Because it’s Carnaval, Iara wears a striped pirate shirt and a red pirate headband. And because of who she is, she sits on the bathroom floor, closes her eyes, and wears the perspectives of seven alley cats, three stray dogs, and a single pigeon for the sake of a broader aerial view.

Pigeons are great when she needs to quickly assess the surroundings, but she avoids tuning in to them as it always makes her so damn airsick. Indeed, she feels like puking when the bird takes off from the top of a building, but the payoff is almost immediate: Its visual feed alone shows that the street Carnaval party is underway, and all seems peaceful. No signs of turmoil. Earlier, she saw some posts in her social media about police officers using excessive force to disperse a nonviolent political protest nearby, so Iara needed to make sure the neighborhood was calm—or as calm as possible—before taking Dona Ondina downstairs; no one deserves pepper spray spoiling all the fun, let alone an old lady.

Not far from there, Dylan is climbing out the subway stairs. He’s late to meet his friends because he got lost, and he got lost because whoever named São Paulo’s subway stations was either so confused or so mischievous they decided it would be a great idea to call the station on Paulista Avenue “Consolação” and the station on Consolação Street “Paulista.” The situation will turn into an anecdote later, one Dylan will tell whenever he has the chance to talk about the intense time he had in Brazil—but, right now, he’s just exasperated because his internet reception is almost zero, and the messages to his friends remain unsent in the now useless mobile.

Through the eyes of one of the dogs that is not too willing to accept her gentle mental nudges, Iara does see Dylan looking around; he has a foam trident that goes with his homemade merman outfit and is holding it under his arm so he can type with both hands. But she doesn’t pay any further attention to the stout, bespectacled, fair-haired boy, because wearing so many animals at the same time drains her out very quickly.

She disconnects and stands up. Waiting for the dizziness to go away, she looks in the mirror—just in time to see the darkness dissolving from her eyes. She’s always bothered by how ugly and dirty it looks; but, at the same time, she’s quite proud of being able to do what she does. Mixed, muddy feelings, as the ethereal substance that seems to come from the depths of the city to fill her soul, turning her and the street animals into a kind of supernatural network of communicating vessels.

She straightens her curly black hair under the headband and leaves the fourth-floor apartment, heading down the stairs.

More or less at the same time, Dylan gives up on finding his friends. Revelers are all heading in the same direction, and it’s impossible not to hear the music, the drums, and the buzz of the crowd coming down the street. His pals are probably somewhere around there, so he decides to go to the parade on his own. Before that, however, he kneels to tie the shoelaces of his Vans. This simple pause delays him just enough so Iara is already leaving the building when he turns the corner.

This story is about identity, trust, and a lost passport, but is also about Carnaval. Carnaval, in turn, is famed for being a holiday of affairs, flings and, ultimately, love in all its forms. And that’s how, entirely by chance, all these things fit together.

“Oi,” she says, waving at him. “Você tá de boa? Consegue me ajudar com uma coisinha aqui?”

He looks back and finds no one else before he realizes the girl is talking to him.

“What? I—” he babbles and says the next words really slowly. “Sorry. I don’t. Speak. Portuguese.”

“Oh, no sweat! I just asked for some help,” she says, in a carefree English. To Dylan’s ears, her accent sounds clumsy and cute at the same time. “Are you busy? Could you help me really quick?”

He hesitates. He looks at his mobile. He then notices the girl is dressed as a pirate, big golden hoop earrings and all. In the process, he forgets to reply.

“Fear not, foreigner merman!” she says and smiles at how he arches his eyebrows. “I promise I won’t kidnap you or anything. Most of the neighbors are out partying, and I need help getting my great aunt’s wheelchair down so she can have some fun too, that’s all. She lives on the fourth floor, I won’t lie, but I can pay with some ice-cold passion fruit juice. I highly recommend it.”

Dylan looks at his phone again. The messages are still stuck, so he’s definitely lost—she, in contrast, seems to know exactly where she’s going. “Sure,” he finally says and follows her into the building.

“What’s up with the elevator?” Dylan points to the wooden, old-fashioned door.

“It broke down yesterday. It happens all the time, and they usually fix it quick, but—” She opens her arms wide. “Carnaval.”

“Wow. There’s no one you can call at all?” Dylan asks. “It looks like an emergency.”

“There probably is. It’s just not the wisest thing to call them now. You know, if they are not hammered from last night’s party, they’ll be pretty pissed about working during the holiday, and I’d prefer not to have our elevator just sloppily fixed. Fortunately, there’re always good Samaritans willing to help,” she adds, winking at him.

