I can’t say for sure what it was that first drew me to him, but the first time we met in that dark and somewhat dusty second hand book store down a dark side street in a rundown part of town. I remember his eyes meeting mine and feeling like I was being pulled towards him by some unseen force. His eyes were a deep, rich brown flecked with burgundy which made them burn like little pools of liquid flame. I sensed great power behind those eyes and I could not help but feel as though they could see right into the very core of my being. I would go so far as to say that as he gazed upon me unashamedly he was staring straight into my soul. The air around him seemed to crackle with some kind of arcane energy that felt both dangerous and appealing simultaneously.
I wasn’t sure if I should turn away or approach him. However, the choice was taken out of my hands as the stranger approached me. As he came closer, I saw that he was only a few years older than me, or at least he appeared to be, but when I looked once more into those mesmerizing eyes I saw the ghosts of many past lives. He dressed casually in smart jeans and a dark coloured shirt and had long dark hair caught in a ponytail at the base of his neck. If not for those startling eyes I might never have looked twice, apart from the fact that my whole body seemed to have felt his presence before I had even laid eyes on him.
I remember feeling like I should speak, but my mouth was dry and I couldn’t form the words. I simply stood there, rooted to the spot, desperate to run but afraid to even turn my face away. He spoke in a rich voice; his words seemed to curl around me like a soft comforting blanket.
“You feel it don’t you? You know.”
He was right in a way, even back then I knew something, I just wasn’t sure what. I was a sensible girl. I didn’t believe in magic or monsters. I lived in what I considered the ‘real’ world where like was black and white. At the age of sixteen, I was too old to believe in fairy stories. But looking in the stranger’s eyes I felt everything I knew fall away and looking back I can pinpoint that it was the exact moment my life changed forever. I tried to respond but I stammered over my words, I didn’t really know what to say and my mouth didn’t seem capable of speech at that point anyway. He smirked at me and sighed. Reaching behind my head he pulled a book from the shelf and offered it to me.
“Not yet. But you will. This is what you are looking for”
I took the book from him and turned it over in my hands. It looked very old. The black leather it was bound in was cracked and worn. It had no title, but the cover did have several strange markings embossed onto it in gold. Just holding the book seemed to make my skin tingle.
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