'This party is boring.'
Noah "Puck" Puckerman straightened suddenly at his friend's admission, loudly slapped a hand to his cheek and let his jaw go slack so it dangled open in mock surprise.
'Do you think so?' Puck asked in manufactured tones of wonderment. 'Stop the presses!' Puck exclaimed loudly, lowering his voice a moment later at Sam's whispered behest as he finished sarcastically. 'What a shocker! The posh little prince finds the lavish royal ball in his honour boring.'
Puck raised an eyebrow and socked Sam lightly in the arm. He gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes as he flopped back against the bar and, reaching out a long arm, managed to snag an hors d'oeurve off the tray of a passing waiter. A look of pure bliss came over his face after he popped it in his mouth and began chewing, and he was alert and scanning the room for his next opportunity to procure more before he'd even swallowed.
Sam stopped himself just short of folding his arms across his chest, remembering at the last minute that 'Princes did not do such things', and settled for shooting Puck a look of weary bemusement instead.
'You mean to tell me that you - of all people,' Sam asked, looking pointedly at the self-proclaimed, Party King, 'are actually having fun at this thing?'
Puck shrugged, his eyes glued to the tray of a waiter who looked like he was going to pass close by. With a precision borne of years of practice, Puck leaned over at the perfect moment and grabbed another handful of the tiny treats from off the top of the tray without missing a beat.
'The food's good.' he allowed, popping another hors d'oeuvre into his mouth and swallowing. 'Not to mention it's entertaining watching you trying to dodge all the spoiled debutantes desperately gunning for their own, personal fairy tale with you as their prince.'
The dark-haired man grinned without remorse as he tossed back his second to last hors d'ouvre and savoured it thoughtfully while Sam shifted uncomfortably at the truth of Puck's statement.
'Besides,' the olive-skinned man added as he polished off his last treat before straightening up against the bar. His eyes focused in on a flash of activity by one of the small service doors near the head of the ballroom that was being used by the Orchestra. 'I have a feeling things are about to get way more interesting.'
Sam tried to see what Puck was looking at, but the dark-haired man quickly threw an arm around the young prince and steered him off in the opposite direction before Sam could get a glimpse of what was going on.
'What did you do, Puck?' Sam asked carefully, his apprehension only growing when Puck grinned, grabbed a glass of champagne from a conveniently passing tray and pressed it into Sam's hand while avoiding answering the question.
'I looked out for the happiness and wellbeing of my best friend on his birthday.' Puck answered brightly, a wide smile plastered on his face - but his voice was too sweet, his expression too innocent, and Sam balked at the mischief Puck might have planned for the night.
'Ok, just… let me know now.' Sam started cautiously, 'Is it likely I'm going to have to spend my next year on a world-wide apology tour?'
'Pfft! You worry too much, you're so tense!'
Puck shrugged and moved his hands so he could give Sam's shoulders a "reassuring" massage. 'You'll be fine!… Probably… Mostly… we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.'
Sam spun around so quickly he almost gave himself whiplash, his mouth already open ready to persuade Puck to maybe reel back some of his plans, but Sam closed it again when he caught sight of a gorgeous dark-skinned girl that he'd never seen before and lost his train of thought.
She was standing in front of the orchestra at the head of the room and Sam couldn't keep his eyes off her. It wasn't hard to miss her, she stood out amongst the other elegant dignitaries for a whole host of reasons. One was that her dress, while pretty, was clearly nowhere near as expensive as the others currently being paraded around the luxurious ballroom, and it only came to her knees instead of cascading down to the floor like those of the other ladies in attendance.
Then there was the fact that the woman was also wearing ridiculous five inch heels, that Sam wasn't entirely convinced she'd be able to walk in. Even with the aid of those skyscraper heels, Sam noted that the woman was still rather short. She was probably around the same height as Sam's little sister, except Stacy was fourteen and this woman looked like she was, at most, only a few years younger than Sam's tender age of twenty-four.
