The Amber Meridian

The street smelled of crushed marigolds and warm tallow, curved inward by some impossible geometry of the old district. The child stood unbothered in her red skirt, bathed in the heavy, honey-thick light of a noon that had somehow acquired a face. There was no terror in the air, only the quiet, rhythmic hum of a solar deity that had finally decided to smile down on its favorite street corner.