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head bobbing with them, his body brittle in the cold night air, encumbered by his formal robes. Impatiently he throws off the outer layers, the top button of his tunic popping loose, and although only the thinnest bit of silk shirt shields his body from the cold, he does not mind, for he can see the young lady through the trees. She is standing alone, the lantern at her feet, and casting creature shadows behind her, her arms rising and falling, twisting into the approximation of a crane, but no crane ever had her unhurried fleetness as she spins, leaps, lands, flows, stops, begins again. The lake yawns wide behind her, and she is sheltered from the breeze by a vertical slab of stone against the crags which dates to generations before, the characters for longevity carved into its surface. 
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Her back is to him. This will not do. Opponents must be faced head-on, without subterfuge. Back at the lake, a flute plays, and the song seems to whip through the trees, reeking of lovely melancholy. She turns, now she is looking straight at him, two pinpoints of light in her eyes. Perhaps she cannot see him in the darkness, but he cannot take a chance. With an outlaw cry - Prepare yourself! - he attacks. They will argue about what happens next for some time afterward. Her interpretation: She was ready to counter the attack, primed to fell him with a single strike, but the young man slipped on a particularly treacherous out-cropping of rock, the accident proving to be a better opening gambit than his own sloppy attempt, as it launched him at her, sent the two of them  |
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