Traces of the past

23. Home

Reth POV

The next day Elisa woke up to a short note saying: I am leaving, don't look for me. Forget I even existed.

It was the most sincere note I had ever written as if I let my blood on it.

After a whole night of poor sleep and endless thinking, I finally came to a conclusion. It might have hurt, it might have scared me at first, but now it seemed right.

The best decision I could have made, me, that was so bad at deciding my own fate.

To go back.

As soon as I entered the hotel, everything looked at me like I was a stranger, an alien, not someone that slept at the same hotel two weeks ago. Even the furniture was so bland, so out of shape, it didn't fit my taste at all. 

Let's not talk about people. I would have made a fool out of myself as always hadn't Elisa been there to sort everything out. I was just followed her like a lost puppy, like a little animal that lost his mother, except that I lost something else. I lost my land, therefore my happiness.

Here, in the present, despite the comfortable and clean bed, I didn't feel the comfort at all. All that I felt was a trace of what once used to be.

Despite the security of the hotel, the cameras, the phones, the interconnectivity, I felt empty and sad, desperate to find something to grip, something worth living for.

The courage has vanished somewhere deep into my being, ashamed of the surroundings; I felt like people looked at me in disgust, wondering why I exist.

The thing that I was wondering about too.

Why do I even exist in the first place?

Returning felt like living hundreds of years in the matter of seconds, crossing worlds like rivers, not even seeing them in the first place.

If someone would have cracked my head and brought to surface my thoughts, for sure they would have been labelled as delusional. 

You were treated badly there, why would you want to come back? Here is the place where you belong. 

Was it? 

It is said "Home is where your heart is" and my heart remained there, in a cold dammed castle, in the 19th century. 

There it was my home, my pace, my strength, my people. Slowly, I remembered the people, how they listened to me without asking much, how they gave back pleasant smiles and grateful looks, how warm the castel halls felt when the torches were lit and the dust wiped, how magical was the sight from the windows, when snow fell covering the earth and ...your soul.

If that was a fairytale, I want the fairytale back and there is nothing and nobody to stop me from going back.

Not a moment I doubted my victory, not a moment gave a damn about Sarya, not a moment worried about leaving here. And what was I leaving? 

Aside from Elisa, that I felt pity for a little, there was nobody worth of mentioning.

My place was the 19th century of my mother's land, in a specific medieval castle, somewhere in the woods of Wallachia.

This was going on into my head, while I was on my way to the castle.

Getting closer to the entrace I prayed I wasn't too early for the opening, but the gates were slightly open, so I made my way in without hesitating. 

It will take a second...You go in and then...

What I thought, I did. 

A little longer, endure a little longer this world...