Sin Las Mariposas, a Dora Story

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Dora lie sulking upon a slab of weathered stone in Mexico City's Juarez district. Once she was enraptured by the cobbled sidewalks, vine-plated stone walls, and stately mansions that ornamented Juarez with its colonial ego. Yet as she submitted to the absence of her beloved Abuela's hand-held waltzes down Mexico city's narrow alleyways, she refused to concede the infantile wonder that accompanied them. It had been years since Abuela had departed on the wings of the golden monarchs. No, Abuela wasn't the nail in Dora's explorative coffin. For a month past both her and and her cousin Diego's parents had departed on an explorer's pilgrimage to the alpine jungles of Peru. To Machu Picchu they went, and to their children they never returned. She had never known emptiness as such a burden before then, more sharply such a betrayal. For whom was it a parent's job to merely exist for? That Wagnerian harp no longer plucked for her and her cousin, though, and the memory of the disappearance was not as culinarily fresh if also haunting. That memory summoned phantom voices to her grated seat. The ones that echoed betwixt the strangler figs' hollow trunks. Be it hollow, it remained in its cameral state. Her eyes trailed a cigarette butt as it rolled afront her foot towards the gutter. Towards the building across that gutter's street came her gaze. It was only a small caffe, whose tables were visible from from the street. On a seat she spotted Diego. She was late.

"I spoke with the Ténico Primero the other day." Diego slid a stained coffee cup towards the edge of the table, so close that Dora feared it would fall right off and shatter. "Apparently visitors are supposed to take the west slope up the mountain. Our parents took the south." Dora continued to stare at the empty cup's triangular yellow ornaments, refusing to acknowledge Diego. "They took the south slope." He repeated. "Dora." She noticed the cylindrical studs that encompassed the cup. "Dora!" Dora's strained downwards as a few heads turned to the cousins.