Place des Quinconces

[Jamie Llywarch]

Bordeaux was even more beautiful than the brochures. The French city simmered and sparkled under the radiant summer sun, and even the occasional passing cloud managed to look majestic over the Place des Quinconces fountain. It wasn't short of sights to see, either; though twelve days into his fortnight break, Jamie had already visited everywhere of interest at least once. Keeping himself occupied with Bordeaux's aesthetic attractions was the simplest way to take his mind off Eilywn, who he missed dearly and couldn't wait to see again - even if she did keep him awake almost every night. Still, the Welsh paramedic rested easy in the knowledge that his daughter was safe with his parents, and that they would phone him immediately should anything out of the ordinary happen.

Ankle deep in pigeons, Jamie lifted his new smart phone to the shimmering fountain and tried to make out the picture on the screen through the sun's glare. He'd already taken more pictures than he could possibly have had time to look back on, but they all seemed to be missing something. Jamie smacked his forehead with disbelief at his own stupidity. None of the pictures had him in them. He didn't think himself particularly photogenic, but he couldn't go back to Wales without one or two pictures of himself in France. After all, the opportunity to return looked to be remote at best. Glancing around for someone that didn't look like they would run off with his phone, he approached a friendly enough looking woman and requested, with the most appalling French grammar, whether or not she might take a picture of him by the fountain.

 

[Mireia Garcia]

There had finally been enough time off for Mireia that she had finally taken the plunge and gone on holiday, a real holiday, the witch had always wanted to travel, but with limited time and a lack of courage the woman had never found the time, but when she'd taken some time off, Mireia had decided to just go, of course just go meant planning things and making sure that her family knew how to reach her if they needed to, not that many of them still lived with her father on the outskirts of Barcelona, Mireia herself lived and worked in Madrid, though her work wasn't limited to such areas, but they still needed to know how to reach her. She had decided however to not really stray far from home, and the woman was wandering the streets of the French city of Bordeaux picking at the edges of her lose jumper she'd worn over the summer dress. Mireia was so happy to be in this french city, it was all kinds of beautiful that was so different from what she was used to in Spain. Despite never having done much in the way of travelling the woman had been to many places in Spain but that was about it, and it was nothing like going to a new country, even if she had spent her teen years at school in the south of the country.

The witch arrived at the place des Quinconces fountain and couldn't help but marvel at the sights of it, it was so beautiful, the way it shimmered in the beautiful sunlight, and the woman couldn't help but stare in wonder at it. She could see so many people taking different pictures of it, but she had limited pictures of the place, travelling alone meant that all her pictures would be of sites and while that was always lovely she thought they always looked pretty empty so she opted to just go to the sites and take them as they were presented in front of her. However as she stood at the fountain of this place a man approached her, she glanced at him with a somewhat worried expression and made out from his not so great french that he wanted a picture.

"Sure," Mireia's own french wasn't as good as it had once been, since she barely used it any more, though it was better than his, however the main issue really was the phone that he handed to her, the problem was that Mireia didn't know how to work it, she looked at the phone and noticed the screen was showing what was in front of her somehow and she didn't know what to press, it seemed so complicated, the woman just smiled at the man as got himself ready for the picture, and she held up the phone, perhaps a little too close to her face and then tried to take the picture, once she managed but then her finger slipped and pressed something else and suddenly she was staring a blank screen, she shook the phone a little before looking up at the man, "Picture disappear? Not too good with phones," she grabbed the first excuse that she could in her own accented french with a small laugh hoping he wouldn't question her inability to use the phone too much.
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