“Just five minutes,” Colombine said. Mea nodded, and Lu Cia smiled with the air of someone who had heard this before. In Montenegro, their small pauses collected themselves: beside the water, by a bridge, in the shade of an old tree. They missed no connection. Only the idea that everything lovely could be fitted into a plan.
An imagined journey with Mea Zen, Colombine MichelangeLove and Lu Cia, inspired by four original Travel2City photographs. Kotor, Rijeka Crnojevića, Bar and Sveti Stefan form a loose story collage, not a literal record of one journey or a one-day itinerary.
Mea checked her watch. Not impatiently; she was simply curious what the device thought of their stop. Colombine's sketchbook was still closed, although her eyes had already travelled halfway along the stone wall. “Five minutes from when I start drawing,” she clarified. Lu Cia rested against the railing. “So we still have time.” Green reflections moved beneath the walls, and each flicker of light made a small delay seem reasonable. Mea lowered her wrist and joined them. “All right. But I decide at the next stop.” Colombine smiled at her. They both had a fair idea of how that would turn out.
The bridge was short. They could have crossed it in a moment, if Mea had not stopped on the riverbank and looked at the water. The arch continued beneath the surface; the slightest movement of water broke its other half into small pieces. “Well?” Colombine asked. Mea rested a hand on the stone parapet. “I've decided we're not going yet.” Lu Cia, who had already taken a step ahead, turned back with a perfectly serious face. “A bold decision. You have my support.” All three burst out laughing. The notebook stayed closed. This time, it was enough to look at the same thing, each of them seeing it a little differently.
“There's an elbow,” Lu Cia said, pointing to a fold in the trunk. Mea tilted her head. She could see it too. A little higher up there might have been a nose, or just a shadow; the tree was keeping its options open. Colombine hugged her sketchbook and laughed. “If I drew it exactly, people would say I'd made it up.” For a while, they tried to find the same figure in the tangled bark. They could not agree, and none of them minded. They stayed together on the path as bright patches moved across their clothes. When Mea suggested leaving, Lu Cia raised a finger. “Wait. I've found the other elbow.”
“You can't ask a model like that to stand up straight.”
At the view over Sveti Stefan, nobody proposed a time limit. Red roofs clustered above the water, the bay curved toward the shore, and the breeze occasionally carried Mea's scarf toward Colombine. She held it lightly with one finger, then let her shoulder brush Mea's. Lu Cia looked at them both. “We could use a photograph now.” “But who would take it?” Mea asked. There was a brief silence, and then they laughed: another excellent reason to stay. None of them reached for a camera. They remained there as the light on the water changed and their conversation found its own easy way toward the next journey.
“We'll remember this without a countdown.”
From notebook to book
The Map with No Last Page
The world of Travel2City continues between the covers of a book. Discover The Map with No Last Page and more illustrated journeys.