She points at the stairs, and there’s an awkward moment when they try to climb it at the same time, bumping shoulders. Dylan giggles and steps back, but Iara feels a little embarrassed because she’s fat. She doesn’t feel like that very often—not anymore—but the feeling comes without warning. Luckily, Iara has a trick she uses whenever she feels embarrassed: She does more embarrassing stuff to pretend she’s not embarrassed at all.

“These stairs ain’t big enough for both of us, partner,” she says in a deep voice with whatever passes for a Texan accent. Then she laughs. “You go first. I’m not the fastest gun in—well, in any direction, really.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Dylan says, serious, and waits a couple of seconds before smiling at her frown. “I mean, shouldn’t you be more pirate than cowboy, matey?”

He starts to climb before he can see her face brighten up.

“Aye!” she says. And when they reach the last flight of stairs, she proves she’s in full pirate mode by shouting: “LAND AHOY, YOU SEA BASTARD!”

Their laughter echoes, bothering exactly zero neighbors who happen to be at home. It’s Carnaval, after all—perfect time to laugh at stupid jokes, enjoy brand new friendships, and be noisy. Those who are not doing that are complacent with those who are, or else are consciously far from any merrymaking.

Iara knocks before opening the door. When they step into the apartment, Dylan feels as if they’re entering a time pocket. Even the air smells like the past—not stalled or rotten, but matured and full-bodied. A remarkable lost vintage of past.

“This is Dona Ondina,” Iara says, closing the door.

The old, stocky lady comes in from the kitchen, walking carefully but steadily. She wears a canary yellow dress with a blue hem and red patterns, another piece of yesterday that matches beautifully with her black skin. Her nappy white hair is adorned with a bright carmine rose.

“Iara!” She smiles. “Foi rápida, filha!”

“The pirate girl has a name, then. Eee-ah-rra,” Dylan says, rolling the tongue to pronounce it. To her, his accent sounds clumsy and cute at the same time. “I’m Dylan. Nice to meet you.”

“Oh, um gringo?” Dona Ondina says, delighted. “Pardon my English, son, I’m not that used to it. I like French better, and Yoruba. West Germanic languages sound too harsh, and—” She shakes her head and smile. “Sorry, I’m doing it again.”

“Dona Ondina taught linguistics at the university. See those books? She wrote many of them.” Iara points to one of the many shelves that cover a whole wall. “Anyways, are you ready to go, tia?”

“Ready, ready, ready.” The woman nods. Then she tastes the air, thoughtfully. “It’s too hot outside, though. There’s mango juice in the kitchen. I’ll stay here on the sofa for a while; you go grab some before we leave.”

“Passion fruit.”

“Sorry, dear?”

“It’s passion fruit juice,” Iara says, gentle.

“Yes, passion fruit. What did I just say? Well, doesn’t matter, I meant maracujá. Passion fruit, orange. All fruit, all good.”

Iara leads Dylan into the kitchen, where he rests his trident against the wall. She pours him the promised ice-cold juice, and he chugs the glass in two big gulps, widening his eyes: It tastes like a shack by the sea. Like a breeze against sunburnt skin, like a big bed with freshly changed linens. He doesn’t know it yet, but this is the best passion fruit juice he’ll ever drink in his whole life. Nevertheless, whenever he drinks it, he’ll remember this very first flavor—added by an aftertaste made of thunder, rummy, and trust.

He realizes he’s staring at Iara while he finishes a second glass. She’s also staring at him, tracing the glistening sweat running down his neck.

They both look away, and Dylan draws his phone.

“Look, do you have Wi-Fi here? I need to check out where my friends are, but I have no bars.”

“We don’t, but the upstairs neighbors do. The network is called ‘capitu,’ and—well, let me type the password for you,” Iara says, sure he would never get the “obliquosedissimulados” spelling right.

“Uh. Should we do that?” Dylan scratches his head as he takes a step forward. She sniffs his fragrance—woody and fresh and marine—and for a moment she’s adrift, not even understanding what he’s talking about.

She shakes her head when she finally gets it. “Oh, no! They’re friends. They gave us the password.” She tries not to laugh and makes an upset face. “I’m not that kind of pirate.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean it. It’s just—”

She holds back the laughter for a moment longer, just to see his embarrassed face. Then she lets it go.

“I’m kidding, dude.” She takes his phone and feels suddenly embarrassed when she peeks at the wallpaper—a picture of Dylan hugging a blond, pretty girl who looks like an Olympic gymnast. Without a second look, she finishes the setup. “Here you go.”

