Onwuka sat on the narrow bed, his fingers tracing absent patterns over the rough fabric of his borrowed tunic. The room wrapped around him in austere white. The curtain hung like a promise, a simple rail of freedom that let him choose solitude—a concept as foreign to him as the Portuguese still stumbling on his tongue. He had known only the press of bodies, the forced intimacy of those bound together by circumstance and suffering, but here, silence could be a choice rather than a sentence.

His arm throbbed with the dull, steady ache of healing, a reminder of the cart's violence, but that pain was an afterthought now. But even this discomfort felt distant, secondary to the anticipation that hummed through his blood like market-day drums. It had been three days since he last saw her, and in that time, he had rehearsed the moment again and again in his head—what he would say, how he would stand straighter, hold his words carefully in his mouth before letting them loose.

He had practiced in whispers, the foreign syllables feeling unfamiliar on his tongue. Though he had only a single day to learn and practice with Luísa, he felt confident he could manage a few words. He would not be silent this time. He would meet her words halfway.

The door's hinges spoke first, a brief song of iron and wood.

And there—there she was.

María.

She stood in the doorway like a figure from a dream, the corridor's lantern light embracing her form as if reluctant to let her go. Then she stepped into his space, and the room itself seemed to exhale, to expand, to welcome her presence like earth welcoming rain. Her smile broke across her face like sunrise over water, warming everything it touched.

"Wuka!"

Her battering of his name in her mouth became something new, something precious.

Something in Onwuka's chest loosened, and despite himself, he laughed. A quiet, brief sound, but real. She laughed too, the corners of her eyes crinkling, her teeth flashing.

"Como está?" she asked, hands moving as if to bridge the language that still stood between them. 

Onwuka hesitated, feeling the weight of practiced words heavy as river stones on his tongue. He released them carefully, like offerings to a careful god. "I well."

María's smile broke open, full and unguarded. "You're learning!" she said, her voice lifting in delight. 

Onwuka nodded. He had spent the past few nights whispering phrases into the thatched roof of the small room Luísa had given him, repeating them over and over until his mouth ached from the effort of shaping new sounds. 

"I learn... Paraty language now," he said, proud of himself. 

María's eyebrows arched with gentle mischief. "Not Paraty language. Portuguese."

"Portu... Port..." The word tangled in his mouth like fishing line, refusing to unspool smoothly.

Her laughter came soft as rainfall. "Português," she offered again, her voice a guide rope through the fog of learning.

"Porto-giss," he echoed, tasting the near-rightness of it.

"Almost," she grinned. 

Her presence filled the sterile room like incense, the faint scent of lavender and something sharper—medicinal, clean—clinging to her skin. She leaned against the wooden cabinet with the easy grace of someone who had made peace with their place in the world. Every gesture—the absent-minded adjustment of her white shift, fingers trailing across the table's surface—anchored her more firmly in his reality. She was no longer just another ghost in this dream of a new life, but solid, present, real as earth.

She unwrapped the cloth bundle she carried, revealing small vials of medicine and bandages.

"Your arm is healing well, Beatriz told me you had been brought back the day before yesterday," she murmured, pressing her fingers lightly against the bruised skin, where the wound had begun to close into a hard ridge. The warmth of her touch lingered, something soft against the edges of pain. 

"Yes. You... not here," he ventured into the space between languages.

"Yes, well, I was on leave."

"Leave..." The word floated between them, strange and shapeless.

"Yes. Holiday."

Onwuka's brow furrowed as the new word wrestled with his understanding, refusing to yield its meaning.

She just shook her head, a smile soft as morning mist gracing her lips as she reached for the needle, its silver glint a reminder that some things needed no translation—pain, healing, care, touch. These were languages older than words, and in them, they were both fluent.

Onwuka tensed. 

María's eyes caught the tension. "It will not hurt much, I promise."