A servant materialised as if from nowhere to place a microphone stand in front of the woman, and another appeared behind the first to carefully set about efficiently attaching a large number of wires to a small black box that was then placed on the ground directly in front of the woman. The servant who had brought on the mic stand was now busy attaching some sort of monitor to the woman's ear, being careful not to snag any of her long, glossy, dark curls as they went and Sam felt a momentary unfamiliar pang of jealousy towards the servants, that they were able to interact so freely with this mysterious woman while Sam himself was stuck watching from a distance and wondering at her identity.
Sam wanted to ask Puck if he had any idea who the girl was, but when he turned to question his friend Sam found that Puck was already gone. Sam scanned the large ballroom for his friend's familiar close cropped dark head to no avail, but Sam found him with his eyes a few moments later when his eyes had slid unbidden back to the beautiful, mystery woman on the dais.
Sam frowned when he realised that, while the servants had now disappeared, Puck was standing in their place and currently seemed to be engaged in some kind of disagreement with the woman. Puck looked annoyed and the girl was shaking her head, but beyond that Sam couldn't work out what was going on. When he saw Puck grab the girl's arm to tow her away, however, Sam found that he'd somehow managed to propel himself halfway across the ballroom in a matter of seconds and was now standing in front of the two with his disapproval etching wrinkles onto his face.
'Puck!' Sam's voice held a rarely-used tone of authority as he neared the two, and his eyes focused pointedly at his best friend's fingers wrapped around the woman's smooth brown skin until Puck caught on and let her go.
With that done, Sam turned back to the young woman with an apologetic smile. It faltered slightly when he realised how much prettier she was up close, but Sam recovered smoothly as she smiled tightly back at him.
'I'm sorry,' Sam began, pausing to bob his head courteously at the woman. 'My friend here seems to have forgotten that we do not manhandle women.' Sam shot Puck another reproachful look and turned back to the woman, holding out his hand for her to shake although as a prince he was generally discouraged from making such familiar gestures. 'I'm Sam…'
'Prince Samuel Garrett Fitzwilliam Evans.' The woman finished for him, apparently unaware that many a finishing school mistress would faint upon hearing her interrupt a prince so freely. 'I know who you are.' she smiled warmly up at him, and Sam felt his face split into his first genuine smile of the evening in response.
'Well, then, you find me at something of a disadvantage.' Sam suggested, his long fingers curling around the woman's small, soft hand in his. 'It seems that you know who I am, but I don't yet know you.'
The woman smiled again and gracefully extracted her hand from Sam's grip, her eyes still lost somewhere in his as she answered.
'I'm your birthday present.'
She stopped and blinked for a moment, realising how that must have sounded and corrected herself, her face flushing at how her words could be misinterpreted.
'I mean, not in a… not in that way. Just that, someone paid for me to perform here… as a present… to you.'
'And before you say anything, it wasn't me.' Puck glowered as he reappeared at Sam's elbow and startled them both. Sam managed to keep the surprise off his face with some success, but he noted with interest that the woman wasn't as successful in her attempt. She wore her emotions on her face openly and Sam studied her for a moment in delight as he considered how refreshing that was.
Apparently they'd both forgotten that Puck was even there.
'Um, right.' the woman agreed, taking a step away from both men after another long moment and fussing with her already perfect hair.
'Anyway, I should, um… go play.' she made to go back towards the microphone, but stopped abruptly after a few paces, her head snapping back around to face Sam as she realised something.
'Uh, if that's ok with you, I mean, Your Highness?' She affected a surprisingly impressive curtsy (especially on those heels) and Sam nodded, his face lighting up in amusement as the young woman blinked big, brown doe eyes at him, her straight, white smile dazzling him when she grinned her pleasure at his assent.
