“They are coming over again, climbing the peaks. Those dull grey clouds. A storm is brewing. You can sense it in their rogue abandonment”.
“Only you can have such a mournful thought about cloud covered The Alps. Appreciate their beauty, for a change, you know”, she said while gazing at the magnificence of the scene in front of her.
A smile touched his lips and vanished in the thousandth part of a second on sensing the tinge of disdain in her voice.
He didn’t reply, instead looked at her. The breeze licked through her Auburn hair as she breathed it in deeply. He felt a sudden, wild, urge to slide his fingers through her locks, but he resisted it.
“You don’t write much anymore, nothing of significance at least”.
“Well that is my way of pausing life”, he replied.
If only, he could, though.
She laughed.
“You have such a God complex, don’t you”. she was awfully straightforward.
“Not really. I don’t want to control life”, he uttered, “just like to imagine it differently”.
“So you are an escapist from reality?” … she looked at him, trying to figure out his expressions.
He knew she was attempting to pin him down into one of those classifications of human race she was raised with.
“I am a long journey to discover. Do you really want to walk down that road?”.
“Why not. I like challenges. They make me feel alive”.
“Some Journeys should never be taken on. The quest outlasts the thirst”.
“Do you always talk in riddles?”
“Ha! silly girl”, he chuckled in his head. Never mind.
Thunder cracked in the distance.
“How long are you going to stay in Torino? “, she asked, shaking her head in absolute pity on this mad stranger. Stranger yes. She had read his every book, and yet he was a stranger. Every passing minute was making her firmly believe the idea.
“I leave for Bordeaux tomorrow morning en route to Seville. A couple of book signing events here and there. The usual”.
“And then?”.
“We’ll see where the wind takes me after that. I’ll surely miss the Alps, though”.
“Oh they are hard to forget, I am not sure though I want you to remember them the way you probably would”. She seemed pretty possessive about them, he thought.
A honk of the arriving bus woke him from his thoughts.
“That’s my bus, are you catching the same one ?”, she got up and asked him while collecting her bags.
“I think I’ll stay for a while”.
“Suit yourself. You surely will catch a cold in this weather”.
He looked up to say something to her, but she walked away murmuring something to herself.
“This crashed the Idol of mine to pieces in her mind”, he thought with surety.
It started to pour as the bus engines humming became a distant sound.
It was as if the storm had never left him.
Like a faithful companion.
A smile touched his lips and vanished in the thousandth part of a second.
