Part 2 The translator - Glimpse I

They were driving on a narrow mountain road, pines passing by them as they glided left and right on the asphalt river that snaked around the mountains.

The gentle hum of the engine comforted her, and she didn’t feel like she wanted to do anything, still she opened the briefcase and began to search. “So many bills and invoices” she thought to herself as she browsed through all the papers.

Her colleague was at the steering wheel and looking at him she struggled to remember what she was searching for in the first place. “What am I doing with him” she began to wonder.

The road hit an opening and she could see Pribilyna down below. Orange roofs atop white buildings, they looked like mushroom cakes.

She was falling to her death when she awoke in her train seat. She had fallen asleep due to the jet lag and it had been a very long trip. She wiped her face with her hands and looked again at the rice fields that were passing by her train. Relieved she was where she was meant to be, she made an effort to stretch a bit in her seat.

The shinkansen was mostly empty that day and hour as she noticed when she looked around. The sun was coming up though she felt like it should have been going down, since back home it was 7 hours earlier.

The rice fields and farm homes gave way to buildings and the towns, and those in turn gave way to mountainous forests. Mount Fuji could now be seen in all its glory when the train faced it with its side. The bloody red light of the morning bathed it in an ominous glow.

After she got off the train she began to look around for the bus stop until she eventually found it in front of a shoe store. They were selling some funny looking tennis shoes with high heels. “Very vintage” she thought looking fondly at them. Some yellow ones were on sale, but the shop was closed at that hour.

It was around 7 am and she was cold and alone, only robots traveled the streets cleaning them. All the shops and restaurants were closed, and she could smell the ocean, even though it was 100 km away. She also smelled the perfume of orange blossoms, so she looked around, but couldn’t see any orange trees, though there were some decorative bushes that seemed to give off the scent of oranges.

She wondered if she was waiting in the right place, sitting alone in the bus stop with her suitcase.