Bluefire

Memories

The hotel was a lot nicer than I had thought. Even though the evening had at last set in, it looked so busy it might as well have been early in the afternoon. Hundreds of people, most clearly belonging to the upper echelons of society, clustered around the lobby as valets ferried car after car away from the gilded porch with the vaulted ceiling. The good news was that since we were arriving in a Lamborghini, we didn't look out of place among the two limousines and the long procession of Ferraris, Aston Martins, Jaguars, Cadillacs and Rolls Royces. 

When we dropped the car off, Sylvie had the car taken away and my bags as well, not even bothering to tell me that she had checked in for the two of us before handing me my card key and telling me to take an hour to rest since I would apparently be having a busy night. 

I couldn't help but feel that my preparations hadn't cut it, despite the fact I had anticipated this. Well, even though I was tired, I'd get to rest. 

I tried not to get too flabbergasted at my room once I started looking around it in more detail: it wasn't that it was huge (but it was), but rather, the amount of decor that seemed to have come straight from the Royal Palace. Everything here, from the mattress to the sink to the bedposts seemed overly expensive... to the point I felt highly uncomfortable just sitting in bed. 

The good news was that my bed was really big, so I would have no trouble getting some sleep. Since the weight in my eyes was turning into a drag, it seemed like a good idea to do so now. 

So after I left my bag in the closet (whose doors looked like they had already seen a fair share of careless guests despite their ornate finishing), I kicked off my shoes and grabbed my travel bag, digging in to find my earphones and some face wipes. I didn't feel like using water lest I did wake up and instead decided on something less sleep-killing. 

I plugged the phones in, threw the dirty wipes in the bin that was (thankfully) next to the bed and set the tone with a relaxing piano playlist before letting my head graze the pillow, barely having time to kick my pants off my feet as I essentially blacked out in the room. 

Yes, dreams were had, again. 

Thankfully, these dreams were far more normal or at least nowhere near as unsettling: I dreamed with the person I had just met. 

Back when I was around 11—and after the family had gotten its collective baggage together, so to speak—we used to visit Sas' home. While our own home was fairly large (by space deprived European standards at least), Saskia lived in a gargantuan manor roughly the size of two football (Soccer for any American reading me) fields put together and at least three stories tall. So most family reunions took place at 'Snow Manor' or 'Sneeuw Herenhuis' if you wanted the official name of the building. We met most often during the holidays, naturally. However, the dream I was having was actually one that reminded me of the reason I wanted to spend my summer there: because the best summer I had I had spent there with sis and cous. 

I also remembered the day and time of the dream: it was June 5th, shortly after breakfast. It was something fairly amusing to have a cereal and waffles buffet in a 16th century dining room with a table for 40 guests. It was even more amusing to go from that to fiddling with Lego when your living room was full of golden statues and relics and looked more like an antiquary. 

At the time, I had been focusing on trying to use the obnoxious amount of blocks at Saskia's disposal to build a fort of them I could hide in. Saskia herself was doing something a lot less interesting (and a lot more confusing): homework. Or well, the thing was it wasn't really homework, but the girl had taken to teaching herself music because she wanted to go to a Conservatory and become a pianist. Yes, rich people riching.