He types and frowns while they go back to the living room. “The juice was amazing, thank you,” he tells Dona Ondina and returns the phone to his pocket.

“You’re very welcome.” She smiles, then claps excited-little-girl’s hands. “Shall we go?”

“Yes, let’s—oh, damn, wait a second. I’m forgetting something!” Iara says and hurries back to the kitchen.

She’s back soon with a funny looking feathered parrot perched on her left shoulder. “And you forgot this!” She tosses Dylan his trident. “Aarrr.”

He grabs the clumsy thing mid-air. He considers praising her costume, but he doesn’t. Instead, he points to Dona Ondina.

“Won’t you dress up too, ma’am?”

“Oh, no, no, no, son. I don’t do that anymore.” She shakes her head, while Iara opens the door. “I’m too old for that.”

“I’ve heard there’s no age limit to enjoy Carnaval. Everyone can be whoever they want to be.”

“Then you’ve heard right,” she says and lets out some giggles. Prompted by Iara, Dylan pushes the empty wheelchair waiting by the door while the old lady links arms with the girl. “That’s precisely why I don’t use costumes anymore.”

Although he knows everything about being who he wants to be, Dylan is now speechless as he realizes he would never have a proper comeback for that—not even if he could speak all the languages Dona Ondina masters. Gladly, Iara seems as baffled as him, so they exchange a knowing glance and start their mission of safely taking the old lady to the ground floor.

Dylan goes first with the heavy wheelchair. Still arm in arm with Dona Ondina, Iara helps her down the steps, one by one; frantic as it may be, Carnaval is no time to be in a hurry.

The boy ends up all sweaty, ruddy, and sore from the effort, but the delight on Dona Ondina’s face is totally worth it.

The old lady settles in the wheelchair, and Iara pushes it out of the building, stopping when they reach the broad street. A second later, the gal who works in the local bakery comes to greet Dona Ondina, pulling a toddler dressed in a cute kitten costume by the hand.

Iara leaves them in a cheerful chat and turns to Dylan. “So, any news from your friends?”

“Well, they’ve answered me. But they’re having too much fun for my taste.” He turns the mobile so she can see a group chat full of audio messages and blurred photos, along with mistyped and utterly senseless bits of text.

Iara makes a sorry face. “Well, the good thing is that we’re really close to the bakery in the last picture, which means you’ll probably end up finding them around if you go now. The bad thing is that maybe they won’t remember your name.” She shrugs. “So, what are you going to do now?”

He pushes the mobile button, and the wallpaper fills the screen. Without thinking much, he points to the blond girl.

“Well, maybe I’ll walk around and take some pictures for my sister. She’s an illustrator and likes references.”

Dylan surprises himself as he says that out of the blue. His sister indeed is an illustrator, and she’d surely enjoy some references from the Brazilian Carnaval, come to think about it—but this idea just happened to him as he felt a desperate urge to state the girl in the picture is nothing more than his sister.

Iara tries to ignore the chill in her stomach. “Well, maybe you can join us? We can’t take Dona Ondina too far, but I can show you around, and you can take the pictures.” There is a shy silence between them. To break it, she shakes the prop parrot and mimics a screeching voice. “Pictures! Pictures!”

“You’re very funny,” he says, giggling, and Iara smiles weakly. She hears this a lot and, although she agrees, it’s not what she really wants to hear. But then he adds: “You know, maybe it’s a good thing I’ve lost my friends. You seem like great company.”

She doesn’t hear this a lot, and suddenly it sounds like something she always needed to hear.

They take pictures. But they also dance, and chat, and sing, and play. Dona Ondina tells them Carnaval stories about her youth, when the holiday meant a more profound catharsis than now: four days of rare gender, ethnic, sexual, religious, and cultural freedom. Precisely four days to fit all the freedom one could dream of, ending on Ash Wednesday—when everything would inevitably burn down and go back to its tight, uncomfortable, predetermined places. There couldn’t be a better name for the end of such a party.

Iara remembers her mother’s stories, building another chronological layer over Dona Ondina’s. When she juxtaposes her own collection of memories on top of it, she can totally understand—for a small, ephemeral second—why this holiday has been a national passion throughout so many generations.

On the other hand, Dylan—who’s arriving now at this colorful, musical world—is a dry sponge, eager to absorb everything. He feels the drums thumping rhythmically inside his rib cage. He inhales the smell of beer and sweat and promising summer rain. He sees children and elderly alike dancing, and people in between jumping and singing and hugging and kissing and having genuine fun. He suddenly realizes how beauty and joy are two sides of the same coin.

