The fountain didn't show up on most maps.
Tucked between Via delle Terme and the ivy-choked remnants of what might once have been a monastery wall, it sat like a half-forgotten secret—no plaque, no spotlight, no eager crowd pressing for a selfie. Just a worn stone basin, shallow and cracked, with water trickling lazily from the lion's mouth embedded in its side. The lion looked more tired than fierce. Its eyes were hollowed by time.
Moss curled around the edges like quiet laughter, and fallen leaves floated like lost thoughts on the surface.
Elisa found it not by design, but by instinct.
Or maybe grief.
Or maybe some gentler, quieter compass she didn't know how to name. The kind that doesn't follow streets or schedules but the echo of a mother's voice and the weight of a page unfinished.
---
Rafael was already there.
Same tan jacket.
Same tousled hair.
Same streaks of paint on his fingers, like they had stained his skin too deep to scrub out.
He was sitting with one leg tucked under him on a low marble ledge. A sketchbook rested in his lap. His pencil moved in fluid, aimless strokes—searching, not perfecting. He didn't look up when she arrived. He didn't have to.
He knew.
She stood a few feet away, watching him with her arms crossed and her heart uncertain.
"I wasn't planning to come," she said.
Still, he didn't glance up.
"That's usually how it starts."
The silence that followed wasn't uncomfortable. It was thick, yes. Dense, even. But not cold. Not sharp.
Like silence between two people who haven't figured out how to speak the same language, but are starting to listen anyway.
---
Elisa sat down across from him on a stone bench, the kind that always felt slightly too short and eternally cold. The chill of it bit through her jeans. She didn't mind. It grounded her.
The sound of the fountain continued—gentle, unhurried, like a lullaby meant for ghosts.
A pigeon flapped overhead. Somewhere nearby, a Vespa engine coughed to life. But here, in this sliver of Florence, the world was quieter than usual.
Finally, Rafael spoke.
"You don't draw."
It wasn't a question.
Elisa stared at the water.
Watched it drip from the lion's mouth and ripple across the shallow basin.
"My mother did," she said after a beat. "That was her sketchbook."
"Not yours?"
She shook her head slowly.
"I don't draw."
There was something final in her tone, but he didn't flinch. Didn't argue.
He just nodded.
Once.
"But you came to Florence."
"She asked me to."
He said nothing. Just let the words sit.
So Elisa continued. Fingers tapping the edge of the bench, like she was trying to match the rhythm of her own heartbeat.
"She died last winter," she said.
The sentence still tasted unfamiliar. Too blunt.
Too soon.
Too real.
"Before she finished her last sketch. Said I'd find 'true Beauty' here. Like it was something I could just…"
Her voice tightened.
"…walk into."
Rafael tilted his head, finally looking up.
"And you think that's a myth?"
Elisa's laugh was small. Dry.
"I think grief makes people poetic."
A beat of silence.
Then:
"So does Florence."
He said it with a small smile. Crooked. Lopsided.
Like the kind you wear when you've been wrong before, but still want to believe anyway.
---
She looked at him then. Really looked.
His jacket was older than she thought—frayed at the seams, one cuff sewn with mismatched thread. His shirt had a paint stain near the collar. His fingers were long, knuckles faintly scarred. His sketchbook looked like it had lived through ten different countries and never been treated gently in any of them.
"You're not a tourist," she said.
"Neither are you."
"You draw for a living?"
He paused, eyes distant for a moment.
"I used to draw for the world."
"And now?"
He met her gaze—quiet, sure.
"Now I draw for me."
---
The silence that followed wasn't silence anymore.
It was something softer.
Like space being made.
Like something unspoken agreeing not to demand anything.
She watched him tear a page from his sketchbook. It wasn't of Florence. Not a building or a statue or some intricate bit of history. It was just… lines.
Messy.
Angled.
Almost violent.
They twisted and tangled across the page like storms that couldn't land.
"What is that?"
"What I feel most mornings."
She blinked.
"That's allowed?"
He smiled faintly.
"People expect artists to draw only what's beautiful. But sometimes, the most honest line is the one that doesn't become anything."
She looked down at the bag beside her feet.
Her mother's sketchbook lay inside.
Closed.
Untouched.
Full of pages she hadn't dared open in days.
Or maybe years.
Pages that weren't hers, but somehow belonged to her now more than ever.
"What was she like?" Rafael asked quietly.
Elisa looked away.
Thought for a moment.
Then said, slowly—
"She was louder than me. Bolder. She always chased the light. She'd stand in the middle of the street just to photograph a shadow."
"Sounds like an artist."
**"She always said things like, 'Look up, not around.'"
Rafael's smile was gentle now. "Did she find what she was looking for?"
Elisa's voice dropped.
"I don't know."
A pause.
"I'm not even sure she'd tell me if she did."
---
Rafael stood.
The gold from the setting sun kissed the angle of his cheekbone, and a faint smear of charcoal smudged his knuckle.
"You don't have to believe in Beauty," he said, slipping the sketchbook into his worn satchel.
"But you should keep looking."
"Why?" she asked.
He turned as he walked, voice light but certain.
"Because the moment you stop… it finds you anyway."
And with that, he vanished down the narrow alley, disappearing between timeworn stones and cooling light.
But before he turned the final corner, he called back—
"I'm painting near Ponte Vecchio tomorrow. If you want to argue again."
And then he was gone.
---
Elisa sat beside the fountain long after sunset.
The lion's mouth still dripped into the rippling pool.
Her hands stayed folded in her lap.
No sketchbook. No pencil.
Just silence.
But it felt… different now.
Like the silence wasn't empty.
Like something was listening.
And then—her phone buzzed.
---
____________•••____________
One Plus
You are one plus away from seeing what she once saw.
____________•••____________