Pennies for a Princess

The choice was one thing, but the reality was a pile of difficult, intimidating numbers. Late one evening, Mateo sat stooped over his tiny desk, the stark numbers he had studied illuminated by the glow of his cheap phone screen. The average cost of a flight to Los Angeles is extremely high. Application fee for a US visa: substantial. Fearsome is the estimated price for even a week of bare-bones life in one of the priciest cities on earth. He examined the small amount of euros concealed beneath a loose floorboard in an old biscuit tin. It was like attempting to use a teaspoon to fill the ocean.

But a frantic, almost savage drive was stoked by the vision of the charcoal cat, the indisputable proof. There was no way of giving up. Mateo started the grind.

He swallowed his pride and went to Senhor Alves at the café first. "Are there any other shifts, Senhor? Anything? Closing, early mornings... I require the hours.

Alves chewed a toothpick and looked at him through his glasses. "Suddenly eager? Alright. You can begin preparing for the morning. At precisely six in the morning. It also entails cleaning the grease traps from the previous evening. You can also assist with closing on Saturdays. He grinned. "Don't expect miracles on the pay."

The scent of fryer oil and stale beer lingered in the empty café when we stumbled out of bed at six in the morning. It required him to scour surfaces and wrestle with overflowing dumpsters until his knuckles were raw before the first customers even showed up. Closing Saturdays meant staying up late mopping sticky floors, listening to the drunken cries that faded down the street, and coming home fatigued just as the sun was starting to rise. Each additional euro felt earned, smeared with perspiration and grime.

Then he swallowed his pride in his craft. He brought his sketchbook and a box of charcoal sticks down to the port promenade, where tourists occasionally strolled, during the few hours of daylight when he wasn't working for Alves. He taped up some good samples of his work, including a stunning seascape, a weathered fisherman, and a little sign that read, "Retratos Rápidos / Quick Portraits - €10."

The initial attempts were embarrassing. People mostly passed past, looked, and occasionally grinned. He felt vulnerable, selling his talents like trinkets. At last, a boisterous American couple paused, curious. Instead of a portrait, the man desired a caricature. Mateo, who desperately needed the 10 euros, hated every stroke of his charcoal as it accentuated the man's garish clothing and burnt nose. Mateo felt somewhat filthy after the man paid him and yelled with delight. However, it cost 10 euros. He forced himself to view the transaction solely as fuel for the larger purpose by drawing rapid, passable likenesses of impatient spouses, bored kids, and conceited teenagers. The biscuit container was filled with each ten-euro note.

Seraphina, meanwhile, was back in the antiseptic cocoon of the recording studio on the other side of the Atlantic, working on a song that would be the album's next big single. It was lyrically generic, cheerful, and unrelentingly positive; it was carefully crafted for broad consumption by a group of songwriters.

"All right, Sera, from verse two. Remember big energy? Her headphones buzzed with Marcus's voice.

She took a breath, nodded, and began the verse. The sentences seemed like someone else's writing, and the melody was cliched. Something else came to the fore when she finished the lyric and moved into the pre-chorus. Even she was taken aback by the phrases, "…walking on cobblestone dreams, is any of this real?" that were matched with a new melody fragment that was softer and more inquiry-based.

Marcus pressed the talkback button right away, ending the recording. "Hold on, hold on. Sera, what was that? Dreams of cobblestones? The 'dancing-under-the-stadium-lights' atmosphere doesn't fit, does it? His voice was more puzzled than irritated.

Feeling unprepared, Seraphina blinked. From where had that originated? The sound of Mateo's universe and the texture of her dreams were echoed by the sentence. Sincerely, "I don't know," she said. "It just… came out."

"Okay," Marcus tapped a pen slowly. "See, it's... fascinating. It had a certain vibe. This song is definitely not for me; it's just too depressing. However, perhaps... perhaps save it? Later, hum it into your phone. Perhaps we might utilize it for an album tune or a B-side. deepens things, you know? Genuineness. He spoke as though he were explaining a brand-new synth effect. But for now, let's just focus on the brightness, shall we? Again, verse two.

Seraphina nodded, pulling her voice back inside the bright, marketable box and ignoring the unexpected digression. However, the phrase persisted. Dreams of cobblestone. Compared to the polished lyrics on the sheet music in front of her, it felt more like her own. A little breach in the façade that she felt keenly but the machine missed.

Back in Portugal, Mateo expanded his sources of income to include cleaning barnacles off the hull of Rui's father's yacht. Under the scorching sun and with the stench of low tide lingering in the air, it was backbreaking labor to scrape away at the obstinate marine life. Rui observed him, occasionally shaking his head, but no longer expressed his doubts aloud. Instead, he would silently acknowledge Mateo's unrelenting efforts by giving him a glass of water.

Mateo sat on his room's floor one evening with the biscuit tin open next to him. Over the course of two weeks of nonstop labor—extra café shifts, embarrassing photographs, scraping barnacles—he meticulously tallied the crumpled bills and coins. The sum was... pitiful. Perhaps sufficient to cover the visa application fee, but far less than the price of a trip, let alone lodging. A wave of discouragement swept over him, thick and chilly. Los Angeles seemed more like a mocking star in the distance than a metropolis.

In need of the comfort of actual drawing, he took up his serious sketchbook. He did not draw the boats or the tourists. He discovered that he was once more recalling details from his dreams, such as the sharp focus in Seraphina's eyes as she listened, the precise way light struck her futuristic room's glass wall, and the odd way their two worlds collided while he slept. Remembering her fingers moving the resin cat charm over and over, he drew it again, more carefully this time.

A little strand of hope resisted the despair as he drew. This link, this impossibility of a bridge, existed. The price was irrelevant. It didn't matter how ridiculous it was. The pennies would be earned by him. He would do whatever it required, including cleaning grease traps, drawing cartoons, and scraping hulls. He was striving for the only true sense of wonder his life had given him in years, not merely saving for a trip. Carefully, he reinserted the little hoard into the biscuit tin and concealed it. He had made the first, exhausting steps up the base of the mountain, which was still enormous.