beside Meilori and me.

Renfield sighed, "I'd forgotten how your face looked happy."

I looked at my ghostly double, envying him the sheer delight in his eyes. "I'd forgotten how it felt."

The sound of my words settled an old score with truth, and the evening shades slowly faded from sight.

I shivered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Renfield look wistfully at the disappearing Magda in his own double's arms. I sighed along with Renfield. Some truths were best seen only by starlight.

***