The Night Fair

But for all the merriment, the shimmying, shimmering dancers and the gaudy fire-breathers on their ornate stilts, nothing caught Kai's eye. Decorative jade horses, racks of necklaces and bracelets made from exotic jewels and stones, even strange fruit with glittering skin and wet, variegated flesh. It was rare and beautiful, yes, but there wasn't anything new. He wandered from tent to tent, past red and white and blue and gold, yellow with threads of silver racing through and rich, dark navy velvets the colour and texture of the midnight sky. And stopped, transfixed, at the sight of perfection.

He'd come with no motive and precious little of the burning curiosity that drove the others, he'd come with no expectation at all. And yet, there it was in front of him. Everything he'd ever wanted, and never before realised.

And that everything, with a languorous inclination of his head, made eye contact with Kai and smiled with more gentleness than Kai expected.

It was like a chain connected them, glittering as fiercely as the fleur-de-lys pattern in the tent beside him did as Kai made his slow way towards the table. A black cloth bearing a sheen that shone with as many colours as Kai saw around him covered the table and, behind it, sat the most stunningly beautiful man Kai had ever seen.

A man whose gaze was as firmly set on Kai as Kai's was on him; a faint smile quirked up one side of his mouth.

Kai's mouth dried in one painfully-thumping heartbeat. Now would be a good time to leave, because he just knew he couldn't have what he suddenly, desperately wanted. There was nothing else here for him.

But that smile welcomed him in. His feet picked up and moved, one after the other, towards the man with the welcoming smile.