Val breathed in the crisp midday air. It tasted sweet on her tongue and the hints of Aisha’s perfume made her shudder with a warm smile. “Mon amour, we’ve got quite the day ahead of us.”
She took Aisha’s hand in her own, clasping her fingers gently through Aisha’s, interlocking the two’s hands like their lock on the Pont des Arts, leading her forward to their tandem bike.
Val felt like she was in a dream. ‘Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted,’ she’d once read, ‘He lived happily ever after.’ The cruising speed of their bike down the Rue des Saints-Pères allowed Val to muse so leisurely.
Val laughed into the air as they traveled. Her smile could practically blind a man.
Old Peugeots and Renaults drifted down the road beside them as the two reached the first destination on their date, a cafe with a storied tale. They parked the bike by the side, Val leading Aisha to the outside terrace and the both of them taking a seat in the patio just outside Les Deux Magots.
Paris is quite the bustling city, and sometimes the hustle and noise can get too much. If, at any point, there gets to be too much noise for either of us to hear each other, I’ll use Hiero Oldies Act 1 to get my voice a little closer to Aisha–using a revolving door of blanks to play what I have to say in my voice without any visual effect–and having a pair of ears closer so I can’t miss a single word of Aisha’s voice.
“The weather’s so perfect today, isn’t it?” Val smiled. It always got so nice that time of year.
“It always gets so nice in the Fall, right?” Aisha smiled back. “And it’s not too busy, since most people come here in Summer. It’s nice to not feel like ‘just another tourist’.”
“Very,” Val agreed. “I’ve been to this city many times, but I have to admit I’ve never been with someone else. It’s so… new.”
Aisha reached out her hand, and Val took it in her own, laying a kiss upon Aisha’s knuckles before wrapping her fingers around the back of Aisha’s hand. She smiled up to her love, her cheeks a dark cherry color.
Finally, the Maitre-D’ arrived, servicing a smile to the both of them. “Bonjour, mes deux beautés,” he began, with a slightly canned chuckle. “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez manger aujourd'hui?"
“Je prendrai le Pâté en croûte aux saveurs automnales, eeet… ehm… aussi la Blanquette de veau Boris Vian façon Gouffé. Merci.” She turned to Aisha.
“Oh, uh… I’ll have… is that steak tartare?” Aisha ordered. Val nodded. “Oh! Alright, so uh… steak tartare and the… oh! Escargot, too!”
“Elle voudrait la Tartare de bœuf Charolais et les Escargots géants et sauvages de Bourgogne, s’il vous plaît. Merci.” She nodded to the waiter, who took their menus and was off. “Y’know,” Val turned back to Aisha, “Boris Vian was one of my idols as a kid.”
Aisha raised one eyebrow. “Ooooh, is that so~?”
Val pulled a pair of fake nerd-glasses out of her pocket, slapping them on her face. “This place is famous for that. A whole host of artists, writers, musicians, all used to go here. I thought, once, if I ate here, I might get artistic superpowers!” Val laughed a bit at her past self.
Having finished lunch (and perhaps a couple orders of seconds), Val and Aisha once again mounted their tandem bike and rode South. They both felt full, but the post-food fatigue hadn’t caught up with them.
With so much excitement, how could it?
They reached the entrance to the Paris Catacombs with little time to spare until the tour guide left without them. Val wrapped her arm around Aisha’s shoulder, leaning a bit closer while they toured the underside of the city.
It was dark, dusty, and macabre, the tour guide using a flashlight to lead them around.
“..et à droite, vous pouvez voir le tunnel qui mène à…”
Halfway through, Val had a clever idea. She let go of Aisha’s shoulder slowly and gently, so that Aisha would pause to turn around. And, in that split second, Val had made a skull mask from a blank, covering her face with it.
“Yieep!” Aisha yelped as Val used its burst to make the eyes glow an ominous red! OOooh! Of course, because it burst, the mask quickly disappeared, leaving Val’s shit-eating grin underneath. “You scared me!” Aisha whisper-yelled, so as not to further disturb the tour.
