The Fates (Book I) - 2014 Watty Award Winner!

3.6 - Scholar and Journeyer

Dear Readers: Back to the modern day, to follow Cloe flying off to Greece :)

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Scene 6: Scholar and Journeyer

A.D. 2015

She blinked at the screen, and then chose to look out the window instead. The blue beyond the pane was full of promise, with a floor of cloud below, the sun above a little closer than it was from on the ground. An open skyscape bright with hope.

Unlike the image on her monitor. The opposite: a series of death sentences pronounced against her dreams.

In less dramatic terms, emails from literary agents. All rejections.

It was silly to revisit them like this, over and over again, Cloe knew. Emotionally masochistic, really. To relive the sting of rejection. Not only of herself, but also and more painfully for Cloe, of her characters. Of Eldor, the lovingly crafted hero into whom she poured her dreams.

This was a royal waste of time, besides—she was on her flight to Greece. She shouldn’t have been spending it rereading old, unwanted mail. True, the airline had free Wi-Fi; but she didn’t have to use it.

Cloe shut her laptop, slipped it back into her bag. Leant the side of her head on the seatback and let her eyes follow the airplane’s tiny shadow as it soared across the clouds.

Once she had done that long enough to momentarily forget about her manuscript rejections, she decided it was time to start her job. It couldn’t hurt to get a head start—this summer was set to be a lot of work, what with researching hundreds of hotels, hostels, restaurants, and tourist attractions; writing reviews of each of them; and posting daily entries on the travel company’s blog, to boot.

On top of this, as her mom never stopped reminding her, she had to come back in one piece. When Silvia had learned that Cloe was to roam the streets of Athens and the Greek islands after dark to research nightclubs, she had nearly ripped the job contracts to shreds.

Cloe had managed to assure her mom that she would find ways to stay safe. Making friends in the hostel to barhop together, for instance. Silvia was skeptical, given Cloe’s college track record of making friends. But Cloe pointed out that her problem was never with making friends—rather, with realizing which ones were real, before it was too late. And for European nightlife purposes, friendships didn’t have to be real; most wouldn’t last beyond a week. She basically just needed temporary bodyguards, which she was certain she could find.

For these and other reasons, Silvia had let her daughter go, granting that the decision wasn’t hers to make. Cloe was all grown up. Or almost, at the very least—the rest was sure to happen on this trip.

Cloe reached into her bag, pulled out a book: last year’s edition of the travel guide for Greece. The company had provided travel-writers with the previous year’s guidebooks, for their respective routes, to be used as a starting point for their own work this summer.

She had to visit each establishment reviewed in this edition—to verify information, form her own impressions, and update the content accordingly. She was also supposed to delete unremarkable listings and discover new places to list in the upcoming guide.

It was all quite exciting. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be fun.

Thumbing through the guidebook, she mentally mapped out her agenda for the first few days. Her itinerary, organized by the research managers back in the States, allowed for ample flexibility. They had booked her flights and lodging, but aside from that—and as long as she completed all her work along the way—the course of her summer in Greece would be entirely up to her. Tom had urged her to take full advantage of that, based on his own travel-writing stint in Europe.