"Miss Danist, what exactly is the secret of that village?"
The little princess, who was also eating at the table, asked obediently and respectfully. Angelina was only half a year away from her next birthday, so Danist Gustav was only half a year older than her:
"Investigations revealed that the entire village had fallen within a Time Stop force field. It wasn't time being paused, but rather that all scenery there never changed.
The village's environment was forever fixed on a spring afternoon from some year. Although the outsider villagers could be born, grow old, fall ill, and die, after death their souls could not leave that area. Instead, they became children and were born again to local pregnant women.
So in reality, most of the people there had been the first refugees from a thousand years ago. A small number were Travelers who had later wandered into the village. They were their own Ancestors. As for why the road could not be found, the current conclusion was that the birth of that special area was one manifestation of the temporal disorder in the woods. It was likely only accessible at specific times each year, by following a specific route. Other than that, only something as extravagant as what we did today could get someone in."
"Danist, you've made this story completely unromantic. I still prefer the ending where 'the dreamlike village never appeared again.'"
Flora complained softly. The red-haired girl merely smiled and did not mind. By now, she understood Flora's personality quite well:
"Though it sounds like some fantastical plot from a story, if this sort of thing happened frequently all over the world, I doubt anyone would find it romantic. This is one manifestation of unstable time in the Material World. It may not be as dangerous