Cecilia - Three
The problem with arriving in Toulouse with a sixty-litre backpack and exactly zero upper body strength was that you had no choice but to look like a struggling snail on wheels.
“I’m actually going to cry,” Siena wheezed, half-dragging her pack down the tram steps while mine was busy trying to take me out with every turn. “Is my spine supposed to sound like that?”
“I think mine’s trying to escape my body,” I said, nearly falling backwards into a very unimpressed French businessman. “Oh my god, is it hot, or am I just panicking?”
She looked at me, red-faced, sweaty, hair in chaos and burst out laughing. “Both. It’s giving stressed tortoise meets dehydrated tomato.”
“Thank you so much. I really needed that confidence boost.”
But honestly? I didn’t even care. We were in Toulouse. Actual Toulouse. With its candy-coloured buildings and cobbled lanes and that hazy, honey-glow that made even our exhaustion look romantic. My feet hurt, my back hated me, but my heart felt like it had been cracked open and filled with light.
It was a five-minute walk from the metro station to our accommodation.
That’s what the listing said. What it failed to mention was that the walk was uphill, on cobblestones, in thirty-nine-degree heat, and that the building we were headed for looked like something out of an abandoned post-war novel.
Siena stopped in front of it, took off her sunglasses slowly, and stared.
“This can’t be it.”
“I think it is.”
“No.”
A pause. A shared look. We burst out laughing and it was the tired, borderline-hysterical kind that came after five hours on trains, questionable sandwiches, and one particularly traumatic encounter with a sweaty man who thought Siena looked like his ex-wife.
We buzzed ourselves in and climbed what felt like seventy-eight stairs — narrow, uneven, and spiralling up into darkness like the tower in Rapunzel , if Rapunzel had been broke and sweaty and slightly sunburnt.
By the time we reached the top floor, I was clinging to the handrail like it was the last bit of dry land on a sinking ship.
“I’m going to cry.”
“We’re not even in the room yet.”
“Then I’m going to cry when we get in the room.”
The room, when we finally shoved open the stubborn door, could only be described as.
.. a box. A hot, stuffy, possibly haunted box.
There were two mattresses pushed to either side, a tiny window half-covered by a curtain that definitely used to be a tea towel, and — the piece de resistance — a plastic standing fan that looked like it had survived three wars and a mild electrical fire.
Siena stared at it like it had personally offended her. “Is the fan... bent ?”
“I think it’s held together with masking tape.”
We both fell onto the beds, limbs splayed, too tired to speak. The air was thick and sticky and unmoving, like we’d stepped inside someone’s armpit and closed the door behind us.
A beat passed.
“Drink?”
“Definitely.”
To our complete relief there were three bars just opposite our apartment building and we chose the one filled with slightly more patrons, taking it as a positive sign.
We ordered two pints, peeled ourselves off the plastic chairs every time our thighs stuck to them, and played cards with a battered deck Siena had pulled from her backpack just before we left.
We hadn’t even changed out of our travelling clothes because the temperature was so stifling that we would only sweat through more clean clothes.
A waiter, maybe twenty, grinned as he dropped off our beers.
“Very hot day,” he said.
“We noticed,” Siena said, giving him a look over the rim of her glass.
“You stay long in Toulouse?”
“One night,” I replied .
He raised his eyebrows like that was a tragedy and returned five minutes later with two shot glasses of something neon green and suspiciously complimentary.
“To the girls who came for one night,” he said, tapping his glass to ours. “May you return for many more.”
We didn’t even ask what was in it, much to our mother’s dismay as taking a drink from a stranger was never a good idea, but it had been one of those days. We just drank, winced, and burst out laughing again.
“I think that just melted a layer of my oesophagus,” Siena said, shuffling the deck like a pro.
“Maybe it’ll knock us out cold. The fan isn’t going to.”
We lost track of the games. We kept score in discarded peanuts and half-finished thoughts.
We talked about nothing and everything; whether Siena should wash her hair tonight, whether I’d survive the heat without melting into a puddle of unresolved emotional damage.
We didn’t go anywhere else, we just bathed in the bliss of the afternoon sun.
