last night's spangles and yesterday's pearls
Remus wandering around Europe. Inspired by this Remus as discovered by longsunday. Unbetaed. Accompaniment: Road - Nick Drake
The day the door shuts on Sirius' cell Remus starts walking.
He heads south and pretends that he hasn't looked back. He tries to loose himself but England is too familiar. Too small. Too big. The sky is too grey. The hills are too round. His feet don't carry him fast enough.
Somewhere around Leeds he hitches a ride in a ratty VW. The other travelers are friendly enough but Remus has nothing to say. His resolve feels thin, stretched. Their laughter ricochets off van roof and window and the side of his skull and he has to close his eyes against the sting and turn away. By the time they're nearing Cambridge the friendly comments have been reduced to nervous sidelong glances.
Remus stretches their thinning good will until they reach Dover and the ferry. When balding VW tyres hit French soil Remus slides the door open and jumps. Escapes. Trouble is he doesn't know what he's escaping from.
France doesn't feel much different from England.
He stays clear of more traveled roads after that. Wanders through vineyards and lets the carefully tangled rows of vines choose his direction. They lead him southeast, then east, then southwest, over hills and stone walls. Past estates watching him from the next rise and down long winding drives that spill him out grand wrought iron gates onto dirt tracks that seem to be going where he wants to be.
When he makes it far enough south that the air is still warm at night he removes his shoes, leaves them on the low wall edging the last French vineyard he'll pass (though he doesn't know it at the time). He doesn't realise he's left France behind until the place names on sign posts - faded yellow paint over weathered wood - start to end with a's instead of s's and e's. He knows it's Spain by the way the words feel on his tongue, thicker, warmer, wilder.
The ground is leading him now, the earth itself. The pebbles and sharp stones beneath the soles of his feet whisper the names of places he's never been - never even thought to go - delicate almost imperceptible words in the pad-scratch of skin against fine gravel, against tarmac, against cobbles, against sand.
Remus lets the names pull him south and west. Warmer and further from the last time he's had any real idea of where exactly he is. His surroundings register as still images, tableaus frozen in his mind's eye. An orange grove; branches heavy with fruit that is too bright in the long shadows of the afternoon. A red lizard squashed flat against a grey cobble, like a painted tile. Clouds, small and white and impossibly far above, spelling out an indecipherable message against deep blue sky.
He tries no to think.
He doesn't think.
One foot in front of the other.
Until one foot in front of the other hits water. Ocean. Unreal cerulean, green, aqua. A riot of calm and Africa beyond. Gibraltar, and England again. So far and so different. And yet.
The sand is warm beneath his feet, soft, like tangled sheets on a lazy sunny Sunday morning. Gulls wheel and soar across the sky teasing the wind. Africa tempts him to go further.
Remus thinks of the hot wind that pulls at his hair as he stands at the prow of the ferry and gazes resolutely south as cleansing.
Africa feels only marginally different from the continent before.
The day the door shuts on Sirius' cell Remus starts walking.
He heads south and pretends that he hasn't looked back. He tries to loose himself but England is too familiar. Too small. Too big. The sky is too grey. The hills are too round. His feet don't carry him fast enough.
Somewhere around Leeds he hitches a ride in a ratty VW. The other travelers are friendly enough but Remus has nothing to say. His resolve feels thin, stretched. Their laughter ricochets off van roof and window and the side of his skull and he has to close his eyes against the sting and turn away. By the time they're nearing Cambridge the friendly comments have been reduced to nervous sidelong glances.
Remus stretches their thinning good will until they reach Dover and the ferry. When balding VW tyres hit French soil Remus slides the door open and jumps. Escapes. Trouble is he doesn't know what he's escaping from.
France doesn't feel much different from England.
He stays clear of more traveled roads after that. Wanders through vineyards and lets the carefully tangled rows of vines choose his direction. They lead him southeast, then east, then southwest, over hills and stone walls. Past estates watching him from the next rise and down long winding drives that spill him out grand wrought iron gates onto dirt tracks that seem to be going where he wants to be.
When he makes it far enough south that the air is still warm at night he removes his shoes, leaves them on the low wall edging the last French vineyard he'll pass (though he doesn't know it at the time). He doesn't realise he's left France behind until the place names on sign posts - faded yellow paint over weathered wood - start to end with a's instead of s's and e's. He knows it's Spain by the way the words feel on his tongue, thicker, warmer, wilder.
The ground is leading him now, the earth itself. The pebbles and sharp stones beneath the soles of his feet whisper the names of places he's never been - never even thought to go - delicate almost imperceptible words in the pad-scratch of skin against fine gravel, against tarmac, against cobbles, against sand.
Remus lets the names pull him south and west. Warmer and further from the last time he's had any real idea of where exactly he is. His surroundings register as still images, tableaus frozen in his mind's eye. An orange grove; branches heavy with fruit that is too bright in the long shadows of the afternoon. A red lizard squashed flat against a grey cobble, like a painted tile. Clouds, small and white and impossibly far above, spelling out an indecipherable message against deep blue sky.
He tries no to think.
He doesn't think.
One foot in front of the other.
Until one foot in front of the other hits water. Ocean. Unreal cerulean, green, aqua. A riot of calm and Africa beyond. Gibraltar, and England again. So far and so different. And yet.
The sand is warm beneath his feet, soft, like tangled sheets on a lazy sunny Sunday morning. Gulls wheel and soar across the sky teasing the wind. Africa tempts him to go further.
Remus thinks of the hot wind that pulls at his hair as he stands at the prow of the ferry and gazes resolutely south as cleansing.
Africa feels only marginally different from the continent before.