🌟 Chapter One: The Color of Dust and Daydreams

The midday sun beat down on the corrugated iron roof of Café Estrela, transforming the small, shaded interior into a dim, sweltering haven against the dusty, bright street outside.

The air inside hung thick with the aroma of strong, sweet coffee, stale pastry, and the fainter, metallic scent of the town’s proximity to the sea—a sea they rarely saw.

Cristiano—Cris, to the few who called him friend—leaned heavily on the counter, his elbow threatening to slip off the worn Formica.

He wasn’t particularly tall, but his frame was lean, taut with a restless energy that often made him look coiled, ready to spring.

Right now, though, he was just tired.

He watched the dust motes dance in the single beam of light slicing through a high window, a universe of fleeting particles set against the grimy reality of his town.

“Two mil-reis for the same burnt coffee,” a low voice grumbled from the corner booth.

Lionel, perched on a stool that looked too big for him, stirred his cup with meticulous, unnecessary swirls.

He was shorter than Cris, built like a fire hydrant, and moved with a quiet, efficient grace that belied his current profession: chief counter assistant at the Estrela.

He always looked slightly out of place, as if he should be calculating the trajectory of a star, not the price of a pastel de nata.

“It’s not burnt, Leo,” Cris said, his voice flat.

“It’s ‘robustly roasted.

‘ That’s what old man Bento calls it.

And it’s two-fifty now.

Inflation.”

Leo squinted at him over the rim of his cup, his dark eyes sharp.

“Robustly, Cris? It tastes like a robustly dead engine.

And don’t quote Bento’s marketing genius at me.

He raised the price again because that tourist boat docked for two hours last week and he thinks we’re all suddenly rich.”

A short, round woman with a perpetually exasperated expression and flour dusting her eyebrows, Dona Sofia, emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a clean, white apron that somehow still looked immaculate despite the heat.

“Less chatter, more scrubbing, Lionel,” Sofia instructed, her voice a clipped alto.

“The mayor’s cousin is coming in for his afternoon coffee.

He likes to see a clean counter.

And Cristiano, if you’re going to loiter, at least make yourself useful.

Hand-crank the ice machine.

The old motor’s complaining again.”

Cris straightened up.

“Loitering? Dona Sofia, I am providing atmosphere.

A handsome, brooding customer is good for business.

It makes the tourists feel rugged.”

Sofia let out a sound that was half-sigh, half-snort, retrieving a chipped mug from a high shelf with surprising agility.

“You’re brooding because you’re hungry and broke, not for atmosphere.

Go on.

The noise drowns out your daydreams.”

Cris grinned, a quick, flashing motion that made him look momentarily younger than his twenty-three years.

“You know me too well, Sofia.”

He moved behind the counter, the small space smelling faintly of lemon cleaner and old sugar.

The ice machine was a battered hulk of aluminum bolted to the far wall.

As he turned the handle—a slow, back-breaking rotation that produced a pathetic trickle of crushed ice—he caught Leo watching him.

“You’re thinking about that house again, aren’t you?” Leo asked, not as a question but a simple statement of fact.

He scraped his chair back from the booth.

He carried his plate and cup to the counter, scrubbing them immediately under the weak stream of water.

He was always cleaning, a habit born from years of meticulously keeping his own small life in order.

“It’s not just a house, Leo,” Cris paused, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

“It’s a luxury house.

The kind with a terrace and a view of the real ocean, not just the cargo docks.

We said we’d do it.

Remember? From broke to buying.”

Leo rinsed his cup again.

“I remember the part where we decided on a dream.

I also remember the part where we currently have enough money between us for three tins of sardines and maybe a new shoelace.

We’ve fixed three broken motorbikes and painted one fence this week.

That’s a good week, and it still doesn’t buy a view of anything but this alley.

”

“That’s the slow part, Leo,” Cris insisted, returning to the relentless crank.

The metal squealed in protest.

“The slow part is the foundation.

The hustle.

We start with the bikes, then the tractor, then.

.

.

” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely towards the window, as if the next step in his improbable plan was floating just beyond the dusty glass.

