Part I — The Timetable
Barcelona Sants pulsed with the kind of energy only departure halls carry: the weight of waiting, the sudden surge of movement when platforms lit, the restless shuffle of shoes on polished tile. The ceiling glittered with solar panels feeding the grid, and holographic departure boards flickered above the crowd.
Seven travelers stood in a crooked line near Platform 12, luggage scattered between them like a fortification. They didn’t look like a group yet—too many different shapes, ages, habits—but they leaned faintly toward one another, drawn into orbit.
Alma Díaz stood in the center. Her scarf, deep red, caught the station’s manufactured breeze, and in her hand a translucent PDA glowed with data: train numbers, hotel bookings, meal credits, backup plans. She flicked through the tabs with quick precision, as if the device were an extension of her nervous system. Her watch displayed two time zones, though she never needed reminding.
Beside her, Luca Santori held a slim digital notebook folded like a wallet. He’d written only three lines so far but carried himself like a man who could spend an entire day listening and leave with more than a page full of truths. He had the patient jaw of someone who rarely interrupted.
Nina Kovács adjusted the strap of her camera. It looked like a classic SLR—metal body, weighty lens, satisfying shutter click—but its digital screen hummed faint blue. She preferred the old silhouette; people softened when they thought she was using film, not a chip. Her eyes darted everywhere: ceiling beams, the curve of a stranger’s jaw, the angle of the light across Alma’s scarf.
The others filled the constellation. Camille Moreau, the pastry chef, cradled a tin of butter cookies wrapped in smart-foil that adjusted to climate, ensuring they were always crisp. She held it like a gift and a shield. Jonas Weber, her boyfriend, stood beside her—quiet, wiry, fiddling with his wrist display that kept losing sync with the station network. Zahra Bensalem, interpreter, tested her AI earpiece by muttering to herself in three languages, watching the translation delay with a frown. And Pietro Rinaldi, retired teacher from Trani, leaned calmly on his cane, eyes soft with the patience of a man who had shepherded generations of teenagers toward adulthood.
The TGV slid into the station without a roar, just a hum that lifted the hairs on everyone’s arms. Its nose glowed faint amber, windows tinted like sunglasses. Boarding gates pulsed green.
They moved.
The train’s interior smelled faintly of citrus polish. Seats adjusted automatically to height. Luggage racks purred shut. Outside, Barcelona blurred past: apartment blocks, terraces heavy with plants, graffiti slogans already fading in the sun.
“Arrival in Paris at nineteen-ten,” Alma said, PDA glowing in her palm. “Hotel is twenty minutes by taxi—fifteen if the auto-lane is clear.”
“Metro is faster,” Zahra said, sliding open her earpiece map. “Five stops.”
“Or we walk,” Pietro said, voice warm. “Paris should be honored by feet.”
“Feet plus bags equals regret,” Jonas muttered.
Camille nudged him with her elbow, smiling faintly.
“We’ll see how it feels when we get there,” Alma said. The PDA dimmed to transparent.
Nina raised her camera and clicked. Alma’s hand over the glowing device. The scarf in red flare. “The hand that steadies the day,” she murmured.
Camille opened the tin. The cookies gleamed golden. She passed them down the aisle. Jonas took one, kissed her wrist. Pietro leaned into Zahra, murmuring about Frederick II of Sicily, who had once balanced empires like a teacher balances chalk. Zahra translated fragments into English, sprinkling them into the conversation like crumbs.
Luca sat quietly, eyes moving from one face to another. He noticed Jonas carrying Camille’s heavier bag into the rack without comment. Alma offering him her stylus when his failed. Zahra holding Nina’s lens cap when both of her hands were full. No speeches. Just gestures, as if the air itself asked to stay easy.
Near Figueres, a ticket inspector paused at Nina’s camera. “Vintage,” he said in Spanish, curious. Zahra bridged the conversation, switching tongues like breathing. When she explained they were bound for Bari, his face softened. “The sea will welcome you,” he said in Italian.
Pietro pressed his palm to the window. “Trani is near,” he whispered. “White cathedral, sea like glass.”
“Not glass,” Nina corrected softly, raising her camera. “Lens.”
Luca scribbled without looking: Not glass, lens.
By the time they reached Paris, the city had gathered itself into evening. Gare de Lyon’s vast canopy glittered with light panels. They spilled out with hundreds of others, luggage wheels stuttering on tile.
