The days stretched long, their weight pressing against the walls of Paraty like a held breath. The town had lost its usual luster, its vibrancy dulled by whispers and the gnawing absence of the missing children. Where laughter once rang through the cobblestone streets, now only murmurs of fear and speculation lingered. People peered down alleyways with wary eyes, their steps quickening after dusk, as though shadows might reach out and claim them too.

Onwuka had not yet found the words to name the heaviness in his own heart. It was not just the town's sorrow that burdened him. It was something more personal, more insidious, a slow realization unraveling inside him, thread by thread, like his grandmother's old kente cloth coming undone.

The hospital was no longer a place of comfort. Once, he had welcomed its sterile scent, the orderliness of it, the brief, stolen moments with Maria that had made the cold walls feel warm. Now, it felt like a stage upon which an inevitable ending had to be performed, each step down its corridors bringing him closer to a truth he'd rather not face.

Maria stood waiting when he arrived, her white coat pristine against the fading paint of the walls. The same Maria, yet not the same. There was something about her today, something in the way she held herself, that told him she had made peace with what she was about to say, even if he had not.

"You're early today," she said, her voice carrying a gentleness that made his chest tighten.

"The streets are quieter now," he replied, rolling up his sleeve. "Makes walking faster when you're not dodging market crowds."

She nodded, understanding the unspoken weight of his words. The missing children had changed everything, even the rhythm of daily life. She prepared the needle with practiced efficiency, but her movements seemed deliberate, as though she was trying to stretch these final moments.

"This is your last treatment," she said, swabbing his arm with alcohol. The cold touch made him shiver, or perhaps it was her words.

"Yes." He watched her face, searching for something he couldn't name. "Strange how time passes."

The pinch of the needle was brief, but the moment stretched. And then, softly, she spoke.

"Wuka," she said his name like a prayer, like something precious and fragile. "I know why you've kept coming here. And I need you to know that I didn't mean to mislead you."

The air between them thickened. The world slowed until all he could hear was the steady drip of the IV in the next room and the thunder of his own heart.

"There's someone," he said, not a question.

"I am engaged," she replied, and the words fell between them like stones into deep water, rippling out, sinking into the space where something unspoken had once existed.

His first instinct was to grasp at something, anything, to hold himself together. He felt his lips move, but his voice did not sound like his own. "That is good news," he said, the lie smooth on his tongue, though jagged beneath.

Maria exhaled, a breath filled with something close to regret. "I like him," she admitted, a small, sad smile on her lips. "But my family..." She trailed off, then squared her shoulders. "They rarely approve of my choices. This time, they do. Perhaps that should tell me something."

"About the choice?" he asked, unable to stop himself.

"About me. About who I'm trying to be versus who I am." A small rebellion flickered in her eyes, then dimmed. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm making decisions or just following a path that's been cleared for me."

He recognized it. He had spent years seeing it in his own reflection. The longing to choose for oneself, the burden of being tethered to the expectations of others. In that moment, they were mirror images of the same struggle, separated by circumstance and the choices they hadn't quite been brave enough to make.

"We all walk paths others have cleared," he said finally, pressing a cotton ball to his arm where the needle had been. "The question is whether we keep walking or cut our own way through the brush."

Maria's fingers lingered on his arm, a touch so light it might have been imagined. "Some brushes are harder to cut through than others," she whispered, and in those words lay all the things they would never be to each other.

She hesitated, her fingers twisting the edge of her white coat. "I'm sorry if I ever made you think there could be more," she said, each word carefully chosen, like selecting herbs from her mother's garden. "Sometimes kindness can be mistaken for something else."

She had not needed to say it. He had known—somewhere deep inside him, beneath the wishful thinking, beneath the stories he'd woven in quiet moments—that whatever he had imagined had been his alone. But hearing it aloud, feeling the shape of it in the air, forced it into something real, like watching a beloved mask shatter against stone.

"You were kind," he said, voice steady despite the tremor in his chest. "That's all. I made it more."

He nodded, offering a small, tight smile. "We can be friends," he said, the words a bridge to something safer, something less painful, though they both knew bridges could collapse under too much weight.

She accepted the offering with a gentle nod, but they both knew the truth. Some friendships existed in name alone, like the dried flowers his mother kept between concoction cups—maintaining their shape but having lost their essence. This would be one of them.

Maria's fingers brushed through his hair, a gesture so familiar it ached, yet suddenly so final. "Take care of yourself, Wuka," she whispered, her accent wrapping around his name one last time. Then she turned, moving back into the rhythm of her duties, leaving him to navigate the jagged edges of his own heart.

The walk back to the dormitory was long, and for the first time, he welcomed it. The streets hummed with their usual evening sounds—merchants packing away their wares, children's laughter piercing the thick air like needles through cloth, the occasional rush of footsteps against cobblestone. A woman sang somewhere, her voice carrying the weight of fado, speaking of love and loss in a language he was still learning to understand.

