a brief meeting

I felt a heavy coat being draped about my shoulders and two strong hands turning me around.
“You’re lost,” he said, and in the drafty back-alley by a sliver of moon I made out his confident figure.
The night was open and the stars were close. Closer than home, as a fact, where the flat plains of the Mid-west couldn’t take me up to the elevation of this capital, Lhasa.
I was standing on the roof of the world.
He took me then, and looked at me for awhile. I saw a smile cross his lips just before he turned on his heel and strode cooly down the narrow alley by the way he came.
I took a step forward then, to follow him, but continued only with my gaze. A smile rose to my lips as I silently turned in place and began walking lightly in the opposite direction — the direction I had come, waiting for him to realize and come chasing after me.