hyacinthsayearago:

Cobbled street tramped and stomped on by the centuries. Alleyways that weave back and forth and round, flowering into a hectic winding series of tunnels that tighten and tighten onto a central point where they all simultaneously widen and burst out into a jagged-edged square with pigeons and their beady eyes who hawk pain au chocolate flakes and dip their feet into coffee dregs flecked with torn up napkin bits.

One character but two narrators are trekking today, emerged very freshly from a train station, from a train carriage grey and white. They’ve been curled up over two seats for eight hours when they boarded at random in a French city. This is the autumn of their best and worst year, an autumn of nothing to do – so little that the only thing one could feel when looking upon newly inherited money was an urge to kill every past memory and fall through enough foreign towns that the neverending experience alone would wipe any previous semblances of personality from the mind. This was the underlying concept, at least. Right now they had chapped lips and very worn clothes and a growing sense of weariness at every drunken wild backpacker. The one constant so far had been each other, sleeping in the arms of each other on benches at train stations and sharing hostel beds.

Today they were quiet. At the station was a white sign with the name of the town written on it, a name that sounded like the up and down motion of a small boat at sea but minus the queasiness. He – Matteo – muttered it under his breath and she didn’t bother because names didn’t matter, they grabbed hands. Fingers interlocked, she felt his thumb stroke hers in circles while they strode through the medieval town gates. There was a bus station just outside, three white empty tourist buses stood in a row, the rest was desolate.