Una finds herself not enjoying the next leg of her trip as much as she hopes. By the time she finds herself a hotel and checks in early, she is exhausted. She misses home in moments like that, especially as she stumbles her way through her horrible German enough for the receptionist to take pity on her and switch to English.
She checks her phone out of habit. Alec had gone to bed in the wee hours of the night and she hadn't heard from him since.
God, she had actually done that. She had a one-night stand with a random stranger in the middle of Paris. Named Alec of all names, remembering how he joked that he hoped he was a better person than Alec in her book.
She was about to message him when ends up stopping her Facebook scroll. Jem and Faith's engagement party was something she had ducked out of being on the trip.
He was there, he was Jem's brother of course,
"He'll be there, though please believe me when Jem thinks he's being a total ass hat Una," Faith told her. "He wants nothing to do with his brother, but family is family to his family. They got into a really big argument about what happened between the two of you actually."
Faith tells her apologetically.
What Faith didn't warn her about was the pretty little blonde that hung off his arm like a puppy. It should have been sickening, but instead, it was gut-wrenching. She barely makes it to the toilet before she finds herself being sick.
She spends the day in bed, ignoring the knocks of housekeeping and other things.
Falling down the rabbit hole because she knew that blonde.
She doesn't know why she does it, hitting the numbers and hitting the call. She didn't even care about the time.
"Hello?" A girl's voice answers the phone and Una freezes. "Hello?"
Una drops the phone on her bed and hits the end call as soon as she can.
She sighs curling up, bringing her knees up to her chest, hugging herself into a ball. A few minutes later her phone rings.
She doesn't answer it, she can't answer it.
It beeps in voicemail.
She knows it's him and she plays it anyway.
"Hi, you called—anyway I hope you are well and maybe when you are back you can find that copy of Keats that I gave you last fall."
Seriously? Does he want a book that he told her to keep back?! She would rather burn it before facing him.
She lays in bed for the day, ignoring all the messages that come through on her phone. Not wanting to hear about it, or feel anything. The sound of his voice replays in her mind and lingers like bad perfume from an older lady at church.
She feels like she is back at square one, back in that hospital room feeling alone and guilty for what she has done. She broke down, she lost her strength and called him. Maybe she had been wrong in her choice? Maybe he should have been told?
She curls up, even more, her long hair tangling around her, smothering her in ways that it never did before.
Hours go by as her stomach rumbles, she ignores it. Like she ignored every other bodily function so far. She doesn't cry though. She just lays in silence, stuck replaying every moment that had shared together.
At some point she digs through her bag, finding the offending books that now tortured her conscience. She opens it to that first page.
Una,
May the words on these pages bring forth a fantasy in your mind
She wants to slam it shut, but she doesn't.
She flips it open more, landing on whatever page it wants to.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still, wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
She makes it out of bed the next day, forcing herself to go out. Despite the dark circles under her shadowy blue eyes and pale skin.
She dresses in her black knee-length dress, and a light black blouse under it. She even threw on black pantyhose for good measure. Nothing else seems appropriate for how she feels.
She walks down the Cathedral, it was easy to find being as large as it was. She stands in front of it, intimidated by just how large it was in person. She might not be Catholic, but she could enjoy the splendour all the same.
The hushed spoken language is different all around her, English, French, what appears to be Japanese or Korean, and of course, there is German as well.
She reaches for her mother's cross at her neck and prays silently as she sits in one of the pews. Ankles crossed and head bowed. Fishing out her bible, stopping to stare at the books of poetry that she still couldn't part with. Maybe
"Frau—Madame?" She hears a rushed voice behind her as she walked around. She turns around to see a young boy holding out her pocket poems that had been in her bag.
"Thank you, she says taking it. She forgot she had taken it out when she sat down in a pew. "Danke," she corrects herself trying to use that little German she knows.
The boy nods his head and runs off to his parents or she thinks anyway.
She sighs looks at the book, and puts it back in her purse. It was like a curse, how it managed to find its way back to her.
"Are you mourning someone or something?" Another voice, with a strong accent, asks her as she lights a candle. Something she does every place she goes when it's available to her.
She looks up, and then down at herself, dress in black, with her black hair and pale skin.
"For my soul, for humanity," she says sighing. "I have run a long way away, yet my past keeps following me it appears."
The older woman tilts her head, clearly not expecting such a melodramatic answer.
"Well, god is forgiving all you have to do is ask," she says and it makes Una want to snort. If any Catholic knew what she had truly done, they would never say such a thing. She only nods her head before walking away deciding that her heart wasn't in it.
She leaves the large Cathedral, she might regret her mood and how she felt about it in a few days. Not appreciating what was around her to see, she was too haunted to care.
She walks down the sidewalk, very aware that very few people were speaking English around her. Of course, such a thing was expected, she was in another country, but it only made her feel more out of a place.
She wrapped her arms around herself and walked towards the bridge that seemed to be popular. Grates of padlocks lined it, much like the old bridge that had been in Paris. She stops halfway across the bridge, rifling through her bag for the book.
She rips her two favourite poems out of it as the trains thundered back and forth across the river. She ignores the people around her, trying to keep her cool, she can cry later in the hotel room. She could cry later in the bathtub with a bottle of wine from the shop that she saw earlier.
She stops, leaning over the railing to look at the blue water of the Rhine River. Her dark hair falls forward in the breeze.
She looks at the book once more. Just another piece of him that she needed to be clean of, and she comes to regret her decision, but as her hold loosens her heart races. She didn't want to appear to be throwing things into the river, not books anyway. She didn't want to be charged with littering in a foreign country.
