Meeting her was a total accident. It was my first time at the yearly festival in the city where I recently moved into and a typical first timer, I was going around trying to absorb it all in as much as I could. I was with a few friends who at the late hours of the night sank into the crowd never to be seen for the rest of the night. Despite having started to drink a cocktail of vodka and lemon, which was comfortably disguised in a blue plastic water bottle, since 8 o’clock in the night, the alcohol didn’t take a toll on me as much as it should have. I was tired but I continued my aimless walk in search of my friends and there she was in the middle of the big square. We knew and didn’t know each other at the same time. After a brief greeting we started chatting about this and that . Moments later, as it was already dawning, I asked her if we could watch the sun rise close to the tower which was not so far away from the piazza we were at. I have never been at the tower in such hour of the day but with her at that moment, no place seemed so right. We started strolling. Before we reached the end of the piazza which we were at, I locked my arm with her arm. As we continued strolling, the natural flow of conversation made us seem as though we knew each other from years ago but not just as two virtual strangers who met few minutes short of an hour. As we turned right to the street of Via Santa-Maria heading to the tower, splinters of sun light from the early morning twilight lighted her face and it was then I comprehended how, despite looking tired,  delightfully beautiful she was. Meanwhile the mix of the morning light and her blondish curly hair was also creating a show of its own. Our arms were still locked and the conversation was still flowing. She didn’t speak too fast and she didn’t speak to slow either. My throat was suddenly starting to get dry and I remembered I still had some vodka lemon in the plastic bottle which I had kept in my back pocket. When I left my house for the night I was laden with enough alcohol to get me through the night and apparently my foresight was commendable for I have something to drink even this late in the night. She started to giggle as she saw me perform a great early morning miracle of pulling out a blue plastic bottle filled with vodka out of no where. The sound of her laughter was a refreshing thrill and definitely better than the ubiquitous morning song of the birds which was feeling the fresh morning air. A thought in my head whispered,  “nothing feels good like making a woman laugh in the wee hours of the night huh”. She had thicker lips, the kind which reminds me of my mother’s. I lightly kissed her on her cheeks. Before we knew it we were standing in front of the tower whose white marbles were scattering the golden early morning sun light creating a halo and posing even more majesty onto itself. To the left of the tower there was the cathedral and we headed to it. The small passage from the main street to the cathedral was blocked with a low hanging chain where a written notice forbids visitors not to head to the cathedral before 7AM in the morning. The blockade forced us to stand facing each other. I looked at her tired but keen eyes, her thick eyebrows, her lips, her face which was beaming with involuntary smile, her white blouse and the light dark pant suit she was wearing. This was no time to waste chatting, As I went for a gentle kiss on her neck an invigorating scent filled my nose. My lips stayed locked onto her neck for a while my fingers were going through her hair adding more dynamics to the still on going foreplay between her hair and the golden sunlight. I then moved onto lightly kissing her cheeks and naturally our lips found each other in a short while. The touching of our lips mixed with the taste of tobacco in her breath sent an electric shock in all my body. We kissed for a moment before we both recoiled back for  an unintended deep stare into each others eyes. When it comes to worldly pleasures, a few of them I enjoy the most for the first brief moments and these include the first sip of a good beer, the first puff of an occasional cigarette and a woman’s first kiss. Passion was raising high and not breaching the “No crossing before 7AM” notice felt so unnatural so we trespassed to sit at the stairs of the cathedral and continue melting into each other under the rising sun.

She was beautiful in every sense of the word, she knows how kiss, when to stop and talk, how to send fiery signals into the eyes, I was awe struck by it all. We moved on to the green grass field in front of the cathedral. After what felt to be an extended moment of oneness, as we were both laying down, her head on my chest, we started to look at the fiery sun slowly revealing herself from the back of the tower. It was then that I began to sense the long lost feeling of utter tranquility that was starting to dawn on me. I was suddenly light and bright inside just as a room which was lit with rays of sun light after its dirty glass window had been cleaned. My legs locked with hers while my fingers kept ramming through her hair and my nose absorbing the totality of her scent as she lied on my chest carefully listening to every beat of my heart. It all made the front of the cathedral the right place to be and to remain at for a long time.

We started talking again and this time her physical beauty seemed her least quality.  The captivating conversation was starting to reveal how intelligent and engaged she was to what she was doing. The conversation began to dwindle again as we slowly drifted into our own threads of thought while holding each other tight. At 7 AM a blasting alarm from her phone awakened us both from the soothing bliss we were submerged in. She stopped the cacophony from her phone and started to kiss me on my neck then on my lips and I also started to kiss her back all along reciting in my head the words of Rhett to Scarlet on  Gone with Wind: “You should be kissed my dear Scarlet and often and by someone who knows how”.

As I woke up from what I presumed was a brief sleep, she was gone. At first I was confused if it was all a hallucination from too much indulgence of alcohol from the night before. But the sweet odor I was smelling on myself made hallucination unlikely. I then remembered about the alarm at 7 AM. What did it all mean? What if it was a signal to mark a transition from land of the ideal to the real. A signal to mark the abrupt end of the stretch of imagination. I stood up, composed myself and started to walk in the direction of my house suddenly thinking about the tale of  Cinderella which I read many years ago. I am not exactly the fan of fantasy love stories but I couldn’t help but draw some parallels between the Cinderella of the fables and my Cinderella of the night. Cinderella left prince charming her glass slippers while she escaped before her reverse-metamorphosis into her old poor self at mid night while my Cinderella of the night left me with a crack in my heart before the clock of gray reality struck at 7 AM and she left abruptly: a crack to let more light to sparkle my soul which was already growing weary or a crack which might grow into a sink hole.