And, to him, Iara seems to be the person who’s enjoying it the most.

He’s thinking of telling her this when some random guy hugs her from behind, placing a kiss on her cheek. She seems startled for a second, then laughs and turns back to throw her arms around his neck. To Dylan, the drums seem to play a wrong note.

Iara and the man exchange some words in Portuguese. Dylan doesn’t understand them, but it’s clear he’s praising her costume—something he should’ve done but was stupid enough not to.

“This is Bento, the neighbor from upstairs.” Iara introduces them. “Thank him for the Wi-Fi.”

While Dylan forces himself to smile, another guy arrives, jumping, and kisses Bento right in the mouth.

“Behave yourself, love,” Bento says, giggling. “We have a gringo here, can’t you see? You don’t want him to think Carnaval is about kissing people out of the blue, right?”

“Course not. Don’t do this, buddy,” the other man says. “Unless you’re married to your target for ten years, like me. Otherwise, please ask first.”

Dylan’s smile grows broader than the avenue.

The newcomers greet Dona Ondina, and she mentions that although she’s having fun, her age is starting to take its toll. Bento shakes his head when Iara offers to take her home.

“No way, you’re too young to leave the party before sunset! But we’re going home anyway. You can come with us, tia.”

“Sounds perfect!” She claps her hands. “I can prepare some coffee for you, boys. I could use some hot, dark coffee, I could.”

Iara opens her mouth to protest, but Bento raises a resolute hand.

“Don’t you worry, Iara! Enjoy it, everything is under control. Zeca and I used to help take care of tia Dina loooooong before you showed up, darling.”

Zeca nods and starts to push Dona Ondina wheelchair away.

“Oh, Iara,” the old lady calls her. “Watch the sky. The radio said there’s a storm brewing.”

“I will, tia. Thanks.”

They leave, and for a moment the pirate and the merman stare at each other without knowing what to do next. He reacts first.

“We can—uh, go after the Carnaval party?” he proposes.

“Sure! Yep,” she nods readily. The parrot on her shoulder shakes up and down, and she feels a little bit stupid. “Maybe we can look for your, uh—”

“—my friends? Yeah. Great!”

“Ok.” She smiles. “Right. Let’s go?”

They start to walk up the street. Dylan actually does see some of his friends, but he pretends he doesn’t, and laughs when Iara shows him a pregnant woman painted green to look like a sliced avocado, her big belly standing out as the seed. Not long after, Iara catches sight of a group of girls from her neighborhood—but she looks away immediately and uses a big, rampant group of men dressed as sushi rolls as an excuse to change their route.

At some point, Dylan points to a guy holding a red cooler over the shoulder and asks if she wants a beer. She’d enjoy a cold beer—but she knows she shouldn’t. Not when she is working.

“Not even one? It’s Carnaval!” Dylan insists when she refuses it.

“I can’t.” With no further explanation, she smiles and points to a woman who is selling green coconuts. “I’ll have coconut water instead, but go ahead.”

“Well, coconut water sounds great. I’ll follow the local customs.”

Iara bursts into laughter. “Local customs? During Carnaval, the local custom is drinking anything but coconut water! But you’re very welcome to join in.”

If they knew what that innocent decision would mean for their story, maybe things would have gone down differently—or maybe not. But they don’t, anyway, so they head towards the coconut seller while Dylan opens the front pocket of his little backpack to reach for his money. He rummages, grabs some change, and offers to pay for Iara’s coconut. She refuses it, a drunk guy dressed in a pink princess gown stumbles on them, they laugh, each one pays what’s due, and Dylan finally closes his backpack pocket.

They resume walking happily drinking the cold, sweet-and-salty water. They reach the crowd not long after disposing of the empty shells in a big trash can, and Dylan stops before the thick partying mass.

“Wow!” He straightens his hipster glasses, hesitant. The noise is such that he needs to shout so Iara can hear him. “It’s a sea of people!”

She nods—but approaching the trio elétrico kind of electrizes her. The traditional Carnaval marches urge her to sing along at the top of her lungs, and she’s already feeling like partying all afternoon when somebody throws a bunch of confetti up, making a rain of colorful paper fall over their heads. When she looks at Dylan, his face is a mask of joy, awe, curiosity, confetti, and something else. There’s no judgement, though—and the feeling that she can trust him bursts an invisible dam.

“You’re right, it’s a sea of people!” She brings her face close to his and raises her voice above the music. “But you know what?”

He feels goosebumps when she absently brushes his head to clear the confetti and removes a piece of paper from the corner of his mouth. “What?” he whispers.

