Chapter II

We set sail at dawn.

The sea was almost still,
as if it too were holding its breath.
The boathouse faded behind us, slowly swallowed by the fog,
until it became nothing more than a shapeless shadow.
A place that, little by little, stopped belonging to us.

The engine broke the silence with a steady hum.
Pongo, sitting at the bow, stared at the horizon with his ears pricked up,
as if he knew exactly where we were going, even without a map.

I watched the water flow beneath the hull.
Each wave seemed to carry away a thought I'd held on to for too long.

The man didn't speak.
He steered with confidence, with those slow gestures of someone who has spent their life moving through the same space,
without ever truly crossing its boundaries.

"Feels strange, doesn't it?" I finally said.
"Leaving without knowing where you'll end up."

He gave a bitter smile.
"It's scarier to stay when you already know how it ends."

I stayed silent.
Then I asked him:
"Why did you agree to come?"

He didn't answer right away.
He let the boat cut through the water for a few more seconds, then said:
"Because when I watched you leave… I realised I was letting something slip away that I had already lost once before."

I turned to look at him.

"When I was your age," he continued, "I wanted to leave.
I didn't know where, but I knew I didn't want to stay.
I dreamed of seeing the world, of living stories that weren't all the same.
Then came the responsibilities.
The steady job.
The people who tell you it's better to settle."

He gripped the wheel tighter.
"And one day you wake up and realise that the fear of taking risks has made your choices for you."

The sea stretched out before us, endless.

"You get used to it, you know?" he said.
"To the life you didn't choose.
It's the most dangerous thing there is."

"And freedom?" I asked quietly.

He sighed.
"Freedom isn't doing what you want.
It's having the courage to admit what you truly want.
And I never fully managed that."

We sat in silence.
Only the wind and the sea spoke for us.

"I'm afraid," I admitted.
"Afraid of taking the wrong path."

He nodded.
"That's how it should be.
Fear isn't the enemy.
The enemy is not facing it and standing still."

Around midmorning, the sea changed colour.
It didn't happen all at once.
First the water grew clearer, then the wind seemed to ease,
as if someone had turned down the volume of the world.
The waves slowed.
The sky opened above us, clean, enormous.

Then we saw it.

An island.

It appeared without hurry, while the sun was already high.
It had nothing remarkable about it from a distance.
Just land rising from the sea,
as if it had always been there, waiting for the right moment to be found.

"Is it on the map?" I asked.
The man lowered his eyes to the folded papers by the helm.
He studied them for a moment, then shook his head.
"No."

"Then what is it?"

He looked at the island.
"Maybe a detour."

Pongo barked once, as if that were answer enough.

We pulled in slowly.
The water was so calm it seemed to have no direction.
The boat glided toward the shore almost without a sound,
until the sand appeared beneath us, pale, soft, scattered with broken shells.

I stepped off first.
The sand was cool beneath my feet, slipping between my toes.
Pongo jumped down right after, running ahead then stopping to look at everything,
as if every single thing were new.

"Hey!"

The voice came from the shore.
A boy was watching us, holding an enormous shell.
He had hair full of salt, skin dark from the sun, and eyes that seemed to expect nothing,
yet were ready to be surprised by everything.

Behind him, sitting on a rock, was a girl.
Bare feet in the water, hair tied up loosely, skin that smelled of the sea.

The boy ran toward her.
"WOW, look, Lia! This one's beautiful!"
He shoved the shell under her nose.
"Listen! Can you hear it?"

She smiled.
"Yes, I can hear it. It's the sea."

Then she looked up at us.
She didn't seem surprised.
Just curious.

"Hello," she said.
"Hello," I replied.

The boy circled around me, studying my shoes, Pongo, the boat.
"Is it yours?" he asked, pointing to the vessel.
"Yes."
"It's big."

He paused.
"But it floats well."
"I'd say so."

He nodded, satisfied, as if the matter were settled.
Then he pointed to a spot ahead, where the sand curved gently between some low rocks.
"Over there is better. No wind."

Without waiting for an answer, he started walking in that direction.
We glanced at each other for a moment, then followed him.