A taxi drone driver scowled at their number. “Deux rides,” he said.
“Metro keeps us together,” Zahra countered, map projection hovering at her wrist.
“Feet would honor Paris,” Pietro repeated.
“Feet plus bags equals regret,” Jonas said again, heavier this time.
For a beat, they hesitated. Then Alma tilted her PDA. “Metro,” she said. The group moved in a single sweep, like iron toward a magnet.
On the platform, a busker played violin beneath a solar lamp, notes winding between metal beams. Camille stopped short, tin forgotten, eyes wide. Nina caught her in the instant her jaw loosened, her body leaning toward the sound. The shutter clicked, and Camille’s awe was preserved. Later, Nina would title the photo: Paris, Day One: Carried by Sound.
The hotel near Place d’Aligre was narrow, glass doors smudged with fingerprints. The clerk’s holographic smile glitched once before holding steady. They squeezed into an elevator that moaned like an old ship. Upstairs, corridors barely allowed two to pass.
“Tomorrow we leave at nine,” Alma said, distributing keycards from her PDA. “Breakfast vouchers included. Don’t lose them.”
Jonas leaned against the wall, exhausted. Camille slipped the tin from her bag, offering cookies in silence. Nina fiddled with her camera strap. Pietro hummed softly under his breath.
Luca lingered, notebook shut in his hand. He didn’t write. He just looked at them—their tired postures, the thin thread of care that kept them from unraveling. “Tomorrow will give us another chance,” he said quietly, almost to himself.
No one replied, but the words seemed to settle in the hallway like a promise.
Dinner was a narrow bistro glowing amber from within. The hostess’s wristband kept flipping between French and English, sentences dissolving mid-translation. Zahra filled in the gaps, her voice a ribbon weaving the group into coherence.
The plates came: celery root remoulade crisp and creamy, duck confit so tender Pietro closed his eyes as if tasting prayer, pears softened with cardamom that made Camille smile with professional respect.
Jonas tried ordering fries in French and ended up with two extra glasses of wine. He stared at them, then shrugged. They drank the mistake, laughter clinking like glass.
Nina leaned forward, photographing Camille’s face as she tasted dessert. Jonas saw the lens, saw the attention, and his jaw tightened. He looked away, sipping too much wine at once.
Alma organized the bill with her PDA, dividing credits with smooth precision. The hostess, grateful, touched her arm gently in thanks. Camille saw the smile, then saw Jonas watching Nina. Something sharp moved in her chest, too fast to name.
Back at the hotel, the elevator groaned them up again. Camille walked silently beside Jonas. Alma carried her folder close, eyes tired. Nina reviewed her images, smiling faintly at the violinist, at Camille’s astonishment. Pietro hummed.
Luca followed last, notebook closed, words still unused. He didn’t need to write to know the shape of tomorrow: frictions beginning, loyalties shifting, gestures carrying more weight than anyone admitted.
He smiled into the dim hallway. The day had ended. The journey hadn’t yet begun. smiled into the dim hallway. The day had ended. The journey hadn’t yet begun.
Part II — The Corridor
The Frecciarossa Executive car gleamed like something meant to impress dignitaries, not ordinary passengers. Polished wood, leather that adjusted itself to posture, lighting that shifted warmer as the sun climbed. Even the silence felt curated.
Camille sank into her seat with a sigh. “If butter could be furniture,” she murmured, “this would be it.”
Pietro chuckled, stretching his legs. “If I were a baron, I’d hold court from this chair. Kindly, of course.”
“Barons don’t share cookies,” Jonas said.
“I would,” Pietro replied, eyes twinkling.
The attendant brought coffee, cups balanced on a hover-tray that slid gracefully to a stop between them. Nina photographed the porcelain, her digital camera clicking with its satisfying retro snap. The attendant, pleased, adjusted the saucers as if he were arranging relics for display.
They’d left Milan before dawn, city streets half-empty, drone taxis drifting like silent beetles above them. The morning still clung to their clothes.
For a while, the rhythm of the train smoothed them. Luca roamed lightly between conversations, notebook tucked under his arm, offering the kind of questions that opened doors without pressing anyone to walk through them. Zahra adjusted her earpiece to local dialects, humming approval when the AI kept pace.