“You’re a merman. I’m a pirate.” She opens her arms. She’s about to say the corniest thing ever, but somehow she doesn’t mind it. It looks appropriate. “Why would we be afraid of the sea?”

Before he can say anything, she grabs his hand and advances towards the mob. They are instantly encircled by people celebrating and dancing, and there’s no choice but to jump along and get closer to each other. And closer. And even closer.

Maybe they don’t need to be that close—but they want to.

And well, some moments call for a whole lot of clichés. This is one of them, so here it goes: Butterflies flutter in Iara’s stomach. Dylan goes weak at the knees. And their hearts skip a beat (each).

When he holds her by the waist, she gently plunges her hand into his hair. They laugh when his face bumps against the prop parrot, but they end up finding the right angles and the high tide pushes everything into its place.

It’s a passion fruit, coconut, seawater kiss. And they dive into it as waves of bliss crack over their heads.

Somehow, Carnaval seems even brighter now. They walk around holding hands, and it feels like they’re holding hands with the whole city. Iara tells Dylan about the dark side of Brazilian Carnaval: fights, and harassment, and robbery, and prejudice, and poverty, and repression—pretty much the same as Brazil’s day-to-day dark side—but they don’t run into any of it. It’s like São Paulo has imposed an unspoken truce, so they can feel what a beautiful place it can be.

But the lowest point of this story needs to happen sometime. And it happens when they’re hungry and decide to stop at a bar to grab a sandwich. They order it, eat it, and nothing special happens. The most thrilling moment is when Dylan almost dies out of shame after insisting Iara tries his delicious mortadella sandwich, and she reveals she became a vegetarian less than a year before, and mortadella sandwiches are amongst the things she misses the most. However, when they head to the cashier to pay and Dylan opens his backpack, he notices that something is very, very wrong.

“Where’s my passport?” he mutters.

They pay the bill, but before leaving they go through the regular I-lost-something protocol: They scour each one of Dylan’s pockets, empty his little backpack, and even check Iara’s own pockets. The passport is not there.

And the passport is not there because, as it may be obvious by now, it fell from the backpack during the few sloppy seconds Dylan left the pocket open at the coconut seller and the dude dressed as a princess bumped into him.

If we go back to that moment, we’ll see it ended up being kicked in a manhole by a man dressed as Fernanda Torres holding her Oscar. And as bad news always come in threes, it landed in a point where no eyes—no human eyes, anyway—can reach.

But Dylan and Iara have no way of knowing that, of course. And that’s how they end up in a police station while Carnaval is barely beginning.

Iara deeply regrets it when the cop at the counter is rude to her for the third time in a row. Besides, there’re noisy people everywhere, apparently involved in all kinds of trouble.

“We shouldn’t have come,” she mutters, while the cop leaves his place to calm down a drunk couple mid-argument.

“We had no other option.” Dylan shakes his head, upset.

She nods, but she knows they did have another option: She could have found an empty alleyway, slipped into the skin of a couple of dogs, used her power to draw them close, made them sniff Dylan, and hoped they could follow his scent to the passport’s whereabouts. She’s done something similar in the past, but definitely not in the company of one of the nicest guys she’d ever met—a guy who seems to be into her, but who would surely think of her as a) a lunatic if she explained this plan to him or b) a freak if she simply invited him to go to a random alley, let her eyes turn into two dark, scary pools, and summoned stray dogs to sniff him.

Either way, she’d have screwed everything up.

A friendlier cop arrives and checks the system to see if someone has returned the lost document.

“Nothing. He says we’ll need to go to the US Consulate,” Iara translates. “But they’re closed, of course. They reopen on Thursday.”

Dylan mutters a curse.

“I have a ticket for Wednesday. I’m screwed. I’m such an idiot.”

Iara heart sinks. She could help him—if it didn’t mean exposing her unconventional self. Also, it hurts realizing so suddenly that he’s going back to the US in a couple of days. It’s obvious, and their relationship so far is nothing more than a single afternoon together—but she is not prepared, or willing, to think about it.

When they leave the police station, the sky is dark and menacing. Dusk has fallen, and the summer storm that has been brewing since morning is now fully ripe. With a resolute thunder, light rain starts falling.

“What now?” Iara asks.

“I don’t know. We could retrace our steps, maybe look for the coconut seller and ask him if he found it.” He sighs. “But I think I’d better go back to the hostel. It’s dark already, I won’t find it anyway.”

Iara proposes they head to Paulista subway station, where they can properly…say goodbye? Farewell? Maybe kiss for the last time? Exchange phone numbers? Settle to meet again tomorrow and look for the passport? None of them knows what is going to happen, so they say nothing.

