As Lianna talks, she leads you around the edge of the clearing, on an unpaved but smooth path that circles behind the cluster of neat little houses. "It started about a hundred years ago. Josephine was the one who created it." Lianna's voice fills with admiration as she looks off in the distance to where she stands: that tall, pale woman in the Downton Abbey white dress with the delicate silver-rimmed glasses, her dark blond hair swept up into a neat knot, and her posture full of confident command.
"Her sister Felicity was dying." Sorrow shadows over Lianna's eyes, and her voice softens a bit. "Probably cancer, from what she's said? But she doesn't like to talk about it, and we don't want to push her."
Lianna raises a hand to point out Felicity. Now that you look more closely at her, you can see the resemblance. She's got the same pale coloring as Josephine, and their faces are similar. But you wouldn't have pegged them as sisters at first glance. Felicity is shorter and rounder than her sister, with slightly darker hair, and the angles of her face look different because they're not hidden behind glasses. She moves more quickly than Josephine, too, as she makes her way through the little village. Plus, she's dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and comfortable sandals.
"They went to a hospice—or sanitorium, or whatever they called it back in the day," she adds vaguely. "Seaside air, that kind of thing, you know? And Josephine wanted to do something to save her sister. Maybe Josephine already had magic and didn't know it, or maybe coming here was what gave her magic. But when she came to this spot, something definitely happened. She tapped into its magic and made the Timeless Circle. It's a place where time never passes." Lianna's voice softens, and that wondering look comes back into her eyes. "It's always spring here. If you're inside the Circle, you never age, and you never get sick."