Chapter 2

The tangy sweet aroma of sour chervil bagels intensified my hunger, the moment I entered through the glassy cobblestone bricked layered road, near a local bakery. A quiet alternative path to the busy township of Namur. This was the path I usually took, the others were lined with cars and water showers as tires met puddles. This walk didn’t have space for cars, it was almost perfect for pedestrians but halfway up the lane there’s a strange Brink pink stone wall.

Its build cut the pathway in half and originally, it was meant to connect the opposing buildings. However the owner passed away before its completion and his son and daughter, as the inheritors refused to complete the bridge, nor could they agree to knock it down.

At the moment it lay in rubble, as for the silence, climbing over the wall was a challenge for walkers with bags, dresses and bicycles, they didn’t use this path. It’s highly conventional in my case for it's the shortest path from my work to my favourite lunch place. Airway Bakery.

Suddenly I was crashing and rolling onto the floor, I started laughing, don’t let my reaction fool you, it hurt a lot. Swiftly clambering back onto my feet I searched for the collision and was met with a concerned face. The face looked vaguely familiar, however that concern, it wasn’t for me, it was for the apples now bouncing across the ground. I must have crashed into him but that can’t be right. I hadn't seen anyone in front of me, had he been behind me? He must have been, and are those heavy breathes? He must have been running too.

“I’m sorry, I’ll help you clean up,” stretching to lift up a granny smith apple. My arm was violently yanked left. The man had a powerful grip, I started struggling and tugging enough to agaite so he let go and stated, “Leave it there.”

“But I can help-” I tried to protest.

“Just leave it!” Shrugging I turned my back on the man to continue forward but I couldn’t help but wonder where I’d once seen him before.

With my mind in such a gutter I ended up walking past the bakery into the heart of the city. Where stores lined every front and stalls fought for attention in the sun baked square. This afternoon the clothes stores and jewellery stalls bathed in popularity, with the gift stores floundering. Usually the gift store flooded as Central Numur had a much larger flock of tourists on the daily to the ratio of locals, but today the locals were celebrating a story of their own. One with fashion involved as ‘Tienda de vestido elegante’ racked up an audience to remember. I had no business here, so I turned back to the intended destination.

Wisps of conversation laced with tones of stress filled my ears. I zipped past a crowd of local bird watchers and brag stifled elders, into an airy bakery. There was a queue and plenty of chittering, albeit I was hoping to pass through the back. “¡Hola Mercela!” Mercela was the life source of this bakery, she’d mastered all the recipes in a matter of months and had begun to develop them the way I now knew and loved. Even after expressing over and over again how she wished to open her own restaurant it never happened. It was fear that kept her here, either that of failure or fear that success might make her situation complicated if not rather stressful, a pressure most couldn’t handle. Mercela could, if she put her mind to it, however her stiff devotion to the owner of this bakery kept her locked in position.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Oh! You’re later than usual, lucky for you Vernan isn’t here, you can walk through,” she responded. Vernan owned the bakery, although he rarely spent his time here, he’d occasionally pop in around noon. The guy couldn’t cook or bake but he liked to claim that he’d created the recipes served in the store. We all know it’s from his grandmother's cookbook, and some of the newer delicacies were Mercela’s own. “Thank you!” I responded before crossing through the floppy oak panels into the kitchen beyond.

“Hey, take a break, I can take over here,” I said to a young woman who I’d guess was around my age. She’d been kneading a lumpy mass of bread dough. She nodded in thanks before heading off towards a sort of break room area to the right of the store. As she passed through the door, she beckoned someone within the room in my direction. In a loud progression a grin of a fiend popped out around the door. The newcomer had blank hazel hair like shards of glass, and eyes gleamed an emerald slice similar to a stalking cat’s. “Anathe! I feared you wouldn’t show up today!” the grin changed to a frown, “What's with the streaky vibe spinning from you today?”

This is my friend Zarith, or as I refer to her, The Sharp Scented One. We met when I moved to Namur, about a year ago. I'd visited this bakery during my first afternoon and swiftly grew to love the delicacies. Zari began to speak with me after the first week when she grew curious about the stories of a newcomer that consumed bagels by the minute. That’d began to bond over edibles and slowly befriended each other, through conservations about choices of careers, and personal impressions of insight to world views.

“I’d love to tell you once I have my chervil bagels within arms reach,” I responded. Zari’s grin returned as she went to retrieve a brown paper bag resting in a compacted metal box, built to store heat. “Would you like ice coffee with that, my valued customer?” she asked, eyes sparking.

“Always!” I said laughing.

“Well, what's been nagging?” Zari asked as she settled down across from me, sliding the bagels and coffee over the table. I handed the bread dough over to an awaiting baker and sprang into the contents of my morning.

“Bram never seizes to surprise me,” Zari laughed, “Oh I almost forgot! I got you something.”

Zari spun on her toes, stretched high and tall and just narrowly snagged a honey lemon toned envelope off the shelf, above a flour painted birch table. She handed it to me. Frowning, I tore it open, inside was an invitation to a party. To the party. “The Trogen Ball?! Isn’t this your invite? Why would you give this to me? The party is tonight… You don’t wish to go?” fumbled Ann.

“I can’t make it. My mother is sick, I’m travelling to France tonight to stay there for a while, I… I need to be there for her. I haven’t… I didn’t, I just have to be there,” Zari said, water building under her eyelashes. Zarith had run away from home when she was fifteen, it's been seven years since she last saw her family. I know she fled due to abuse but right now she was too blinded by guilt to even think back on it. This was bound to be a difficult reunion, one that would either end in absolve or belief in culpable. The latter had already begun to build its base in Zari’s heart.

I jumped up and wrapped my arms around Zari, “I understand, please go visit her, and thank you. For the invitation, and for telling me, and.. for being here for me.” It may or may not be true that both of us began to cry right in that kitchen over a flour powered workbench, that was a little bit too unpleasant to clean up.

Upon exiting the bakery I paid my bill and turned back towards the Sambre, turns out I was going to head home earlier than I’d been hoping after all.

----------------------------------------