|| Open starter - The Dark Fair ||
There was a man at the fair who shouldn't exist. He looked like a beggar on the street, a labourer. A blanket draped about his shoulder, swarthy, tanned, baked skin, a thick beard somewhat ill kempt. What she most noticed about him was his eyes. They were sharp and met hers across the crowd of the fete with an archer's accuracy. A sharpness she remembered like a dream. A dream of seasalt, wine, incense.
Amaranth closed her eyes to try and search for where she had seen him before. She drew a blank, and when she opened her eyes he had disappeared. Amaranth frowned, but ultimately continued around the fair, seeing as how she had made the effort to attend. That was when she noticed that the man was haunting her. She would turn corners to see him perched at a table, look up from a vendor's stall to see him wandering through the crowd. Yet if she tried to approach him he vanished. In this game of cat and mouse Amaranth forgot the more-likely game, fish and lure. She followed the man deeper and deeper into the center of the fete, determined to corner him and ask him what he meant by crossing her path, by looking at her like that.
In her hurry to catch up with him Amaranth bowled into another person, sending them both to the ground. Amaranth pushed herself up, more than frustrated to see that the man had disappeared himself once more. "Sorry," Amaranth apologised to the person she had collided with, offering them a hand to pull them up. "I did not see you. Did you happened to see a man come past you?"