Palvine Part 4

 By Mitzi Danielson-Kaslik

hot cranberry juice

 

After it was all over, we held each other and kissed silently for what seemed like both our entire lives and no time at all. It was heaven. Just to have him hold me. As we lay there in the darkness, I found myself remembering fondly that first night we had spent together. How we had first kissed and then made love and how I was not half so happy once he was gone. As time ticked on, I watched as dawn broke out over the sea and the misty pearly clouds that had previously threatened the ship’s passage to Brittany port has sunk into the sea. We were in France. The new world. Him and me. Together at last.

We grabbed my things and dressed promptly as we bumped against the side of the pier. Sylvester took my hand as he had the night before and led me out of the cabin and into the crimson-carpeted narrow deck that we had passed through. He was so gentle with me. It was so strange to think that just the day before I had been crying his name permissively into the wind as if it’d somehow bring him back to me. And it had. He was mine. We disembarked the vessel still with our fingers intertwined, our hearts wishing our naked bodies could touch again, and they would. I knew it.

We walked a while down winding narrow dimly lit streets and wondered over bridges until we finally arrived at a small train station which appeared to me as if it wouldn’t have even a small local train leave it, let alone a train that stopped in Paris Gare du Nord and would continue through the night until it reached Marseille. But there it was. On a small light up board. Our train. The locomotive was painted midnight blue with small specs of brown dirt from smog around the chimney and pure white billowing smoke swirling into the city air. The doors creaked open as the smartly dressed guards pulled them and Sylvester, quiet as ever, helped me and the bag on board. We found ourselves two seats together in a small compartment right at the back end of the train. We waited for a few moments and the train began to steam up and chug off into the distance to Paris. The city of light. He began to whisper to me of the life we would have and he told me all of The Artists’ District of Paris and all the wonders that I was soon to encounter. 

hot cranberry juice