An eventful night can change an entire dynamic, creating a revolution just large enough to flip the worlds of two people on their heads. When you wake the morning after that eventful night that is certainly how it feels.
Dim light pierces the blinds. Her arm is warm where it is draped across you, her skin hot to the touch where it presses against yours. She breathes softly, long hair tangled about her face and tickling your shoulder. You smile and kiss the top of her head. Nothing feels the same. Everything is more real, suddenly. Everything about her, and you. Being together. Finding unity in each other and each others bodies.
Eventually you have to move, if only to go to the bathroom if not for any of the other pressing issues which you are facing in the coming days. Travel documents have to be arranged, passes and tickets must be bought - and at some point you have to fit in a return to the Counts gigantic house in order to discover exactly what it is he's being so mysterious about.
It takes more than one attempt to leave the cosy bed where you finally consummated your relationship. It feels strange that it was not the creaking steel framed one in your apartment nor the threadbare mattress in Sasha's. Is it a betrayal or is this somehow your illicit honeymoon, snatched from the jaws of violence and offered up like a healing gift on the heels of a storm. Was that too melodramatic, was it too intense, was it too heartachingly tragic to think of this as a honeymoon? You were travelling, after all, with the one woman you had ever consented to spending your nights and your days with. You might not be married but then that's a laughable idea. Where in the world could you marry another woman, after all.
The two days between waking up in that perfect moment and steppin into the Count's villa once more are hardly jam packed. You spend most of them drifting through the cities warm streets, eating and lounging in the tired little hotel you are staying in. It's the only place that you can safely take her hand and hold it in your own, though a few times you dare to go as far as to stand, arm in arm, on the little balcony where you enjoy to smoke in the shining sun or under the stars.
"Do you think you still want to go to the capital?" Sasha asks in a quiet moment on the first afternoon, leaning against the doorframe with a cigarette in hand. She is framed by sunlight, shadow cast across where you lay on the bed.
"Do you know, I think it might be worth finding another part of Europa. One with a few less people who are quite so invested in us." You think back over the four people who've tried to encourage some course of action from you over the past twenty-four hours and how you actually only trust one of them to be at least threatening to use you for good. Between the spy on the airship and the traitor at the party you have a newfound impatience with anyone who seems to know anything about you. You'd rather be invisible, given your stated intent of getting away from the stressor that your home had become.
"I'll admit, I'm already tired of speaking Dyske. Where would you like to see? I'll take you anywhere you like, Koshka, anywhere at all." she said, and you know it is true, you feel it deep down in the way your heart flutters.
"What about Gallia? I've read so many stories about the vineyards and the restaurants and the tower of ayefulls-"
"The what?" her head snaps around, a big smile plastered across her face.
"The big metal tower in Lutetia, the triangle- what?" You say, confused as Sasha tries to hold in a laugh with only limited success. "What is it, what's so funny?"
"My sweet, sweet girl." She bites her lip, shaking her head, "Le tour eiffel, the Eiffel Tower."
She walks across the room, catching your jaw with her hand and kissing you softly on the lips. You're still pouting when she pulls away and she smiles again.
"Well whatever it's called."
"Lutetia then. We can do that. La Ville de Lumière, the city of lights. It'll be magical."
"I hope so." You say and take another drag from your cigarette in the early afternoon of a summer's day.
Walking up the path towards Count von Zeppelins house would feel like dejavu if it wasn't for the blazing sunshine and the lack of formalwear about your person. Equally you, once more, don't have Sasha by your side and while it does not feel as fear-inducing as it did that night in the Count's great ballroom it's still a little unsettling. But you have your cane, and your ideas and a confidence when climbings the stone steps which feels entirely unearned.
His office is much as you remember it, all dark wood and high backed chairs though a little less smokey than it was the other evening. Less heavy. The atmosphere isn't oppressive with the heavy curtains tied back and bright sunlight streaming in. It's almost beautifully designed, in its own Dyskelandic way.
Von Zeppelin himself sits in his chair, puffing away at another cheroot, looking both more comfortable and happier than he did that night when the party was in full swing.
"Valentina-" he says, pausing to take a long drag. He offers his lighter but you shake your head, "you said the other evening that you are not a woman of war."
"Yes. I stand by it." you respond despite the lack of a question.
"And I said that I had a potential offer of work for you, yes?" It's an actual question, but it's no more helpful. If he intends to simply go over the same conversation all over again, perhaps you should have started on that cigarette. At least you would have had plenty of time in which to smoke it.
"Yes, sir, you did. Asked me to come back and here I am." Crossing your legs, you lace your fingers in front of you. You're nervous, more nervous than perhaps you should be but the problem is that you just don't know.
"And here you are." he takes another long drag, blows the smoke in a billowing cloud into the air, "There is a gathering of the worlds nations being organised in October of this year, a congress if you will. It is intended that there will be negotiations on an unprecedented scale with the intention of working towards a worldwide network of trade and travel. I have been invited, of course."
"You airships? Surely ships, naval vessels-" You start to ask but he interrupts.
"They have their uses, yes, and they can certainly transport more than any of my airships currently can. But they are slow! If you want to travel from Varnmark to Otrusia in a matter of days then you take a von Zeppelin special, not a boat, don't you?"
You almost laugh. You most certainly would not, given the price of an especially chartered international airship flight but perhaps those who could, would.
"Certainly, I can see that. How does this relate to the congress?"
"Expanded trade, girl, expanded travel! The weakening of borders and the strengthening of bonds between people. My airships will change the ways in which people will relate to each other entirely. They will change the world, of that I am very certain."
"So this… this negotiation, it's a business opportunity? You had me sold on noble dreams, not money-making."
His smile is much broader than you thought it would be, given what you have just said.
"I knew you were not a naive woman, Valentina. Of course I will make money, but such is life. Such is the world. But that is not my purpose and I can swear by the nobility of my goals." Another pause. Another drag. Another cloud. "If people can travel, they will learn. If they learn, then they will understand one another. And if they understand one another then perhaps we will achieve unity on an unmatched scale. I wish to stop war, Valentina, a purpose that I know you believe in. That unity will end war, I know it."
The end of war? Folly, surely, to end something to central to the formation of everything you know. All the people, all the nations, all are twisted by war. But it's certainly a dream that you can get behind.
"I hope so. I truly, truly hope so. I imagine there are those who would give up everything to make that a reality."
"And there are those who would give up everything to stop it, knowing they could make it all back in the next stupid war. This congress will either be our our best hope for peace… or it will be the thing that sets us on the road to a war unlike any we have ever seen." He shakes himself back to the room, blinking until his eyes focus, "I would like you to speak at that congress on my behalf. You experiences in you home nation will be just the thing to convince the delegates that peace is the future, not war."
What do you say?
[ ] I would be honoured to speak on such a noble endeavour.
[ ] I can't possibly agree to this. I'm no speaker.
[ ] I can't give you an answer now. I need time.
