Clock Shadows Await

Feet scuff against stone as the boy counts something invisible, pressing small shapes into his palm like promises, while she crouches low, tracing the sun’s amber spill in his gestures. Behind them, the colonnade holds its breath; pillars repeat themselves into silence, each arch whispering the same unanswered riddle. The clock above tilts its heavy face toward late afternoon, yet even its long hands seem unwilling to move decisively forward. That painted sentence at their feet—Where Vojta?—glows faint in the angled light, less like a demand and more like ritual chalk, renewed again and again as if saying it enough could conjure him. Strangers drift by, their paths bending around the scene, cycles folding over cycles without collision. Every stillness hums with intent: perhaps Vojta slipped between these same arches, maybe around the kiosk where black screens tilt like sleeping eyes. The air holds the question taut; time swirls, and still, Vojta does not answer.