He woke to the beginning of the descent and looked out the window at the Mediterranean — proper blue, the specific blue of the central Mediterranean that was different from the Ligurian coast he'd seen from the yacht, darker and cleaner, the water colour that made sense for a sea that had been warming continuously for three months.
Malta appeared off the right wing before they turned on approach — small, flat, limestone-coloured, the Valletta harbour visible from this altitude and the streets of the capital laid out in their grid above the water, and further in from the coast the interior of the island was fields and roads and small clusters of buildings that looked nothing like anywhere he'd played before.
