Mea left a small empty square on the first page of her notebook. Later, she would give it one colour to remind her of Portugal. Just one. It seemed a pleasantly simple task for someone who had packed only three pencils.
Illustrated fiction inspired by original Travel2City photographs. The places come from separate journeys, not a one-day itinerary. Characters, dialogue, props and some composition and lighting are artistic interpretations.
Beneath Lisbon’s stone arches, Mea looked up and briefly stopped searching for a roof. She found the sky instead. Blue fitted between the old edges as though it had measured the space beforehand. She steadied her scarf and nodded happily. Blue, then. The task seemed finished almost before it had begun. Still, she did not draw anything in the notebook yet. She wanted one more look upwards.
In Coimbra, blue appeared again, this time on white tiles. It was finer, more precise and full of little curls. Mea stepped aside to see the whole ornament. The sky certainly had not worn curls like these. Perhaps she would need two squares. She held the closed notebook at her waist and pretended this was not the first change to the rules. Choosing one colour was turning out to involve a surprising number of possibilities.
Beneath the open windows in Guimarães, Mea stopped for the plants. The narrow balconies held as much green as could squeeze between the pots and railings. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked higher. Every leaf had a different shade. One green would hardly do them justice. She laughed at herself. She had come to choose a colour and was merely giving more of them places in her notebook.
Beside the river in Porto, Mea opened the notebook. Pale walls, coloured fronts and dark roofs crowded together across the water, which mixed them a little. She put a blue line inside the square, a green one beside it and then a touch of ochre. It looked more like a beginning than a finished answer. She no longer minded. When she closed the notebook, it held a small, mismatched company. Exactly the one she wanted to take home.
“All of you, then. Just move over a little.”
From notebook to book
The Map with No Last Page
Travel2City journeys continue between the covers of a book. Discover our illustrated travel world.
