Gabriel and the Swallows (The Volatile Duology #1) by Esther Dalseno

Author:Esther Dalseno [Dalseno, Esther]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B01B26Z0TQ
Publisher: Oftomes Publishing
Published: 2016-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Dear Volatile,

I just wanted to say how sorry I am for what I said to you last year. I still think about it whenever I touch my nose. I don’t know why I said such things. I didn’t mean them.

Remember that secret I told you a long time ago? Well, I managed to get some medication here in Rome to help me sleep.

That was three months ago. I don’t dream anymore.

Wish you were here,

Gabriel

17 January

Rome

The pills were a godsend. They worked from the very first night. It was almost as if, when I closed my eyes to sleep, I watched the vibrant colors of my dreams, the faces they contained, the voices, all the sharp, poignant images of my alternative life fade to grey, and then to nothing at all. I was sad, upon waking that initial night, to realize my beautiful, healthy mother was gone, my strong, rich father too, and my canopy bed with sheets of silk that every night contained Mariko Marino.

Long ago seemed the childhood days where I had trouble distinguishing my dreams from reality, regarding them as some sort of oscillating universe where I could retreat and live the life I was meant to. The only purpose the dreams served as I reached manhood was a reminder of my own unhappiness, of the imperfection of life and the lack of what I desired most. The dreams had themselves become unbearable since moving to Rome, they became stretched and thin and completely wretched, like scraps of old cloth, as if they couldn’t stand to be wrenched away from Orvieto, as if they didn’t understand Rome and the people within it, and therefore could neither function nor formulate.

And so I confessed a little to Everard, just the bones of it covered with a skin of falsehood, saying I had bad dreams and couldn’t study for trouble sleeping, and away we went on the Lambretta, to a tiny apothecary near Termini station. The pharmacist, a boyish looking Asian man, sold me a bottle of pills – a new American breakthrough medication that they were testing in Europe. The effect was miraculous. For the first time in my life, I felt like a normal person with one life and one set of desires. The confronting duality of everything was dead.

The Roman winter lasted for a much shorter time than usual, the frozen silver plains of the Tiber river melting into an unhygienic grey sludge. The pigeons returned to the squares and perched upon the domes of the churches and castles where they resumed their happy defecation, and the naked skeleton trees shivered and dropped a pound or two of snow on anyone who ventured under them.

It was February and the whole city became immersed in Carnevale fever. Banners were erected all over the ancient city; the cobbled lanes and the busy highways were scrubbed until they shone. Shopkeepers displayed their goods in festive motifs, and the wealthy Romans stocked their pantries with rich foods, even though they would predominantly dine out.

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