When they reach Consolação Street, it’s still crowded.

“Well, it seems we’ll need to go with the flow,” Iara says, pulling Dylan’s hands to her shoulders so they’re in line. “Let’s go.”

They advance with the mob, slowly but steadily, and the drizzle against their skin helps them chill. We’ll need to go with the flow, Dylan thinks, and suddenly the situation is not that bad. He leans and gently kisses Iara’s neck. She turns her head and kisses him back. The way their bodies are close heats them from inside although the rain insists on cooling them down.

They’re passing by Dona Ondina’s place when another thunder whips, close, and the rain grows stronger. And stronger, and stronger—so strong the less drunk partygoers finally start to run and look for shelter under shops’ awnings.

“Uh-oh! We should stop!” Iara shouts above the roar of the storm, and they hurry to the building.

If this were a Hollywood flick, the elevator would be fixed through some kind of deus ex machina, and there would be a hot scene inside it where they’d stare at each other, start to wildly kiss on the way up, then suddenly break apart when the doors open at another floor with a beep. But this isn’t Hollywood—the elevator is still very much broken, and they climb the stairs to the fourth floor in a sopping silence.

Zeca answers Dona Ondina’s door.

“We were wondering if you two love birds had escaped the rain.” He frowns. “It seems you didn’t.”

Iara and Dylan exchange looks, suddenly embarrassed.

Bento is sitting at the living room table and bursts into laughter when he sees them. “I’m sorry, darlings, but your outfits feel much more realistic now! Did you walk the plank and he rescued you? Awnnnnn, that’d be cute.”

Iara can’t help but laugh at the way her parrot feathers are soggy, while Dylan comically squeezes his trident to drain the water.

“We were waiting for you to play buraco.” Dona Ondina shakes a pack of cards. “But you’ll need to shower first. Go, go, go! Before you catch a cold.”

“We can lend you a pair of pajamas,” Zeca says to Dylan. “You’re more or less Bento’s size.”

“Oh, I’m not staying.” He shakes his head. “I need to go back to the hostel. I’ve lost my passport and—”

“I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere, son,” Dona Ondina says. “It’s a summer storm out there. It means floods, crazy traffic, slow subways, and all sorts of chaos.” She adds in Portuguese, “Chill now, boy. O que não tem remédio, remediado está.”

“‘If it can’t be fixed, it’s fixed enough’,” Iara translates. “Fair enough.”

“But—”

“Forget it, darling. Dona Ondina will lock you in here if she must,” says Zeca. “That ship has sailed.”

And half an hour later, Dylan finds himself experiencing the genuine Brazilian hospitality he has always heard about—he’s in a stranger’s house, using a stranger’s clothes, learning how to play a kind of a local rummy game with people he met hours ago. The TV airs the official broadcast of the glamourous, amazing parade in Rio de Janeiro; costumes are drenched, and some floats would certainly shine more if it weren’t for the heavy rain, but it looks like nothing in the world would be able to ruin the beauty of it. Carnaval is a force of nature itself, Dylan thinks, and I’m so lucky to experience it. At some point, Dona Ondina produces delicious homemade condensed milk pudding from the kitchen, and he feels like he’s the most fortunate guy in the whole world indeed.

They spend a long time playing cards and talking. They go from political discussions to supernatural stories. At first, everyone makes fun of Dona Ondina when she tells them about having spotted a werewolf during Lent when she was a little girl, living in a small village in the northeast of Brazil—but, deep down, they all feel goosebumps when she describes the stench of its fur, the gleam of the midnight moonlight in its red eyes, and the way the new village doctor, the seventh son of a seventh son, vanished the next day. Immersed in stories of lands and times far away, Dylan even forgets about his missing passport.

They finish another match, and Bento utters an exclamation when he notices it’s three in the morning. He gets up, stretches, and walks to the couch to wake up a snoring Zeca.

“Nice to meet you, Dylan. I hope to see you again, swimming by these seas.”

They all hug goodbye and the men leave, holding hands. Dylan washes the dishes; when Iara leaves the bathroom, Dona Ondina is bringing a pile of sheets from the bedroom.

“You can stay here,” Iara says to Dylan, pulling the couch seat to revel a comfortable-looking sofa bed. “I’ll sleep in the guest room.”

“Uh-oh, I think you both will need to stay here,” Dona Ondina says, excessively cheerful. Iara frowns and she makes a face. “I left the window open. The mattress is all soaked.” She smiles and shrugs. “Oopsie.”

