She is not from here.
But this morning—boots laced, bluejean shorts frayed at the thigh, red scarf tied loose around her neck, she marches with the crowd through Pamplona’s ancient stone veins like she’s been doing it her whole life.
Her name is Riley, from Arizona or maybe Melbourne or nowhere that smells like bull sweat, beer foam, and Spanish dust. She walks fast, shoulders squared, keeping pace with the men in white, the drums, the chants, a folded map half-stuffed in her back pocket, stained with sangria.
It’s San Fermín, and the city trembles—balconies bloom with spectators, shouts bounce off the cobbles,
and adrenaline hums like a second heartbeat. Riley laughs. She’s not running—not yet—but she’s close.
Every few steps she raises her phone for a photo, but mostly, she watches—the old men crossing themselves, the young ones puffing bravado like smoke, the boys gripping rolled-up newspapers with shaking hands. Someone hands her a plastic cup of wine. She drinks. Doesn’t ask what it is. She’s in it now. The festival. The fever.
When the rockets crack the sky and the bulls are released, she steps back—not out of fear, but awe—
presses herself into a stone doorway, heart thundering louder than hooves. And when the runners thunder past—white shirts streaked red, legs flying, faces twisted in joy and terror—she cheers like she’s always belonged, dust clinging to her calves, sun in her hair, alive in a way no travel guide could have warned her about. Later, she’ll post a photo—blurry, bright, loud with color—captioned:
“Pamplona. I didn’t run. But I burned.”