They were still smiling goofily at each other a few moments later, when Puck dragged Sam away from the stage so the woman could finally get on and perform. They'd started to attract attention by now, and Puck could see that some of Sam's snootier guests had begun to eye the woman on stage up and down, their eyes taking in every detail from her dark skin to her ample curves and the most intriguing and damning point of all - that she had been there all of five minutes and had apparently already begun to charm the Prince.
That had to hurt, Puck realised without much sympathy, especially for women who had spent much of their lives attempting to secure Sam for either themselves, or their over-entitled daughters. Yet here was this nobody in the wrong dress and shoes, making the Prince fall all over himself. Puck wasn't sure that he liked this new development, but he could guarantee that the society women liked it less.
/
The woman on stage cleared her throat surreptitiously before licking her full lips and reaching up to adjust the microphone with slightly shaking hands as she prepared to start.
She didn't bother introducing herself. She had been going to, but then she'd seen the looks on the faces of some of these guests and decided that it would probably be more prudent if she didn't. Some of them had that vicious look about them, and she reasoned that they wouldn't be able to torment her if they didn't know who she was. Well, maybe they could, but she resolved not to make it easy for them anyway. She plastered a smile on her face instead and decided to forget the grumpy privileged types and just lose herself in the music. That's what they were paying her for anyway.
The woman tapped a panel on the black box in front of her a couple of times with her foot and an uptempo track echoed suddenly through the ballroom via the hidden speakers placed discreetly around the ballroom. Part of her was nervous about singing this kind of music in a room full of such refined people, but she'd also been told that the prince's favourite types of music were country and uptempo pop songs, and she'd been charged with the task of livening up what she'd been assured would be a 'snoozefest'. Here goes nothing, she thought with a resigned sigh and started to sing.
Her voice was stunning. So stunning that even the older men who usually just sat along the edges of the room nursing tumblers of dark spirits began to take notice of her.
Sam straightened when she began to sing, not just because she'd changed up the backing track and surprised him but, more than that, it was that the song she was singing had been one of Sam's favourites since he'd first found an old Whitney Houston album on vinyl in his father's study when he was four. It had been a long time since he'd heard the song, but as the mysterious woman continued to sing, Sam was reminded just how much he'd loved it.
How will I know if he really loves me?
I say a prayer with every heartbeat
I fall in love
Whenever we meet
I'm asking you,
Cause you know about these things…
Sam laughed in delight as the beat of the music combined with her voice and washed over him. Without much further thought, Sam grabbed for the hand of the nearest woman willing to dance with him, a Duchess in her forties, and spun her around the dance floor. She, and the other guests, seemed a bit unsure of how to dance to the song at first. It didn't exactly fit with the regimented dance styles they'd all been taught since birth, but they all seemed to get the hang of it after a while.
The woman on stage helped them all loosen up as she danced about on the raised platform, and even though he was dancing with the Duchess, Sam found that he had a hard time keeping his eyes of the unknown beauty. She moved like liquid, but she seemed completely unaware of how sexy she was. She was just enjoying the music, and Sam resolved to do the same, even though he threw in some of his patented body rolls towards the end just in case she chanced a look at him. Sam beamed to himself once the song finished and he scanned the ballroom behind him delighted to find that even some of the stuffiest of his guests had small smiles taking up residence on their faces.
The woman's eyes sparkled as she programmed the track for her next song. It was originally performed by a man so she'd had to do some arrangement on it, but she figured that if the prince's guests had liked her first song then they'd like her second. A servant appeared holding her acoustic guitar and she accepted it with a gracious smile and a nod of thanks before she slipped the instrument on over her shoulder and bent to make sure it was properly tuned.
Sam hadn't known his smile could get any wider, but then the woman had started to strum on her old beaten up electro-acoustic guitar and broken out into her next song.
The music was infectious, heck, she was infectious, and even more people had come down onto the ballroom floor to try their hands at dancing without set steps. Sam had his dance partner stolen by her husband, so he pulled his little sister up out of her chair and laughed as she squealed delightedly as he spun and dipped her around the dance floor.
