Dark, cold, stark, brilliant, the night was dangerous and elegant.
It was perfectly cast for New Year's Eve.

Exceptionally different yet not completely different were the night and Adonie. Like the universe bending round itself, like fractal aggregations forming strange attractors the night and Adonie were not separate.

Dark, brilliant, dangerous and elegant was Adonie this night.
She had never been cold or stark with me, but she could be and I feared
the source of that where I did not fear confrontation.

I stood alone in the unlighted room among variant oblongs of silver and blue moonlight which patterned with undefinable simplicity portions of the walls and the floor and glided onto one slice of ceiling.
Molly's house was old and large and had many rooms even when it held several dozen people. I had come into this one darkened to stand before a tall and narrow window and gaze outward, through the bare twists of a ragged woody vine leafless with winter, black and bejewelled with night.
My head throbbed, my chest was tight.
Other than that I don't know what I felt, or what I thought.

In Molly's main room, where the massive central hearth welcomed with its generous fire and cheerful light I had turned to see Adonie and it wasn't the first time that evening that she had surprised me.

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