Florence smelled like dust, espresso, and memory.
The train from Rome had been long and quiet, filled with soft hums and strangers speaking too many languages for her sleep-deprived mind to register. Elisa had stared out the window most of the way, watching the Italian countryside unspool like an old film reel—olive groves, crumbling walls, ochre rooftops, hills stacked like folded linen. But it hadn't felt real until she stepped off the platform at Santa Maria Novella and walked toward the heart of the city.
Now, standing in the golden hush of late afternoon, it was undeniable.
Florence was real.
The heat of the day still lingered in the cobblestones. It pulsed faintly beneath her boots as she made her way to Piazza del Duomo, each footstep a hollow echo in a square built to outlive memory.
The cathedral rose like a mirage.
Santa Maria del Fiore—the Duomo.
In photographs, it was always grand. On paper, majestic. In her mother's sketches, it had been sacred.
But here—here—it felt almost too much.
Wider. Heavier. Stranger.
Too beautiful for lines to capture.
Too human to be divine.
Too divine to feel real.
Elisa stopped walking.
Her breath caught somewhere behind her ribs.
She wasn't ready.
She hadn't expected this—this invisible hand reaching through centuries to press something ancient and familiar against her chest. The ache bloomed behind her sternum like a bruise forming in slow motion.
She reached instinctively for her sketchbook—the one that had belonged to her mother.
The leather cover was warm from the sun, but the scratches from airport security still stung her eyes every time she saw them. The corner bore her initials, E.M., barely legible anymore from years of handling.
She hadn't opened it since landing.
Not yet.
Not here.
Not now.
Not when the ache in her chest was still too raw.
Instead, she crossed the piazza in a daze and sat down on the cathedral steps—half hidden between two thick stone balustrades. The crowd swirled around her: tourists snapping selfies, pigeons fluttering skyward, an old street performer tuning a guitar.
But she didn't see them.
Her eyes were locked on the Duomo.
The building her mother had drawn more than any other.
The curves of its dome.
The impossible detail of the facade.
The shadows that changed with every hour of the day.
But the building didn't care who watched it.
It just stood.
Unmoved. Unmoving. Uninterested.
Elisa sat for a long time, letting the weight of memory settle into her shoulders like a second coat. The sun dipped a little lower. Bells rang somewhere in the distance.
And that's when she noticed him.
---
He stood across the piazza, partly in shadow.
Leaning casually against a sun-warmed column, sketchpad balanced on his forearm, pencil moving in fast, confident strokes.
A young man.
Mid-twenties, maybe.
Tan jacket. Rolled-up sleeves. Messy brown hair that curled slightly at the tips.
There were streaks of dried blue paint on his fingers.
At first, she thought he was just another art student. Tourists often stopped to draw the Duomo—they'd sit with easels or notepads and give it their best try before losing patience halfway through the detailing.
But this one didn't hesitate.
There was a flow to his movement.
A rhythm.
Like he wasn't trying to capture the building—he was remembering it.
She squinted.
Something about the way he angled the page… the way he shaped the shadow line against the bell tower…
It wasn't just familiar.
It was exact.
Her heart stuttered.
She stood.
Crossed the piazza slowly, step by careful step, drawn forward by some magnetic certainty she didn't understand.
Tourists blurred around her.
Voices became static.
The cathedral loomed behind like a quiet witness.
When she finally stood behind him—close enough to see the lines but far enough not to interrupt—her breath caught.
He was drawing her mother's cathedral.
Not the cathedral itself.
But her mother's version of it.
The same angle.
The same light.
The exact composition Elisa had stared at for years in the back of a worn sketchbook.
The one her mother had never finished.
And then—without warning—he flipped the page.
Started again.
But this time…
This one was different.
This wasn't a new sketch.
It was a replica.
Her mother's sketch. Her mother's hand.
Same fractured dome.
Same interrupted arch.
Same tiny alley where the lines stopped, as if drawn in pain.
Her chest turned to ice.
"Where did you see that sketch?"
The words tumbled out—sharp, cold, too loud.
The man turned, startled—but not rattled.
He had gray eyes.
Not stormy. Just tired. Like he'd stayed up too many nights chasing something he couldn't name.
"I didn't," he said calmly. His accent was soft. Italian. Local. "I drew it."
"You drew both," she said, heart pounding. "But the second one—that one's not yours."
His brows furrowed.
She opened her sketchbook with shaking fingers.
Turned to the final page.
The unfinished drawing her mother had made on a hospital bed, months before the end.
Same lines.
Same flaws.
He stared.
Then looked up at her.
Something shifted in his face.
Not guilt.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
"…She's your mother?"
Elisa's fingers clenched around the edge of the sketchbook.
"You knew her?"
"No," he said quietly. "But I've seen this sketch before. Years ago. A gallery in Venice. Small show. Most of it unsigned. But I remembered this one."
"I didn't know it ever left the house…"
He nodded slowly, eyes still on the sketch. "I was maybe sixteen. It wasn't framed. Just pinned to a display board. But it stuck with me. I must've copied it a dozen times since then."
She swallowed.
That page had been her secret.
Her grief.
Her map.
Now it was a shared memory.
"Why draw something you've already seen?" she asked.
He smiled, faintly. Not smug—wistful.
"Because sometimes beauty doesn't let you move on."
Then, without waiting, he tore the page from his pad—the replica—and gently handed it to her.
"I don't steal work," he said, eyes meeting hers. "But sometimes, I remember it too well."
Their fingers brushed as she took the page.
His hand was warm.
And stained with blue paint.
---
He stepped back.
Slung a battered satchel over one shoulder.
As the crowd swallowed him, he turned once more and said—
"My name's Rafael. If you want to yell at me more, I'm usually near the fountain after sunset."
And then he disappeared.
Just like that.
Elisa stood in the glow of the golden hour, the Duomo casting long shadows across the square.
In one hand, she held her mother's sketchbook.
In the other—a torn page from a stranger who remembered what she thought she had lost.
For the first time since arriving in Florence, her hands trembled.
And her phone buzzed.
---
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One Plus
You are one plus away from someone who remembers what you forgot.
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