You're so delicious
You're so…
Soft.
Sweet on the tip of my tongue…
Sam had never seen so many smiling faces at one of these functions before, and he was grateful that his sister's height allowed him to watch the woman without much difficulty. She was luminescent, magnetic, even, and Sam made a deal with himself that he would go and talk to her just as soon as she finished her set. He chuckled to himself as the woman pouted and did a little shoulder shimmy along to the music as she strummed away on her guitar and when the music stopped, Sam looked down to find his sister, Stacy, shooting him a knowing look.
She shook her head.
'You would.' she told him with a resigned shake of her head, releasing Sam's hands and stepping away from him with a subtle quirk of her eyebrow before she went off to go find her twin brother.
"I would' what?' Sam muttered under his breath as he watched his sister walk away from him without so much as a backward glance. Shaking his head, Sam turned back to the stage just in time to hear the woman announce that her next song would be her last. There were groans of protest from amongst the guests, which seemed to both please and surprise her, and she curtsied graciously before wishing "Prince Samuel" a very happy birthday and launching into her final song. It was an unfamiliar country infused track with a ridiculously catchy hook that Sam felt strangely drawn to, especially when he picked out some of the lyrics she was singing.
Every king
Has a cloud
Where he wishes he'd built his castle
Every brick
Is made of stone
but none has got his heart in
Cause it ain't home
It won't be home
Til you find love…
The woman curtseyed again for her applauding audience once the song was over, and then handed her things off to the servants who came to clear the stage. Sam waited patiently until she made her way out of the hallway and into one of the private back rooms behind the ballroom, and then politely excused himself to go after her.
/
By the time Sam actually managed to get away from the guests in the ballroom, however, the woman had already packed up and gone. Sam said a quick prayer and picked one of the many exits she could have taken, hoping against hope that he'd got the right one. If he'd made the wrong choice, it was likely that he'd never see her again, and for some reason, that thought bothered Sam more than it should've.
Sam allowed himself a grateful sigh of relief when he rounded a corner and caught sight of the woman taking the scenic route through the palace gardens back to the service entrance. She stopped when Sam called out to her, and he jogged to catch up with her, only realising once he'd got there that he had no idea what to do next. He shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels, completely forgetting the hours of lessons that were supposed to have trained him out of those things.
She looked really, really stunning in the moonlight, Sam thought. Her long, dark eyelashes looked even longer and darker beneath the shadows cast by the moonlight, and her hair looked almost blue where the light hit it. She looked ethereal, like some kind of fairy creature, and Sam had to surreptitiously pinch himself to make sure she was real and not just a figment of his imagination.
'That was a wonderful set.' he complimented after a long moment, and she offered him a shy, grateful smile of thanks.
'I'm pretty sure your voice is one of the most soothing sounds I've ever heard.'
She flushed at his praise, and trained her eyes on the low-lying flowers on the ground when she discovered that looking at him only caused her cheeks to get hotter.
'Thank you.'
'You're welcome.' Sam took a tentative step forward and cleared his throat, deftly avoiding the urge to consider why he was doing what he was doing. 'You know, you could stay for the rest of the ball if you wanted to.'
Sam smiled in a way that he hoped was more reassuring than desperate, because despite himself he really didn't want to lose her just yet.
Her mouth dropped open to form a small, surprised 'o', but she closed it again a moment later with a sigh that sounded genuinely regretful.
'I can't.' she told him sadly, 'I have to get to another job, but thank you for inviting me.' She smiled warmly at him. 'That was kind.'
Sam snorted, a decidedly un-princely sound, and shrugged. 'There's nothing kind about it.' he answered honestly. 'I just want to spend more time with you.'
The woman studied him for a long moment as if trying to figure out whether he was making fun of her or not, but seemed to eventually decide that he was being genuine.