“Then we invent cold fusion and retire,” Leo finished dryly, grabbing a clean rag and wiping down the counter section Cris had been leaning on.

“Look, Cris.

The dream is solid.

I’m with you.

But maybe we need a new job before we need a new fantasy.

Old man Bento just docked the Esperanza down at the pier.

Said it needs a hull patch before high tide tomorrow.

He promised a hundred mil-reis.

Split evenly.”

Cris stopped cranking, his face lighting up with genuine, hopeful intensity.

“A hundred? That’s more than the bike shop paid for the whole week! See, Leo? The universe provides the opportunities.

We just have to take them.”

Sofia appeared again, carrying a tray of freshly baked rolls.

She set them down with a gentle thump.

“You two and your grand schemes.

Bento promises.

He never pays.

Just ask poor Manuel down at the docks.

He’s been chasing Bento’s ‘promise’ for three years.

Now, about that ice.

.

.

the mayor’s cousin doesn’t wait.”

Cris grabbed the handle again, the previous weariness replaced by a renewed, frantic energy.

“A hundred mil-reis.

Enough to put a deposit on a new piece of equipment.

Maybe a welding torch.

No more old tools.

A proper business.”

Leo sighed, a sound of patient, deep-seated resignation.

He caught Cris’s eye and allowed a small, almost imperceptible smile to tug at the corner of his mouth.

“A welding torch? Fine.

Just try not to set the pier on fire this time, Ronaldo.”

Cris winked, calling back the reference to the popular football legends with a theatrical flourish.

“It was just a small fire, Messi.

And we need to make an entrance, don’t we? Let’s go make a hundred mil-reis.”

🛠️ Chapter Two: The Esperanza and the Smell of Salt

The promise of a hundred mil-reis—a fortune in their current economy—was enough to propel Cristiano and Lionel out of the relative cool of Café Estrela and into the blinding afternoon heat.

They trekked the short distance down the cobbled slope toward the small municipal pier, their worn canvas shoes crunching on the dried seaweed scattered near the water’s edge.

Old man Bento’s fishing boat, the Esperanza, was a squat, sea-battered vessel moored near the end of the dock.

She was painted a faded, patchy blue, with rust streaks running like tired tears from every metal fitting.

The stench of diesel, rotting fish, and deep, ancient brine clung to her like a second coat of paint.

“Look at her,” Cris said, shading his eyes.

He stopped several feet away, sizing up the boat like a challenger in a ring.

“She’s a classic.

Needs a lot of love, though.”

Leo approached the hull immediately, running a careful, discerning hand over the damp wood just above the waterline.

“She needs more than love, Cris.

She needs a miracle and about fifty liters of sealant.

Bento said a patch, right? Where is it?”

Bento himself was nowhere in sight.

Instead, a grizzled, diminutive man with arms like knotted ropes and a face etched with countless sunrises was busy coiling thick mooring lines.

This was Manuel, the dock hand Sofia had mentioned—the one still waiting for Bento’s three-year-old ‘promise’.

Manuel didn’t look up, but his voice was a dry rasp, seasoned by salt wind.

“Looking for the boss? He went home.

Said the job was simple.

Said you boys were sharp enough not to need hand-holding.”

“Simple is Bento’s code for ‘I couldn’t pay a proper shipwright to touch it,’” Leo muttered under his breath, stepping onto the Esperanza‘s deck.

The deck planks groaned a nervous welcome beneath his weight.

Cris grinned at Manuel, trying to project competence.

“We’re more than sharp, Manuel.

We’re precision instruments.

Where’s the patch needed?”

Manuel finally paused his work and fixed them with a weary, knowing gaze.

He pointed a calloused finger not at the hull, but at a section of the cabin roof.

“Not the hull.

She takes on water when it rains, not when she’s sailing.

It’s the skylight frame.

Bento’s ‘patch’ is a piece of aluminum he tried to screw down last season.

The wood around it is soft as cheese.

You need to pull the frame, replace the rotted section, and seal it all up tight.

He left the materials in the hold.”

Leo’s eyes widened slightly.

