Once upon a time, a time that had not been all that long hence, the crossroads had been tenanted by those good neighbors who had, as some anodyne to their seemingly endless, unchanging lives, stepped forth to touch the flame that burned so brightly in those folk who lived away from Danu's blood and Danu's heartbeat. A traveler could not walk from one village to another without encountering one of the fair folk, curious enough (in a mild, inquisitive way, for the lives of the folk were punctuated with all too few diversions, but their nature kept them content with such state) to stand forth and wait for a passing one of Adam's race to stop and match wits.

Times changed.

She stood at the side of the crossroads and waited. The sun was just beginning to paint the sky a shade of violet that was pale and drawn compared to the glory, the perfection of the sunrises she saw every morning when she rose to greet the day. She stood, and she waited, and that deserted road made of the materials that contained little trace of Danu's blood whispered its potential in her ear.

When he came, she knew that he did not know why he stopped for her, why he let his conveyance drift to the side of the road, why he opened his window to meet her eye. She did not tell him that another who passed would see only him, not her own tall and slender form. His brows drawn together, his confusion writ across his face, he said, "You need a ride?"

Once, she had been hailed as the Queen of Heaven, and had been forced to disabuse the speaker of the notion. But each saw what he most expected, and so she appeared to him, she knew, as a woman of indeterminate age, long black hair falling down her back, clad in leathers and a tunic that displayed far more of her body than would have once been seemly. She fit her mouth around the mode of speech that would be found suitable; the syllables sat oddly against her lips, but she, of all her folk, knew of the ways of this world, and could ape them when needs must. "I left my bike up the road. If you don't mind --"

He looked as though he were in a dream, staring at her as though bespelled, and then there was a clicking of the mechanism inside his carriage and he nodded. "Hop in. I can take you --" He stopped and frowned, biting his lip, and then shook it off. "I can take you a little way, yeah."

She opened the door and climbed into the seat, arranging her legs as daintily as though she had to negotiate the yards of fabric she once would have worn. "Thanks," she spoke. "Mind if I smoke?"

"No," he said, still trying, she knew, to fit her into the puzzle of his daily life, still trying to fit her and tag her and place her in the ordinary and ordered scheme of his world. She knew that it spoke to the portion of him that still believed, the portion of him, though never conscious, that knew the old tales, the memory of his race. The music spun around them, that strange music so unlike anything she knew. The music that they brought with them, all of them, the only form of shaping and alteration and change that breathed life into her people when life was nothing more than an endless series of ordered days. "No, you can -- go right ahead."

Her illusion was so complete that she left marks of lip-paint on the cigarette, and yet she had used no magic to cast it; his sense of what he should see was strong, so strong, and she knew that such a formidable will would serve him well. The cloud of smoke wafted around her cheeks and tickled at her hair. Such small pleasures there were in this world, and yet so destructive. She inhaled, tasting the bite of it in the back of her throat, and the music worked its way into her blood like the touch of fire, like the heady kiss of dragon wine. She opened her mouth and sang, wordlessly, a line of notes laid along the amelodic backbeat like sunshine, and next to her, he hissed and clenched the wheel more tightly.

"Yes," he said, and turned his face from the lines of the pavement before him to tilt it towards her, like a plant would tip its face to the warmth of day. "It's -- That music. It's what I hear in my dreams."

"Bard," she said, naming him, defining him. "You have long since dreamed of it."

Slipping, she was slipping, in this tiny carriage where she knew that he could feel the touch of her world against his skin, where they straddled the line in between what was and what could be, where the offer could be made and, she hoped, accepted. She could feel the need underneath his skin, the fascination, the tiny faint spark of realization that she knew would not bloom into full understanding until he could see it, touch it, feel it.

"I feel -- You're doing something to me, aren't you. I feel like I'm standing next to myself and watching." His brows drew together again, as though he were working his way through it. She knew her craft, though, and remained silent. "You're not -- Who are you? You're not just -- some hitchhiker I picked up on the side of the road. And I still don't know why the fuck I did that, and that'd be really nice to know too."

Reluctantly, she tapped out her cigarette in the tiny cup provided for such a purpose, and laid her hand on his arm. His muscles flexed beneath the pads of her fingers, so warm, so real, and she knew the burn of desire. "Hush," she said, "and listen," she said, because she knew that he knew, that he had always been waiting, underneath the curtain of doubt and denial. She tipped her head back again and let the music ring out, slow and alien and other to his ears, no longer even trying to fit it against the sound that already filled the air. She knew that he would hear only her voice. She could see it in his eyes, the desire, the longing, the fascination of one who felt music down to his bones and back again.

