The warm breeze whipped her dark hair behind her in teasing and playful disarray. Even from this distance he knew it's color, the color of the earth after a rain and as soft as silken water when it flowed through the fingers. The memories were there, clouding his mind, and he could remember vividly exactly the feel of it, the warm liquid weight of it that ignited his feelings with the slightest caress. Tapered fingers curled as his hand clenched in longing as he let the memories wash over him, drown him in their dark pain.

It was her eyes, the color of them, that intense green that was so often glazed over with dreams until they were the softened color of sea foam which invaded his mind. Those same eyes that could lay all her thoughts so honestly and innocently bare one moment and suddenly darken into midnight, shielding all those sweet thoughts from the world, from him.

It was painful, so beautifully painful as he watched her run across the grass of the campus toward the towering gothic building in the distance. The way her face glowed, tinged with color that the wind had touched her cheeks with and the sheer uninhibited excitement that was so much a part of her that it could be read in every line of her face, made his breath catch. Warmth flooded through him, dissolving his knees into golden weakness.

'She has matured', he thought. 'Well, at least in the physical sense of the word', he added to himself as he let his eyes take in the sight of her. The loose white blouse that clung to her chest as the wind toyed the un-tucked hem of it and the tight faded jeans that covered the length of her shapely legs brought on an assault of desire that he hadn't felt for anyone but her.

Suddenly his breath caught and he had to brace his hand against the tree beside him. The rough texture barely registered as his thoughts swirled in a blur of color to a time long ago, a day when he had watched her through the depths of his crystals as she traversed the Labyrinth. She had been running then as she did now, the two images were physically identical as they melded in his thoughts. The physical was all that linked the past with the present… or was it?

I wasn't just the images that had sent him spiraling to the past, it was something else.

Excitement.

In the Labyrinth she had been running for a different reason, a purpose that had shaped her young face into lines and expressions both confused and determined. There had been none of the joyful glow that lit her face now but even then, when she had been racing against time, against him, he had felt the sharp edged thrill of excitement that radiated through her like crashing waves. He could feel it now. It pulsed from her still in a softened rhythm that had slowly been restrained with time. Now it took him under, degree by degree, slowly eroding away all resistance, leaving him defenseless before he knew what was happening.

She enchanted him now as she always had since he had first felt her desperate tug at the edge of his thoughts.

Asking.

Seeking.

She had cried out then for proof of magick, wanting her faith justified, needing it to be.

Closing his eyes he let the memories fade back into a the soft ache he knew so well.

Somewhere in the distance the clock that towered over the campus bellowed out two ominous tones, stirring him out of his reverie. Opening his eyes, he was too late to catch the hesitation in her movements as she reached out to open the door of the building. He turned to her and watched as disappeared behind the door below the letters 'Theatre Building'.

"So, it begins….", he whispered half to himself, half to her, "I underestimated you once, I wont a second time". A slow, lazy grin spread across his face, "You will be mine this time….. Sara".

A soft gust of wind swept through, stirring the air, leaving the campus empty…