“Replace wood? That’s not a simple patch, that’s carpentry.

He said a patch! We don’t have a saw that clean.

We barely have a screwdriver that works.”

“Welcome to working for Bento,” Manuel said flatly, returning to his rope.

“If you make it seaworthy by high tide tomorrow, maybe he actually pays.

But I wouldn’t hold your breath.

If you do, use some of the hundred to buy a better hammer than that pebble you two were using last week.”

Cris ignored the dig at their tools.

He vaulted lightly onto the deck, his earlier fatigue forgotten.

The sheer scale of the task—and the immediate world-building details of the rickety boat—had focused his energy.

He pulled a rusty hatch open, revealing the dark, oily hold.

“Materials in the hold,” Cris repeated, his voice echoing in the cavity.

“Let’s see what kind of disaster Bento classifies as ‘materials’.”

Inside, bathed in the sickly green light filtering through the grime, they found a small, warped sheet of marine plywood, a half-empty tube of industrial-grade caulk that looked suspiciously petrified, and a jar containing perhaps a dozen rusty, mixed nails.

Leo stared at the pathetic collection.

“He gave us half-spoiled glue and wood that looks like it survived a shipwreck.

This is a salvage operation, not a repair.

” He picked up the plywood, testing its stiffness.

“We’ll have to be precise.

We can’t waste any of this.

The cut has to be exact.”

“Precision, Messi.

That’s our specialty,” Cris said, already pulling an old, dusty hand-saw from a compartment under a bench.

The saw’s teeth were dull and slightly bent.

He tested its edge with a thumb.

“We’ll need to sharpen this first.

Then we measure twice, cut once.

And we’ll use the rustiest nails first, just to get rid of them.

Saves us lugging them back.”

He grinned, a wide, enthusiastic expression that was almost contagious.

Suddenly, a loud, high-pitched squawk erupted from the adjacent boat.

A large, garish parrot, perched on the shoulder of a small, wiry man dressed in a blindingly white, if slightly stained, linen suit, eyed them with malice.

“You lot!” the man, Tio Vasco, shouted, adjusting his straw hat.

He was Bento’s younger brother, known locally for being a theatrical pest and a chronic over-investor in useless novelty items.

“If you scratch my paint, I’ll charge you triple the cost of this pathetic little fish-tub! And keep your dust to yourselves!”

The parrot, sensing the tension, flapped its wings and shrieked, “Pathetic! Pathetic!”

Leo, already kneeling on the deck and carefully measuring the skylight frame with a ruler retrieved from his back pocket, didn’t even look up.

“Cris,” he said quietly, “if the parrot calls us ‘pathetic’ one more time, I’m going to caulk its beak shut.

Get the saw sharp.

Now.”

Cris chuckled, a deep, rumbling sound.

He pulled a flat sharpening stone from his own meager toolkit.

“He’s just jealous, Leo.

Vasco is all talk and cheap linen.

We’re on the way up.

Pathetic today, CEO tomorrow.

” He squatted down, the gritty sound of the saw being sharpened quickly cutting through Tio Vasco’s next, entirely predictable complaint.

The smell of metal dust mingled with the sea air, a new, active scent replacing the stale coffee of the café.

They were working.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

🚢 Chapter Three: The Price of Precision

The monotonous, rhythmic shick-shick-shick of the sharpening stone against the saw blade filled the air.

Cristiano worked with focused intensity, his brow furrowed, paying attention to the satisfying friction that promised sharp teeth.

“You know, this saw belonged to my grandfather,” Cris murmured, without looking up.

“He built half the fishing shacks on this harbor line with it.

If this old metal could talk, it would tell us to stop daydreaming and start sawing.”

Lionel, meanwhile, had carefully laid the warped plywood on a bench across two wooden blocks, anchoring the corners with heavy, oil-stained spanners.

He was sketching a precise cutting line, using the tiny, half-rusted ruler and a stub of pencil, comparing the dimensions repeatedly to the damaged skylight frame.

“It’s not the saw that’s the problem, it’s the wood,” Leo said, his voice tight with concentration.

“This ply is bowing.

