TRANSLUCENT FEET

TRANSLUCENT FEET

Today was an awful and rainy day, while I was running under the water going back home i heard footsteps along with mine and a metallic clank. When I looked around I saw him, just for a brief moment. Some people told me to write down what i think if I don’t find myself ready to say it out loud. They’d think I’m crazy if I did. Even to me it sounds like a lie that a medieval soldier’s still alive by now. I guess I’ll take the advice now that I got home.

The night is falling and i walk through the suburbs that she frequents. I think about when i saw her leaving a trail of wet footprints and i heard the spatter even though it was not raining. How could that be possible? I haven’t stop thinking about her since the first time i saw her. Is nothing like anything i have seen before. Might she be a witch? It seems like she enchants everything on her way... That’s when I see a paper flying from a window, I take it and as I try to return it, I realize the window did not seem to have been open in the whole day. The intrigue takes me so I bring it with me.

I don’t know why i keep seeing that soldier. It doesn’t make any sense. I think I’m losing my mind. I don’t know what to do or if that means something. I don’t want people around me to think I’m going crazy, I don’t wanna think I’m going crazy.

I would not be surprised that the place where this paper came from was her house.

Several days have past and we’ve crossed glances without knowing each other, but I’m almost sure we recognize each other. Even when what i wrote was blown away the wind, and that feels like a try to untie me, it doesn’t calm me down yet. I wake up one morning and look vaguely through the glass. For my surprise, it was him leaving something on the ground, at the foot of the olive tree in front of my window. I stood the way i could and went look for it. Under a rock, it was a letter. I immediately take it inside and read it.

My dear lady, I want you to know that I am not a mirage, i thought the same about you, I have believed a lot of things actually, anyway, I would like you to explain yourself who are you.
Kind regards, soldier Sargon Lycus

So he has a name… and wrote me a letter. Am I still dreaming? All this is so surreal that i just put it in my bag and continue with my normal routine. But as the day goes, every time i look for something in my bag i still found the same paper.

I have been visiting the same place daily since i saw that paper going out the window. I left a letter a while ago. One day i see a new folio appear at the foot of the tree. As expected, it is a letter of her.

I wanna start apologizing for such a horrible first impression you got of me. I wasn’t expecting you to get that paper. I wasn’t even expecting wind blow it away. Getting to the point, my name is Felicie Vanna, I’m 19 YO. I’m college student. I consider myself a normal person; I don’t know how your normality is though.
I’d like you to introduce yourself too and, if it’s that you know, explain to me what’s happening with us; why do we see each other for moments.

What a beauty name!

Jeez! What a madness! Why did I write that? The worst part is that the letter is not any more where i left it! And I’m waiting for that soldier to answer me!!! I can’t believe this is real, neither that is not though, cause i can grab and touch the note he gave me, but i can’t help thinking about how surreal this situation is. As usual, I’m coming back from college and arriving home. I check out the tree, indeed, there’s a new letter. I take it with me.

Felicie, I should apologize too for my lack of gentleness in the first letter. I introduce myself, call me Lycus. I am 20 years old. I work as guard in Medici’s castles, I got the work hoping to talking my peasant family out of the working class.
How come that studying is something normal for you? What do you study? Do you belong to the high society? Or in what kind of world do you live on to don’t be demand to cover your knees with a skirt?

Royal guard!? Where’s that?

So he actually sees his life as a medieval soldier’s?…

He doesn’t know nor can see the today’s world…

Ti is so hard to contain the excitement, pretending to patrol, marching straight, when all i really want is to start running to go to search the cleric and ask him to read the new letter. Might be one day I am going to get fired by this… Any ways, I am arriving to the place to take my friend out of his tortuous task of copying endless pages. I shake the letter noisily so the news announces its own self.

“what kind of world do I live on?” in one where public education does exist and almost no one is annoying enough to tell other people what should they wear. I’m not a high class person but I study Advocacy so I hope to be when I get the job. Really boring subject though. I study art too.
Studying isn’t normal for you? Is it hard the work or why so many walks over the city? Maybe this doesn’t has much to do with it but, could you writhe the complete date in the next letter?

The hell is advocacy? No one close seems to know, so I decide not to screw about it and start to dictate the following letter.

The walks are on the free time i get. And I had to work hard to get close to the cleric and ask him to read and write the letters in my place. Since he is the only one, who receives education, that I can beg for a favour. given that for obvious reasons no one would pretend to give the nobles any task.
September seventeenth of 1368

“Medieval soldier” Was just a descriptive nickname, but it seems i wasn’t so wrong. I can’t take outta my head yet that all this looks like a dream, though I’m just gonna go ahead. That was just the visible part of a folded letter. There’s more text inside, so i unfold it to read it.

