9:11 PM, SONON DE LA BRETECHE, FRANCE

Gentile Baillieu sat outside the tiny café, sipping her bitter coffee and reading in the dim candle light. Her eyes ran over the passage over and over again.
“"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."