Tick. Tick. Tick.
The old clock in your parents' kitchen sounds just as loud as you remember, and strangely regular.
And then you think that it's strange you think it's strange. That's what a clock is for, isn't it? To keep steady time?
But the more time you spend inside the Timeless Circle, and the deeper you go into its magic, the less you feel connected to the steady progression of time. You've lost track of when your campers are supposed to go from one activity to the next, and what you thought was just a few minutes passing turned out to be an hour or vice versa.
This is what Josephine talked about that first time you visited. The longer someone stays in the Timeless Circle, the less they're bound by the constraints of time.
Is that what you want for yourself? You might be able to have it, if you tried.
Right now though, you could be at any point in time in the past eighteen years: sitting in your parents' kitchen while your dad cooks dinner and your mom talks about her day at work.
Kingsport looked the same, too, as you drove through it on your way back from Camp Cedarcrest for your days off. The same streets clogged with summer tourists, the same sparse trees on the hills overlooking the ocean, the same storefronts and weathered houses.