I spent all the night awake. Creating endless scenes of what might happen. Fearing for it to be the last letter. Hoping that looks like the first. Wishing to someday look back in the time and remember it proudly.

There is something that i want you to know. You have made me fall in love with your eccentricity, your walk, your smile. I adore your double coloured hair and melancholic features. Always called my attention your strange garment and translucent feet, it intrigues me what they mean. I love all the mystery that you carry.
I was wondering if you want to meet this Saturday afternoon behind the tower of the Castello del Trebbio.

Do NOT get exited! Anyone can write cute words in a paper! I don’t wanna get my hopes up in vain. The words “translucent feet” come to my mind. I look perplexed to my normal feet meanwhile locks of my rough-discolored hair get in my sigh. I hear a gallop and turn immediately to the window, it’s him! I try to see his feet. They’re not there! His shin is degraded transparent and there’s nothing below. I realize he’s waving to me and give back the sign. He walks to my window, i try to open it but when i get it he is not anymore on the other side.

I have been waiting under a tree, it’s been a few hours already. I think about an endless quantity of things when i realize that i didn’t stop thinking bout her since four days ago. At some moment I lift my gaze and I see her walking along… two carriage wheels? It’s a strangely amazing contraption.

I see Lycus sitting in the shade, I walk to a nearby tree to support my bike when i turn my sight to him, i realize he’s not there anymore. Was that my imagination? I turn around again and i find him walking around the tree holding the trunk, I go there, i look around but i don’t see him, I look in another tree, and another one, till i turn away and see him. For moments I look around an i see him appearing in other places. Is it that i wasn’t wrong either when I said i was going crazy!?

Each time that i look for her she shows up in a different place. Her face looks like she’s more confused than me. I do not really understand what’s going on but i think both of us understand that we are on a mutual chase. After a while this seems to frustrate her, so, tired now, she goes back to her wheels machine, we look at each other with disillusion, she sighs, greets and leave.

Hectic and overthinking, I try to understand what happened today, after thinking about it over and over again all seems to point to hallucinations, maybe because i really wanted to see him. The next day I go out to leave a letter and i caught him about to go leaving a letter for me. He turns to me when he hears the sound of the door. I go to take his letter, leaving mine.

What a good chase yesterday. I liked it so much, is a lame that it didn’t last long. I hope you think the same way, in such case i would like to meet at the Palazzo dei Vicari next Tuesday afternoon.

Right before I’m gone. leaving a letter for her, she gives me one on her own.

You didn’t show up yesterday?

What is she talking about? I’m pretty sure she saw me. Have got a lot of doubts and the feeling that something is not right.

Now i overthink my mistake in the letter, at least i didn’t assure it. I could barely sleep last two nights waiting for the meeting, I’m dying of nerves but anyways, here I am, getting ready to go.

I pretend to supervise at the top of the wall, is not hard to make the scene even if last thing that crosses my mind are traders or invaders. I stuck my sight on the horizon only being able to think of the broth of feelings that there’s in my head.

I hesitate, should I go in? I walk and stop again to look at the paintings on the dome above me to think again.

By chance i decide to move from my corner and I see Felicie on the building yard, my heart hot filled of excitement and dread at the same time, I wish i had a bouquet of flowers for her, but is not a very accurate object for a guard’s work.

I see someone standing at the top of the wall, i’ts Lycus, showing the silliest smirk i’ve seen in long time. I smile at him and immediately we both start running.

I am about to fall down stairs.

I almost crash the furniture.

At halfway something stops me. A blow in the chest.

A tense rope holds my waist.

A chill crosses my spine.

After few moments of being frozen i go back in my self.

I try not to give it importance. I keep running.

I go upstairs.

I finally arrive to the yard, but i don’t find her.

He’s no where to be found. Shouldn’t i have seen him on halfway?

I should have crossed her inside. I fall in my knees. I don’t distinguish any more the pain of my soul from the pain of my body.

I fall to be hold by the railing on the wall, mute out of disillusion, I couldn’t even listen to the people who arrived to see if i was okay.

I came back to reality when i saw a tear sliding through my uniform and getting wet the cobblestone, i noticed the shadows of my coworkers and realized that i had to go back to pretend again that I wanted that freaking work.