Tonight was not a night for certainty, not for questions, the entire evening was soft around the edges, where questions and answers had no meaning because one's mind furnished the information you needed without the need for words. She didn't know his name, they hadn't been introduced and yet it wasn't a concern. Nothing in her was screaming for the demands of propriety to know his name - The Highway Man was name enough. The band played and music filled the air, and she allowed herself to be moved like a ballerina in a music box, her actions automatic, careless, thoughtless and soft. The whole world pillowy and cloudlike, blurred at the edges like the memory of a dream.

Like any woman of rank, of riches, or of beauty, Merida, depended upon the world for her gratification and was sensible of her dependence on her brother, in the absence of her father. However, tonight her highwayman wasn't a man and she wasn't a woman - she was a nymph, an earthly analog for a transcendental vision, an Epipsychidion Lady Emilia or Blithdale Priscilla; fragile and enigmatic, reveling in her mystery. He was a force of physical nature, who rejected the ton and society was lesser as a result of this rejection. Surrounding herself in the namelessness that existed between them.

Merida shook her head, not in no, but in a wild movement, like a mare tossing it's main, an expression of physical abandon. Her wild hair and dress shimmering together with the movement. 'Do you not recognise Undine, the Naiad when you see her?' she teased, her tone of obviously mock affront, 'I've come tonight to steal the heart of a Knight to gain a soul, but all I've managed to steal is my fine new hat' Merida managed, her voice sounding dreamy and far away to her own ears.

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