The café table wobbled when she set down her coffee. A folded napkin would fix it, but she liked the instability—the tiny clink each time she shifted her weight, a reminder that nothing sits perfectly still.

The man at the next table was drawing. Not sketching—drawing, with the focused intensity of someone trying to capture something before it dissolves. His subject: the pigeons clustered around a woman's feet near the fountain. She was feeding them breadcrumbs, scattering them with the mechanical repetition of ritual.

"They're not hers," he said suddenly, not looking up.

She realized she'd been staring. "Sorry?"

"The pigeons." He added a shadow beneath a wing. "People think they're feeding their pigeons, but they're not. Different ones come every day."

She glanced at the woman, then back at him. "How can you tell?"

"The one with the crooked foot—it was here yesterday. The rest are new." He set down his pencil, satisfied. "She doesn't notice. Or maybe she doesn't care."

The woman by the fountain scattered the last of her bread and walked away. The pigeons remained for thirty seconds, then dispersed as if pulled by invisible strings, off to other plazas, other hands.

"Why does it matter?" she asked. "If they're different ones?"

He studied his drawing—really looked at it—then tore the page from his notebook and crumpled it. "It doesn't. That's why it matters."

Before she could respond, he stood, left coins on the table, and walked toward the Gothic Quarter's narrow streets. She watched him disappear into the shadows between buildings, the crumpled drawing still in his fist.

Her coffee had gone cold. The table still wobbled. She reached for a napkin, folded it twice, and wedged it under the uneven leg. The table steadied.

But when she lifted her cup again, she missed the clink—that small proof of impermanence, now gone. She pulled the napkin free and slipped it into her pocket.

Tomorrow, she thought, she'd come back. Maybe he would too. Maybe different pigeons would gather, and the woman would scatter breadcrumbs with the same mechanical grace, and someone else would notice that nothing repeats exactly, not even the things we think we know.

She left her own coins on the wobbling table and walked toward the Gothic Quarter, napkin still in her pocket, wondering what he would draw next.

#flashfiction #Barcelona #strangers #moments