The Jungle Gym

But they turned around and found themselves in a small garden, light streaming timidly down through the trees which surrounded it and playing spritefully in the fractal afternoon fog. There was a house, there were doors into the house, the paint on the walls was white and sounds echoed meanderingly through the halls and the rooms, stumbling on trinkets of glass, books lying about, mites of dust in the air, fruit lying on the tiled counters, the stained wooden floor with colorful old carpets crisscrossing it. Echoes of distant violins, the laugh of a girl, gentle murmuring between two unseen conversationalists, the happy clinking of metal on porcelain, the click of wooden sticks against one another, the reassuring scrape of a pen leaving curving limbs of dark ink on rough paper. The restless ticking of mechanical devices being set and holding their procession of time, the thump of a full teakettle being placed on the stove, vegetables being crunchily sliced, water boiling, steam. Who knows how long this moment lasted, or if it ended, or if it began. They saw books on the shelves, notebooks and papers, a good-​natured and restrained manifestation of disorder. The sun and the moon at once in the sky, midnight become noon and up become down, an unhurried fire of magic coursing through the shadows at pace and emerging from them to gild everything with a subtle sheen of gold. Time was content, space was content, at least for a while, to just be.