"I know that music," he said again, and there were almost tears in his eyes, born of frustration and missed opportunity. "I know it. I want -- I want --"

Almost there, he was almost there, and she could feel the fluttering of his heartbeat underneath her touch like a small caged animal. "You may," she said. "It is why I am here. You may."

He let out a noise, soft and trapped, and tore his face from her. "I can't," he said, sharp and raw. His anger bloomed in the space between them. He knew, he knew what she was offering, and she could see in his face that he was thrilled and terrified all at once. "I want -- But I can't. I have things to do. There are people here."

"People who do not count your worth," she said. "It is Midsummer, and you are a bard, and you know, now, what it is to feel as though you do not belong to your own life. You know the feel of heartbreak. These are the things that allow me to come to you. Yet Midsummer will not last forever, and I cannot stay. I offer you the choice. I offer you the music."

A moment of silence. She could feel him, standing right on the edge, standing at the crossroads and hesitating at the choice. Oh, she knew it, she knew, hundreds of times of playing out this scene and not once, never once, did it unfold any differently. "Could I come back?" he asked, finally. "When -- Can I come back?"

"Seven years, as you count the time," she said. "Your world will change, and you will not change with it. Yet you will change, for change is what I offer, change and a chance to be loved, unquestioningly, for who you are and what you have to give." There was an ache, deep within him, a cracked and broken place that bled and cried for healing. It pulled to her, pulled at her. "And I will give you the music."

"I can't go," he whispered, but there was no heat behind it. She could feel him reaching out for her, feel the way that his soul had already made its choice. "Can't you just -- take me? Take the decision out of my hands? Don't make me say it. Please don't make me say it."

The place where she had left her steed was barely visible on the edge of the horizon. "It must be by your choice," she said. "We take no man unwilling." She held still for a moment, and then lifted her hand from him. His shoulders rose and fell, as though he would reach back for her, as though he could not bear to be separated from her touch. "And I cannot come to you again."

"It's not fair," he said. Oh, how many times had she heard that plaintive cry, that faithful reliance on the notion that the world should order itself in the columns of "fair" and "unfair", that the universe should comport itself in the manner to which they had become accustomed. She did not say what she thought, which was that "fair" had different meanings, depending on whom was making the assessment.

"Here," she said, and gestured to the side of the road. "This is where I left my bike. You may leave me here."

He pulled over to the side of the road with shaking hands, and rested his forehead against the wheel, breathing deeply. "What if I say no?"

"Then I shall leave," she said, "and you shall place your carriage back in motion, and return to your life, with the man who does not love you in the fashion that you wish to be loved, the woman who does not see you even when you are standing in front of her, the others who want from you everything that you will give them and fumble so clumsily to give back to you what they can without having to change what they do." Her words were bleak, and she knew that they each reached a spot in his heart that was not yet armored over, and she knew that she could not give him less than full honesty. "You are loved; that much is never in doubt. But what I offer you is another world entire."

"Why me?" he asked, and that was another cry that she had heard so many variants upon, the sense of digging in one's heels and asking why this, why now, the eternal plea of please don't make me do this even though I want to, even though I know that I have to, even though it's what I've always known was waiting for me. She could hear it in his voice, the echoes of dreams he'd forgotten and thoughts that kept him sleepless in the middle of the night. She knew that he knew the answer, had known it from the very beginning; she knew that she had answered him already, and that answer had been nothing more than the truth he already knew. But oh, they always needed to ask.

Because she could already feel the love for him blooming, because she knew that he deserved her truth, she spoke. "Because you, out of all those I could choose, will know its worth."

"God," he said, his head down, his voice muffled. "I --" He stopped, and she did not prompt him to continue, for she knew all of the protests that he could make.

"Come with me," she said, and opened the door to step free. Her steed, wearing the form of a motorcycle, waited for her by the side of the road. "Come with me, of your own free will, to my home and to my lands, and I will give you the world."

She did not glance over her shoulder to see him. She knew, with that preternatural clarity, that he had slid from his seat and stood beside his carriage, watching after her as she strode across the ground. He hesitated again, almost ready to turn and leave, and then reached in his pocket to throw something onto the seat and lock the door behind him. He closed the space between them with long strides, without looking behind him. She caught his hand and finally allowed herself to smile.

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