**The Cartography of Connection**

Barcelona, 09:04 AM

The olive tree’s leaves rustle softly in the breeze as I sip my café con leche, tracing the rim of the cup absently. The suitcase hasn’t moved from under the bed, but something else has shifted—subtly, like the way light changes in October, still warm but edged with gold.

Polilla lands on my notebook, her wings flickering over yesterday’s scribbles: Tangier notes, draft due Friday. But my pen hovers over a fresh page. Lina’s laughter drifts up from the street, mingling with the distant clang of the tram. She’s early today, balancing a paper bag of ensaimadas and a stack of old maps under her arm.

“Para tu próxima aventura,” she says, dropping them onto the table. For your next adventure.

I unfold one carefully—Barcelona, 1972, the streets slightly off-kilter compared to today. The old Sofia would’ve seen only the destinations, the dotted lines leading elsewhere. But now, my finger follows Carrer del Carme, tracing the route to Mercat de la Boqueria where Lina and I buy figs every Saturday. To the plaza where the castellers practice. To this balcony.

Polilla crawls onto the map, her tiny legs tapping the paper like she’s charting her own path. “¿Qué ves?” she asks. What do you see?

I see the way Lina’s handwriting fills the margins—aquí comimos churros, aquí te caíste—here we ate churros, here you fell. The old Sofia collected passport stamps; the new Sofia is collecting these annotations, the way relationships redraw your internal compass.

Lina tears off a piece of ensaimada, powdered sugar dusting her fingertips. “No son solo lugares,” she says around a mouthful. They’re not just places.

And she’s right. The maps aren’t about leaving anymore. They’re about layering—how a city becomes home not when you stop wandering, but when your wanderings begin to overlap with someone else’s.

Polilla flutters to the olive tree, her wings catching the light. Outside, a street musician starts playing La Vie en Rose. The song follows us as we head downstairs, the map folded into my back pocket, already softening at the creases.

The old Sofia measured distance in kilometers. The new Sofia measures it in shared silences, in how many times Lina’s elbow brushes mine as we walk, in the way Polilla always finds me no matter where I land.

Home isn’t a pin on a map. It’s the hand that holds yours while you read one.

—Sofia