A Piece of History: A Meeting Gaze

     He knew it was going to be a bad night the moment she sat up and pushed away her covers. Diamanta Rothwell was not a restless sleeper. That was something the mage crouched on her bedroom balcony knew well, learned from nearly seven months of observation. She would go to bed, lie still and simply sleep. Perhaps it was an instinct to avoid damaging her fragile wings, or perhaps her heart was simply always at ease, with nothing to burn it through the night and cause unpleasant dreams.

     Jonas Foster’s eyes glinted as she drew her slippers onto delicate feet and wrapped her wings about herself for warmth. Considering it was well into December, Jonas’s persistence in lurking about her house could have been viewed as a sign of questionable insanity. Brandenburg rarely got soft layers of fluffy snow, and was often hit with ice storms. Odd weather, but that was the way of Freak Central. Jonas himself, layered in his light grey cloak and thermal clothing, didn’t quite feel the cold, but then again…he rarely ever did. Dia, he had noticed, was extremely sensitive to temperature changes, and suffered when the temperature fell out of a steady sixty-eight to ninety degree range. He knew a lot about her now. The mage frowned a bit as she shuffled around her bedroom, rubbing her forearms, her wings rustling as they shivered for warmth. He knew so much about her…more than he’d cared to know about anyone, and yet…why she mattered still escaped him. The death mage had watched her do everything. (Literally.) He had seen her at her best, at her worst and every range in between during the near seven months. And yet, the answer to the question still escaped his grasp.

     Shifting his weight, Jonas leaned forward, examining her posture as she leaned down to adjust the hem of her nightgown. She was aching again. He knew by the way she held her wings, by the way she stood. It never occured to him to wonder why it was that after seeing her for the first time, he could always see her this way. Spider, when questioned, had offered little more than a shrug and a "Well, guess you just shifted your perception or something." In fact, seeing Dia had opened his eyes to a new layer of the world he had never before seen. Trees grew with wildly coloured fruits, creatures from his strangest dreams and nightmares prowled the streets, and the more he looked, the more he saw. Spider had not lied: the city was filled with the "changelings," as they were called. Bertram Jumoke, the large, grandfatherly man who was so fond of Dia, had impressed Jonas when first he had truly seen him. Standing over nine feet tall, his skin was a faded sky blue, and his thick white hair curled about a pair of horns jutting from his forehead. His friend, not lover as Jonas had once thought, Andrew was shorter, rounder and cherry-cheeked, with a disposition that would rival the most drastic manic-depressive. Aeneas Dougal, a man who often spent nights at the daycare center, was outrageously handsome, with strangely pointed ears and the mannerisms of a rural English lord. The most startling to Jonas’s eyes had been Black Robin, a man who seemed to be a rogue about town, hailing from some city in North Carolina, always grinning, his voice honeyed with that thick, soft accent. The bike messenger was speedy, Jonas knew, having timed the length of his runs when Dia called him to ask for something, and when the death mage beheld the strong, thickly furred goat legs Robin walked upon, he had an inkling as to why.

     It was all so different from the life he knew…perhaps that was why? {…not for the sake of diamond eyes…not for kisses of petal-soft lips…} A glimpse of an existance lived for the sake of life, rather than administering death had made him more…thoughtful, was the only way he could think to phrase it. This was Fate. He knew that instinctively, could feel it in his very bones, but the lesson she had to teach him was elusive, tickling at the back of his mind only to dash away when he attempted to think about it. Some things never crossed his mind, never occured to him, and perhaps that would be his undoing…but as it never crossed his mind, how could he think of it? No…some things the universe gives one only at the proper time, and for Jonas Foster, it was too soon.

     Lost in thought, he shifted his weight, adjusting his cloak about him as he toed the thin layer of ice lying across her bedroom balcony. For a moment he wondered if perhaps he could warm her house, just a bit, to help take the chill off. The old wood stove downstairs was unpredictable, and she had such a hard time making a proper fire…not to mention the heater itself was a bit temper-

     Dark eyes raised with something akin to horror as the feeling of a gaze became undeniable. Crystalline eyes were looking at him. Not through the space he occupied, not around him, but at  him. Jonas froze, an ironic thing to do considering the weather, but for the life of him, he could not make himself move, nor could he pull his gaze away. She was staring at him with something on the edge of becoming fear, consternation, embarrassment and …curiosity? Indeed, flickers of color in the depths of her eyes gave him her emotions as clearly as if he’d read them in her aura. The death mage rose to his full height, and the fae backed away from the sliding glass door of her bedroom. There was a tense moment in which not even the wind dared utter sound, and then he simply…vanished. Dia ran to the balcony door, peering out anxiously, even then, with the fear of the unknown man, concerned that perhaps he’d hurt himself, or fallen off of the balcony. Biting her lip anxiously, the Gift of the Dreaming darted to her phone and swiftly dialed for assistance.

     Ten yards away, Jonas looked over his shoulder, reassuring himself that he’d left no traces of his presence. Frowing blackly, he looked up at the balcony, empty now, and tugged at his cloak. Unnerved, he shivered, rubbing his long-fingered hands together as he t

urned away, moving swiftly down the icy sidewalk. While the grainy snow blew across the faint indentations made by his feet, the wind swept away any lingering scent, nothing could be done to remove or hide that single moment, and it was that which made the mage’s heart pound. Fate had dealt some of her hand, and he could not possibly deny it now.