Where the Condensation Gathers

A retired cartographer discovers that the daily condensation on her coffee shop window is forming a map of a mythical, non-existent island. When a sailor recognizes a landmark, a skeptical historian is challenged to question the nature of reality.

She traced the outline of a bay with her finger, careful not to touch the glass. The shape was familiar now, a constant anchor in this shifting geography. For six months, since opening ‘The Daily Grind’, she’d watched this phantom landmass reveal itself. At first, she’d dismissed it as pareidolia, the mind’s tendency to see patterns in randomness. But the patterns were too consistent. The same fjords, the same archipelago, the same great river delta. It was as if she were looking out not onto a rainy street in Halifax, but onto the coastline of a forgotten world.

The bell above the door jingled, admitting a gust of salty air and Terry. He was a retired merchant marine, a man whose face was a roadmap of laugh lines and whose eyes still held the distant gaze of one who has spent a lifetime watching the horizon. He moved with the gentle roll of a man more accustomed to a deck than a pavement.

“Morning, Linda,” he boomed, his voice warm and resonant. “The sea’s in a foul mood today.” He stomped his boots on the mat and made his way to the counter. “The usual brew, if you please.” As she prepared his dark roast, his eyes drifted to the window.

“Ah,” he said softly. “She’s clear today.”

He was the only one she’d told. The only one she thought might understand. He called the map ‘The Ghost Coast’.

“New mountains,” she said, placing the heavy mug in his hand. “Appeared this morning.”

Terry walked over to the window, coffee in hand, and peered at the moisture-drawn peaks. He squinted, leaning so close his breath fogged a fresh patch of glass. He let out a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“What is it?”

“That one,” he said, pointing with a thick finger. “The one that looks like a broken tooth. My grandfather used to sing a shanty about that. About Hy-Brasil. The phantom island. Said there was a mountain on its shore that looked like a tooth the gods had cracked on a hard bit of cosmic tack.” His eyes twinkled. “Said it was the only way to find the hidden harbour.”

“Hy-Brasil is a myth, Terry,” a dry voice cut in. “A cartographic error from the 14th century that was copied for two hundred years. A refraction of light, a smudge on a lens, a drunken monk’s fantasy.”

### The Historian's Doubt

John stood by the door, shaking out his umbrella. He was a history professor emeritus from the local university, a man who believed only in primary sources and peer-reviewed papers. He treated folklore the way an exterminator treats termites.

“It’s a lovely bit of condensation, Linda,” he said, approaching the window. “Remarkably detailed, I’ll grant you. But it’s just water vapour. Seeing maps in it is no different from seeing a fluffy bunny in the clouds.”

“But the consistency, John,” Linda argued gently. “Every morning, it’s the same coastline. It changes, it evolves, but the core features are always there.”

“The window frame creates thermal variations,” John said, already in lecture mode. “Air currents in the room, the heat from the radiator below. It’s a closed system with predictable variables. You’re getting a recurring fractal pattern, not a map of Atlantis.”

Terry scoffed. “Predictable variables don’t account for a landmark from a song that hasn’t been sung in a hundred years. You historians, you spend so much time looking at old maps you forget the sea that made them.”

“And you sailors spend so much time looking at the sea you start seeing mermaids in every wave,” John retorted. The two men had been friends, and intellectual adversaries, for decades. Their arguments were a form of sport.

Linda smiled, letting their banter wash over her. But John’s dismissal stung more than usual today. Because she had a secret she hadn’t even shared with Terry. She pulled a large sketchbook from beneath the counter and laid it on one of the tables.

“It’s not just one map, John,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. She opened the book. Page after page was filled with meticulous, dated sketches of the window map. “I’ve been documenting it. The coastline doesn’t just evolve. It’s moving. Each day shows a slightly different perspective, as if… as if the viewpoint is rotating.”

She flipped through the pages. The coastline shifted, revealing new features behind it, a vast interior, other continents on the far horizon. It was a globe, flattened onto her window pane, turning one degree at a time, each day, with the rising sun.

---

John fell silent. He slowly walked around the table, examining the drawings. His academic skepticism was at war with the evidence before him. The drawings were too precise, the progression too logical, to be a series of coincidences. He looked from the sketchbook to the window, then back again.

“It’s impossible,” he whispered, more to himself than to them. “A collective delusion.”

“Or,” Terry said, a triumphant grin spreading across his face, “proof that all your dusty old books didn’t get the whole story.”

John shook his head, pulling his tablet from his satchel. “No. There’s a logical explanation. There has to be.” He tapped furiously at the screen. “Here. Live satellite feed. The North Atlantic. Exactly where the old myths place Hy-Brasil.” He turned the tablet to face them. It showed a vast, empty expanse of blue ocean, white clouds swirling over it. “See? Nothing. Just water. Miles and miles of cold, empty water.”

Linda looked at the tablet, then at her window. She walked over and put her finger on a specific point of the glass map, a small island just off the coast of the larger landmass.

“There,” she said. “The satellite is looking right there.”

John scoffed and was about to make another dismissive comment, but Terry, who was looking over his shoulder, gasped. “John… look closer.”