Paper Faces

The music was hauntingly beautiful, a melody that was slow and pensive yet sweet and sorrowful. A violin trilled its heart out to the thick crowd of masked figures as she waded and danced my way through to the center…where he waited.

He was the core, the goal, the focal point of the warm marbled room. Everyone spiraled and twirled and dipped around him as he stood there like an admiring and omniscient statue.

His dark mask looked to be crafted from the very essence of shadows and smoke, resembling a haunting stygian mark against his bright and pale complexion. The moment he saw her dragging her hampering silver skirt into the center ring he smiled wickedly and extended an offering hand.
Such a gesture could not be refused. She was lured in easily, like a moth to a spider’s labyrinth of a web.

They glided together, circling around one another in a melodious and intricate waltz. He held her firmly against him, his powerful arms a mere facet of his true power as he loomed over her tiny existence. The moonstones and silver baubles that dangled from and adorned her attire seemed to match his midnight doublet, as though he were the sky and she the stars.

Suddenly he spun her and dipped her low along with the steep cry of the violin. She felt as though her body was no longer her own. She was merely a marionette, and he controlled her strings.

Those dark eyes of his burned like hot coals sitting in a hearth, watching her every move as the rhythm of the dance grew to its crescendo and slowly began to still.
The hundreds of people who danced around them halted in their own dances, watching, waiting, witnessing their private dance. Their paper faces were blank, becoming less and less animated as she was led into another dip, concluding the song as well as their waltz.

When she returned her gaze to him and fell out of the spell of the violin, she was met by a chaste and frightening kiss. His lips were like poison, drawing her in to his intoxicating presence as though he were wrapping her within a dark cloak. She became cold, then steadily sleepy, as though she were sinking into a warm bath. It was an odd series of sensations that lasted until the kiss ended and the applause filled the room.

When she parted her long eyelashes, the room had changed completely. There were no marble halls or grad stairwells. There were no dancers with masks or musicians. There was no prince. She was alone in her bed, the candle on her bedside table guttered from the open window. The only remnant of the evening’s dream was one of the silver baubles that she had worn, which had stationed itself just underneath her bed.

Still jingling softly.