--Toulouse and Royal--

Okies, here's the quick teaser of my new up-and-coming fic. Hope y'all enjoy! Drop me a line and let me know, and the real story will be here soon!

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They say, down in New Orleans, that all of life converges on the corner of Toulouse and Royal. While no evidence has been found to substantiate this claim, I know that my life, for one, has been built around that street corner.

The first time I ever saw those names, I was thirteen years old and way out of my league. New Orleans has a pulse and a heartbeat all its own -- the city itself is alive -- and my naïve adolescent mind was all too easily caught up in the maelstrom. I learned much of life from that city. I remember tasting my first whiskey, losing my first five dollars in my first poker game, and first learning to see the city as the living, breathing creature it truly was. The city breathed a spicy, smoky, sultry atmosphere, and everyone within it seemed to absorb a bit of that same enticing mystery.

I don't know how I managed to find my way into the heart of the French Quarter, much less how I managed to find my way into the heart of the French Quarter without the stern, watchful presence of my Aunt Irene. But there I was that day; a young, sheltered Catholic girl who had never been out of her hometown in Mississippi before being thrown headlong into the color and jive of the Big Easy. I, who had been singing in my church choir since age six, tossed alone and unchaparoned into the city whose pulse carried the beat of jazz. It was so different from anything that I had ever known that I couldn't help but fall in love with the fantasy. That's the only word I could find to describe New Orleans; fantasy. It was too crazy and perfect to be anything but a dream, and seems to exist outside of time and limitation.

I fell head over heels in love with its bright colored, horn blaring, Gone With the Wind, hot pepper aura. They say you never forget your first love. My first love was a city, and she is forever in my heart.

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