The Levesque family lived in Arles, a small city somewhat south west of Paris. Adeline Levesque, Marie’s mother, ran a little hotel a short distance from the town square. The buildings were built right up to the winding byways, former cart paths that had been first cobbled when the roman conquerors occupied the region. Trees lined the roads, stretching their round green leaves up over the rooftops like living paintbrushes, yearning to capture some fragment of sunlight.
There was much competition for the sunlight, given the multitude of botanical life, which grew in profusion, even in the very center of the town. Every house had its own garden, even if it was pots on the back steps, or a wizened fruit tree trained to grow along a wall. Window boxes abounded with red and yellow geraniums and trailing vines with variegated leaves that tumbled down from even second story windows to the street. The buildings themselves looked strangely organic- as if they’d grown up there just like the grapevines, which were absolutely everywhere.
The train station was the biggest, and newest, building in town, with an elegant roofline and filigreed carvings adorning it. It had a large clock with ornate hands that, like all the clocks in town, chimed every hour, on the hour. There were several churches distributed throughout the town, all of them old (to varying degrees) and most fantastically decorated. When the bells chimed in unison the air seemed to be almost heavy with the combined noise.
Outside of town farms spread out, oddly shaped fields tucked between the vineyards, squeezed into any space not used for growing grapes. The railway made a straight line across this irregular patchwork, carrying people and goods to and fro over the verdant landscape. The only blemishes- the only scars- were the great gouges in the living earth, tracks made by engines of war, hulking armored cars driven by stern faced young men, far from home, here to kill.
that is all. <3
-M
