Bluefire

Farewell?

I wanted to say as much to my mom, since I would be leaving tomorrow morning and she wouldn't even be awake. 

Instead, I was trying to jam everything I wanted into my luggage. While the main bag didn't worry me because I could just go shopping as soon as I reached my destination, —Copenhagen, for those who were curious— I couldn't really leave my favorite stuff behind for a whole month... which meant stuffing Tablet, Lappy, xCloud Handheld, Sennheiser Headsets and I'm starting to sound like a certain Canadian tech Youtuber with all this sponsoring so I'll stop there. 

Translation: there was a lot of stuff and I had to burn through every inch of space I had to stuff everything in together with the books I liked. Stuff like The Silmarillion, Metamorphoses and... Love and Prejudice. The stuff I could read until bored and ready to go to bed. Hopefully reading would soothe my mind even in a ship so stable I wouldn't be able to feel the rocking of the waves. 

I sighed as I put the last few things together, making sure to count the $500 I had in my wallet and the two credit cards I would be taking with me, along with my passport and cruise tickets (I had learned Saskia had my hotel reservation done online so I didn't have to worry about that and my boarding pass for the flight was on my phone). Once everything was accounted for, it all went into my handbag along with the phone. I removed my smartwatch (no Apple, you don't get me to reference you except in this pause) and set an alarm for 4:00 AM —the time I would be getting the pick up— and zipped everything tight, stacking checked luggage, duffel bag and handbag together. 

As I finished wrapping things up, I couldn't help but notice how empty my room here looked. It kind of made sense. The apartment was a temporary home during my modeling gig, while my mom worked on it in her own way, as a fashion designer. As a result, most of the stuff in my fairly large room was the stuff I could haul with me from my actual home back in Belgium. Most of my childhood stuff, my collectibles, my posters, everything... was there. 

Also, since I'm getting personal, question and answer time I guess: yeah, I'm a model. I did tell you I wouldn't really be out of place among a bunch of rich kids because I was one and I also happened to have a very Instagrameable life and appearance. Also, I happened to be Belgian. I was born in Liege. My mom was from a small German-Belgian town, old man was from a similar town deep in Wallonia. I was from Liege like my big sister, and my cousin was from Ghent. If that sounds confusing, I don't intend to make it any simpler for you. Just don't try to understand it because I gave up on doing so as well. 

After checking everything once more, I went down to the kitchen to get something to drink. For a moment, I thought about just watching TV in the living room instead of going to bed right away. 

I quashed the idea right away. The truth was that tomorrow I would be busy all day and by the time I was in my room it would be around 5 in the afternoon, which meant I wouldn't get rest for a while. 

So after taking a tin of LaCroix upstairs and untying my hair, I dropped into my pillow, thinking of what would happen tomorrow. 

From what I understood, Saskia would pick me at the airport and take me to the hotel. It would be around four when I arrived, and while day 1 wasn't terribly important, someone had intended to host a soiree in one of the bars as an icebreaker. Needless to say, it would involve staying awake until late into the night, then the next day would be sightseeing and boarding the ship that would take us to Saint Petersburg. This meant that I really did well by going to sleep at... according to my smartwatch... 8 o'clock. 

Especially because I had a feeling Saskia would keep me awake and out of my room as much as she could. 

As I ran a list of all possible scenarios in my mind to brace for tomorrow, my eyelids started to close on me. It was only a few minutes into one of the many worst case scenarios before I fell asleep.