It’s a place beyond life, beyond death, like a purgatory awash in the auburn of a never-ending twilight. There on the horizon, at the place where ocean and sky meet, the stillborn sun hangs, its reveries glittering across the waves as they make their way to the shore.

Below – at the base of the hill – is the town plaza. A giant marketplace, wrapped like a ring around its main focal point, the Clock Tower. Its cobblestone floor is littered with small buildings, vending tents, and the like.

Though there’s movement, though the people walk to-and-fro, their shadows grabbing desperately at their heels, time is stuck. The sun never moves. It’s never quite day, never quite night. Never quite anything.

I look up, stare at the Clock Tower’s bronze face. The hands are stuck in place, never moving. One is at the number five, the other at three. Five-fifteen.

And that, my friends, is life on this nameless island, sitting at the very fringes of space and time.

Getting up, I walk to the edge of the hill. I follow a shallow path in the grass, watching my feet with vague disinterest as they take me away. When I get there, I look down. The hill drops off into a cliff, where it eventually meets the shore below.

I listen to the waves as they caress the sand, combing it into all kinds of delicate patterns and shapes. I smile.

“Not thinking of jumping, are you?”

I recognize the voice, turn. Behind me, she’s standing, hands clasped at the base of her thighs. She’s wearing a summer dress and a loose blouse that trembles slightly in the breeze.

She smiles meekly.

Her nose is a little crooked at the bottom, and her eyes seem too big for her face. Her brown hair is long, curling as it tumbles gently down her round shoulders. Her features combined, there’s something strangely fascinating about her, but it’s dulled somehow. Like seeing through a window on a rainy day. Or like an artist who tried to capture someone’s beauty in a statue.

I smile as well, nod.

She looks past me, as if searching for someone in the sky. “What are you doing here all by yourself?”

“Thinking.”

She giggles, brushing her nose up against her shoulder. “You’re so weird.”