But somewhere past Bologna, the mood shifted. Small things, always small.
Alma leaned across the table, checking her PDA where glowing tabs marked time. “The violinist,” she said to Nina, “was outside Gare de Lyon, not inside. You had it wrong in your notes.”
Nina froze, camera strap digging into her shoulder. “The detail isn’t the point,” she said evenly. “The memory is. It’s how it felt.”
“I don’t want us to lose the thread,” Alma pressed. “Otherwise we’re just scattered beads.”
Jonas blew out air hard enough to fog the glass. “We’re beads anyway. Stones, people, whatever. Only string is the train.”
Camille touched his knee, a silent tether.
Zahra leaned toward the window. “Look,” she said quickly, pointing to the coastline unspooling outside—fishing villages painted in pastel, houses like sugared almonds. “If we had one more day, we could stop for brodetto.”
“We don’t have one more day,” Alma whispered, words heavier than she meant.
Silence spread like condensation.
Luca leaned forward, quiet. “What are you both most afraid of losing? The plan?” he asked Alma. “Or the meaning?” His voice wasn’t challenging; it was an invitation.
Nina’s mouth tightened. Alma blinked, PDA dimming in her hand. They said nothing, but the air shifted.
Pietro filled the gap with a teacher’s memory. “My best classes,” he said, “were when the quietest student stood at the board. Just five minutes. The whole room changed. Everyone learned differently after that.”
Camille lowered her eyes. “Sometimes I want to be seen for something that isn’t bread.”
The table stilled. Her voice had been too soft, but everyone heard. Nina looked up at her, startled.
Jonas reached for her hand, but Camille had already turned back to the window.
Lunch arrived on glossy trays: mozzarella gleaming like moons, prosciutto folded with ceremony, tomatoes bursting with color. Jonas lunged too quickly for one and his fork slipped, sauce streaking across Nina’s shirt.
He froze. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
Nina dabbed at the red smear with sparkling water, expression calm but edges taut. “It’s just a shirt,” she said. “Now it’s a story about an expensive accident that tasted good.”
Her smile was thin. Camille studied Jonas’s face—the guilt, the need to make it right—and felt the twist in her chest again. Jealousy didn’t need logic. It just needed a doorway.
The train tilted toward the sea. Blue opened beside them, bold and careless. Zahra leaned close to the window, the AI in her ear silent now. She didn’t need it here. The water seemed to speak directly.
Bari hit them like a furnace door opening. Heat pressed heavy, air salted. The station bustled with voices, the old stone façade lined with solar panels like scales. On the platform, a couple argued fast and sharp, their words a cascade none of the group could follow. But their anger was fluent enough: a forgotten promise, a wound about family.
Zahra murmured the gist in English, soft as a confidante. “She thinks he doesn’t care. He thinks he’s drowning. Neither wrong, neither right.”
They carried that thought into the hotel lobby, where the clerk frowned at his glowing console. “Six rooms only,” he said in Italian. “System error.”
“Seven booked,” Alma countered, flicking her PDA to show confirmation.
The clerk spread his hands, weary. “System error,” he repeated.
“I’ll take the cot,” Pietro said, before tension could thicken. “I’ve survived worse beds.”
The cot rattled in later, mattress thin as a folded map. Nina photographed it anyway. “Hospitality with humor,” she muttered, earning a half-smile from Alma, who felt guilt prick anyway.
Dinner made everything right again.
They wandered into the old quarter where stone alleys twisted like veins. Women sat at doorways rolling orecchiette, their fingers pinching dough into tiny ears. One beckoned them inside her garage, where tables were wedged between tools and bicycles. No menu. No pretense.
Plates arrived: octopus charred to sweetness, shrimp translucent and trembling with the sea, pasta tangled with bitter greens, bread dripping with oil. The grandmother tapped Nina’s knuckles with a spoon for photographing too close, then kissed her cheeks anyway.
Jonas watched the kiss, the ease of it. A flash of envy came and went—not for the kiss itself, but for the simplicity of being welcomed without effort.
Camille saw his face. The twist in her chest returned, sharper.
Back at the hotel, she set the cookie tin on the desk and stared at it. “Do you think Nina loves the story more than us?” she asked, voice low.
Jonas tilted his head. “Which ‘us’?”
“You. Me. Alma. Anyone.”
