"Uhh, oui, oui, il devient difficile de trouver de l'inspiration, inspiration is everywhere and nowhere at the same time."

Mystery woman, I now know as the beautiful Arlissa Glow nods, eyebrows barely meeting as she nods, eyes forward while she thinks of what I say. Seeing her in proximity allows me to study her properly.

She's a muse of modest, gentle brown eyes- guarded as the hat that guards her bald head. She stands the height of a child compared to me and her lips as much as her skin, so intent on the color of a Dianthus sap, glows but never swallows the light around her.

She doesn't look at me in the eyes when she speaks which without doubt, I'm thankful for. Her eyes have a way of running my vocabulary as dry as the throat of a sailor. She smells of cinnamon, spice and the sea all at once.

Her tiny smiles unabashedly add to my exaggeratory deduction of how I want to slap myself silly because of how disarmingly alluring and innocently weakening she is, one giggle at a time, in just a mere few minutes.

We've apparently outlived my stalkerish ways of saying hello and now as the coach rocks us to and fro I enjoy the mistaken proximity between us but we both ignore this; standing on a half full bus going uptown while talking about the art history and religion is only foreseen when in Paris and believe me- it doesn't take much.

"What about the death of religion?" As I await her reply, my eyes vaguely settle at her cupid's bow, the words like heart shaped arrows ready to aim my way.

"But religion is not dead." I nod understandably at that.

"And The Sex Revolution?"

"What exactly is The Sex Revolution?"

I hide my amusement with the pad of my finger. Unfortunately, I fail. "You must think I'm some righteous prune that you find me so amusing."

I could see by the playful quirk of the brow and the lopsided smirk that she's only playing along. "Oh pas du tout, why would I think that way?"

Her eyes finally meet mine and there I am, my chest buckling and staggering for air. She seems to see right through me as if the transparency of my soul unravels easily in the bottom of her tender eyes. She rubs her nose, another habit I check off in my head- again unintentionally.

"Sex is a universal thing. Like coffee, it wakes us up one way or another."

She appears to be less whimsical than before and I, bewitched, follow every word closely.

"Seduction, flirtation, human contact, communication- it's what makes us do, say and be the things we are- mainly to either attract or repel. To laugh or to frown. Hence, The Sex Revolution is redundant because we will always evolve into different means of sexual pleasure but once things change the more it remains the same."

The bus gently engages to a standstill and she smiles widely at my wordlessness.

Wow.

"Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôm- my home." She squares her shoulders and somehow I forget my carelessness of being drawn uptown by this woman when I realize that her company lives short.

"Bien sûr, vous ne marcherez pas seul, will you?"

Her leather jacket sighs softly against the playful air as she exits the bus and she does that small clever smile I've learned to appreciate that it holds as much intellect I aspire in women these days.

"Well yes, if you believe a woman in this age is as helpless as anything in a big city."

She's mocking me. But it isn't a no.

"Well, we wouldn't want that now do we?"

I'm right on her heels as she turns ahead.

✿ - - - - ✿

Because purple dye was so difficult to obtain and expensive to produce, the color became the royal color in many parts of the world and is traditionally associated with royalty and power.