“Oh,” Iara and Dylan say at the same time, and random thoughts about this sounding like a Hollywood flick cross their minds—as they probably crossed yours.

“Besides, the curtains are broken,” Dona Ondina adds, dragging her slippers as she heads towards her bedroom. “The sun would wake you up too early, you know.”

“It’s raining like hell, tia, there is no—” Iara shakes her head. “Forget it.”

“Good night, dears!” the old lady says, closing the main bedroom door behind her.

When Iara turns back, Dylan is blushing. He has a downward gaze, but she can see he’s smiling. He reaches for the linen and starts to make the bed.

“So, which of your folks are related to Dona Ondina’s sibling?” He asks, his back turned at her while he slips one of the pillows into the pillowcase.

Iara’s stomach lurches when she crouches by the sofa bed to idly search her backpack for a hair tie.

“She’s, uh, the sister of my—” She puffs, feeling stupid. Why is she doing this? What else will she hide from him? “Damn, she’s not my great aunt. I work for her. I’m her caregiver.”

“Oh,” Dylan says, and she knows he has stopped arranging the bed even though she doesn’t look at him. “This is why you didn’t want to leave her alone. And why you didn’t drink.”

“Yeah. I didn’t say it because—”

“Well, because you didn’t need to. It doesn’t really matter. Besides, that’s actually very cool,” he says, and she turns to face him. “She treats you like you are family.”

He smiles, removes his glasses, and leans down, his arms crossed behind his head. He’s actually a bit stockier than Bento, so the grey shirt is a little tight. Iara sees a colorful tattoo appearing from underneath the sleeve.

“Do you like it?” he asks.

“What?” she mumbles, embarrassed.

“Your work. Do you like it? Working here?”

“Oh.” She turns the lights off and sits at the other side of the sofa bed. “I love it. Dona Ondina is a great woman. I really feel I’m family.”

“That’s what matters.”

They fall into a hesitant silence, although they both have so much to say and to do. The balcony curtains are still open, so the faint moonlight that comes through the rain clouds casts a bluish light inside the apartment. Iara is about to say goodnight when somebody shouts outside. She laughs when Dylan sits up, startled.

“It’s ok. He’s just saying how he loves somebody. Very effusively.”

“Wow.” He walks onto the balcony and Iara follows him. They approach the railing and see a young couple down there, in the middle of the street, kissing in the rain. “It takes a lot of alcohol for someone to declare his love under a storm, for the whole city to hear.”

“Maybe it just takes some courage. Or trust,” she says. Her heart is beating fast when she reaches out and rests her head on his shoulder. “Carnaval has room for all of them.”

He’s smiling when he turns to face her. They’re kissing by the time the couple at the street leave, giggling. They stumble inside, and Iara is pulling Dylan’s shirt off when another thunderbolt strikes. She grabs her backpack and reaches for a condom.

“Wait,” he whispers, breathless. For a second, Iara fears he’s turning her down, but the expectation in his eyes says it’s not about her. “I’m a trans guy. Is that okay?”

Iara takes some time for his words to kick in. He absently crosses his arms, and she can see the scars on his chest. But her gaze doesn’t linger on them: Instead, it goes to his forearm, where now she can see his tattoo, a hopeful vintage swallow. Then it goes up to his eyes—now he’s without the glasses, she can see they’re greenish. A calm tropical ocean shade of green.

Does she mind? She has never thought about it, but the question seems meaningless. Why would she?

“Not even a little,” she says, finally, and removes her own shirt while she leans towards him.

And, although Dylan takes Iara through routes she has never navigated before, the stars above their ship are exactly the same—they only shine brighter than ever.

It’s six in the morning when the sun rises, blazing in the cloudless sky. Closing the curtains was not in their minds last night, so they both wake up when most of the city is either asleep or still partying. Dylan laughs when Iara points out Dona Ondina was right.

They cuddle a little bit, but Dylan is uneasy.

“I need to go after my passport. I—”

Iara shushes him. She’s decided. “I have something I need to tell you,” she says. “Would you take a walk with me?”

While they climb down the stairs, Iara opens her heart about what she can do. He seems startled and incredulous at first, but she looks into his eyes and asks him to believe in her—to keep trusting her. As they leave the building, she tells him about the kind of things she sees through others’ eyes—nice things, but ugly things alike. When she says she uses it to patrol the streets every other night, watching for violence against those who have no voice—or no apparent relevance—to ask for help by themselves, he hugs her. When she says she also uses it to serve the resistance group that battles against the despot who commands São Paulo’s supernatural undergrounds—as an oppressor ruler is not an exclusivity of non-magical Brazil—he looks at her with thrilled pride.

