I fell in love with Lena when she won Eurovision. Not my favorite song of hers, but, well, I have an alphabet to follow.
Monica did a double take.
Despite the crowded city streets, she
managed to step backwards till she was at the window again. There was
a man on the other side of the glass in the small cafe, Bloom, the
window words said, and there was an empty table next to him. She
felt compelled to take it.
Monica walked in, bought a muffin just
to have something to play with, and then filled the empty table.
The man wasn't paying attention to her,
he seemed to be doing a puzzle in the paper, and judging by his frown
The New York Times was
kicking his butt. She tried to figure out what caused her to double
back. She wasn't a crossword fan. The guy wasn't dressed as if he
had cash, though he didn't look like a starving artist either. More
like those trendy casual clothes start up entrepreneurs wore. Monica
wasn't really into entrepreneurs though, too unstable of a job in a
boyfriend, so what was it?
His looks? No, he
wasn't good looking. Actually, calling him average looking would be
a bit of a stretch. He obvious skipped the gym and not the sugar, his
eyes looked a little too big for his head, and large Grecian noses
hadn't been attractive for at least a thousands years.
Monica blatantly
stared at him, trying to figure out what drew her attention to him.
He didn't notice, which she was thankful for. She was always telling
her coworkers staring was rude, even if she didn't really mind. But
she had a feeling this coffee shop stranger wouldn't like to look up
from his puzzle to see a woman staring at him as if written on his
skin was the secret recipe for Coca Cola and she had ten minutes to
memorize it.
By the time the man
stretches and prepares to leave Monica hasn't really touched her
muffin, her attention had been on him the entire time. It's only
when his movement, and her desire to hide her stare, causes her to
look outside that she realizes it's been hours since she first sat
down. She's missed two focus groups she was supposed to conduct.
Franticly, she fished out her phone from her purse. Ten missed calls
from her boss, a few from other coworkers, and a bunch of texts
telling her to get her ass to the office.
She's totally
fired. Just because she was captivated by this random guy in a coffee
shop. A guy whom she still didn't know why captured her attention.
It cost her her job, she should at least find out why.
Monica followed him
out the door.
Now no longer
sitting, she could tell he was a confident person. Despite his weight
and almost ugly looks he walked like a prince, shoulders back and
head high. There was confidence in each step, the opposite of the
introverted personality she had built for him in Bloom. He also
seemed to have the ability to control other people around him. The
human traffic split around him, providing lots of space to walk in
without even the chance of a shoulder bump.
Was this what she
saw earlier? Monica wasn't sure.
She
followed him for a few blocks until he entered a night club. Monica
paused across the street. A night club, really? And it wasn't even a
nice one, there was just one bouncer and he didn't even look at the
man when he walked by and through the doors. Plus the neon sign,
reading The Court and
the fairy next to it, were flickering. Monica bet the place was awful
inside, full of cheap prostitutes, drunks, and lots of smoke. It was
not someplace she wanted to be.
Still...
She crossed the
street and the bouncer just glanced at her before she pushed open the
door.
“You caught one
today,” she heard a voice say as she entered. The man who she had
been following was sitting in a tall plush chair, reminding her of a
throne, and turned his head to look at her. He looked silly, but also
right in his placement. There was a woman wearing a flowing dress
holding a silver platter next to him, it had grapes on it.
“So I did,” he
answered the first voice, still looking at her. “Wasn't even
fishing.”
There was a round
of laughter, all high pitched and nasally. One part of Monica's mind
thought it sounded like nails on a chalkboard, another compared it to
wind chimes. The club wasn't really set up like a club, there were
a variety of personal corners and platforms, each with a chair of
some sort in the center. Some were surrounded by pillows, others by
rugs, and some just the bare floor. But all of the extra space was
filled with people who kept looking at those sitting on the chairs.
Some, like the woman next to the man she had followed, were acting as
wait staff and holding platters.
“And this is why
its amazing to be part of the Court,” the first voice continued.
Monica didn't bother looking for it's source. She was still staring
at the stranger she was taken by. “We can collect humans slaves
without even trying.”
The man laughed and
beckoned to her, patting one of the arm rests of his chair. Monica
walked over and sat on it, not minding when the man began playing
with the ends of her hair. “That it does Conan, that it does.”
---------------
I know members of the Unseelie Court are usually thought of good looking, but the Celts believed that words had power and thus they called the fair folk 'fair folk' to avoid bringing the faeries to their doorstep. However, I can also see faeries being in reality really ugly and Celts calling them fair to not anger them.
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