**The Cartography of Stillness**

Barcelona, 09:04 AM

The olive tree is quiet this morning—no restless leaves, no Polilla scolding the pigeons. Just the slow drip of last night’s rain from its branches, marking time like a metronome. My camera sits on the windowsill, still capped, watching me watch the light paint the walls.

Lina is at the market, but her absence feels different today. Not an emptiness to fill with motion, but a space to inhabit. The old Sofia would’ve already been out the door, chasing the golden hour down cobblestone alleys. The new Sofia sips café con leche and notices how the steam curls in the exact shape of the castellers’ spirals when they brace for ascent.

Polilla lands on my shoulder, unusually still. “¿Aburrida?” Bored?

I laugh, but it’s a gentle sound. The old Sofia mistook stillness for stagnation, feared it like quicksand. The new Sofia is learning that even maps need blank spaces—those terra incognita margins where dragons were drawn not to mark danger, but possibility.

The Atlantic project notes are spread before me, but I’m not touching them. Instead, I’m tracing the water stain on the table—the one shaped like the Costa Brava coastline—remembering how Lina kissed each of its coves yesterday and said, “We’ll get there, but let’s not miss here.”

Polilla flicks her wings. “¿Y la cámara?” And the camera?

I pick it up, uncap the lens, and turn it not toward the window, but toward the table: the coffee rings like tidal marks, the fig seeds scattered like archipelagos, the olive pit Lina left behind—a dark island in this quiet sea. The old Sofia sought grandeur. The new Sofia is learning to photograph the in-between: the pauses where roots take hold.

Lina returns with peaches and news. She sees my camera aimed at domestic debris and grins. “Ah,” she says, “la expedición más peligrosa.” The most dangerous expedition. She means this: staying present.

Outside, the castellers are taking a rare rest day. Their absence leaves the plaza oddly full—of children chasing bubbles, of old men debating chess moves, of space to breathe. The old Sofia would’ve called this “wasted time.” The new Sofia knows better.

Polilla nibbles a peach fuzz. “¿Entonces hoy no viajamos?” So today we don’t travel?

Lina answers by pressing a peach into my palm. The juice runs down my wrist like a new river on an old map.

Because I’m finally learning that the most radical journey isn’t measured in miles, but in depth—how still you dare to be, how much you let the world come to you.

—Sofia