La Puerta (The Gate)

I am the Gate, the threshold between the road and the compound. Some enter with a password whispered to the guard; some show a seal from a distant lord; some receive a merchant's mark that lifts the latch without a key. I remember every face that passes: the anonymous traveller, the named guest, the invited merchant. I am the boundary between the wild road and the safe harbour.

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A woman once came to me with no key, no seal, only a story — her grandmother's name, her mother's route, the year she first smelled orange blossom. I had no record of her. But the Scribe stood behind the guard and nodded. I opened. She later became the chief guide of the Granada route. The Gate knows: some locks open to memory, not metal.