Rafito el Varado and the Two-Mouthed Cliff

More about Rafito el Varado and the Two-Mouthed Cliff

Rafito el Varado arrived at the two-mouthed cliff just after sunrise, when the water below was still waking up and deciding whether it wanted to be turquoise or something more dramatic. The waves nuzzled the rocks with the lazy confidence of creatures that had nowhere else to be. Rafito could relate.

Above the surf, a row of pale stone houses perched on the edge of the cliff like thoughtful listeners. They were quiet houses—serious, sun-warmed, and built with the intention of outlasting every opinion ever formed about them. Rafito admired that kind of architecture.

He followed a narrow path that wound between pines shaped by wind and stubbornness, their branches twisted like questions with no real need for answers. Every few steps, the sea revealed itself through gaps in the trees—bright, indifferent, magnificent.

The cliff had two large openings carved into it. The locals called them “the mouths,” though no one agreed on what they ate. Some said storms. Others said secrets. One elderly man insisted the cliff consumed time itself, but he had been drinking anise spirits since sunrise, so Rafito took that with a pinch of salt.

Still, the mouths fascinated him.

He approached the first one carefully. It was cool inside, smelling faintly of minerals and long-quiet tides. The second mouth was warmer, as if it had trapped heat from the sun or from something else entirely. Rafito listened closely. Both caves breathed, but not in unison. One inhaled while the other exhaled.

“Strange duet,” Rafito muttered.

A woman tending succulents on a terrace above called down to him, “People say the caves are connected.”

Rafito looked up. “Are they?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter much unless you’re planning to crawl in.”

“Not today,” he said, though he wasn’t fully certain.

He continued along the cliff, feeling the dual rhythm of the caves beneath his feet like an uneven heartbeat. The houses above seemed unfazed. Even the pines didn’t bother reacting.

At the far end of the path, he reached a flat rock where the world opened wide. Boats dotted the horizon like punctuation marks. The sea shimmered with possibilities that didn’t demand pursuit.

Rafito sat, boots dangling above the drop, listening to the asynchronous breathing of the cliff.

Two mouths, two rhythms, one coastline that refused to resolve itself neatly.

Perfect.

He leaned back on his hands, breathed in the salt air, and let the world move around him without asking him to interpret any of it.

That was the beauty of places like this:
they didn’t need to explain themselves,
and they certainly didn’t expect him to.