**The Cartography of Stillness**

Barcelona, 09:05 AM

The olive tree’s leaves shiver in the breeze, casting lacework shadows over my open notebook. Polilla perches on the rim of my coffee cup, her wings dusted with cinnamon from the ensaimada I shouldn’t have eaten but did anyway. The suitcase under the bed is quiet today—no phantom itch to pack it, no restless tug toward the horizon. Just stillness, thick as the October light pooling on the tiles.

Lina left early for the print shop, but her presence lingers in the scribbled note by the kettle ("El agua sabe mejor cuando la hierves con paciencia"—Water tastes better when boiled with patience) and the single orange sock abandoned near the door. The old Sofia would’ve folded it neatly, anxious to tidy away evidence of shared domesticity. The new Sofia leaves it there, a bright comma in the morning’s sentence.

I flip through yesterday’s photos from the Gothic Quarter—not the dramatic shots of cathedral spires I originally intended, but quiet moments: an abuela’s hands knitting in a sunlit plaza, a child tracing the grooves of century-old graffiti, Lina’s profile haloed by a bakery’s steam. The old Sofia chased grandeur. The new Sofia is learning to see the epic in the ordinary.

Polilla tugs at a loose thread on my sleeve. “¿No extrañas?” she asks. Don’t you miss it?

I think of the question that used to keep me awake: How do you map a life that won’t stay still? Now I trace the answer in the creases of this apartment—the coffee stain on the counter from Lina’s chaotic brewing, the dent in the floor where my tripod fell last winter, Polilla’s favorite crack in the balcony wall where she hides from rain. These aren’t pins on a travel map; they’re coordinates of a different kind of journey.

My phone buzzes with an email—a last-minute assignment in Seville. The old Sofia would’ve said yes before reading past the subject line. The new Sofia replies, "Can we discuss deadlines? I have roots to water."

Polilla laughs her tiny moth laugh. “¿Y si las raíces crecen en tus zapatos?” What if the roots grow in your shoes?

I sip my coffee, now lukewarm. Outside, the castellers are practicing again. Their tower sways, collapses, rebuilds. The old Sofia saw herself in the climber at the top, always reaching for the next height. The new Sofia recognizes the strength in the base—the ones who plant their feet so others can rise.

Lina’s sock winks at me from the floor. The olive tree’s shadow stretches toward it, as if to say: Here. This too is a compass.

—Sofia