'Hey, how are you?'

I turned around, eyes caught in a bout of glaring sun, surprised to find a strikingly handsome stranger sitting against the wall. It was not his handsomeness alone which intrigued me, but his uncanny resemblance to the main character from my book (a character I'd been drawing pictures of for years). The two of us began a lively conversation in no time. I told him about the novels I was writing. He told me he was studying crystal healing. We couldn't stop talking. 'I'm Madyson by the way,' I said. 'What's your name?'

'Julius.' He smiled warmly.

After a while, we got up and walked around together. It was early June—the second day of my first Pagan Festival—I had expected to make friends with like-minded people, but something about this man tantalized me beyond friendship. Not long after our initial encounter, he brought me back to his tent and flirted with me unabashedly for the rest of the day. We'd begun to play little mind games with one another, bantering and joking through contests of wit. Even so, neither of us made our feelings completely clear until that night.

Once the sun had set, I decided to enter among a female-only group who gathered together for a frivolous Dionysian parade. After our ritual leader made her fervent speech about love, sex and alcohol, we quickly touched our plastic cups of wine together and got busy adorning ourselves in glow-necklaces and glow-bracelets. 'It's all about the passion ladies,' she said. 'Now we must go out on the prowl and catch ourselves some men!'

First we wandered out onto the dark fairgrounds in a wavy line, singing and dancing to the beat of distant drums. Julius hadn't left my thoughts all night, and when the group split up to capture unsuspecting members of the male gender, my good friend Lindsay pushed me gently. 'Go and find your bearded man.'

The camping area was nearly desolate at the time. Some of the tents were set up facing one another and I felt as if I was meandering through some sort of tiny village. There was a faint blanket of fog that settled in the grass, growing denser where I peered into the distance. A figure had begun approaching me—a tall, dark figure with long, curly hair. He beamed as we came closer to one another. "So how's the ritual going?' he asked.

'I don't know…' I said slyly. 'Apparently I'm supposed to find a man to kiss.'

We had begun to circle one another. 'Oh really? And how's that going?'

'I don't know yet.' I stopped in front of him and looked upward, attempting to fit his entire stature in my vision. 'I'm supposed to find my Dionysus, and I think I've found him right here.'

'Aww,' he said, nearly blushing. 'So what happens next?'

'Just a kiss,' I told him playfully.

'Oh, how I've longed to kiss those heavenly lips.' (Yes he actually said that!) It wasn't long before he took me into his arms. We walked together a small distance back to is tent where there was more privacy and shared our first kiss. I had never felt such incredible euphoria in my life. Afterward I was shaking and tingling, unable to comprehend what just happened.

He was forty-four, he told me. I was twenty-three. And yet the years between us felt like nothing. We held each other deep into the night—two strangers who believed ourselves mysteriously reunited under the stars.

The next day, we lay side by side in his tent. I gazed into his eyes and touched the contours of his face. 'You look like my soul,' I told him.

'Your soul has a beard?' He laughed.

'Yes, actually,' I said, and proceeded to expose my inner Jungian geek as I described the concept of anima and animus. He listened to what I had to say and found it interesting—which was comforting to me, knowing we had only grazed the tip of my glaring weirdness. Luckily I found out soon enough that we were both complete and utter weirdos who complimented one another in the best kind of way...

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