Days blurred into one another beneath the ever-fixed sun.
The village remained untouched by time—each morning began with the same golden light, each evening failed to fall.
It was a strange sensation, existing in a place where the sun never shifted, where the breeze carried the same warmth and the flowers never wilted. An eternal day.
Seren, surprisingly, had taken well to it.
After they had arrived, she was quickly swept up by the same boy who had tugged at her arm that first day.
His smile was as warm as sunlight, his tiny fingers always curled around her hand as he led her from place to place: the flower garden, the small hill behind the huts, a creek that barely babbled but sparkled like glass.
The fur coat man—the so-called "monster" from the murals—was already part of the boy's world.