'You barely know me.' she protested lightly, the corners of her mouth twitching up in a smile, and Sam grinned unapologetically back at her with a shrug of his shoulders.
'Exactly.' he agreed merrily, 'I want to change that.'
A slow smile spread across the woman's face, but it faltered slightly when her phone vibrated in her pocket, and she outright frowned when she looked down and saw the message she'd received.
'I'm sorry.' she apologised with a resigned shrug once she'd looked up again. 'I have to get to work… but, it was lovely meeting you.'
'You too.' Sam agreed automatically, but he felt his heart beat pick up in a panic when he realised that she was leaving. 'Wait!'
He jogged to close the small distance that she'd managed to put between them and threw caution to the wind when he reached for, and caught, the hand that wasn't carrying her guitar case.
'Can you give me one dance?' Sam asked, aware that he was begging but not quite able to bring himself to let her walk away just yet. 'That's all I ask.'
She looked dubious, but her head tilted to the side pensively as she considered his request.
'One dance?'
Sam nodded, shoving his suddenly sweaty palms into the pockets of his dress trousers as he waited for her decision. Please say yes, he was thinking furiously, please, please, please say yes.
'it's also my birthday.' Sam added as an afterthought, thinking it was worth a shot to throw that card onto the table with the others. 'You know, if that means anything to you.'
She smirked and rolled her pretty brown eyes at him in amused exasperation, but then she bit one full, plump lip into her mouth and finally nodded.
'Just one, though.' she warned as she set down her guitar and stripped off the backpack she was wearing. 'And let me say this now: I don't mind being late in honour of your birthday, Your Highness, but I draw the line at being fired.'
'Sam.' Sam corrected, and then held his hands out to her, palms out, and bobbed his head in acquiescence, unable to keep the huge satisfied grin off his face. 'But that's fair enough.'
He stretched his arms out further in front of him and held his hands out to her, he felt the electricity tingle through his skin at the contact when she slipped her hands into his and allowed him to pull her close.
'Wait,' she asked after Sam had wrapped his arms around her soft curves and was holding her flush against his body. 'We're gonna dance here?'
'Yup.' She was so short, even in those heels, that Sam could easily prop his chin on the top of her head and breathe in her floral, comforting scent as he held her close. 'Why wouldn't we?'
Sam felt her laugh against his chest, and the vibration sent a warm, contented feeling shooting down his spine, and for the first time in a very long time, Sam realised that he was completely at peace.
'There's no music.' the woman pointed out and Sam tilted his head in contemplation for a few seconds before he lowered his head back down until his mouth was level with the woman's ear.
Why are there so many
Songs about rainbows, he sang quietly in his soft, deep voice.
And what's on the other side?
'The Muppets?' The woman asked in surprise as Sam gently spun her out and back in again in time to his singing.
'Kermit the Frog.' Sam corrected in his best Kermit impression, and internally kicked himself for letting that slip. Dozens of tutors and advisors had warned him off doing his impressions, and usually Sam was pretty good about keeping them under wraps… but there was just something about this woman that made him feel completely comfortable, and it had just slipped out.
'Aw, Kermy!' the woman retorted in a pretty decent Miss Piggy impression and obligingly pretended to snuggle lovingly against Sam's chest. She paused there for a moment, her breathing in sync with his, and Sam got the distinct impression that in that moment neither of them were pretending.
Someday you'll find it, Sam sang.
The rainbow connection…
The pair slowed as the song came to a close, the woman singing a light harmony under Sam as he sang;
The lovers,
The dreamers,
And me…
They pulled apart once the song was over, but kept hold of each other's hands as Sam led the curvy woman along the familiar paths of the palace gardens.
'Who would have guessed that you were a closet Muppets fan?' she said conversationally after they'd walked in silence for a while.
