Bethsabée et Elio (ENG version)

Chapter V

V

Days passed, and Bethsabée couldn't decipher a single additional clue. The author, for his part, showed no signs of life anymore and seemed to have suddenly lost all interest in her. Bethsabée was somewhat surprised by this attitude, but she eventually realized that she had all the cards in hand to decipher the riddles and that no further assistance was needed.

However, a week later, no progress had been made regarding the clues, and Bethsabée was starting to be annoyed by the author's behavior. Despite her growing frustration, she persevered with determination in her efforts to solve the riddles.

After three weeks of fruitless searching and still no news, Bethsabée decided to put an end to her investigative efforts. She felt a certain anger towards the author, accompanied by a bitter taste in her mouth. She felt like she had been treated as a toy that was discarded once its entertaining side had been exhausted. Sad and disappointed, she tried to move on and forget everything that had happened in the past few weeks, rightly thinking that the author was done with her.

Seeing the clues still pinned above her desk, she felt a wave of disgust and tore them off the wall where they were hung before throwing them in the trash. She felt the need to escape, to escape from this disappointing reality. So, to take her mind off things, she took out a book from her closet and started reading. Following her mother's advice, Bethsabée had acquired a novel by Michel Bussi and felt that it was the perfect time to start reading it. Half an hour later, she emerged from the gripping plot she had immersed herself in. This reading session had provided her with great comfort; however, with dinner time fast approaching, she decided to take a quick shower.

Once in the bathroom, she undressed and observed herself in the mirror. Bethsabée was tall for a girl her age. She was just over five feet seven inches tall and therefore had a rather slender build. The tips of her brown hair stopped abruptly at the level of her collarbones. Despite the naturally smooth appearance of her hair, unfortunately, it was never perfectly so. Indeed, a rebellious lock just above her right ear would not cooperate. It curled every day without fail, which gave her a certain charm but bothered her more than anything else. She wore light glasses with round lenses that she placed on the edge of the sink before washing up. Without glasses, she had small hazel eyes that matched perfectly with the color of her hair. The shower and the night were rare moments when her small triangular nose could enjoy the little respite offered by the absence of her glasses.

Her ears could also benefit from this rest, although they often had to bear the weight of the silver jewelry that enhanced her face. She liked her thin stature, but she found her arms too slender. Her thighs, on the other hand, were of normal size, while her calves would certainly have pleased any man from the 20th century. However, she did her best to keep her legs relatively slim, as she couldn't bear to have them any larger.

Once her shower was over, she went downstairs and looked forward to eating a meal whose delicious aroma already filled the entire house.

The next day, she spent it sewing. It was her grandmother who had taken care to pass on this skill to her, as she believed that sewing should always be part of modern school curricula. Since this was not the case, she had taught Bethsabée what she called the eight essential stitches. The first stitch was the backstitch. To make it, all you had to do was make a loop over the tip of the needle and then pass the thread through the same loop. Rather simple, this basic technique was used to securely fix a hand-sewn stitch, as neither Bethsabée nor her grandmother used machines. The second stitch was called the basting stitch and was used to temporarily attach several layers of fabric. The basting stitch was the stitch she mastered the best since to make it, all you had to do was to insert the needle into the fabric and pull it out from the same side. The other stitches had even stranger names than the previous ones: the running stitch, the back stitch, the invisible hem stitch, the slant hem stitch, the whip stitch, and the blanket stitch. All these stitches had a specific and varied usefulness that every tailor had to master.