That was the thing about being this kind of tired, the world narrowed in the nicest way. Just the two of us, drinks in hand, laughter half-delirious, air still buzzing around our ankles even as the city softened into night.
When our limbs finally felt too heavy to keep upright, we wandered beneath the orange glow of streetlamps and into the tiny supermarket tucked below our building. The fluorescent lights felt too bright, the floors too shiny, and everything smelt vaguely of overripe melon .
We bought the bare essentials: baguette, brie, crisps, tzatziki, two tomatoes we wouldn’t eat. Siena held up a pot of dip and asked solemnly, “Dinner vibes?” It was the closest description of a girls dinner if I’d ever seen one.
Back in the airless room, the humidity seemed to be the only thing circulating with the fan, that was groaning like it resented our presence.
We both made quick work of showering, desperate to shed the layers of sweat that had accumulated throughout the day.
Afterwards, we lay on our respective beds, limbs splayed, fresh clothes already beginning to stick to our skin, baguette resting reverently between us on a folded map of southern France.
We ate. We talked a bit more. Siena said something about marrying the beer boy for visa purposes. I laughed until my stomach hurt.
And somewhere in the middle of the heat and the crumbs and the muffled city sounds outside our window, we fell asleep briefly, only to be awoken by a sudden quiet. The fan had been blaring noise pathetically all evening and now in the dim light I saw it too had succumbed to the heat.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I murmured under my breath, before letting out a deep sigh and facing the reality of the few hours of sleep I had yet to have.
By our fourth morning in France, we had a ritual.
It wasn’t fancy, but it felt like one. A buttery croissant still warm from the oven.
A small coffee served with a sliver of chocolate on the side.
A metal chair on a street corner, legs sticking slightly to the seat, the sun already kissing the backs of our necks.
We sat outside our recent favourite bakery, elbows resting on the table, eyes half-closed from sleep and sunshine.
Neither of us spoke much until the first bite.
The croissants here didn’t crunch so much as sigh apart.
Flaky on the outside, soft and sweet in the middle.
Siena swore they had to be made with magic and I couldn’t argue with what seemed like sound logic.
We had been in France for only a few days and already I knew this was something I would miss.
The simplicity of it. The way the mornings felt gentle.
No one rushing. No one tapping at their phones or snapping at strangers in coffee queues.
Just warmth, fresh pastries and the low hum of conversation.
A kind of peace I didn’t realise I’d needed.
“Do we have a plan today?” Siena asked, brushing flakes from her lap.
“Not really. Our train isn’t until later, we should explore Toulouse while we’re here.”
She nodded, already pulling out a compact mirror and patting under her eyes like we weren’t both still slightly beer-fuzzed from the night before.
We wandered with no real destination. Toulouse unfolded around us slowly. Rose-coloured buildings, shuttered windows, sun-faded signs.
When we stepped into the open square in front of the Capitole building, we both stopped.
It took a moment to realise we had arrived somewhere special.
The stone stretched out in front of us, warm beneath our shoes, and at the centre of the square, a wide circle had been carved into the ground.
Around the edge, twelve symbols gleamed bronze under the sunlight. The zodiac.
Siena found Aquarius. I stood over Libra. We took turns standing on each other’s signs, trying to frame the whole thing in a single photo, failing every time. We couldn’t stop smiling as everything felt golden.
We weren’t even sure if we were allowed inside the building, but Siena shrugged and said what she always did lately.
“We’re here. We might as well.”
We wandered over the worn stone through the large open door and through what appeared to be an outside courtyard.
There was scaffolding littered and a man holding a can of paint getting ready for the day ahead.
We saw a faint arrow on a badly signed piece of paper and followed it through another open doorway; this was sufficiently smaller.
To our left was a gorgeous floor to ceiling mirror with a thick golden frame and the glass itself had age marks on it, mimicking an object that belonged in a fantasy novel.
As I looked up, I saw the towering staircase in front of us and was already marvelling at the beauty of it – this too reminded me of something grand and suddenly my torn, denim shorts and halter-neck top didn’t seem appropriate for the grandeur of the building I was in.
Hesitantly we made our way up the stairs, posing on a few of the steps in dramatic poses. As soon as we made it to the next floor, our steps faltered.
We stepped into the main hall, and suddenly the world fell quiet.