The light of the new day began to filter into the room until it filled the space. During the process, which started slowly and ended in an instant, Simonopio barely blinked, concentrating, trying, in the slow and gradual luminosity in which the boy’s face was bathed, to see the baby he had been and the man he would become, all at the same time. He had no difficulty making out the baby in those bones, assisted perhaps by his memories, but the face of the man eluded him: he saw promise there, but no certainty.
