One of the Gates into the Palace of Time

Marianne made a wall by pressing time together and labelling it "Now and After." I was surprised that time could be manipulated so. But she is masterful. She made things that normally float in time stop. And then she took me through the wall, through a gate of numbers and murmurings. It was an island, a kind of lump that, itself, floated through time as everything did. It was a room in the palace of time. After she declared a trance, those words--red balloons, everything was eerie and quiet. My eyes moved over the silent furniture of looking and speaking, somehow changed. It slowly passed away like music quieting when the guitar stops. It was an incident, like a song.