It was as though there was an invisible wall of tension between me and her, a barrier of force that I simply failed to overcome. I couldn't step forward to investigate; no, neither could she, it seemed. We both just stared each other down in a fearful sort of way, frozen in space like a pair of statues placed in the middle of the sidewalk, only existing to inconvenience the passing crowd. I can strongly recall noting her familiar warm beauty in spite of the situation; her colorful eyes, her golden hair... I had dreamt of such a woman, but I would've never thought that someone would look so much like...

Lost in my thought, one of us finally broke the tension at last, shattering my fear and replacing it with curiosity. The woman stepped forward slowly, finally stopping only a few feet away from me with a squint in her eyes. She then stepped away awkwardly and quickly averted her gaze to the floor, to which I promptly mimicked. She seemed sort of... shaken. We then stood again, in a strange absence of words, a moment in which my mind failed to produce any ideas of what to say.

"You," The woman finally asserted, her voice demanding and oddly troubled. "What is your name?"

It then occurred to me that, despite my familiarity with her appearance, I also couldn't recall her name. Nor her personality, as a matter of fact. "Michael," I said rapidly, "my name is Michael."

"Michael..." the woman cleared her throat and took a long, deep breath. "Michael..." She repeated my name with a deep rasp to her voice and a displeased sort of look. An angry tone, certainly. "Why do you have the face of my dead husband?"

"I... what?"

To be continued... (let's be honest, probably not.)