The Last Vikings

#LiveTheMoment

I attempted to wait for Paulo at the front of the ice hotel, but the merciless wind seized the tears wobbling between my eyelashes, threatening to freeze them solid and make me blind.

I ducked back inside and slumped on the icy bench around the glistening sculpture of a polar bear that dominated the lobby.

Or maybe it was a grizzly bear. They were equally incongruous in this environment.

A neon-clad man lifted his phone to  take a picture of the sculpture, and I moved again, feeling like the biggest, most deluded twat that ever had the misfortune to walk this accursed earth.

An ethereally pretty girl with red, red lips and glossy black hair sat next to me. She was a fairy tale princess, the physical incarnation of Snow White; beautiful and imperious. She immediately pulled out her phone.

How could I have thought Ruben was interested in me? I wasn't even in the same league as him and Suzie, as any of these people. I wasn't even playing the same sport.

I was parochial and ordinary, hopelessly outclassed, just as I had been at GlobalGreen.

Suddenly, homesickness crept up and stabbed me in the heart like a Shakespearian villain.

I saw the wide, silver beaches of Whalsay, the dancing yellow blossoms in the machair.

I heard the call of a lapwing.

The absent smell of peatsmoke, whisky-rich and homely, burned cruelly in my lungs.

I wanted Shetland. I wanted to go home.

But I couldn't.

The tears began to coalesce in earnest, and I glanced at Snow White, embarrassed she might see my cry. But her eyes were fixed on her Instagram, and I watched her scroll, face bored, thumb moving in a continuous looping motion up the screen. Slide, slide, slide. People and places, moments and faces, all rolled quickly past.

Occasionally, she would pause for a semi-second and beat a neat double-tap with her thumb. Then the images would roll past once more; irrelevant landscapes on a train journey from somewhere else to somewhere else.

I was lost in the tiny, hypnotic movements of her hand when Paulo arrived. He had to come right up to me and say "Jennie," before I even registered his presence.

"Paulo!" I jumped up, grinning too brightly, hoping he couldn't tell how lost I was. "Thanks for coming! How nice to see you! Thanks!"

He gave a tight lipped smile, his eyes quickly leaving me, roaming the blue-lit glassy arches and columns of the lobby. I took him in as he took in the room. Still darkly handsome, still short, still looking as grizzled and dangerous as a mafioso.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" I said, overcompensating with jollity to disguise my unspent tears. "Just breathtaking. Is this the first time you've been inside?"

Paulo nodded, his eyes on the sculpture. "Polar bear," he observed dryly.

"Or grizzly," I said.

"Shall we go?" he said. He seemed stiff and uncomfortable, and wasn't acting too pleased to see me.

I don't know, maybe that was his social awkwardness.