Slayers Fan Fiction ❯ Paint the Sky with Stars ❯ Prologue ( Prologue )

Title: Paint the Sky with Stars
Author: Yugure
Genre: Romance
Bias: Lina/Zel - Zel/Lina
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own Slayers. I don't own the rights to the album or song "Paint the Sky with Stars", which actually belongs to Enya.
Author's Notes: The conception of this story occurred when I was listening to my Enya CD and imagining someone dancing to the music. Now, as of the prologue, you the reader have no idea what dancing has to do with the story. Trust me, you will find out in the first chapter. I'm really not sure where this story is going. I'm thinking I might just let it take me wherever it wants to go. Letting stories write themselves isn't always a bad thing, no da.

Prologue

With a toss of her head, Lina Inverse sent her poppy-red locks of hair bouncing over her shoulder. It looked like the kind of hair you see in shampoo commercials: glossy, luxuriant, and rich in color. In other words... beautiful. Of course, Lina never saw it that way. To her, it was always that mass of demon-curls from Hell, plaguing her with a bad hair decade. She was fairly contemptuous of her appearance, as though she were dead set on proving she was not worthy of her ruby eyes, crimson hair, and milky skin. Lina attributed everything to her mother and insisted she herself paled in comparison. While it was true Lina's mother was stunning, Lina never accepted her own beauty.

It was the casual toss of the crimson hair that caught Zelgadis Graywords' attention. Only once before had he seen such an intense color of hair, and the wrenching in his gut reminded him of the heartache he suffered from it. Zelgadis unconsciously raised his hand to caress the crimson locks when the woman underneath them stepped onto the bus. Zelgadis pulled his hand back and blushed, turning away to cover his embarrassment. How strange people must think he is, to reach out to a strange woman like that. Shame on me, he thought. She's been dead only a year and here you are, already chasing phantoms. Zelgadis turned to watch the bus pull away from the curb. The young woman with the vivacious red hair was hidden from view. Sighing heavily, Zelgadis continued on his jog.

Fate can be a vindictive bitch. If life works like a finely tuned machine, fate is the wrench thrown into the gears. Total and complete system failure follows. Fate cannot be questioned; or rather, no living being would ever understand the answer. Fate works in mysterious ways. Even more mysteriously, phenomenally, fate can also be the remedy for catastrophe, misfortune, or broken hearts.

It is this last malady that fate works to amend. Why else would Lina be boarding a bus at that particular stop on that particular day? Why else would Zelgadis have chosen, at the last minute nonetheless, to alter his jogging route to swing him by the museum bus stop at that particular moment? The two people in question had suffered enough despair in their lives to jade them. Fate had already wreaked havoc on their lives, now it is time to repair the damage.