In her bag she found a clean sheet of paper. Not a shopping list or a note about the next transfer. A genuinely empty page. Mea decided to write down something she liked about the journey. But she waited a little before the first sentence. She wanted it to sound like her.
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.
Beside a white wall in Óbidos, she supported the paper on her closed notebook. The pencil hovered for a moment. “Dear…” she thought, but no name followed. Dark cypresses rose behind the gate, and the light shifted between clouds. Mea stopped searching for the perfect greeting. First she wanted to notice what was in front of her. For now, the page only needed room for one ordinary impression.
“I do not have to make it beautiful. I only have to make it mine.”
In the garden at Queluz, she sat where she could see both fountain and palace. A few short sentences appeared on the paper. About the air on her face. About how comfortably these shoes carried her. About having no wish to explain her dress to anyone today. They were not words for a guidebook or a postcard. Reading them back, she smiled at her own handwriting for the first time.
In Porto she looked up at a balcony. Shirts and sheets hung above old tiles, each at a slightly different angle. Suddenly this seemed as worthy of her letter as a palace. Someone had opened a window that morning, done the washing and continued with their day. Mea held the paper against her chest. She wanted to remember that lovely moments need not always look exceptional. Sometimes they are simply drying above a street.
“I will keep this too. Not everything has to be a landmark.”
On Guincho beach she folded the paper carefully. She no longer missed a name on an envelope. She had been writing to herself: the woman who would return to her responsibilities and perhaps forget how easily she had breathed today. The waves stayed well away from her shoes, and the wind lifted a few strands of hair. Mea tucked the letter into her bag. Delivery was complete, and the postage remarkably reasonable.
“For me. Open on a day when I am hurrying too much.”
From notebook to book
The Map with No Last Page
Travel2City journeys continue between the covers of a book. Discover our illustrated travel world.