He seemed to know the island the way you know a home:
not because someone had explained it to him,
but because he had lived in it long enough to know where he felt at ease.

Lia got up from the rock and joined us.
She was holding two coconuts, already opened.
"Drink," she said. "It's hot."

The juice was cool and sweet.
The boy watched us drink, smiling broadly.
"I told you," he said quietly.
"What?" I asked.
"That someone would come today."

Lia looked at him.
"You always say someone is coming."
"Sooner or later I was right."

The man laughed softly.
It was a short laugh, almost restrained, but real.
Perhaps the first since I had known him.

We stayed there for a while.
Deciding nothing.

The boy threw stones into the water, trying to make them skip.
He counted out loud each time.
"One. Two. THREE! Did you see that?!"

Lia worked on a net nearby.
Every now and then she'd stop, wipe her hands on her trousers, look out at the sea.
"It's not great today," she said.
"What?" I asked.
"The wind. When it's like this, the sea seems asleep."

The boy stopped throwing stones.
"I like it like this."
"You like everything," she answered.

He turned serious.
"Not seaweed when it touches my feet."
Then he smiled again.

In the afternoon we caught something.
Not much.
But enough.

The boy commented on every gesture, every movement.
"This one's fast."
"This one's getting away."
"This one bites."
"This one looks angry."
"This one, I think, didn't want to come."

Lia corrected him now and then, but without really wanting to silence him.
It seemed that on that island even words had time to arrive where they needed to go.

Nobody was in a hurry.
Nobody asked what time it was.
Nobody seemed to worry about what came next.

When the sun began to sink, we sat on the sand.
We ate with our hands.
The sky changed colour slowly, without drawing attention to itself.

The boy lay back, looking up.
"Tonight the sky is full," he said.
"Full of what?" I asked.
"Magic."

He said it without smiling, as if it were obvious.
He turned to me.
"Are you staying tonight too?"

I looked at the man.
Then at Lia.
"Yes," I said. "We're staying."

The boy smiled.
"Good."
Then he went back to looking at the sky.

The sound of the sea was constant, reassuring.
The air smelled of salt, coconut, and warm wood.

Before falling asleep I heard the boy whisper:
"Tomorrow I'll show you something incredible."
"What?" I asked.
"The sea that lights up," he said.
"But only if you stay quiet."

I smiled in the dark.

And for the first time since I had set off,
I didn't feel the need to know where I was going next.

I closed my eyes,
letting the wind and the sound of the trees do the rest.

⸻

The next morning I woke to something brushing my face.
My eyes flew open.
It was a leaf.

The boy was in front of me, crouched in the sand, one finger to his lips.
"Shhh."

I looked at him, confused.
The sun had just risen.
The sky still held that uncertain shade between blue and gold,
and the sea breathed slowly, close to us.

"Why are you doing that?" I whispered.
"Because today starts early."
"What starts?"

He opened his eyes wide, as if I had asked something absurd.
"The day!"

Then he ran off.

I got up slowly.
The man was still asleep nearby, with Pongo curled up against his legs.
They both seemed lighter,
as if overnight the island had lifted something from them.

Lia was already up.
She was walking along the shoreline with a basket under her arm.
Every so often she bent down, picked something from the sand, and held it up to the light.

I went to join her.
"Do you always sleep like this?" I asked.
"Like what?"
"On the beach."

She smiled.
"When it doesn't rain."
"And when it rains?"

She nodded toward a small structure hidden among the trees.
It was made of wood, woven leaves, and pieces of old boats.
"There."

I stood looking at it.
"Do you really live here alone?"

She kept walking.
"Yes."
"Since when?"

She crouched to pick up a small white shell.
"Long enough."

I understood she didn't want to explain everything.
Or perhaps, simply,
on that island answers were never the first thing.

The boy came running back toward us with Pongo at his heels.
"Lia! Lia! He doesn't know how to do anything!"
"Who?"
"The dog! I told him to dig where I said,
but he digs wherever he wants."

Pongo arrived with his muzzle full of sand and his tongue hanging out.
He looked absolutely delighted.

Lia looked at Pongo, then at her brother.
"Maybe he just didn't feel like taking orders from you."

