He spoke, and the stain-glass image of his lips was shattered:

"Why are you alone?"

The words nearly did not register with me, so taken was I by his appearance. Neatly-combed dark hair, brought back and held by an unseen force, brought his face to bear.  Eyes darker than his hair pierced mine, and though the words
he spoke were not reflected within, they felt...deeper, somehow.  His was a question that came from behind the mirrors of his soul, and found their way into mine.

I did not answer, at first.  I could not.  His image burned me and affixed me.
I could not look away, and my thoughts were numb to all but the thirst that the sight of him parched.  I wanted to hear more, and my own voice was inadequate to address him.

He seemed to move, then.  A flicker in his eyes washed a calmness over me, and his next words were gentler:

"You chose this."

He was right, of course.  In all the traffic of my life, this time was a
break from the maddening pulse of my existence.  I was out, alone, and seeking, though what, in fact, I sought eluded me.  I was a statue, an icon that I held apart
from my own reality; and so it was that I was here, a blind woman chasing a handful of ash across the desert, though I pressed that truth away and embraced
what small pleasures I could on these travels.

He did not speak again.  Seven words fell from him, and I could not breathe. His hand found mine.  We sat, then, and gazed at one another for a pool of time deeper than I could reckon.  His hand met mine, and it held me as surely as though it were the iron links of a cruel chain.  I did not resist.  Know
this:

I could not.

When he rose, he still clasped my hand; I was compelled to follow.  A blur of lights, voices and sound battered my senses, but they took in little more than the whisper of an acknowledgement.  Wending through flesh on parade, false smiles, and glasses of golden death disguised as joy, we found our way outside.  He guided me.  I followed.  When the journey ended, we were in the
dark shadows of a building, and my back was pressed to the cold brick.  A wind caught our jackets, but I only knew it was there, nothing more.  I was numb in body, as well as mind, and no small part of that came from the fact that
his eyes bore into mine like pleasant nails.

The eyes crept closer, and the broken image of stained glass pressed against my lips.  I tasted my own blood, and still I could not move.  A moan escaped me, then - or so it seemed.  My flesh was crackling, sturdy tatters that broke under his caress, lightning spiking from one limb to another as he consumed my mouth.

He wanted more.  I did not try to resist, though if I had tried, my body would have surely defied me.  His mouth crept down, leaving my own lips a torn, blooded mess; it spilled down the path that his contact made.  It pooled at my chin, and
was spent, unnoticed, a rain of crimson tears.

He moved further down, and my head found enough strength to turn, if only to expose myself more to him.  Fire coursed down my neck, then, settling to a spot below the lobe of my ear.  His mouth broke a final time...

My skin ripped like paper beneath the pressure of his teeth.  I was undone, and uncaring of the fact.  He suckled, and even as I felt a cold creep into me I also felt strangely alive.  He was giving me sight into the world beyond the one  so desperately rejected when prowling; he was leeching my habits from me, not my blood.  My familiar pattern was gone, forever, and I know that I did
moan then for certain.  So gentle, so thorough he was that not one tear spilled from my eyes; only my life washed away, my responsibilities and my struggles obliterated by his intimate act.

I remember that he guided me down to the concrete.  I saw his eyes one last time - large, illuminated by some unknown source - and then I slept.  I dreamed of the things he had taken, and of the things yet to come.

When I awoke, I was alone; he left me as he found me.  I felt no wind, though I heard it.  I felt no hunger, just an ache to see him a final time.  I felt the presence of the memories of my former bearing, but those memories would not stay.  They slipped from my mind, quicksilver through clenched claws.  What  was had been lost.  What I had become now lay before me.

I occasionally step from the shadow, into old, decaying places where the pliant gather.  I find a suitable meal, and I gaze into desperate eyes, and whisper...

"Why are you alone?"