THE STORY THAT REFUSED TO HAVE ONE NARRATOR
It began, as all good stories begin, in a small town and with a rumor whispered. And from the start, there was a fight over who would tell it. "Let me begin," spoke the old clockmaker, his voice as fragile as a hairspring. "A tale begins with the precise turn of a key, the deliberate tick-tock of fate. I saw it all from the window of my store. The girl, Luna, she found it, a small box of dark, peculiar wood." "Nonsense!" the street cleaner shouted, flourishing his broom like a sword. "A tale begins on the ground, in the earth, where truth and secrets wait. I was there first! I saw the box wasn't a box, it was a seed, a feeble, blue glow, sown in the cracks of the cobblestones." The baker, powdering his eyebrows with flour, wiped his hands on his apron. "You're both wrong. A tale starts with a smell. The air in the morning was thick with the aroma of baked bread and something else, something sweet and wild like an unruly garde...
