Félix 1 (work in progress)

July in Andalucía. Black, star-spattered sky. White, wistful moon swinging high. Red earth stoic beneath drab, silent armies of olive trees. Limestone. Oak. Heat.

The steep village streets are still, except for the dazed fluttering of summer moths around the street lights, and the purposeful trot of Señora García’s skinny grey cat anticipating jamón scraps and melon rind behind the café - or something a little more entertaining in the fields and verges just beyond the top bus stop. And the mosquitoes, of course: ghostly chancers cruising the shadows, alert for a loose staple, a tiny tear, the slightest breach in the wire mesh fixed across every open window. Few have any luck. Sweltering under cotton sheets, square-set mountain farmers and their sturdy wives stir and sigh in the suffocating heat: nothing is getting through those windows tonight, not even air.

There was a brief flurry of excitement a couple of hours ago, when a battered blue Land Rover stopped briefly at the plaza bus stop, deposited a tall, ungainly boy on the pavement, and then coughed and farted its way up the unbelievable gradient of the narrow main street and out of the village. As the acrid smoke cleared, the boy straightened up, stretching the kinks out of his back and neck, and the town hall clock chimed the three-quarter-hour from the other side of the plaza. Eleven forty five.

It could have been the supper bell: every mosquito in the village seemed to get the message, and they pounced en masse; only to retreat almost as fast, wailing in indignant frustration. Félix grinned wearily, pushing dark hair out of his eyes, and scratching the soft stubble on his chin: he might have forgotten that there was no bus service to the villages on Sundays, but he wasn’t foolish enough to come back here in July without insect repellent. Sitting on the high curb, he pulled the water bottle from his backpack, took a swig: wet and warm. At least it was wet. And he’d be home in another couple of hours.

At the thought of the mill, the valley, the trickling, twisting stream, of dappled shade on the peaceful green pool, Félix felt his heartbeat quicken, and a sudden tightening in the cords that had knotted his chest for months now. He gasped, sat up straight, one hand reaching automatically for the side pocket where he’d stowed his inhaler; and then paused, shook his head, lowered his hand. Slowly he lay back on the worn paving slabs, closed his eyes, and breathed. Home. He was going home. Opening his eyes again, with cool stone under him, he gazed up at the infinite Andalucían sky he’d missed for so many months.

The cords eased, the knot slipped. Only another couple of hours.