The music down the hall continued, and I had hardly gotten ready for my guest when an intense rapping, a strange pattern of three knocks at a time, came forth from behind my old oaken door, softly drowning out the fiddle.

It was this moment that I had been most anxious for whether I knew it or not. The type of thing I had been waiting for all my life, and as I would later see, be all the better for.

Presently anxious, and now uncertain of how to best approach talking to my guest about the matter of my manuscript, let alone money, I opened the door. What stood behind my door, and what still stands there in the frozen moments of remembered history long past, was, I would later find out, what would turn out to be my dearest friend.

The sense of dread I had felt for some reason gave way to awe, as well as feelings I had yet to fully figure out by then, and the vision of this woman, a being too good for this world, stood there, silently knowing.