“Maybe she loves all of it,” Jonas said. He rubbed his eyes. “I feel like a tool in someone else’s story. Useful, but not essential.”
Camille bit her lip. “And me? Am I just the baker in the background?”
Jonas leaned over, kissed her shoulder. “No. You’re the part people remember.”
For once, she almost believed him.
The next morning, the regional train clattered south, old enough to groan when it moved, steady once it found its rhythm. The sea unrolled beside them like a companion.
Pietro pressed his forehead to the glass, his voice hushed. “I’ve dreamed of this view every day I’ve been away. It hasn’t aged. Only I have.”
Trani opened around them: narrow streets, white cathedral anchored at the water’s edge, laundry flapping overhead like bright signals. The city seemed to breathe in time with the tide.
They walked until walking became knowing. Nina photographed doorways, the curve of strangers’ hands. Alma’s scarf glowed red against sunlit stone. Camille ducked into a bakery and emerged with focaccia slick with oil, her eyes lit as if she’d tasted salvation. Jonas carried water bottles without being asked. Zahra chatted with a fisherman about dialect and weather, both of them laughing. Luca spoke with no one, but listened to everything.
At sunset they gathered on the sea wall, paper cones of fried things warm in their hands, wine sharp and sweet in their throats.
Alma lifted her PDA, screen glowing. She hesitated, then flicked it off. “Not tonight. No grid.”
Nina smiled. “Then one photo each,” she said, raising her camera. “Something unexpected. That’s the only rule.”
They scattered like coins thrown wide.
Nina found a boy on the cathedral steps, bent over homework, his chin in his palm. She photographed him against the sea, his youth lit by patience. He asked to see the image; she showed him, and he straightened suddenly, proud.
Alma was pulled into a doorway by an old woman who fed her zucchini flowers and told her about a stonemason husband whose hands had carved the cathedral. Alma ate and cried without quite knowing why.
Luca paused near a young couple arguing. He asked them gently what they thought the other feared most. Their answers softened the air between them. He left them smiling.
Camille stood in a bakery, custard bag in hand, piping swirls into shells under the watchful eye of a woman with arms like cables. She boxed two and wrote a note: For the film’s last frame.
Jonas found himself in the middle of a children’s soccer game. When the ball flew toward the water, he sprinted, sliding to save it. The children cheered, a grandfather clapped his back, and Jonas laughed like he hadn’t in years.
Pietro ate a cone of tiny fried fish, each bite reverent.
They returned to the sea wall as the sky went gold. One by one, they showed their photos: Nina’s boy with homework. Alma’s woman at the window. Camille’s custard galaxy. Jonas’s soccer save, transferred from the grandfather’s old device with surprising ease. Zahra’s candid of Luca mid-listening. Pietro’s shaky frame of them all laughing at nothing in particular.
They looked at the photos, then at each other. Silence held them. It was enough.
Tomorrow’s trains waited, but tonight belonged to them.
Part III — The Album
Morning in Trani came with pale gold light spilling over the sea. The cathedral stood like a sentinel at the water’s edge, its white stone so luminous it seemed carved from the sky itself. The tide lapped against the quay, steady as breath.
They met at the steps, still rubbing sleep from their eyes, carrying coffee in paper cups. The city was just waking—vendors rolling carts into place, shutters lifting, a cat darting across cobblestones.
Alma turned slowly, scarf trailing in the breeze, then laughed. “I didn’t die without a plan,” she announced.
Her PDA stayed dark in her pocket.
Nina raised her camera. “An admission,” she said, clicking the shutter.
They lingered on the steps, not ready to move. Something wordless moved through them, a current. Camille glanced at Jonas, who nodded. Pietro set down his cane. Zahra tilted her head as if catching a signal. Luca stepped closer, his notebook unopened.
And then they all leaned in. Seven bodies, awkward at first, bumping shoulders and elbows, uncertain where to put hands. Jonas gripped too tightly. Camille laughed into the center. Pietro hummed under his breath. Nina tilted sideways into Alma, who caught her without thinking.
The hug held. Clumsy, too warm, but real.
A woman passed with a bag of bread, watching them for a moment before smiling and continuing on.
They left Trani reluctantly, the train south humming them away from the sea. At the station, Pietro stood straighter than usual, cane firm in his hand. “You’ve seen my city,” he said. “Now you’re part of it.”
