Arden Dasher was no stranger to fate. She knew, more than most that some things were completely inevitable. She knew she, like all people, were merely specks in the roaring, screaming channel of time and events and fate. The future – the predestined, forseen future – wasn’t scary for her, it just was.
She’d broken up with Sindri Trickett because of a vision she’d had. She’d gone to meet Niska in a shady area of the city in the middle of the night with no wand because she’d seen it happen. There wasn’t anything to do against it. Whatever she did was already decided; if she hadn’t gone willingly out in the rain that day, maybe she would have been mind-controlled to do it, or maybe Ruari would contact her and say she had an emergency in that area of town, or maybe she’d be mugged and her wand would be stolen. She never did get the entire picture when she forsaw events, but she knew – knew that they were real. Indisputably unavoidable.
She was nothing but an instrument of fate, but that was something she’d come to terms with years ago. She had consolidated her ideas about free will in a world where every vision she’d had had come true.
Still, it was a little shocking when she had visions about herself. It was shocking when she had increasingly clearer visions about a swarthy well-dressed man with strange eyes touching her skin. In her vision, she experienced everything. She knew what her waist felt like to his fingertips. She’d experienced his blindness with startling clarity. It was all a bit overwhelming, but the summation of all of this had led to her presence here, in Italy, looking for him.
It hadn’t taken long. This time she’d been gifted with a flash of the exact place he’d be, and the time. It had felt right and, sure enough, he’d been there. Arden Dasher had watched him with curiosity. She’d watched him manoeuvre through the busy throng around him. She wondered if he spoke Italian. Wondered what he was like. Wondered if he was her “type” and wondered how nervous she’d be when she spoke to him. The brunette moved as if in a dream, weaving in and out of the busyness that surrounded her and following at a safe distance.
Her visions weren’t the same as reality. They weren’t like dreams, either. If she had to describe it, she’d say that if reality was dreaming, then her dreams would be like waking up. It was a flood of super defined experiences. All of her senses were heightened, every touch, smell sound picked apart and presented to her like she was soaking it up for the first time. When it involved other people, it was always intimate in one way or another. Things like the little movements they made or the way they smelled were imprinted into her memory in a way that made them far too familiar when she met them in real life. It had happened with Niska. It had happened with Verity. She’d known exactly what Verity’s skin felt like, exactly how her laugh sounded, before she’d even met the girl.
This was a step up from that. Sex had always been an intimate thing for Arden Dasher. For her it was private, special. She had plenty of friends who saw it in other ways, but she knew enough about her own sexuality to know that this was what was important to her. Experiencing that in such an intense way, through her visions was… strange to say the least. Too intimate. Too close.
He paused at a stall and Dash paused too, to almost be run over by someone with a cart of exotic-looking fruit. She watched as someone moving past the man bumped too hard into him and his glasses fell to the ground and bounced twice, but didn’t shatter. After a moment, she steeled herself and closed the gap between them, her heart beating quickly as she did so. Dash picked up the glasses, which had fallen beside a group of men emphatically discussing something in Italian.
She turned to the man, her hazel eyes taking in what information she could as she held them out. “Here are your glasses,” she said softly.
Who are you? she thought.
