Halls of the Dark Muse

A cafe, shall we say a Midnight Cafe, is the perfect setting. A place lost within time, that belongs to its own reality, where a quiet solitude might be found among the hurried noise of those who pass by. Clink of glasses low voices in conversation, occasional outbursts of laughter. Yet it is a place where the mind can draw into itself, let the rest of this form a painted background. There is a soft illumination of lamp light. Paper lamps strung from the trees, hanging in their very colored globes. The streets of course can only be made up of cobble stone. The air cool with a sweet smell of something exotic tingling upon the currents which pass by. There is lingering mystery behind dark veiled eyes. A pert smile perhaps a touch cruel, deeply knowing, uninviting, and yet devilishly enchanting rests softly upon the lips of our mistress. Of course she smokes french cigarettes and appears like an actress from the 40's. Elegance divine, with a cold hard kept hidden deep inside. Her laughter is biting and her eyes flash in quick movements. No, she misses nothing. She is on the prowl awaiting for the right victim to show themselves before her.

But she is enchanting with her head tilted just so against the whispering tongues of fire lapping hungrily at the air from the candle centered upon her table. It is tempting to give her wine, perhaps a nice red, but we must not treat her to such cliches, let us think of something else. Something warm, something exotic, with a touch of spice it will contrast her nicely. Of course her clothes are vintage, sophisticated, a hat with a partial veil falling just before her eyes, shading her face from view at just the right angle, tilted upon her head. her hair, dark auburn, pinned up. Her every movement seems to be a deliberate and conscious action, as if she is aware of always being watched, of always putting on a show. She is precise and never misses a mark. Her words are clipped as they froth forth from her lips in a dusky voice that makes one think of an opium den.

Everything about her is measured and her angles are perfect, sharp, motionless she is like a dancer. Others drift toward her, around her, and she remains unphased. All it takes is a furrow of her arched brow to drop one to their knees, and this she shrugs off. She has no use for this world anymore, but sometimes it still amuses her on nights while sitting at a cafe and the stars swirl above merging with the city lights. A curse as reality blurs upon the scene and we are drifted out of the dream. But she is leaving now, departing as a ghost, a shadow which has never truly been.

Well she leave any mark of her presence? A whiff of perfume that wakens a sleeping poet who strums upon the strings of a lute playing old sad songs. A single glove abandoned to its fate, a token that now lies limp like a gentle sigh of the wind through the trees. Or perhaps there is nothing. Nothing but the empty space, which one imagines must have been occupied once.

And so she fades.........