THE MAGIC OF FIRST LOVE is our ignorance that it can ever end_FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE_NEW HORIZONS

Both hands of the clock on the city's distant tower reach up beseechingly to the stars.

Hear the ghost-chimes?

It is midnight, the dark start to a new day,

to NEW HORIZONS.

Come. Sail with me aboard the cursed DEMETER in responce to Francine's and Denise's ROMANTIC FRIDAY CHALLENGE.

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

Peek from the the night's shadows upon the first meeting on a 1853 midnight of Samuel McCord and the one great love of his long life, Lady Meilori Shinseen, most feared of all the Ningyos. (399 words)

{Samuel's other than human senses have felt deep pain and hollow loneliness up on the midnight-shrouded deck of the transatlantic steamer, DEMETER.

He has used the teachings of his Apache blood-brother to render himself invisible by wrapping the threads of night around his lean, horseman's body. He goes to investigate.}



I slowed as I spotted a woman, sitting right on the wooden deck by the railing, huddled over something.

I wrapped the threads of night tighter about me and stepped closer.

The faint smell of jasmine tickled my nose. She was in a long, flowing scarlet and black Victorian gown.

I stiffened as the fog thinned enough for me to make out her slanted eyes, not quite Japanese, not quite Chinese, but a beautiful blend of the two.

Her long black hair was styled up, her eyes were cast down. She was stroking a dead seagull, its slender neck bent awkward. I guessed that it had hit the rigging in the fog and killed itself, tumbling to the deck.

The woman spoke, and it was as if her vocal chords were velvet. Her accent. It sent shivers through me. It was like human speech itself was a foreign language to her. What was I getting myself into? Her words were almost lost in the night.

"Poor little creature of air. Like last month, I came upon you too late. Too late."

She spoke as if the two words were a summing up of her whole life. She was one of those haunted-eyed women you attached your own hidden fears and silent sorrows to.

Close-up her eyes weren't cold jade as they had seemed farther away. They were filled with echoes of regret. The coldness had just been a bold front to hide the fact that they'd lost their way a long time ago.

Maybe mine looked the same.

There were disturbing depths of sadness in those eyes. Depths in whose darkness swam the monsters which drive us or haunt us or both.

Those depths whispered of age more ancient than the Aztecs, more dangerous than even my past. They both called and warned at the same time.

She stroked the bird's head tenderly as if afraid of waking it up

and sighed,

"Dreams drift like clouds,

I reach to touch the moon,

I grasp but empty night."

I couldn’t take her in such pain anymore and stepped into view. “Ma’am, you were a blessing.”

She stiffened at my sudden appearance, but said calmly. “How so?”

"That seagull got to die in the arms of one who cared and cried over its passing. How many of us get to die that loved?"

Her face flinched. "Not ... very ... many. And ... too many."

***