A Field of Repeating Clocks

The meadow didn't look unusual from the road. But the clocks in town always lost three minutes a year, and the discrepancy came from here.

She entered at noon. By the time she crossed twenty meters, it was 1988. A radio played six gardens away. She had been eight years old that summer and she had been happy.

She moved through the meadow methodically, checking her phone. 2019. 2003. 2031. Each patch its own weather, its own smell of cut grass or woodsmoke.

She found 3:17 PM, March the seventh — the exact hour she'd looked away and missed the thing she had meant to witness. It was still happening, three meters off the road.