Memories of a Life That Never Happened

Chapter 63 - No Man's Land

Mica had taken only two pictures so far. She was striving to grasp the camera work and had no idea how many pictures she had left. Therefore, Mica pondered very carefully which images she desired to capture.  

The first one she snapped from the highest part of the forest. There, the trees subsided and a green valley spread all the way down a green slope. It was speckled with grey rocks of different sizes and shapes, which emerged from the tall grass like the bubbles in boiling water, becoming smaller as the hill mellowed out to a white strip of sandy beach. 

As moisture blew into the shore, the lowest part of the valley, closest to the beach, was silvery with haze. The slope formed a natural barrier that prevented the fog from dissipating. It was a beautiful scenery; one that could very well pertain to one of the storybooks Mica used to read to Julian. 

From there, Mica made her way down to a place she knew very well, a place she used to go when she wanted to be alone. It was a tiny derelict harbor, where no more than three boats could dock at the same time. There was a pitiful shack, mercilessly worn down by the weather. Mica remembered how it looked once, when her father used to moor his boat to one of the poles. Now, it was a flimsy pile of rotten wood, broken windows and rusty latches. It looked as though the whole assemble would collapse with the gentlest breeze. 

There was still one long-forgotten boat attached to the pier. A desolate sight as it was, a beautiful garden of water lilies had elected it as their home. Sunlight struck the flowers beautifully at that hour and the mist over the water gave the impression that the boat was sailing on clouds.  

Mica snapped the second picture. 

Next, she walked up to the shack and quietly pushed the door open. She threw a pebble inside, just in case some beast had decided to make it its lair. Nothing came out, so Mica went in.  

Despite the fact that there was dust everywhere, it looked better from the inside than it did from a distance. An old mattress laid on the floor, abandoned there by some lazy angler. Mica could imagine many of her neighbors taking a nap in it. They would snooze from the moment his partner rowed away until the bulging fishnets needed unloading.  

Mica swiveled around, examining the other scattered goods. There was a dirty blanket with a nasty stain, a rusty gas lamp and some provisions, which she had no wish nor courage to inspect. Nothing picture-worthy, Mica decided. 

More than photographs, these images were a reminder that life in Buriti had its enchantments too. Maybe Abel was right and she should forget about leaving. What kind of people awaited her outside the town's borders anyway?  

From whatever little experience she had had, she figured it were people whom she could not pretend to understand, who could not be trusted nor expected to keep promises. Settling down in Buriti, with someone who she truly knew, did not have to be so bad. Love would come eventually.  

Given everything that had happened, Mica cultivated no illusion that Theo and her would be together until old age. Even when he still liked her, before he had heard about Abel's kiss, his parents had made their disapproval abundantly clear. Nicholas might have had invited her to his fancy dinner party, but she would never receive an invitation to join the family. From every angle Mica looked at the matter, her romance with Theo had an expiration date. It was naïve of her not to have realized it before.  

With these dispiriting thoughts, Mica headed to the third place she would like to capture. In no time, she arrived at the outset of the small track she and Theo had walked together. How funny was it that the boy who liked her became the boy she loved? 

She walked past the place where the party had been. It was silent and immaculate. Mica felt a little awkward, as if nothing had ever happened there and that night was a figment of her imagination. If she had not sat and dined in the middle of that empty clearing herself, she would laugh at anyone who told her about a fantastic evening where people were dressed as animals, food melted in your mouth and cameras were strictly forbidden.  

Under her feet, the rich ground foliage cracked differently now. Even with her eyes closed, Mica would know she had left behind the part where the road cut the trail. That night when Theo and she crossed this same path, it had been dark and a bit slippery. This afternoon, it was a whole different story. It was daylight, dry and the leaves on the ground had the most stunning color range. Brown, green, red and yellow overlapped each other, drawing dreamy sighs from her. She held the camera lens close to the ground, turned it around until the image seemed sharp enough and snapped her third shot. 

"This is nice!" Mica cheered aloud.  

Gorgeous colors, she thought as her fingertips skimmed the fallen leaves, ruffling them a bit. This was such a meaningful place for her. These leaves, on the other hand, this particular picture, they could belong anywhere.  

She wanted pictures she could look at decades from now and remember exactly where they had been taken. Still crouched and staring at the leaves, she frowned. Above all, these photos should evoke happy thoughts. And right that moment, remembering Theo did not accomplish that. 

So Mica strut past the obscure trail at the end of which Theo had hid that night and headed off to a track that was a fraction wider, yet entirely familiar to her. Mica had been there many times with her mom when she was a child. She knew it better than the streets of Buriti and could even foresee where the best pictures waited for her. 

Nonetheless, what Theo had suspected and Mica had yet to find out, was that for quite a while now, those huts were her grandfather once lived were no longer vacant. And their new inhabitants were no friendly savages.