I walk down a shadowy path.  The mist swirls about me like a cloud.  The stone is hard beneath my bare feet, but I do not complain.

"What do you write about?"  I ask my companion glancing over at her.

She turns her gaze to mine and I feel my heart stop and my breath freeze.  Then she releases me and I breathe once more.

"Whatever comes to mind.  Whatever speaks to me."  She answers, her voice a whisper in the breeze.

"And what speaks to you?"  I ask, an unexplainable need driving me to understand.

She shrugs delicately.  "Fear, hate, loathing, joy, ecstasy, passion, desire.  Everything I want, but can never have."

The mist turns cold against my skin and I wonder if I could have heard her wrong.  "Why can't you have those things?"  I finally blurt out.  I feel my face flush at my callous words.

She gives me the barest hint of a smile. "My life will never know those things.  Some people are meant for them, others are not." 

My feet compel me forward even as my mind whirls amid chaos.  My companion is beautiful.  Everything a man would want in a woman.  Her hair is a dark chestnut and falls to her mid-back, curling softly on the way down.  Her eyes are the same color, but so deep you could easily drown in them.  Her breasts are full and firm and her waist and hips in perfect proportion with her breasts.

"I don't mean to cause any offense, but I don't understand."

 Again the almost smile appears.  "It's not for you to understand, or even accept.  It  is simply the way of things.  It is something you must learn."  Her voice like water over pebbles.

I shake my head, refusing to believe the truth in her words.  "I don't believe in fate."  I tell her stubbornly.

Her gaze pierces the fog surrounding us.  "The only people who don't believe in fate have yet to experience it."

"You're not even going to try?  You're going to live you whole life without ever experiencing it?"  I demand, turning to face her.

She smiles again, a real smile although I feel no warmth behind it.  "I will experience life through my work...and through you."  Her face starts to fade in the mist, but before she is totally gone I hear her voice once again whispering to me.