The boy thought about it.
Then he looked at Pongo with respect.
"Could be."

We spent the morning that way.
Without any real purpose.

We followed the boy through the trees,
along paths that weren't really paths,
but places where he had decided to pass so many times they had become a road.

He showed us a fallen trunk that to him was "the pirates' bridge".
A flat rock that was "the king's table".
A pool of clear water where, he said, an invisible fish lived.

"It's never seen," he said.
"But it's there."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because sometimes the water moves."
"Maybe it's the wind."

He gave me a look.
"Maybe it's the fish."

Lia laughed.

The man joined us later, walking slowly.
His shirt was open, his hair dishevelled,
and he had the look of someone not yet used to waking up without a purpose.

The boy ran up to him.
"Do you know how to build a small boat?"

The man stopped.
"How small?"

The boy spread his hands.
"Like this."
"That's not a boat. That's a cork."
"But it has to float."

The man looked at me.
Then at the boy.
"In that case, yes. It can be done."

We sat in the shade.
With pieces of bark, dry twigs, and a broad leaf for a sail,
they built a tiny boat.

The boy watched every movement with total concentration.
As if this were the most important thing in the world.
And perhaps, in that moment, it truly was.

When they finished, he ran toward the water.
"Wait!" the man called.
"If you put it there it'll capsize."

The boy froze.
"Why?"

The man pointed to the spot where the small waves broke on the shore.
"See? The water pulls back.
You have to put it where it carries things out."

The boy studied the sea.
Then he placed the little boat in a calmer spot.

The leaf trembled.
The tiny boat rocked.
Then it began to drift slowly away.

The boy leapt to his feet.
"It's going! It's really going!"

The man smiled.
Not a bitter smile.
Not the kind you put on out of politeness.
A real smile.

"Yes," he said.
"It's going."

I watched them.
The boat was tiny, fragile, almost ridiculous against the open sea.
And yet it went.

Without knowing where.
Without asking if it was ready.
It just went.

Maybe some things worked that way.
Not because they were safe.
But because they had finally left the shore.

By midday the heat had grown stronger.
Lia led us under some palms,
where the shade moved slowly over the sand.

We ate fruit, leftover fish from the evening before,
and something the boy called "island bread",
even though it didn't really look like bread.

"Is it good?" he asked.
The man chewed slowly.
"It's… interesting."

The boy smiled.
"That means you don't like it."
"It means I don't know yet if I like it."
"Then have some more."

The man laughed.

I looked at Lia.
She was sitting with her knees to her chest, gazing out at the sea.
"Don't you miss anything?" I asked.

She didn't answer right away.
"Like what?"
"I don't know. People. Cities. Things to do."

Lia lowered her gaze to the sand
and began drawing circles with a small stick.
"People are often lonelier in crowded places."

I stayed silent.

"We don't have much here," she went on.
"But what we have, we see.
We feel it.
We use it.
Nothing passes without us noticing."

She looked at the boy, who was trying to get Pongo to chase a crab.
"He taught me that."
"Him?"
"Yes."

She smiled faintly.
"I thought I was the one taking care of him.
But many times it's him who saves me."

The boy fell in the sand trying to run after the crab.
He burst out laughing.
Pongo jumped on top of him.

Lia watched him with tenderness.
"See?" she said.
"He's happy about things that adults stop even noticing."

Those words stayed with me.

Because maybe it was true.
Maybe as we grow up we don't just lose our innocence.
We lose attention.

We pass by things without really seeing them.
A wave.
A laugh.
The taste of cool water when you're thirsty.
A hand covered in sand.
A dog running for no reason.
The sun going down.
A little boat made of nothing that manages to sail anyway.

In the afternoon the boy took us to the other side of the island.
"We have to get there before it gets dark," he said.

"To see the sea light up?" I asked.

He stopped dead.
"Don't say it so loud."
"Why?"

He came closer, serious.
"Because some things, if you talk about them too much, hide themselves."

The man looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

We walked for a while through the trees.
Light filtered through the leaves and fell on our skin in warm patches.
Every so often the boy stopped to show us something:
a strange fruit, a feather, a tiny insect,
a stone that he said looked like a whale.

