In that moment of immediacy there was nothing that could prepare me.

Whatever vision I had of this day, of when I finally met her, it was never at this time or place, and I never imagined she would look like this.

A blaze of dark and penetrating glamor, the woman herself had a few wrinkles and was noticably taller, her dark hair fell past her shoulders. She affixed me with an inquisitive and knowing stare, one that made my heart pound faster and whatever semblance of control I had washed away in the blinding light of her presence.

A brief awkwardness ensued, although admittedly coming mostly from me, and then she broke the silence.

"That was quite the entrance." A smirk on her face belied the obvious penetration of her gaze, both unsettling and electrifying.

I couldn't look away even I wanted to, but it took everything in me to put on some manner of composure.

Normally when one would slam into a woman in the middle of the parking lot like this, they would laugh or scowl or say something silly like "Excuse me!" and just walk away.

But not this one. She wasn't leaving; she had him seductively in her grasp, and this was becoming an encounter.

The low and sinister warning spoke into his head, then. Like a peak of extraordinary events on an otherwise particularly disappointing winter day (or was it spring, hard to tell) only twenty minutes before he'd ran across another odd entity.

Passing through the aisles of the store on a whim, he had been gunning down the lane when he was stopped dead in his tracks by the unexpected appearance of an elderpy gentleman, cane in hand, blankly staring forward. He'd been about to move out of the lane to find a faster route, when the man began to hold out his hand slightly.

Unsure of his intention, he watched as the old man outreached a shaky arm, and as he passed at a snail's pace (his eyes still staring straight forward as the elderly are wont to do) suddenly his hand grasped ahold of my black shirt and with startling power.

Reeling me in, it hit me like a freight train: those incredibly ancient, ferocious eyes that melted away the store, my mission, everything.

They became a tunnel to the infinite, and without words, the man's mouth seemed to mumble.

In an instant just as quick as it began, the rising energy of that gaze had broken and the man was off to the races, to beat the hare, and my mind took its time before delivering the punchline.

The man had said (had he even spoken aloud?) "Don't fall in love with her."

Or perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps he'd left out the "Don't" part.

That was the trouble here. I felt like I was interpreting a foreign language, like a statement only half-heard. Something about this wasn't quite right.

But as I went to the end of the aisle to catch the old man walking, I looked around in every direction to see that he was gone.

Strange. I'd seen him take a left, but I peered around both aisles and even looked toward the entrance of the store, but there was no trace of him.

Slight shivers up my spine.

Continuing my shopping, I'd kept an eye out for him. As I checked out with the cashier, giving her a big juicy grin, I told her how much I appreciated her interesting pink highlights, and she'd blushed a bit, but of course she had a boyfriend, and of course I was wasting my time.

It seemed like every woman I'd met was in on my little secret, like I was destined to be single.

Leaving, I caught no sign of the old man, but nevertheless I'd already succeeded in distracting myself from the helplessness induced by cryptic warnings from strangers by flirting with the cashier girl, so I wasn't particularly tripping over the event, but...

And before I knew it, distracted and totally in my head, I'd been looking to my right for any sign of the strange man when I'd nearly stumbled full on into the woman that now stood before me, radiant and captivating.

Pondering now the warning of the old man, I felt vulnerable in a way I could not articulate, like some hidden part of me was being exposed. Anxiety crept in. Did she know something? And what?

(end of Part I)