The group smiled, but none of them could quite speak. Goodbyes caught like grit in the throat.
Four Months Later
Winter pressed at their windows in seven different cities.
Each of them, at a different time of day, found the same cardboard mailer waiting. Inside: a slim book titled Journey Across Europe. A memory drive shaped like a train ticket. And a handwritten note in Nina’s slanted script:
It took longer than I promised. Truth hides, meaning takes its time. But here it is: the moments we kept, the ones we forgot, the ones that carried us through.
Alma opened hers at her kitchen table in Barcelona. The video began with a station announcement echoing through Sants, then her own hand on the glowing PDA, scarf trailing. She laughed out loud. “Of course she started with me,” she muttered.
Paris appeared: Camille’s face softened by violin. Jonas’s accidental wine order. Zahra filling in half-translated sentences. Alma herself, dividing the bill with smooth gestures, unaware of Nina’s lens.
The screen shifted to the Frecciarossa: coffee cups gleaming, Jonas’s fork slipping, the red streak across Nina’s shirt. Alma winced at the memory of her correction, the way Nina’s jaw had set. But then came Pietro’s voice, steady and kind, and she exhaled.
Bari filled the screen: women at doorways rolling pasta, the grandmother tapping Nina’s hand with a spoon before kissing her. The language barrier at the hotel desk replayed with comic timing—Alma’s frown, Zahra’s hands slicing air, Pietro’s serene smile as the cot rattled in.
Then Trani. The sea. The one-photo challenge. Each image: the boy with homework, the woman at the window, the custard galaxy, the soccer save, the candid of Luca listening, Pietro’s shaky laughter photo.
And finally—the hug.
The frame tilted, caught from a small auto-drone Nina had set on the seawall. Seven bodies tangled, imperfect. Arms around shoulders, faces half-hidden, Camille’s laugh blooming in the center. The film slowed just slightly, not sentimental, just enough to let the eye linger.
Text appeared on the screen: We didn’t fix each other. We carried each other. Sometimes that’s the same.
Alma closed the book on her lap and wiped her eyes. Then she sent a message to the group chat: Who’s chopping onions in Barcelona?
In Rome, Luca watched the album twice before picking up his mother’s number and calling just to talk. The voiceover he’d heard in his head for months was suddenly Nina’s. When the hug appeared, he scribbled a line in his notebook: Friendship is the only currency that grows with spending. He underlined it twice, smiling.
In Budapest, Nina balanced her tablet on the edge of her sink, the bathroom darkened into a makeshift studio. She processed her physical photos again, seeing them differently now that they’d been woven into story. The frame she lingered on wasn’t the boy with homework or the soccer game. It was the hallway in Bari—seven pairs of shoes lined neatly, scuffed, damp, aligned. Belonging without faces. She taped the print above her desk.
In Paris, Camille stood in her bakery before dawn, watching the custard swirl she had piped in Trani glow on screen. She wiped her hands on her apron and whispered, “Not just bread.” When Jonas walked in, bleary-eyed, she held out a pastry. “For the film’s last frame,” she said. He kissed her cheek, sugar dusting his lips.
Jonas watched his soccer save replayed three times. Each time, his grin grew wider. That weekend, he bought a ball and started playing with kids in the park, letting them win, laughing louder than he expected.
In Tangier, Zahra leaned back against her couch, listening to herself say “welcome” in five languages over the frame of shoes. She closed her eyes, whispered new words in Arabic, French, Italian, Spanish. Then she recorded them and sent the file to the group chat: phrases meaning “we saved you a seat.”
In Trani, Pietro sat by his window, watching the sea glow in winter light. The hug filled his small living room. He stood as it played, knees aching, then sat down again, smiling. Later, he walked to the harbor and told his bench, “They sent me proof I wasn’t dreaming.”
The group chat lit up with green dots.
Alma: Next spring. Trains again? Just asking.
Nina: Only if friction allowed.
Luca: And water.
Camille: And sugar.
Jonas: And ballast.
Zahra: And a bridge.
Pietro: And history.
Seven dots pulsed. The next plan was already writing itself.
But even before tickets were booked, before timetables lit on PDAs, they had what mattered: the memory of shared bread, unexpected laughter, and a clumsy hug that had turned seven scattered beads into something strung, something whole.
For now, it was enough.
WE&P by:EZorrillaMc.
Travel in Life 