Mia's POVThe music started.It was an old song. Something from—I don't know. Another century. The kind of melody that lives in the collective unconscious, that everyone knows without knowing how they know it. Notes that your grandmother hummed, that her grandmother hummed before her. Music that existed before recording, before radio, before any of us were born. It simply was, the way sunlight was, the way rain was.The horses began to rise and fall in their gentle, eternal rhythm.Up. Down. Up. Down. Like breathing. Like the tide.The afternoon light slanted through the carousel's canopy, catching the gold leaf on the horses' bridles, the tiny mirrors embedded in the central column. Everything glittered. Everything spun. The world outside became a smear of color. It's green trees, blue sky, the bright dots of other visitors, all of it bleeding together into something impressionistic.I could smell it. That particular carousel smell. Machine oil and old wood and something sweeter unde
Last Updated : 2025-12-12 Read more