Sure, most stories begin with something like, “Adam took his first steps around the fig bush in the garden today,” but for the impatient readers that flip ahead to the part where the story gets going, they need only turn to the page where he sees the woman taking her first steps in.

In this case, if you watched the woman’s feet closely, you might notice a tapping tornado of pent-up energy trying to escape through one of her feet. After about a minute of this, both feet, strapped in leather sandals with sensible heels, headed, with some halting and hesitating, down a sidewalk eventually leading to a large wooden swinging door. She paused by the restaurant door, and did not notice as above her a set of bare cheek bottoms—accompanied by a heart-shaped bow and arrow—disappeared through a tiny porthole window near the roof point.

Still gathering herself below, the lady swung a dubious half smile onto her face as she pushed her way through the door and began to scan the restaurant. A side of her was registering an opinion that she was a bit nuts to be meeting someone she had found only a week ago online, even if they had liked the same books and traveling and movies and porches.

“But it’s the digital age!” argued this more contentious side. “Everyone meets people online these days! With a good description you could buy a shoe online—is man-shopping really so different!? And… well… all meetings mayyyy not end in happily ever after, but strange flashers or murders are even rarer! I like the odds!”

This was met with a prolonged silence from her more pessimistic side.

“Oh hush!” the optimistic side said, calling on the inner teacher voice that somehow quells all opposition. “We are NOT going to end up as any kind of headline!”

With that, the feet set off to wend their way around the right side of the busy room, while above in the rafters, something landed perfectly on one bare toe, and then repeated the same leap, moving with the grace of a trained gymnast, to land perfectly on the other bare toe on the next wooden beam. It mirrored the path of the lady below, who still seemed completely unaware of the figure trailing her path.

The porthole opened again on the outside wall and another bare-bottomed figure clambered in, rather more clumsily, onto a rafter.

She turned at a brisk flash of hand movement from a small high-top table for two in the middle of the room. Nerves set in momentarily, as they often do for whatever historical human reason when one is placed seemingly on stage seated in the middle of a restaurant.

And then two things happened simultaneously.

The waving hand was attached to a sculpted arm and freshly shaven handsome face with red lips and a brilliant smile. Both of her sides yelled, “WOOOWEEEE,” as his playful sea blue eyes locked on her serious green set.

A loud twang from above sounded as a tiny pink arrow covered in hearts and wrapped in lace flew through the air, hitting the lady with an assassin’s accuracy in the central ventricles of the heart. She smiled widely as though this were nothing more than a foam dart.

Another twang echoed around the lofty ceiling as a second tiny arrow soared from close to the source of the previous. Although this time, the lace wrapping appeared frayed on the edges, and hearts fell off the little arrow as it passed by the man’s left ear, and instead found purchase in the lung of a fellow who had previously been minding his own business at the bar, but was now staring at the male bartender with a very confused expression on his face.

The figure of a naked toddler flew over on lacy wings to this innocent bystander and quickly yanked out the arrow, all while watched by the rather severe gaze of his fellow, who had fired his arrow accurately from the rafters, and NOT failed at his one job.

“No sense in wasting a good arrow!” said the clumsier of the two cupids as he yanked it from its place in the lung of the man at the bar, another poorly attached heart falling from the arrow to the floor with a plop.

The man at the bar shook his head as if clearing cobwebs away, and then took a long draught of his beer, which emptied with a swish, and finally returned to gazing at his wife.

“I’ll just, umm, try that again, shall I?” said the little cupid, wiping the arrow on a rather stained silky cloth he pulled from his quiver, a sheepish grin on his face.

With a wave of his hand, everything in the room froze, and he walked right up behind his original target and fired, this time hitting his mark at point blank range. The little cupid looked up with a satisfied smile at his friend, who rolled his eyes in response, and with a wave of his hand, he restored the passage of time in the room.

From the rafters above, the two cupids watched as the lady and gentleman sat and talked for hours afterward, the pair seemingly unaware that time had been restored and that they had both been struck by love’s wayward arrows.

“OOOoo I think I have a good feeling in my toes about this set,” said the smaller jolly cupid to the other. “A job well done us! Been following that one around for ages! Going to be sad to be reassigned, but that’s the job. He was an entertaining one—I think I’ve seen every movie ever made by now! And the hijinks!” he exclaimed, wiping a tear from the outside corner of an eye with the back of his hand. “What was yours like?”

“Well, fairly varied hobbies,” the larger cupid replied clinically. “Crochet, anything you can do with clay or a glue gun I’ve probably had to witness, and she really likes dogs. Also seen a fair few movies—thought my eyeballs would bleed from all that Harry Potter extended set, what do ya call it…binging…and I suppose my favorite bits were when she made something in the kitchen with mushrooms. I don’t usually hold with this human stuff, but those mushrooms—they aren’t half bad. Nothing like the ambrosia of home of course. Speaking of which, I’m off back to HQ if you fancy a cuppa’?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” replied the little cupid, and together they vanished through a small circle of rippling air.

THE END…?