Por Una Cabeza
He tangoes through life in a whirl of flowers and silk. There is no fruit he has not tasted, no flower he has not seen swaying in the springtime breeze, yet always he finds something new to take into his heart. He will not act his age, and he is full of beauty. A hundred times a hundred mornings he has woken with a splitting headache and a bitter taste in his mouth, knowing that the one he loves has tossed him aside. Yet it would be madness not to take a chance on further heartbreak for the heady rush of love he has felt before and knows he will feel again.
He loves them all, and wants to sweep them up into his arms and protect them. It sweetens his blade to fight for a woman, and he is able to find fresh happiness in battle.
He is a flirt, and all the women know it. They take him at face value, slap him soundly with their fans and send him home, but every time he pursues a woman, it is because he has fallen in love. Sometimes with several different women over the course of a single day. He will give anything for the latest woman to say she loves him back, and knows cheerfully that before the week is out he will be destroyed. Every time his heart is broken he swears off women, love, and life, but when the latest raven-haired beauty fresh from the academy saunters past and acknowledges him with the slightest glance, what choice does he have? He is powerless before the fire of her lips, the curved blade of her body, and she becomes yet another fruit which he must taste for himself.
There is no gamble in life not worth taking, he thinks, and why not?