She almost lost her will, when a large gusting wind blew her hair around her face, spluttering she gasps as she feels the books fall from her grasp. Her hair clears from her view, as she watches the book fall slowly into the water, sinking beneath with a small splash, before floating for a moment as it soaked in more water.
A sob escaped her mouth. Someone around her looks at her with pity, or was it disgust?
She buys herself some ice cream before going back to the hotel, along with a sandwich from some shop because she needed something for dinner.
She sits in the tub, wine out of a bottle and ice cream slowly melting, her mother's cross laying against her chest. She doesn't know what to do next, usually, she's planned a few days in advance, but this time she doesn't have the energy.
She looks over the brochures that weren't in English but had a few areas. On one of them, she says rock formations and green.
Externsteine, medieval, possibly a sacred place. She doesn't know why she was drawn to the places that pagans were known for but she books herself a train ticket and finds a hotel for a few nights. She does her laundry that night, sitting by the machine in the hotel with her bible for something to read.
She stops by a bookstore before leaving the city, finding the small English section and hunted down a book of poetry, any book she could find. She ends up with a book of romantic victorian poets and makes her peace with such a thing.
Find her spot on the train, and curls up with her book. She smoothes out the pages she had ripped out and placed them in the new book for safekeeping. She watches the scenery and cities fly by out her window. She at least sent a message to her family that she was moving on, and that she was not dead in a ditch somewhere.
She looked at Alec's messages, which started happily, before it progressively got more worried and then finally just stopped altogether.
Why did it hurt so much?
Did he deserve much more than her broken soul? Her wounded heart that still broke daily, forever cracked and attached to someone else.
Detmold is a small and quaint little town and upon arriving she finds out there is an old castle museum. Not her usual thing, but Germany hasn't been the usual leg of the trip for her. She checks into her room early after inquiring if it was possible. Thankful for broken English because of the local sights that are around for tourists.
She walks to the castle, across the bridge and gate. She counts her euros and pays the admission. In a way, it reminds her of Casa Loma back home in Canada. Except this much-much older, but the set up of the museum is the same in many ways.
It's a break from the regular, it's a change of pace that allows her to sink into history as she wanders around. Despite everything, she finds herself in the castle chapel, because where else would she find herself? No one really bothers her here thankfully or at all. Between their English and her horrid German, it was easier to just not bother each other unless necessary.
She goes back to the hotel after ordering some food at the first restaurant that she finds. She orders some noodles, gravy and some sort of sausage, along with a large piece of black forest cake for good measure. She eats slowly, sitting in the only chair, at the small table. It's good and fresh at least, and there is some strange white asparagus as a side as well it appears which she wrinkles her nose at.
She takes a shower, before changing into her pyjama's deciding to eat her dessert in bed as she turns on her iPad for the first time to watch some Netflix after inquiring about the wifi password. She drinks from the small bottle of wine she found in a shop as well as settles for a fantasy, and because the main guy was hot as she eats her cake before putting it off the side when finished.
She wakes up, and for the first time, there is a pang of heartache and sadness when she opens her eyes. Thinking that maybe there would be someone there, holding her again. There wasn't though, it was just her all alone in her bed.
She puts on her most nature-friendly clothing, a pair of jean shorts and a t-shirt. She doubled check the bus schedule and where to buy tickets to get to the place.
She buys some pastries and a cold sandwich, and a pretzel for lunch for good measure, and filled her water bottle with ice water, along with a bottle of juice just in case she wanted something sweet.
When she gets off the bus and follows the group of tourists, she's in awe of her surrounding. The birds were singing and there was a slight breeze. The hair at the back of her neck tickled enough that she swept it up into a ponytail.
This place she felt alive in, she decided at that moment. It felt like she was approaching something special for the first time since Paris.
Paris
Alec
For the first time, she felt guilty.
How many days had it been? Five, six they had parted at the train station?
She grabs her phone and opens up the new app, confronted with a slew of messages that went from happy too desperate, to just nothing once again. The last one just says.
'There's chocolate in your bag, my little sister always enjoys chocolate. If anything, please don't hesitate to call or message me. Should have something gone awry. If not I get the message loud and clear.'
Una sighs
I'm sorry, I went off the deep end when I got to Cologne. It was nothing you did, I just needed some time to? I don't know really but I needed a few days to sort myself out after a call from my family and seeing photos from my sister's engagement party?
Next, she finds a poem and snaps a photo of it from her book. A poem that she adores.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon
She pockets her phone and goes forward to the rock structures that were the feature of this place. Looking up in wonder and amazement as she came through and saw the old carvings and stairs up the side of the rocks. There was even a bridge at some point.
She makes it to the top before she feels her phone buzz.
I hope everything this all right now, also Keats? That sounds like Keats, I thought we agreed to not like him? Alec texts back simply, but it makes her smile, at his insistence that there were better poets than Keats around today.
I never agreed to such a thing, I believe I told you I would change your mind about him.— Una texts back, before taking a selfie with the skyline and trees in the background, smiling broadly. Her melancholy days were still evident on her face by the dark circles and pale skin, but for a change, her eyes seemed lighter and brighter.
Both poems are Keats. The first one is Ode to a Nightingale, and the second is the first Stanza of Endymion.
I look forward to you're thoughts and comments on this Una. This has been a few weeks in a making for this chapter, dealing with personal things that have made writing melancholic Una a bit much for me lately, but hey I did try and end it on a happy note!