When Time Stood Still

Chapter 1: "The Arrival"

Amara had sold everything but her name to get here.

Her apartment. Her car. The antique mirror her mother left her before vanishing into dementia. Every material anchor she’d once called hers—liquidated, bartered, or boxed away in the corner of someone else’s garage.

She wasn’t unhinged. She was intentional. This wasn’t some impulsive break from reality—it was a calculated surrender. Because Sanare Isle wasn’t just a retreat. It was a last resort.

She’d read about it in a footnote of a footnote. A quiet place whispered about in trauma recovery forums, philosophy subthreads, spiritual backchannels—like a secret people weren’t sure they were allowed to believe in. The kind of place that doesn’t advertise. It appears when you need it, or when you’ve run out of everything else to try.

They didn’t promise healing. They didn’t promise closure. What they promised—if you looked hard enough between the lines—was something more dangerous:

A way to fix time.

Or, at the very least, to understand why it broke in the first place.

The ferry wasn’t grand. Just a weathered skiff captained by a man who didn’t speak unless spoken to—and even then, his answers came in nods and gestures. Amara had been the last to board, her duffel heavy with too many notebooks and not enough clothes.

The others were already seated.

She scanned the benches and spotted her first—a woman near the back, hair coiled in a thick braid, long skirt sweeping over bare ankles. She looked older than Amara, though not in the way time measures. Her posture carried the kind of stillness Amara envied—intentional, contained. Not the stillness of peace. The stillness of someone who had already walked through the storm and learned how to sit in the wreckage.

Amara hesitated, then nodded toward the spot beside her.

“Mind if I sit?”

The woman looked up. Her eyes were calm, unreadable. They studied Amara without reaction.

“You can,” she said, and shifted her bag enough to offer space.

Amara sat, her duffel thudding softly to the floor.

“I’m Amara,” she offered.

The woman didn’t respond right away. Just nodded again.

“So… how many times have you been to Sanare Isle?” Amara asked.

The woman smiled—not mockingly, but as if the question was quaint.

“Oh, I’m not going to Sanare Isle,” she replied. “I’m headed to the next island over. Le Placier du Tiers.”

Amara frowned. “The what?”

“The Place of the Third.” The woman glanced toward the horizon. “It’s not well known.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“Have you been many places?” the woman asked, turning back to her.

Amara shook her head. “Not really. Not anywhere that mattered.”

The woman gave a soft hum. Not quite amusement. Not quite pity.

“Then maybe this one will.”

No one else spoke.

No one introduced themselves.
No one asked names.
Amara didn’t either.

But she watched.

There was a girl with cropped red hair, chewing gum too loud and bouncing her leg with nervous rhythm. A teenager in blue headphones mouthed lyrics to songs Amara didn’t recognize. Across from them, a man in a long wool coat clutched a paperback so tightly it looked like scripture. Near the front, a couple spoke softly in a language that sounded like Spanish twisted through something ancient.

Their clothes didn’t match the season. Their eyes didn’t match their age. Their energy didn’t match the silence.

They weren’t suspicious. Just out of rhythm. Like they belonged somewhere else, or sometime else—and didn’t know it yet.

They arrived just past dawn. The sky hung low and bruised, the water dark and unmoving. The air felt suspended—charged, but unwilling to break.

Sanare Isle stood ahead, untouched and unmoved. Black stone outcroppings framed the shoreline, their surfaces slick with moss and memory. Behind them, the land rose in layers: dense trees with bark the color of ash, their leaves catching the weak light in flickers of gold and green. Towering ferns leaned into the trail, their edges glistening as if the island had rained overnight just for them.

Stone cottages dotted the hillside. Their chimneys leaned, not in ruin, but with character. Vines hugged the roofs, blooming with pale lavender flowers too delicate for the wild—yet thriving. A winding footpath ran through the heart of the island, worn down over time by repetition, not erosion.

Nothing here rushed. Nothing performed.

The island didn’t ask for attention. It commanded stillness.

Amara stepped off the ferry with the weight of what she’d traded pressing against her ribs.

The dock groaned beneath her boots. A gull cried once overhead and vanished. No one greeted them. Just a wooden sign nailed into a leaning post:

Sanare Isle.

The letters were carved but nearly erased, as though they had decided to fade instead of be removed.

A woman in linen appeared on the path, clipboard in hand. She looked at Amara, then nodded once.

“Room 3. Orientation at sunset. The island is yours until then.”

No welcome. No key. No list of what not to do.

Amara nodded back, said nothing, and walked.

Her cottage sat at the end of a gravel trail lined with smooth river stones and soft ferns. It was low, square, and wrapped in stillness. The door was thick wood, slightly bowed in the center. The handle was cold.

Inside: stone walls, cedarwood beams, and the scent of rain that hadn’t yet fallen. A small bed sat in the corner. A desk faced the sea. A ceramic pitcher of water and a single candle waited at the center. No mirror. No clock.

On the pillow was a folded note:

You won’t find the answer until you stop looking for a reason.

No signature.

She dropped her bag, sat on the edge of the bed, and stared at the desk.

The journal sat there. Leather-bound. Her name pressed softly into the cover. She didn’t remember telling them her name. But there it was.

She picked it up. Ran her thumb along the edge.

She opened to the first page.

And wrote.

Journal Entry – Day One

I don’t know what I expected.
Maybe some miracle—something dramatic enough to match the cost.
But no one’s performing here. Not even God.

They say time heals everything. But they never tell you what to do when it doesn’t.
When the clock keeps moving and you don’t.
When you’re stuck in the moment after—after it broke, after they left, after you knew it was too late.

This place… it doesn’t feel like healing.
It feels like truth.
Like it’s going to ask for more than I meant to give.

I feel numb. I get flashes of emotion, but they vanish too quickly.
It’s like I only remember how I felt because of what happened—not because I can feel it now.
Is that dissociation? Or am I just desensitized?

The man I loved went into rehab to “get better”—to be a better person, a better partner.
But he left me behind to clean up the storm he helped create.
He’s healing on someone else’s time. I’m drowning in mine.

I’m allowed to process, sure. But I’m never given enough space to express what I’ve processed.
So it stays stuck. I stay stuck.

I didn’t come here to find peace.
I came because I want to understand what part of me broke the timeline.
I want to rewind to the moment I stopped being enough.
I want to see the exact second I lost control of my own life.

I want to go back.
I want to hold the moment.
I want to fix the damn thing.

But if I can’t fix it…

Then I want to stop it from happening again.
To anyone else. Or maybe just to me.

Whatever it takes.
Whatever it costs.