She doesn’t explain it all, as she herself doesn’t know more than what she learned from watching her Grandma and then her mother wearing the animals of the city—but she explains enough to allow him to understand her plan.

“It may work, but it may not,” she repeats, as they enter a nearby alley. “Maybe somebody found it already, maybe the rain washed the trace away, I don’t know. But I’ll try.”

“You don’t need to do anything,” he says, and they sit side by side on the curb.

“You’re right,” she agrees. “But I want to.”

She puts her head between her knees and lets the city’s matter flood into her. She’s connecting with the dogs nearby when she feels Dylan is hugging her, his head against hers. She has done this many times, but she’s never felt so safe and glad to have someone watching her.

It doesn’t take long until a couple of stray dogs arrive, innocently convinced to come by her mental suggestions. She doesn’t raise her head so she won’t lose the grip on them, but she can feel Dylan straightening up as the animals sniff him. When they leave, taking on her insinuation that they should find something with the same smell, he relaxes and hugs her again.

Iara waits as the dogs explore the area. She’s not able to decipher their multiple, alien reasoning based on the complex olfactory inputs—but, although they go back and forth, they at last start heading with purpose towards a single direction.

She can’t see anything through their eyes, but they point to the trace that goes down the gutter. Ignoring how she hates wearing rats even more than wearing pigeons, she reaches for the nearest rodent and celebrates when its tiny eyes see the blue passport wrapped in a Ziploc, luckily nested amongst a pile of garbage that apparently kept it from being dragged by the current.

It takes some time until she convinces the smart, stubborn animal to carry it up, but it finally gives in. A couple of minutes later, one of the dogs drops the wet, muddied Ziploc with the passport at their feet. Dylan pets all the good boys that dare to approach, wagging their tails. Iara could wait until her eyes come back to normal, but she raises his head and looks directly at Dylan.

Instead of disgust or fear, he looks back at her with wonder and gratitude.

“You’re amazing. Thank you.”

“No. You shouldn’t thank me,” she whispers, serious, and they stand up as the dogs disperse as if nothing had happened. He stares at her, attentive, as she adds: “You should thank Ziploc.”

He bursts in laughter, and they return to Dona Ondina’s, where they can finally enjoy some cuddling while the rest of the city slowly wakes up to another day of Carnaval.

They wait for Dona Ondina with the breakfast table set and freshly baked bread they bought in the nearby bakery, where they were served by a yawning man with traces of makeup smudging his face.

When the old lady arrives, it’s impossible to know if she smiles in delight because Dylan casually tells her he has found the passport, because of the smell of coffee all over the apartment, or because Iara and Dylan can’t take their eyes from each other.

“I’m staying home today,” Dona Ondina says when they finish eating. “They’ll broadcast the parade’s rerun, and I want to watch it and rest. Bento and Zeca are coming to have lunch, so don’t worry. By the way, Dylan, when are you going back to the US?”

Iara’s smile melts a little, but she tries to keep complex thoughts at bay.

They reply at the same time.

“Wednesday,” she says.

“Next year,” he says.

“What? You—” Iara looks at him, baffled. “You said you have a ticket for Wednesday.”

“Yes. I have.” He looks confused. Then he understands it, and his smile widens. “Oh. I have a bus ticket to Campinas, that’s all. I’m in an exchange program at the university there, it’s a two-hour drive from here. Actually, I just arrived.”

“Oh, it’s great news!” Dona Ondina says and claps her hands. She shakes her head towards the balcony, which is oozing with horns, and rumble, and the music coming from the street. “But Carnaval isn’t finished yet, you know? So, you better go!”

Promising to come back at the end of the day, Dylan takes his backpack, and they leave. They’re almost at the stairs when Dona Ondina comes to the door.

“Hey, you forgot your parrot! And your trident!”

Iara and Dylan look at each other. They don’t see a pirate or a merman anymore, they see Dylan and Iara—each of them a whole ocean full of pirates, merfolk, currents, abyssal creatures, storms, and safe ports of their own. It’s all there, for whoever cares to take a closer look.

“We won’t need it, tia,” Iara says, and Dona Ondina proudly nods as they wave goodbye.

Leaving the building, they look ahead and see three other days of Carnaval at the horizon. They don’t know what’s beyond, but they’ll figure it out in time. The only thing they know is that it’s lighter to navigate without costumes.

Then they hold hands, pull all the heavy anchors behind, and set sails, ready to go with the flow.

© 2026 Jana Bianchi