She reached up and pressed her hands to my face.. touched me. And I was no longer with any doubt. Athamé was the woman I had searched for my entire life.

Did she often put her hands upon strangers? I did not know, nor did I give it much thought. Perhaps at the time I was too down on my luck to challenge her with savvy rhetoric. She had simply made me want her all the more; made me want inside of her.. and far more deeply than a fleeting, superficial liason.

In my darkest Ahn I sought her out in her shop, waiting until the remainder of her visitors departed with their ears tickled. Had I too, needed a soothesayer's grim forecast? I had no dreams that I could recall; nothing more pressing upon me with urgency other than my next fix. And yet I was drawn into the heart of the seer's lair.. eyeing her many curios and odd little trinket charms while I waited. Inadvertantly I curled my hand around a spiny twist of metal.. a talisman.. unaware at the time that I had not chosen the thing. It had chosen me.

Later in the evening, she had drawn it from where it hung pendulant on a length of chain, and hung it around my neck. She had missed nothing with her eerie eyes, dark like obsidian glass, having seen me touch it even while she was engaged in the business of several others.

"I cannot pay you for this, Seer," I cautioned her.. even as I made attempt to remove the thing and give it back to her.

"But it belongs to you, Sir," she had replied in a near-whisper as she curled her soft fingers right down inside my tunic and hid the amulet against my chest.

She belonged to me. And I merely had the monumental task before me of making her see this.