He forced breath from his lungs, commanding his body to stillness as she cleaned his arm. The alcohol bit into his flesh with the sharp kiss of ocean spray, but he held himself rigid as a ship's mast. He found anchor in her voice instead—in the way she hummed, soft and low, a melody that spoke of other shores. Though the tune was foreign, its heart beat with the same rhythm as the songs his mother once sang, when the world was smaller and pain had simpler names.

Then, in one swift motion, the needle was in. 

His breath snagged on the moment, but María's hands moved with the swift certainty of tides. The pain was there and gone.

"Good, Wuka. See? Not so bad." 

She rose, pressing clean linen against the small wound. "You must come back in three days for the next dose," she said, her voice shifting back to that careful, professional tone. "No skipping. Understand?" 

Onwuka nodded, but he knew—he would return long before three days passed. 

As she gathered her implements, wrapping them with practiced care, he watched her movements like a man studying stars for navigation. For those brief moments, he had been the center of her world—patient, person, possibility. At the doorway, her fingers traced the wooden frame, hesitating like the last note of a song.

"Até logo, Wuka." 

Then she was gone, leaving only the ghost of her presence, like perfume in still air.

Onwuka released his breath, letting it carry away the tension in his shoulders.

The silence spread around him like ripples in still water, and in that quiet space, he found himself reaching for her words, tasting them, letting them roll across his tongue like precious stones.

"Até logo," he whispered to the empty room, and felt the words settle into his heart like seeds taking root.

His smile, when it came, was soft as dawn breaking over familiar shores.

☀︎

Later, when he returned to the small house, Luísa was waiting. 

She had been watching him, he realized, the way an elder watches a child about to make a foolish mistake. She was seated by the fire, grinding maize into a fine powder, her strong hands moving in smooth, practiced motions. 

"You're speaking now," she said without looking up. 

Onwuka's silence answered first, then his nod—reluctant as a confession.

"Maria is teaching you?" The name rolled from her tongue like a stone dropped in still water, ripples of meaning spreading outward.

Another nod. 

Luísa sighed, wiping her hands on her apron, powder white as seafoam against the dark fabric. "She is kind, yes. But be careful, lost boy. You forget too easily that we are not the same as them."

"She is not bad," Onwuka protested, the words rising from some deep well of feeling he had not known he possessed.

"I did not say she was bad. I said she was not one of us."

The silence that followed was thick as smoke, heavy with things unsaid. Then Luísa's voice softened, like waves after storm. "Do you think she does not know? That her kindness does not have limits? You are a man of the sea, washed onto a shore that is not yours. She will care for you now, yes. But one day, she will leave. And you will still be here, waiting."

Onwuka did not respond. He did not have the words to shape the thought forming in his mind.

Luísa's voice gentled. "Learn their language if you must. Learn their ways. But do not forget what you are, where you came from. Or one day, you will look in the water and not recognize the face looking back." 

Onwuka turned away, looking out toward the sea. The waves stretched endlessly, dark and knowing, whispering secrets only they could understand. 

For now, he would not think of Luísa's warning. 

For now, he would hold only the memory of María's touch, gentle as morning light against his skin.

"Speaking of debts," Luísa's voice cut through his reverie, sharp as a fishmonger's knife, "you owe for two days now. Pay up! This isn't some mission house charity." The words snapped him back to earth, reminding him that beneath her elder's wisdom lay a young woman barely older than himself, practical as sunrise.

Onwuka's laughter burst forth, rich and unexpected. "You're worse than the market women back home. Three days I've been laid up, and you know this well."

"Not my concern," she replied, voice cool as shade, but beneath it ran a current of warmth. Her mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile she refused to fully grant him.

She watched him as his gaze drifted toward the window, where the ocean stretched endless as possibility. Her voice softened, carrying an echo of her earlier warning. "Just be careful, understand?"

Onwuka nodded, the gesture holding both acknowledgment and defiance. The sea air carried salt and promise through the window, and somewhere in the town, a woman hummed while tending to the wounds of others.

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