'Um… Everyone in the palace,' Sam put forward with a short, self-deprecating laugh. 'I was obsessed with that stuff when I was a kid, and I mean obsessed.' he told her. 'I had the Muppets jammies, and the lunchbox… I wouldn't go to sleep unless I had my stuffed Kermit and I went through a phase where I would watch the Muppet Treasure Island like, every day.' He smiled as the woman clapped her hands together in delight, but it didn't stop him from possessively recapturing her hand in his just as soon as she dropped it again.
'Pretty sure I can still quote the entire movie.' Sam added with a hint of pride in his voice.
'It's as dark a tale as was ever told, of the lust for treasure and the love of gooooold!' they both sang at once and then looked at each other in shocked silence.
'Well, hell!' the woman said after a pause before holding her free palm up for a high five. 'Great minds, right?'
'Yeah…' Sam agreed with a sidelong glance at her before he lifted his hand to slap against hers. 'I can't believe that out of the whole movie, we both quoted the same part. That's completely nuts.'
There was a beat of silence as they both contemplated that before the woman suddenly clasped a hand to her chest, and proclaimed in the most melodramatic, over the top voice she could muster, 'Clearly it was meant to be!'
'Written in the stars!' Sam added, following her lead and flinging his arm out wide beside him.
'Foretold in legend!
'Whispered by beggar women!' Sam added, but stopped when the woman fell against his chest in peals of laughter.
'Beggar women?' she asked around her giggles and peered up at him through mirthful tears. Sam couldn't help but laugh along with her as he lifted a hand to wipe away the stray tears that had escaped and trailed down her cheeks.
'There's a beggar woman in Beauty and the Beast.' he argued once they'd both calmed down some. 'I should know, I'm a prince, I pay particular attention to that kind of thing.'
That admission just set them both off into giggles again.
The two of them began walking again, with the woman pausing every so often to admire or smell flowers.
'You know, you aren't anything like how I imagined a prince to be.' she told him after they'd walked a little ways in silence. Sam smiled secretly to himself at her tone, most of his tutors had despaired of that fact, but this woman said it like a compliment - like it made him special.
And with her, Sam felt like he was someone special, instead of like the failure everyone around him tended to make him out to be. For once in his life, Sam actually felt like he was enough.
'You aren't exactly what I expected, either.' Sam admitted, and laughed when the woman pulled an outraged face.
'Well, what the heck did you expect me to be?' she demanded, not caring that she was technically meant to defer to a member of the monarchy, not argue with them.
Sam chuckled and looked sheepish. 'Well, my friend Puck is kind of a wild card, so when he told me he'd arranged some 'entertainment' part of me thought you would be a stripper. Ouch!' Sam rubbed the spot on his chest where the woman had smacked him, although it had been perfunctory, and her hands were so tiny it hadn't really hurt. 'In my defense, I hadn't seen you then.' he added and then held up his hands in surrender when the woman just looked more scornful.
'I'm sorry! That came out wrong!' Sam ran a hand through his hair and tried to get his thoughts in order before he could ruin this any more than he already had.
'You're completely gorgeous, but the women Puck tends to go for are… not really in your league.' Sam admitted honestly. 'You just seemed… special.'
She narrowed her eyes, but looked somewhat placated when she asked inquisitively, 'And now?'
'Now, I know you're special.' Sam declared, and the two of them smiled softly at each other, their faces illuminated by a patch of moonlight that had found them between the rose bushes and a gently babbling stone fountain.
'Well, I think you're pretty special too.' The woman told him sweetly. 'You're kind of a dork prince, and I find that hopelessly endearing.'
'Why, thank you!' Sam doffed an invisible cap to her and she dutifully bobbed a curtsy in response, giggling when she came up again.
A shrill ring tone cut through the peaceful moment and the woman winced in apology as she fumbled in her pockets for the noisy device.
Her eyebrows joined together when she checked the caller ID and she shot Sam another apologetic look as she moved away from him to answer it, holding up a single finger to let him know that she'd only be a minute as she hit the button to answer.
