Axel opened his eyes and for a moment didn’t know where he was.
All he could see was a sheet of white plastic covering him and a great big backpack beside him.
Oh, right. His tent.
He lay there for a while, listening.
No cars, no motorbikes, no people. Out there the birds were whistling carefree little tunes.
“Wonder what they’re going on about,” he thought.
Inside the sleeping bag it was nice and warm.
He remembered the little Brownie in the red cap who’d caught him peeing along the path.
Had that really happened?
Anyway, sometimes his head sent him strange visions. Once, working the night shift at the hotel reception, he could’ve sworn a Brownie just like that one had thrown tomato sauce onto the shirt of some complaining customer.
Another time, playing board games with Bruno and Clara, he’d seen a Brownie steal the most important piece off the board. He found it three days later in the cereal box.
Seriously weird stuff.
So, probably the same thing. A Brownie asking for chocolate in the middle of the woods.
Obviously they were just delusions, the kind that showed up when he’d been awake for too many hours.
He climbed out of the tent and stretched. The woods by day were a marvel, like watching a movie in high definition.
He packed up calmly, stuffed everything into his backpack, and got back on the path.
What a joy to start the day like this. His head suuuper clear and right in the middle of an adventure.
Little by little the trail began to change, and far off in the distance Axel started to make out a touch of civilization.
Not that he missed it already, this soon, but it really was about time for a nice little coffee.
He still had a good while to go. He picked up the pace.
Meanwhile, Eva was waking up with the sun hitting her in the face.
She was lying on a wooden bench at the entrance to a park.
Her clothes were still damp from the night’s downpour, but thanks to the glorious sun they were nearly dry now.
Fay was asleep, curled into a ball on her belly.
“Hey, sleepyhead. Up you get, time to eat.”
They got up and left the park.
She found a little shop barely two streets up, with crates of fruit out front.
She told Fay to wait by the door and came out a few minutes later with a couple of bananas, a little box of dates, a bottle of water, and a small tin of tuna.
She sat on the edge of the fountain in the village square and opened the tin for the cat.
Fay set to eating without stopping.
She peeled a banana and looked around. The village was waking up.
An old woman was crossing the square with a bag full of bread.
Going the other way was a man on a bike.
She took a bite of the banana.
A car went by on the main street, a young guy inside.
Eva liked to watch. Every village she came to had its own spark. Its people, its streets, its shops, its rhythm.
She finished the banana and picked up a date.
She started humming a tune as she nibbled at it.
At first wordless, soft, just for herself.
But the song grew on its own. One of hers, with no name, the words sprouting as she went.
A little girl stopped dead in the middle of the square, clutching her mother’s hand.
It wasn’t that there were many people, but the ones passing by stopped to listen.
Eva had closed her eyes and her voice poured out unchecked, crossing the square from corner to corner.
It was a strange feeling, because the images coming into her mind were so vivid she could’ve sworn they were memories.
But she knew that wasn’t the case. Maybe they were only dreams.
Turning those images into song filled her with an immense sense of peace and freedom.
Behind her closed eyelids she sensed a shadow in front of her. Someone was watching her, up close.
“You again?” said a cheerful voice.
She stopped singing. She opened her eyes.
Eva had spent half the night promising herself that today she’d ask around the village for a kid with a big backpack. And the kid with the big backpack had planted himself right in front of her, all on his own.
“Me again,” she said, with a goofy smile.
Fay lifted his head from the nearly empty tin, looked at Axel for a second, and went back to his business.
The kid dropped his backpack on the ground with a groan of relief and sat down next to Eva, on the edge of the fountain.
“Hungry?” she said, holding out the little box of dates.
“Oof… quite a bit.”
And there, on the edge of a fountain in a village whose name neither of them knew, they started to talk.
“So, what happened yesterday?” Axel asked, with half a date in his mouth.
“Well, yesterday I got invited to a dinner with board games and when I showed up there was nobody there.”
Axel was taken aback. She was telling him she’d gone… but that wasn’t possible. He’d waited until all hours. Maybe he’d just go along with it.
“Wow, what shitty friends you’ve got,” he added with a laugh. And he wolfed down the other half of the date.
Eva laughed too.
“Nah, seriously. I went to your place, man, but I got there suuper late and you were already gone. A neighbor of yours told me you’d left, so I decided to come find you.”
