"Sometimes the longest road home is the one that leads you back to who you really are."
...
Santos airport on Sunday morning had that particular quality of farewell places —emptiness punctuated by contained tears and whispered promises. Gabriel was in the check-in line with the Resilientes, but his attention divided between automatic travel procedures and final conversations his family insisted on stretching until the last possible minute.
"You come back soon," Helena was saying to Marina, holding the Resilientes leader's hands as if she were an adopted daughter. "And bring this boy back to eat real food. He's too thin."
"Mom," Gabriel muttered, feeling familiar embarrassment creep up his neck.
"Don't 'mom' me," she shot back without letting go of Marina. "You take care of him there in Belém, okay? He's too good for his own good sometimes."
Sofia — the sister — was saying goodbye to Caio with the type of hug she reserved for people who had passed the family approval test. "Take care of my brother," she said with seriousness that contrasted with the constant teasing of recent days.
"I always have," Caio replied, and there was solemnity in the answer that made Gabriel look at them both with renewed attention.
But it was the goodbye with Sofia — the journalist — that carried the greater weight. They stood slightly apart from the others, in a bubble of private conversation that seemed protected against external interference.
"Thank you," she said simply. "For letting me see you in context. For letting me understand where the person I know comes from."
"And what did you discover?"
She smiled, but there was something melancholic in the curve of her lips. "That you're exactly who I thought you were. I just now know where it came from — a family that loves you enough to let you grow, and friends who know you well enough to bring you back when necessary."
Gabriel felt something tighten in his chest. "Sounds like you're saying goodbye forever."
"Not forever," Sofia said, briefly touching his arm. "But maybe... with more clarity about what we are. And what we could be."
The flight announcement cut through the farewell, creating the artificial urgency that airports impose on moments that should be able to extend indefinitely.
...
During the flight to Belém, Caio settled in the seat next to Gabriel with the determination of someone who had pending conversations to finalize.
"So," he said after the plane stabilized at cruising altitude, "let's talk about Luna."
Gabriel felt his stomach tighten. Throughout the entire stay in Santos, he'd managed to avoid the conversation he knew Caio would eventually demand. Now, trapped in a plane at ten thousand meters altitude, there was no escape.
"Caio..."
"No, Gabriel. Not 'Caio' anything." His friend turned in his seat to face him directly. "You looked at Sofia — a Sofia who clearly means a lot to you — and whispered another person's name. That's not normal."
Gabriel looked around the plane. Marina was reviewing schedules, Carlos slept with headphones on, Felipe read something on his tablet. Leonardo was far enough away not to hear, but Gabriel knew any conversation about personal secrets ran the risk of becoming public knowledge.
"It's complicated," he said finally.
"Everything in your life is complicated. But complicated doesn't mean you have to deal with it alone." Caio lowered his voice, but didn't diminish the intensity. "Brother, in the last two years you've become our leader, our reference, our anchor. But sometimes I feel like you're carrying things that are too heavy for one person."
Gabriel closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the observation. How to explain that sometimes he woke with the impossible scent of flowers that didn't exist in this world? How to say that there were nights when he heard a feminine voice whispering his name through winds that didn't move the curtains?
"Luna is..." he began, then stopped. How to define someone who existed at the intersection between memory and dream, between longing and impossibility?
"Someone you loved," Caio said gently, filling the silence. "Someone you still love."
Gabriel opened his eyes wide, finding in Caio's a comprehension that transcended curiosity. There was the empathy of someone who recognized familiar pain, even when not understanding its origin.
"Was," Gabriel said finally. "In another place. In another life."
It wasn't a lie, but it also wasn't the whole truth. Caio nodded, seeming to accept the metaphorical answer.
"And now?"
"Now she's far away. Very far away." Gabriel looked through the airplane window at clouds that seemed like floating continents. "And Sofia... Sofia is here."
"And you're trying to figure out if it's possible to love someone in the present when your heart still carries someone from the past."
The sentence was so precise Gabriel felt it like a punch to the stomach. "That's it."
Caio remained silent for a long moment, processing. When he spoke again, his voice carried the wisdom of someone who had learned about love through personal experience.
"Brother, have you considered that maybe it's not about choosing? That maybe it's about understanding that different people occupy different places in our hearts?"
Gabriel turned to study his friend's face. "How so?"
"Like... my grandmother died when I was fifteen. I loved her in a way I'll never love anyone else again, you know? But that doesn't mean I can't love my current girlfriend, or that loving my girlfriend diminishes what I feel for my grandmother." Caio paused, choosing words carefully. "Maybe Luna is the kind of love you carry as a blessing, not a burden. And Sofia is the kind of love you build as possibility."
The words settled in Gabriel's chest like seeds in fertile soil. There was wisdom there he hadn't considered — the idea that honoring a past love didn't mean closing himself to a present love.
