"It's toothpaste", she said, knowing that it was not toothpaste.
She recognized her wasted effort without acknowledgement, knowing damn well that the rural Italian cooks could not understand a lick of her Midwest American English. She now wondered if they were even looking at the stain on the collar of her dress, or if she took a glance in her direction too personally, as most interactions seemed to conclude as of late.
The touch of cold that was transferred from the stone floor to her feet became the strongest sensation of sanity that she was able to grasp since arriving in the village. The feeling like a reminder that these days of heat are only temporary, as are these days spent in denial of loneliness and futile distractions from a lack of human intimacy. Slowly, she repeated the action of pushing one heel off the ground until contact was met with the ball of her foot, and thus followed by the next foot, until she reached the edge of the bed. One deep breath. Dirty underwear caught her vision. Glancing just one foot to the right, she noticed her shoes, untouched and unpacked, in a plastic bag. How long had she been walking around barefoot?
One last lift of a heel, push of a ball, and she found herself molded into the curves of the bed, similar to her ribs silently protruding from her torso. Now, intransigent to the thought of a necessity to ever leave this bed, she fell asleep at approximately 4:38 somewhere else's time.