We reached a small bay as the sun was already sinking.
It was hidden between two walls of rock.
The water there was darker, stiller.
It felt like a secret.

"Here?" the man asked.
The boy nodded.
"Here."

Lia sat down on the sand.
"Now we wait."
"How long?" I asked.

The boy turned to me.
"Until it comes."

He said nothing more.
And so we waited.
Doing nothing.

At first it seemed strange.
Then difficult.
Then, slowly, natural.

The sky changed colour.
The sun vanished behind the water.
The wind dropped.
The boy stopped talking.
Even Pongo seemed to understand that this was not the moment to break something.

When the darkness truly arrived, the bay fell silent.

The boy stood up.
He walked into the water up to his ankles.
Then he turned to us and whispered:
"Look."

Stirred by his foot, the sea lit up.
A blue light, thin, alive.
Like stars that had fallen into the water.

The boy took another step.
More sparks burst open around his legs.

Pongo barked softly, confused,
then put one paw in the water.
The light exploded beneath him in small blue flashes.

The boy burst out laughing.
"See?! I told you!"

I stepped in too.
The water was warm.
Every movement left a glowing trail.
I opened my hands beneath the surface and the sea lit up between my fingers.

It didn't feel real.
Or perhaps it was real precisely because no one had tried to make it useful.

It served no purpose.
It produced nothing.
It led nowhere.
It was simply beautiful.
And that was enough.

The man remained on the shore.
I watched him look at the water the way you look at something you no longer understand,
but once knew well.

"Come in," I said.
He shook his head.
"No, I…"

The boy ran to him and took his hand.
"You have to do it gently.
If you make too much noise, it gets scared."

The man looked down at that small hand in his.
Then he stepped in.

One step.
The light bloomed beneath his foot.
He stopped.
Another step.
Blue swirled around his ankles.

And in that moment I saw his face change.
Not much.
Just slightly.
But enough.

As if for a second he had stopped being the man from the boathouse.
The one who had already seen the sea.
The one who wouldn't try things.
The one who closed questions too soon.

For a second he looked like just a boy.
One who still had the right to be amazed.

"It's absurd," he whispered.
The boy smiled.
"No. It's the sea."

We stayed in there a long time.
Moving slowly.
Creating light without wanting to own it.

Lia sat on the shore, knees pulled to her chest.
She watched her brother laugh in the water and smiled in silence.

I went over to her.
"Why does it seem like he always knows something we've forgotten?" I asked.

Lia didn't look away from the sea.
"Because he doesn't always think about what comes next."
"And you?"

She breathed quietly.
"I try."

Meanwhile the boy was spinning in circles,
creating rings of light in the water.

"Sometimes I'm afraid," said Lia.
"Afraid that this isn't enough.
That I should take him somewhere else.
Give him more.
A normal life."

She looked at the sea.
"Then I see him like this.
And I wonder if it's us, in the end,
who call normal a life that makes us forget the simple things."

I stayed silent.
The light kept flickering in the water.
As if the sea were breathing stars.

"He doesn't know what will happen tomorrow," said Lia.
"And maybe that's why he can live today."

Those words entered quietly.
Without making a sound.
Like the tide.

I looked at the boy.
He was laughing.
Pongo ran through the shallow water, leaving glowing trails behind him.
The man walked slowly, almost moved,
as if each step returned something he had forgotten he'd lost.

And I, for the first time, understood that maybe the journey wasn't only about going further.

Sometimes it was about returning.
Returning to look.
Returning to feel.
Returning to be present in the small things,
before the world convinced us that only the big ones matter.

That night, the treasure didn't take the shape of gold.
It wasn't hidden in a cave.
It wasn't waiting to be found by someone brave enough.

It was there.
In the water that lit up when you touched it.
In the boy who laughed without asking how long it would last.
In Lia who tried to protect that lightness.
In the man who, after years of watching the sea from the shore,
had finally put his feet back into something alive.

And inside me, in a simple thought.

Perhaps freedom isn't always knowing where to go.
Perhaps, sometimes,
it's stopping running from the moment you're in.

And staying there.
Truly.