For every day he’d spent there, a year had gone by here in the real world. Every morning while he’d played in the spring warmth, months had passed. In the afternoon, while he’d lazed in the summer sun, the same. And those haunted twilights, which had seemed so brief, had been another span of months, as had the Christmas nights, full of snow and presents. They’d all slipped by so easily, and though he had only aged a month, his mom and dad had lived in sadness for thirty-one years, thinking that their little boy had gone forever.
