Small elevated village square, a single bar with three metal chairs outside, rough volcanic basalt paving underfoot — the stone porous, dark grey, absorbing what little light the overcast sky offers. Above the roofline the slope of the mountain continues, treeless and black, until the cloud takes it. — Coffee just finished. Empty ceramic cup still on the bar ledge behind her. She stands at the square's edge, weight shifted to one hip, face tilted slightly upward toward the slope — not moving, not done looking.
The car was smaller than I expected and the steering wheel was on the wrong side. I adjusted. The road out of the city climbed fast.
By the time the lava fields started the light had already gone flat — the overcast doing its usual work, erasing shadows, making everything the same temperature of grey. But the black was still black. The fields on both sides of the road: dark, porous, utterly still. Cooled into this.
Roadside lava field at mid-elevation, the verge where asphalt meets hardened flow — black porous basalt extending flat to the horizon on both sides, the surface broken and cellular, every cavity holding a small dark shadow. The mountain is not visible; the road simply disappears into grey overcast above. — She has pulled over and is standing just off the road, one foot on the asphalt edge, one foot on the lava surface — caught in the threshold, looking down at the join between the two materials.
I'd put the trousers on before looking at the weather.
A small ceramic espresso cup on a metal saucer, rim slightly stained, no spoon, standing at the bar's outside counter
In Zafferana Etnea I stopped because the road did. Small square, a bar with three tables outside, an old man reading something folded in quarters. I ordered coffee and drank it standing, watching the slope above the town. The mountain doesn't announce itself. It just keeps going up until it doesn't.
Interior of a small volcanic-stone cantina, the walls of rough dark tuff block, a wooden counter worn pale at the edges, a single window facing the vineyard — the old wavy glass bending the rows of vines into soft curves. The room is dim and cool against the heavy afternoon heat outside. — The glass of dark red wine just set on the windowsill. Her right hand still curved slightly from holding it — not yet released, not yet pulled back. She is looking through the wavy glass at the vineyard, the vines distorted into soft motion.
Milo came later. The cantina had no sign in English and the door was open and I walked in because the door was open. The glass in the door was old, slightly wavy — the vineyard outside bent when I looked through it. The owner looked at me, said something I didn't fully catch, and poured without asking. Nerello mascalese. Dry, with tannin that arrived late and stayed, and underneath it mineral, like water from a stone.
A glass of deep garnet Nerello Mascalese on the single shaded outside table, the black lava-stone slope of Etna rising behind the vineyard rows
I took the glass outside and sat at the one table in the shade. The wind moved through the vines in intervals. The glass warmed slowly in my hand. Above the vines the slope went black, and above that, nothing.
I changed the bottom half in the car before driving back down. The road curved and the city appeared below in the last of the light, dark and flat against the water, and I let it come.
What she wore
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I put on the trousers before I even looked at the weather. Something about driving toward a volcano asks for something with structure.
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By the time I found the cantina the shirt had been open for two hours and I couldn't tell anymore if it was a layer or just something I was carrying.
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I changed the bottom half in the car before driving back down. The skirt felt right for wherever the evening landed — somewhere between a restaurant and not really caring.