“Ah, so you did come!” Axel didn’t know whether to be glad that deep down she hadn’t stood him up, annoyed that she’d shown up late, or amazed that this crazy girl had gone looking for him without knowing where.
He sat staring at her without saying anything. As if he could work out an answer somewhere in her face. Deep down he just didn’t know what to say.
Eva sat looking at him. On one hand she wanted to tell him everything, to finally open up to someone for once in her damn life. But she didn’t know where to start. It occurred to her that she wasn’t actually the only one with something to tell. That kid had taken off in the dead of night loaded with boxes, heading out without really knowing where. He had to have some secret of his own.
She took the chance to put the pressure back on Axel’s side.
“Look… I’ll tell you whatever you want.” She bit into another date. “But you have to go first. Why did you leave like that, from one day to the next? You told me something about an adventure, but an adventure is going off for the weekend to explore wherever, not leaving home in the middle of the night with no idea when you’re coming back.”
Axel sat thinking.
“You want the truth? Just know it’s a ridiculous story.”
“Tell me. I already know all the normal ones.”
“I left because of a slice of pizza.”
Eva looked at him, waiting for the punchline. It didn’t come.
“I was at home, just some ordinary night. Having dinner on the couch, watching junk on my phone. I took too big a bite… and it got stuck right here.” He pointed to his throat. “No air getting in. Not out, not in. Nothing.”
Eva had stopped chewing.
“I stood up, tried to cough, nothing came out. And I got this flash in my head, one very clear thought: that I was completely alone. That if I died right there, in my kitchen, I’d have lived a stupid life. From school to college and from college to work. Fake smiles every day and a handful of boring trips.”
“Wow, and what did you do to keep from choking?”
“I threw myself belly-first against the edge of the counter. Like an animal. And the piece shot right out, haha.”
He went quiet for a moment.
“Then I just sat there on the kitchen floor, staring at that lump of frozen pizza. Out of the microwave. Like everything else. A few days later I quit my job, canceled my lease, said goodbye to my coworkers… and here I am.”
Eva said nothing. She passed him the bottle of water.
“The most absurd part is that I had it all figured out,” Axel went on, and took a drink. “I studied, got my degree, worked as a hotel receptionist, had my tidy little apartment, everything in its place.”
“The whole package.”
“The package, exactly. And the package bored me to death, it didn’t make me happy. Until I nearly croaked over a pizza and thought: hey, is this it? All this fuss for this?”
Eva listened to him very closely. As if every word struck a chord in her.
“I know exactly how that feels,” she said. “They’d already designed my whole package, a prefab life, before I was even born.”
And she told him. Little by little, looking at the water in the fountain.
She told him about the piano. The lessons, the recitals. The right clothes, the right friends. Parents who only cared what other people would think. An older sister who did everything perfectly and never missed a chance to remind her of it.
“At home everything was decided. What you’d study, who you hung out with, even how you had to do your hair. Everything. Except one thing.”
“Which?”
“Whether you were happy. Nobody cared about that.”
She was quiet for a moment, turning a date over between her fingers.
“My parents killed themselves in the car. A while back now.” She said it without her voice shaking. “Arguing, like always. Up front yelling at each other over something stupid, a highway exit they’d missed because they misread the GPS. And my sister and me in the back, quiet. Like always.”
Axel said nothing. He quickly understood there was nothing to say.
“The only thing they knew how to do together was argue. And they died doing it.” A joyless little laugh escaped her. “You’ve got to hand it to them.”
She tossed the date pit into the little box.
“When they died I was left with my sister. At first we were okay, until she started hating everything I did, wouldn’t let me live in peace. So I decided to escape that life… a bit like you.” She shrugged. “But look, I’ve ended up just as lost as before. Though at least lost my own way. Which is something.”
The two of them fell quiet, watching Fay, who had left the tin gleaming and was licking his little paws.
Axel stood up suddenly.
“You know what we need? A nice little coffee. I’ve been after one all morning.”
He slung the backpack over his shoulder. As he moved it, a handful of small, worn photos held together with a rubber band peeked out of a side pocket. He shoved them back in with a swipe of his hand.
“You carry photos?” Eva asked.
“My old life. I’ll show you sometime.”
“Well come on then, let’s go get that coffee,” she said, getting to her feet.
Fay set off first, tail straight up, as if he knew perfectly well where the best coffee in the village was made.