Nova took out a pen and paper, placed it on the desk in front of her. She felt the compulsion. It wasn't a dream, it was a need. Something that filled her head to the brim and wouldn't release except through the ink.
The boss's masquerade on the roof of Potestas Tower. It was about to begin. The writing wanted to show her something, but she had to write from the beginning to get it. And so she started.
She didn't know any of the guests. A hundred dancing guests wearing either black or white and masks that shouldn't have hidden their identities so well, and some of them should have been friends, or at least enemies, but instead they were all strangers.
And she was looking for someone. She would never find him like this.
Every couple that waltzed by, she wrote, looked at her as if they knew her, making eye contact while they passed and turning their heads away when they were gone, one after the other as if they were following the steps of a choreographed ballet with Nova in the middle — and she was the only one who didn't know the steps.
Her pen paused. Over the tops of heads she could see one man who wasn't dancing. He was old enough to be her father, but she didn't know whether he was, which seemed strange. Or was it the boss? But the boss wasn't supposed to wear a mask. She didn't know what to write. Who was he? He noticed her looking at him, checked his watch, and then disappeared. Poof.
He wasn't who she was looking for. The pen decided he was an unidentifiable figure, he vanished when he saw her — and then it moved on.
A young man her own age came through the dancers toward her from behind. When he was almost there he stopped, hesitated, started to turn back, opened his mouth to say something, hesitated again, then scampered past her as if he had just been walking by. She stood on tippy toes to see over him.
Someone by the door to the penthouse caught her attention: a man with the head of a fox. Watching her. Leaning against a doric column, he caught her looking at him and gave her a cocky wave. He shook his head and the fox head disintegrated into that of a smiling brown skinned man, but it was still the face of a stranger.
She felt a tap on the shoulder. Really. But she only wrote that she turned around, she didn't actually do it. On paper she turned around to see the first face she recognized all night, and it belonged to exactly the person she wanted to see. A smile was set free across her face (really) and the man she had been looking for (she wrote) led her out to dance. The fox headed stranger crossed his arms across his chest and watched with a frown.
That was it. With that last image the need was released on the paper, which was beginning to dry. Nova shook her head and considered reading it over, decided it would as always resist interpretation, and pulled on her flat black dancing shoes to go to the party. The real party.
A/N If you had a good time, please leave me a star. The power of the stars fuels my magical world and my writing, and I appreciate each and every one.