'Dance with me' she said. Breathed it in your ear as she slipped round you, grabbing your hand and pulling you closer but never close enough for you to hold.

She moved to a beat that you were never sure you could hear, moves you can't quite make out. Like the light folded around where she was supposed to be and her feet never really touched the ground. She was all around you but nowhere at the same time. Occasionally you think you pull close and the music around you distorts into music from across the centuries yet she's never out of time and you're distracted long enough for her to pull away again.

The room fades into the background the longer you dance and the background fades into colours, and shapes form in the corners of your eyes, towers, trees and mountains. Exotic spices hit your senses before being replaced with a sharp coldness and then that distinct spell of two bodies being combined. You get lost in her, like she's the only constant in ever changing time and place (at one point you could have sworn you were under water). Her strange timeless but rhythmic dancing keeping you grounded and strangely weightless at the same time.

You wake in a unfamiliar hotel across town. The windows open with the curtains billowing in the dying storm, the floor wet with rain and the bed a mess. The hotelier says you checked in alone but a 'Miss Teri' had paid for your booking 2 years ago and asked to pass you this envelope.

You open it. Mind foggy with remnants of the night before and confusion

'thanks for the dance x '

It's all it says. You re-fold the note back in the envelope. Tuck it in a pocket and head home across the town thoughts lost in a swirl of colours, smells, and something you're not sure you remember felt.