At dawn, the city discovered that the minutes had run like amber jam along the ledges of balconies.
The sea, wearing a waxed mustache, promised to bring back the seconds stranded in the little cups of passersby.
At seven o’clock, or perhaps at the saffron color lodged between two sleeps, the pavement began to lap with limp dials. The windows, moved to compassion, held out silver spoons to catch the droplets of noon, while chairs walked on their shadows as on stilts of silk. In the square, drawers sprouted in the chests of statues, releasing a scent of vanilla and well-mannered dust.
Elephants with spindly legs carried sugar obelisks to the edge of the tide, where one could read the time by the taste of salt. A watchmaker of the dunes, her pockets full of sleeping hands, merely raised her eyebrows: “It’s not the end of the world, it’s time’s nap,” confided Maïa Escabeau, before blowing on a second hand as one would on the feather of a rare bird.
Farther on, windmills combed the horizon with combs of rain, and each cloud left a punched ticket at the entrance to the sky. The ants, as the sand’s delicate stewards, lined up seconds like black beads along a string of foam; a child counted them in a whisper so as not to wake the afternoon.
Residents are advised to hang their dreams on crutches of light until the return of a sturdier morning. In the meantime, everyone is invited to walk very slowly, mouths full of vanilla silence, so as not to startle the hours which, they say, always return when you stop watching them.
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