Thora tries to meet his eyes. “Listen. Do you need something to eat? A place to stay?”

The man looks at Santi in despair, as if he doesn’t understand what Thora is saying. “You’re here,” he says again, hopelessly. “Here.”

Santi shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, although he doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for.

The man wrings his hands and turns away, wandering off across the square.

Thora watches him go, biting her nails. “I’ll call the hostel later. Ask them to keep an eye out for him.”

Santi’s eyes follow the man’s vague progress, his blue coat flapping in the wind. There is too much meaning in the world, more than it can hold.

“He’s right, anyway,” Thora says.

Santi looks at her, puzzled.

“We are here,” she says. “Both of us. Whatever that means.” She presses her hand to the wall of the tower, scrawled with messages in the city’s hundred voices. “I guess that’s what all these people were trying to say.” She pulls a marker from her jacket. WE ARE HERE, she writes in an empty space.

Santi understands, and he doesn’t, the meaning sliding away from him like wind-blown leaves. He hates words, he decides. He wishes the ruin was covered in pictures instead. Murals, spreading all across the city like portals to other worlds.

As Thora lowers the pen, he glimpses something on her wrist. His hand moves out to catch her. She steps back, wary again. He holds up his hands. Wordlessly, he pulls back his sleeve, showing the stars inked under his own skin.

Thora makes a soft, disbelieving sound. She grabs his arm, rubs at the tattoo as if she expects it to come off.

“What is it?” Santi asks.

“A constellation,” she says. “One that doesn’t exist anymore.”

He stares down at the pattern of stars: the first thing he drew in his book after he arrived in the city. It felt so important that he went straight to the Belgian Quarter to have it inscribed on his skin. But it doesn’t even belong to him: it belongs to Thora, to the bewildering tornado of existences she brings with her.

He steps back, pulls his sleeve down. He wanted to understand. But if the price of understanding is his own unraveling, he doesn’t think he can survive it.

“What’s wrong?” Thora asks.

Santi laughs. He points to her words, written on the wall of the tower. “We are here,” he says. “But—who are we? Where is here?”

Thora steps hesitantly toward him. “We can find out,” she says. “Together.”