as she stood in the hallway, her next footfall half made. Slowly she lowered her slim foot, the delicate bells of her anklet tinkling lightly in the vast emptiness of torchlit corridor.

She stood quietly, graceful as a doe, her perceptions heightened beyond anything she had ever known.

Why do I hesitate? she wondered.

The golden girl remained motionless, bathed in torchlight, a gleaming figure in the darkness surrounding her.

Her head ached with the effort of thinking. Yet she felt a strange calm, a sense of inevitablility gently pressing against her, enveloping her in a warm lassitude.

Silki turned and looked into the shadowy niche. He waited there, she knew. Her shiney one.

She closed her leaf-green eyes, the better to think, then opened them. I must simply -- be.

One tiny step forward, and then another, and yet another until finally, deep within the dark niche, she reached out trustingly to lay her small hand into the shiney one's warm grasp.

And changed her destiny forever.