The rooftop has two chairs and a crooked table. I chose the one facing the fortress. The Fortezza is massive up close, I walked through it two days ago, but from here it's just a shape. A dark cutout pressed against whatever gold the sky has left to give. The color is going fast. You can almost watch it drain, like someone tilting a glass.
Below the rooftop wall, the old town is doing its evening thing. Shutters opening after the heat. A motorbike threading through a lane that was never built for motorbikes. Someone is grilling lamb, or maybe goat. The smell reaches me in waves, mixed with jasmine from the courtyard one building over. Rethymno has this quality I can't quite name. It doesn't perform for you. It just continues, and you're welcome to sit inside the continuity if you want.
The raki arrived in a small glass, no ceremony. The woman who runs the guesthouse brought it with a plate of walnuts and honey without me asking. She said something in Greek, smiled, went back downstairs. I didn't understand the words but I understood the gesture. This is what eight o'clock means here. You stop. You sit. You drink something that burns a little and watch the town find its nighttime voice. The camera is on the table next to me, loaded with the last few frames of a roll I started in Chania three days ago. I'm not sure I'll use them tonight. Some moments work better when they stay unrecorded, when the only proof is the warm stone under your palm and the taste of anise still on your tongue.
I keep thinking about a thing my mother says. Deixa estar. Let it be. She means it about everything, arguments, burnt rice, lost keys. But it works here too. The fortress is almost gone now, just a silhouette. The lanes below are all amber and shadow. I'm not going anywhere tonight. That's the whole plan.
