Once Upon a Beltane Eve

Fiona paced in front of the entrance gate of the New Denver Beltane Festival. She skimmed her hands down the length of her hair to make sure none of the artfully placed purple petunias had fallen from her dark tresses. Was she doing the right thing, agreeing to meet Julian here? Even though she liked to think of herself as a wild child, free from worries about mundane matters, she was nervous about meeting someone like him. On top of the fact that he was only two years older than her, much less than the five year gap she normally preferred, she'd always dated fellow artists, men she thought would understand her artistic drive. Perhaps it was time to give up on that ideal. In her experience, no two artists saw anything the same way.

She flicked her gaze up to the platform of the personal rapid transit station, but from this distance she couldn't make out whether the person stepping out of one of the trapezoidal white cars was male or female. And having no idea what Julian looked like, she wouldn't know if it was him anyway. Why hadn't he let her send him a photo of herself? How would they find each other? She smiled as she recalled their weeks of online conversations. The fluttering in her stomach settled. Intuition told her that she and Julian would have no problem finding each other, today or any other day. This was it.

Julian fidgeted aboard a personal rapid transit vehicle as it zipped over New Denver. He was still amazed at himself for agreeing to meet Fiona in the first place. He wasn't the spontaneous type. He had spent much of the last week hoping he would be what she expected and vice versa. He'd never met a woman like her before, let alone dated one. He didn't date that often and the few women he had taken out recently were fellow computer programmers. They were nice women, safe women, but none of them got his blood boiling the way one online conversation with Fiona could. His nervousness rose again. Would he be what she expected? To distract himself from his anxious thoughts, he concentrated on the view of the City passing by his window. It was a maze of high and low buildings with fiber-optic cables strung between them. The wires formed a web over the tightly constructed City, but there was an order to the chaos, an order Julian had a hand in maintaining. The tangle of wires unsnarled and came to an end as the car approached the festival site just outside the City borders.

All material copyright 2001, Selene Silverwind.
Available through Spilled Candy publishing

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