But his mind was elsewhere, sifting through memories, through echoes of something that had never truly existed. He thought of his mother's warnings about hope, how she'd say it was like palm wine—sweet at first, but dangerous if you drink too deeply.

Maria was not the siren. They shared a face, but not a soul. And perhaps there had never been a siren at all. Perhaps it had been a story he had spun for himself, a desperate attempt to make sense of survival, of longing, to give shape to the formless ache of being far from home, far from everything familiar.

At the docks, the air was thick with cachaça and music. The scent of the sea tangled with the rhythmic laughter of those seeking momentary escape, reminding him of youthful nights in his village. Luísa was among them, her presence effortless, her body moving to the music like she had been born of it, like the rhythms of samba had replaced her blood.

She caught his gaze and grinned, white teeth flashing in the lamplight, lifting a bottle in silent invitation. The gesture reminded him of his sister, how she would always know when he needed saving from himself. He hesitated, feeling the weight of his mother's warnings, of propriety, of everything he'd been taught about dignity in suffering. Then he crossed the threshold between solitude and revelry, leaving his ghosts at the door.

The first sip burned, sharp and unfamiliar. It slid down his throat like fire, settling into his bones like a memory of sun. Luísa laughed at his grimace, the sound warm and free of judgment. "Too strong for you, meu amor?" she teased, her Portuguese wrapping around the endearment without weight.

He coughed, shaking his head, feeling the warmth spread through his chest. "Stronger than palm wine," he admitted. "But sometimes stronger is what's needed."

She took his hand then, her fingers calloused from work but gentle in their guidance, pulling him into the dance, into the music, into the moment. "Then let it be strong," she said, her words almost lost in the rhythm. "Let it burn away what needs burning." The weight in his chest loosened, just a little, like knots finally finding their way undone.

But Luísa saw more than most.

Later, when the music softened and the night had grown thick around them like heavy cloth, she found him at the edge of the celebration, staring out at the sea.

"What happened?" she asked, her voice quiet but firm, like his mother's had been when she knew he was hiding hurts. She settled beside him on the weathered dock, feet dangling above the dark water. "Your body was dancing, but your mind was elsewhere."

He did not hesitate. In this foreign land, truth felt easier to speak to those who asked without demanding. He told her about Maria.

"Ah," she breathed, understanding flowing between them like tide. "And now you feel lost?"

"Not lost," he said, tasting the words. "Just... between stories."

She nodded, pulling out another bottle of cachaça from the folds of her skirt. "My mother used to say that's the most dangerous place to be." She offered him the bottle. "Between the story you thought you were living and the one waiting to be written."

"Is she wise, your mother?" 

Luísa let out a breath that was almost a laugh, shaking her head. "I dare you to ask her that to her face." 

The laughter lingered for a moment between them, warm and unguarded, before fading into the salty night air. Then, with quiet curiosity, she regarded him again—her eyes searching, not prying, as if she could unravel the weight of his words just by watching him long enough.

"Wise enough to know that men who stare at the sea like you're doing usually need either cachaça or counsel." She smiled, the moonlight catching in her dark eyes. "Sometimes both."

He accepted the bottle when she offered again, letting the warmth of it chase away the evening chill. "And which are you offering?"

"Maybe it's for the best," she said instead of answering, her hand settling on his shoulder, grounding him like an anchor. "You were chasing a dream that wasn't yours to catch."

"You sound like my sister," he said, surprised by the laugh that bubbled up. "She always said I reached for things too far away when what I needed was right in front of me."

"Smart woman, your sister." Luísa's smile widened. "Tell me about her."

So he did. He told her about Ifemma, about her fierce protection and fiercer love. About how she would dance in the rain and sing to the moon and tell him stories of women who changed their fates. As he spoke, the weight in his chest continued to lift, replaced by something lighter, something that felt like possibility.

They sat together, the sounds of the town washing over them like gentle waves. Children's voices carried from distant streets, mixing with the lap of water against wood and the fading rhythms of samba. The sea whispered its secrets, its song ancient and knowing, speaking of endings that became beginnings.

"You know," Luísa said after a while, her voice thoughtful, "in Paraty, we have a saying: 'A maré leva, a maré traz' – what the tide takes, the tide brings back. But not always in the same form." She turned to face him fully. "Sometimes it takes away what we think we want and brings back what we need."

And in that moment, he felt it—a shift, a turning towards something new, like the moon pulling at the tides. Acceptance, not just of Maria's truth, but of his own. Of friendships that could bloom where love could not. Of the stories that were yet to be written in this foreign land that was slowly becoming home, with its cobblestone streets and cachaça nights and people who knew how to listen to both the sea and the heart.

"Dance with me again?" Luísa asked, standing and offering her hand. "This time with your whole self, not just your body?"

He looked at her hand, then at the sea, then back at her. The night held promises, wrapped in the rhythm of drums and the taste of salt air. And for the first time in weeks, he let himself believe in them.

"Yes," he said, taking her hand. "I think I'd like that."

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