'What's up, K?' There was muffled chatter on the other end of the line and Sam watched as the woman's eyes widened in shock. 'What? But it can't be! I swear I…' she pulled the phone away from her ear and checked the readout her face falling as she pressed the handset back to her head. 'I'm so sorry, Kurt.' she apologised sincerely, and started to head back to where she'd left her things. 'No, I'm on my way now… I understand… I know, I owe you. Bye.'
She hung up the phone and turned to give Sam a look that confirmed everything he'd already discerned from her half of the phone conversation: She had to go.
'I'm sorry.' she told him again once they'd reached her things, and he could see the honesty shining in her eyes as she spoke.
'You have to go.' Sam stated with simple resignation, and she nodded. 'Will I get to see you again?'
The woman bit her lip, and Sam's heart sank when he realised that he could already tell what her answer would be.
'I don't think so.' she said finally, her voice belying far more regret than her words let on. 'Our worlds are so different…' she explained helplessly, her hands moving uselessly in the air around her as she tried and failed to expand her point.
'I think this is the only moment we're going to get.'
Sam nodded, knowing that her words were true and hating it. 'But you know,' she told him as she held out her hand for him to shake. 'I really am glad I met you' she smiled conspiratorially before adding '… Sam.'
'And I don't know your name yet…' Sam allowed a pregnant pause to fill the air as he waited for the woman to give him her name, but as she opened her mouth to tell him, Puck's loud calls of Sam's name cut over the newly rebuilt peace and distracted them both.
'Just… one sec.' Sam pleaded with her, before he turned away from the woman and shout back that he'd be in in a moment.
'What?!' Puck shouted back, and they could hear his heavy footfalls and crashes as Puck tried to make his way over to them.
'What the heck are you even doing out here?' they could hear him grumbling, but they both ignored him as they locked eyes with each other for the final time.
'Just this moment, right?' Sam clarified, and when the woman nodded he leaned down and pressed a soft, gentle kiss to her lips, figuring that if this moment were all he had he was going to make the best of it. One of his large hands came to rest on the small of the woman's back, while the other stroked her hair and cupped the base of her skull as their lips moved insistently against each other. It felt like fireworks were shooting through them, sending shivers and tingles through all the places where they touched, and Sam felt her smile against his mouth as she pressed more firmly against him and licked the seam of his lips. They deepened the kiss, but could only enjoy it briefly before they reluctantly pulled apart.
'Wow.' the woman breathed after she'd had a second to get her thoughts back on track, 'wow'.
'Tell me what your name is,' Sam begged, but once again he was interrupted when Puck called out to him, this time accompanied by another voice.
'I…' Sam began, but what forced to stop when the shouts started up again. His eyes closed against the frustration of the situation as he sighed, turning back towards the sound of the voices Sam called out another response before returning his disappointed gaze to the woman's face.
'Hold that thought?'
The woman nodded numbly, but when Sam disappeared off to deal with Puck and his companion, the woman fell back to earth with a decidedly un-gentle bump. With a flash of unusual clarity, she was able to see that she was sitting, waiting for a prince that she would never be able to be with and would probably never even be able to see again after tonight. What made the whole thing worse, was that she was already late for her second job, and she was risking losing it with every extra minute she spent holed up in the palace waiting on a pipe dream.
The woman chewed her bottom lip repeatedly as she tried to figure out what to do, finally shaking her head regretfully as she stood up, ripped half a page of notation paper out of her notebook and scribbled a quick apology onto it. She secured the note under a stone on the lip of the fountain so Sam would be sure to see it when he returned and then went back to pick up her things. With one last, longing look up at the exquisitely lit palace, the woman made her way back down the garden path and out into the road to head off to her next job. The night had been incredible - far better than she could possibly have imagined - but fairy tales weren't real, and it was time for her to return to the real world.