Val skipped a little closer to her. Aisha sighed, laughing it off and shaking her head. “Même quand vous avez peur, vous êtes belle…” Val mumbled under her breath, Aisha tilting her head a bit before Val shook her hand to show that whatever she said in French, she didn’t have to repeat in English.
Circling, circling, circling, Val and Aisha paced a path through the picturesque streets of early-afternoon Paris, cycling along on their tandem bike.
Cycling itself might not be any difficulty for us, but cycling at the same pace can always be difficult. If there’s ever a disconnect between our cycling speeds, HO2 can possess our legs to keep us both perfectly in-sync.
“Look at that!” Val chuckled. “The Louvre on one side, and the Place de la Concorde on the other! It’s like France is here, and Egypt is right over there!” The Jardin des Tuileries was so pretty in the Autumn Sun. The rows of trees with their golden-brown leaves… As the two stopped to get a caricature drawn, Val pulled a small leather-bound journal out of her pocket.
Golden Leaves. A->C->D->E
“What are you writing, Val?”
“Hmm… Just some travel notes. I keep my notebook with me all the time! Travel gives a lot of good opportunities for inspiration that you don’t want to miss out on.” Val wrapped the book back up in its string, furrowing it back in her pocket.
While the tandem bike was cute, as the two started to travel further and further through Paris, they were going to need something a little faster. In came the motorcycle!
Many places throughout Paris offer motorcycle tours and rentals! We’re picking up a Royal Enfield 650 Interceptor here, plus its accompanying sidecar! I, of course, already had the motorcycle helmets in my pockets.
As Val and Aisha sped down the Avenue de l’Opéra, Val caught a quick glance of the Parsons Paris through an alleyway.
Cher journal,
J'ai été rejeté par une autre université. Ceci est impossible. Je suis fini.
J'espère que je serai satisfait en travaillant au Carrefour.
-Val
Val’s slight frown didn’t go unnoticed.
“You alright, Val?” Aisha prodded, gently.
“...I almost went there.”
“There?”
“Parsons.” Val stole glances of Aisha, careful not to crash the bike. “It’s an art college.”
The conversation didn’t have much time to go anywhere before the two arrived at the Galeries Lafayette Haussmann! This beautiful mall was chock-full of stores, illuminated by the glass dome skylight overtop!
The first order on the agenda was the fashion show held on-site! Val and Aisha both got settled down in their seats…
“Y’know,” Val whispered to Aisha halfway through the half-hour show, “I think I could come up with a better outfit than these.” Aisha confidently chuckled.
“I think I could, too.”
Val smirked, leaving a blank to cover the two’s trails as they snuck out of the show and further into the mall. “Alright,”
“Here’s the rules, Aisha! Both of us design an outfit! We’ve got…” Val checked an invisible watch that wasn’t actually strapped to her wrist because it didn’t exist. “Fifteen minutes! Then, we meet back here!”
Of course, thirty minutes passed like thirty seconds, and they both came back slightly underprepared.
“...I feel like… We’d need more time…” Val held out her hand, taking the outfit pieces Aisha had collected and laying them over the outfit she’d made, draped over her arm.
“...That’s exactly it!”
“M-more time?” Val looked confusedly over to Aisha before tracing her finger with her eyes. It pointed to the two outfits, and Val looked over it. “...If we…”
“Combine the two!” They realized at the same time.
“Genius!” Val chirped.
“Fuck yeah!” Aisha cried out.
Val was chosen as the recipient of the outfit, stepping into a changing room to try it out. Turned out that the two’s ‘genius idea’ to combine their outfits was half-baked, resulting in a mishmash of styles that, on their own, might look good, but which, when put together…
“...Pfffthhahahahaha!” Val laughed as she looked in the mirror.
Aisha couldn’t hold back her chortling either, slapping Val a couple times on the back to show how funny she found it.