If we cut it with a dull blade, we’ll lose too much material when we clean the edge.

But even with a sharp blade, we need to plane the surface clean to get a perfect seal for the caulk.

Otherwise, Bento’s ‘patch’ will just be a damp sponge.”

He pointed to a slight bulge in the center of the plywood sheet.

“See? We need to shave that off for it to sit flush.

If we can’t get it perfectly flat, the water will find a way in.

It always does.”

Manuel, who was still silently coiling his ropes nearby, stopped and rubbed his chin.

“He’s right, boy.

Water finds the weakness.

Bento’s boat is full of weaknesses.

A good carpenter’s plane would be worth a week’s pay right now.

Even a small smoothing plane.”

The simple truth hung heavy in the salty air.

Fixing the rotted section was one challenge; ensuring the repair was flawless and water-tight—the measure of a professional job—was another.

Their sharpened saw was only half the solution.

Cris stopped sharpening, the blade now glinting wickedly in the sun.

He looked at the saw, then at the minuscule pile of coins in his pocket—his half of the week’s meager earnings from fixing the three motorbikes.

“A plane,” Cris repeated, tasting the word.

“How much is one? Even a used one from the city?”

Leo looked up, calculating rapidly.

“We don’t know.

Maybe sixty or seventy mil-reis for a decent second-hand one.

That would drain almost all our working capital.

But… it would make this job perfect.

And it would be a real tool for the next job.

Not a borrowed hammer or a half-broken screwdriver.”

“Seventy mil-reis,” Cris sighed, running a hand through his damp hair.

“That’s two more weeks of scraping by on sardines and stale pastry, assuming we get paid for this job.”

Suddenly, Tio Vasco’s annoying, high-pitched voice sliced through their discussion again.

He was standing on the deck of his immaculate boat, polishing a brass rail with almost manic energy.

“Still fiddling with that broken old tub?” Vasco called out.

His parrot immediately squawked, “Broken! Tub!”

“We’re preparing to make a flawless repair, Vasco,” Cris shot back, resisting the urge to throw the saw at the gleaming hull of the neighboring boat.

“Flawless?” Vasco scoffed, adjusting his white hat.

“Bento’s expectations for ‘flawless’ are about as low as his bank balance.

Why spend all that time on a wreck? You’re wasting effort on a cheap repair.

Just slap the wood down, cover it with caulk, and be gone.

That’s the hustle, boys.

Get in, get out.

Volume, not quality!”

Leo narrowed his eyes.

Vasco’s philosophy was everything they were trying to avoid.

They weren’t after a quick fix; they were building a reputation, piece by meticulous piece, for the day they could afford that luxury home.

Their effort had to be visible, undeniable proof of their skill.

“No, Messi,” Cris said, turning to Leo with a determined glint in his eye.

“We don’t slap it down.

We do it right.

Vasco thinks the hustle is volume.

We know the hustle is quality.

That’s how you get repeat business, and that’s how you eventually charge higher prices.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his small hoard of coins, counting them out and placing them on the bench.

Leo did the same, adding his slightly smaller but equally precious pile.

They stared at the small mound of metal—just enough, probably.

“We go to the city,” Cris declared, decisive.

“We sacrifice the next few days of quick jobs.

We get the plane.

We finish this job perfectly.

And then, we start a new business: high-quality marine carpentry.

Only the best tools, only the best work.”

Leo finally nodded, a slow, approving motion.

A faint, almost proud smile touched his lips.

“Okay, Ronaldo.

Let’s do it.

From broke to.

.

.

buying better tools.”

He carefully picked up the money, placing it into a small, cloth pouch he kept tucked inside his shirt.

“I’ll catch the early transport,” Leo said.

“I know a place in the city’s second market that sells old tools salvaged from shipyards.

They might have what we need.

You stay here.

Keep Tio Vasco’s parrot away from the caulk and guard the boat until I get back tomorrow afternoon.”

Cris clapped him on the shoulder, the gesture full of confidence and camaraderie.

“Go get us the tools of champions, Messi.

The Esperanza waits for its perfect patch.”