Alex drops onto the bottom step with the studied nonchalance of someone who absolutely has nowhere better to be. Mira settles beside him, opens the guidebook, and begins reading aloud at a volume carefully pitched to carry up a medieval staircase. "The walls of Kotor," she announces, "were constructed across four centuries, with the upper fortifications reaching—" Another crisp bounces down. They ignore it. A scuff of shoe sole. The distant crinkle of their emergency reserve packet being investigated. Alex raises his camera and photographs the opposite wall. Mira turns a page. Above them, the silence acquires the particular texture of a teenager discovering that boredom, like gravity, is non-negotiable. A battered helmet appears at the top of the stairs. Then dark curly hair. Then the smirk — still present, but operating at perhaps seventy percent capacity. Their bag hangs from one shoulder. "You were just going to sit there," the Moped Kid says. It is not quite a question. Mira closes the guidebook on her thumb. "We're very patient tourists," she says pleasantly. The Kotor Cat has materialised in a nearby doorway, offering no opinion.