"What if Sofia notices?"
"If Sofia is half the person I think she is," Caio smiled, "she already has. And she's choosing to stay anyway."
...
Belém welcomed them with its usual humid embrace, but Gabriel immediately perceived that something had changed in his absence. Not physically — the same trees, the same heat, the same urban energy pulsing through the city. But there was a difference in how he perceived the place.
Santos had been an exercise in context, a reminder of his origins. But Belém... Belém was home in a way that transcended geography. It was where he'd found purpose, chosen family, versions of himself he hadn't known existed.
"Miss home?" asked Marina while they waited for a taxis.
"Funny," Gabriel replied, looking at the airport movement, at faces that seemed vaguely familiar even when they were complete strangers. "Santos is where I was born. But this... this is where I became who I am."
Marina smiled, understanding perfectly. "That's what happens when you find your tribe, right? The place becomes home because the people became family."
The comment echoed in Gabriel's mind as they headed back to the city center. Family. Not just the Resilientes, but the entire constellation of people that had formed around his work — professors, students, project partners, even respectful rivals who pushed each other to higher levels.
But there was also something more. A subtle sensation that during his absence, forces beyond human control had moved. As if Belém had breathed differently for a few days, and was now readjusting to his presence.
...
That night, alone in his apartment, Gabriel tried to reintegrate into familiar routine. Accumulated emails, reports to review, preparations for the return to São Benedito that could no longer be postponed.
But his attention constantly drifted to the window, where Belém's lights spread like terrestrial stars. There was something hypnotic about the view, something that pulled him outside himself.
That's when he saw it.
Over the river, in the distance, small lights danced on the water's surface. Not boats — he knew well the movement of nocturnal vessels. These lights pulsed with their own rhythm, like luminous hearts floating over liquid darkness.
Gabriel approached the window, and the lights responded. When his attention focused on them, they shone brighter. When he got distracted, they dimmed until almost disappearing.
"Impossible," he murmured to himself, but extended his hand toward the glass anyway.
The moment his fingers touched the cold window surface, the lights over the river pulsed as one, creating a pattern that for an instant — just an instant — looked like the outline of a feminine face.
Gabriel pulled back, heart racing. But when he looked again, there was only the dark river and normal city lights reflecting on the water.
Fatigue, he rationalized, stepping away from the window. Jet lag. Too much emotion in recent days.
But as he prepared for sleep, he couldn't ignore the growing sensation that Belém had become a place where the impossible was just another category of the probable. And that his absence, however brief, had somehow intensified the connection between him and forces he couldn't name, but that increasingly refused to remain invisible.
...
Gabriel fell asleep to the sound of Belém's rivers whispering through the open window, and dreamed not of Santos memories or São Benedito anxieties, but of a voice that came from very far away, carried with growing urgency.
"My Solmere... the barriers are getting thinner. I can feel you more clearly now, but that also means others can feel you. You need to prepare yourself. Your light is growing, but growth attracts both allies and enemies."
In the dream, he stood on a bridge that extended over an infinite abyss, but the structure was made of light instead of stone. And from the other side, a familiar figure waved — not calling him to cross, but warning him about something approaching from behind.
Gabriel woke with his heart racing and the name "Luna" on his lips, but this time there was no embarrassment. There was only the growing certainty that the worlds he'd learned to keep separate were beginning to converge.
And that, regardless of how prepared he felt, this convergence would change everything.
...
In the first hours before sunrise, when Belém was silent except for the constant murmur of rivers, Gabriel sat at his desk and opened a new notebook.
Not to make lists or plan projects, but to write a letter he might never send, to someone who might never be able to read it.
Luna,
I don't know if you can hear my thoughts across the distance that separates us, or if this is just my imagination creating connections where only longing exists. But I need to write anyway.
I've been in Santos, in the place where I grew up, with the people I'm learning to love. And for the first time since I returned from that world, I managed to imagine a future that isn't defined only by missing you.
This doesn't mean I've forgotten you. It means I'm learning to carry our story as a blessing instead of a wound. You taught me that bridges connect different places without completely belonging to either. Maybe that's what I am now — someone who can love what I had and still be open to what might come.
If you're listening, know that regardless of what the future brings, you changed who I am in ways that will never disappear. And if you're not listening, at least I finally managed to put into words what I should have said before leaving.
With all the love that transcends worlds,
Gabriel
P.S. — I think you'd like Sofia. You both have the same way of seeing through the masks I use to protect my heart.
Gabriel closed the notebook, but didn't put it away. He left it on the table, open to the page where he'd poured truths he didn't know he carried.
Outside, Belém began to awaken to another day, but Gabriel knew something fundamental had changed during the night. Not just in his understanding of love and loss, but in the very texture of reality around him.
The waters had stirred. And when waters stir in the Amazon, larger changes always follow the current.