UNREADY FOR THE NIGHT

Chapter 3

There in the midst of a great hall furnished with tapestries, brocades, glossy woods, glowing orbs, blinking consoles and walls of books with strange objects perched on pedestals, stood the most gorgeous male specimen Lucinda had ever seen. Take 'tall, dark and handsome' enhanced ten times over, zap it up with a powerful magnetism that knocks a woman sideways and sets her knees trembling, and that might come close but barely.

The garbling cries of the Grumtions ended, the hellish Midden far away, and there she stood in this beautiful place...with him.

She stepped forward, her legs wobbly, unwilling to release him from her line of sight for a minute. He was smiling and speaking but she couldn't focus on a thing he said. She just wanted to watch those finely-shaped lips move, catch the glimpse of strong white teeth, come closer to the incredibly large green eyes, maybe touch the black curly hair flowing like lava to his shoulders, and press herself against the lean muscular build that poured into tight black jeans.  

"Lucinda, can you hear me?" The man stepped closer, encircling her in the intensity of his gaze. Those eyes, crud, but she could just dive right into them and swim in their greenness. Like algae, no agate! "I apologize for putting you though all this but it was absolutely necessary that you be tested." He gave her a little shake. "Lucinda? Do respond. Come sit down. You, too, Geoffrey."  

Was it possible to experience love at first sight? Was this guy even real? He didn't look real. He looked like a combination of every man she'd ever dreamed of in TV and movies combined plus all those heroes she'd grown up swooning over in her grandmother's mythology books: Apollo, Mercury -- oh, those Greeks and Romans knew how to sculpt a man. And here he was, right here, in tight black leather pants, tall boots, and a black turtleneck. Much better than a toga though the ancients did have a way with fig leaves. 

"Lucinda! Snap out of it!" 

Somehow she ended seated in a big chair with him leaning over her snapping his fingers in her face, lovely long fingers.  

"Lucinda? Geoffrey, what's happened to her?" the man asked her companion. 

"I know not, sir. In truth she appears stunned and do my eyes betray me or has she grown? But then, I know not what's happened to me for I am," he stammered, his voice several tones deeper than before. "Older, too." 

"Lucinda, pray turn to me," Geoffrey demanded. 

Tearing her eyes away from him, Luci looked at Geoffrey. Gone the gawky boy and in his place sat a full grown man with muscles bulging against his tunic, his legging seams popping by the force of his calves while the belt fastening his sword nearly cut him in two. In an instant, he was on his feet unfastening his belt so he could breathe. Shoving his long blond hair from his eyes, he was at her side in two strides looking down at her. He took a deep breath. "What trick is this? First the Midden where we are chased by those foul creatures and now this palace and behold how we have altered!"  

"Calm down, Sir Geoffrey. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Alander, Lord of the Midden, and you are my guests. Welcome and ,yes, it's true you are older in form than when first you entered. The Midden changes those who leave its bowels to whatever age, shape, or countenance they most desire. Obviously, you always yearned to be tall, well-built, and muscular and so you are, while Lucinda, here, always dreamed of being, ah, shapely." 

Luci's gaze shot downwards past the collar of the muddied black trench hanging open and landing on the shelf that now squeezed into her sweater. That could absolutely not be her chest. She stared. Crud. It looked like she swallowed a mountain range, both east and west. Those couldn't be hers. She'd had tiny little things that practically needed to be pumped with air to even appear on the visual radar, not that anyone noticed, and now she had these things! Her eyes shot up to find both men looking at her. She whipped her coat closed and blushed furiously. "Stop staring!"