THE GNOME PROJECT

The path wound lazily between the hills, dust and gravel soft underfoot, grass whispering at his knees. Victor walked at an even pace, neither hurried nor slow, the way he moved when the world was already in rhythm.

He could feel the last town still trailing behind him—the smell of roasted grain, the echo of laughter through open shutters—drifting in his thoughts like steam from a kettle. Ahead, another village waited somewhere beyond the bend. 

He didn’t know its name yet, but he could sense it the way a musician feels the next note.

Now and then he stopped to listen: a cricket in the ditch, a squirrel’s bark in the wind, his own steps finding their measure again. 

Everything seemed to be keeping time with everything else.

He smiled, not at anything in particular, but at how right the pace felt—how a day could hold both memory and expectation without either weighing too much.

He adjusted the strap of his pack and kept walking.

The sound of his steps thinned with the distance until it was only part of the countryside’s hum— a quiet beat folded neatly between what had been and what was still to come.