Silk Skin and Smoke

The first time I saw her, she was wreathed in smoke. Not the choking, acrid kind that stings your eyes, but the soft, curling tendrils that seemed to dance at her command, as if the very air bent to her will. She stood under a flickering streetlamp, her skin shimmering like silk under the pale glow. Her presence was a contradiction-fragile yet unyielding, ethereal yet grounded in some unfathomable depth.

She looked at me like she already knew every secret I carried, every lie I'd told myself to survive.