The days in Odensala found their own rhythm after that. Not planned exactly, but felt. The way summer days are when you stop trying to fill them and just let them fill you. Some mornings I woke to the sound of Tima whispering to Hoppy and Patchy in the hammock bed, staging elaborate adventures involving pirates, porridge, and a lake monster called Göran. Other mornings she was already in the kitchen with Nain, standing on the little stool, helping spread butter on bread with a concentration that bordered on surgical. Evenings were long and golden. We'd eat on the small balcony—Nain's flat overlooking the rooftops and the distant shimmer of water—and Tima would name the clouds as they drifted past. "That one's a sleeping bear. That one's a hat for a mountain. That one's just shy." One evening, after dinner, I put on one of my old Enya CDs in the small portable player, the one I'd carried since university. The soft chords drifted across the room like mist. Tima curled into the hammock bed and listened, one hand on Hoppy, the other gripping Patchy's paw. "It sounds like water," she murmured. "It does," I said. "Like a river that knows where it's going." Her eyes closed before the second track ended.

Nain and I sat in the old chairs by the window afterwards, tea between us, the moon hanging low outside like a lantern left on the sill. "She's settling," Nain said softly. "Aye," I said. "More than I expected." "Children do that. They find the rhythm of a place faster than we do. Less in the way." We sat there a while, listening to the building breathe—the hum of an old fridge, the tick of the clock in the hallway, the faint creak of a child dreaming in the next room.

On the fourth day, we took the yellow city bus into town and got off near Jamtli. Tima held my hand and walked with that half-skipping gait she used when she was trying to contain excitement. Inside, it was cool and full of soft echoes. We started with the main exhibits—old spinning wheels, skis longer than I was tall, snowshoes made from birchwood and sinew. Tima wandered slowly, stopping at every single doll and every taxidermy fox with a kind of gentle reverence. There was a corner room with a reconstructed Stone Age shelter—fur-lined walls and a flickering projection of a campfire in the centre. Tima crawled in immediately and sat cross-legged like a tiny ancestor. "We can live here if it rains forever," she declared. Further on, we found the scroll room. A massive tapestry stretched from wall to wall, unfurling the legends of Jämtland across time: the Sami herders, the Norse settlers, the Swedish kingdom swallowing it all. One panel showed the Three Weavers of Destiny, hunched at their loom, threads of red and silver streaming through their fingers. Tima stared at it for a long time. "They look tired," she whispered. I nodded. "Weaving the world is hard work." Then came the folklore section—dark wood panels and soft lighting. A huge wall mural told the tale of Jata and Kata, two ancient trolls said to live beneath the lake. According to the story, they'd spent centuries brewing something in a massive iron cauldron at the shoreline. Storm after storm they summoned, waves crashing as their brew bubbled. "After many moons," the plaque read, "it hissed and spat, and from the foam leapt a beast none had seen before—a serpent with the head of a cat, body long as a river, scales like moonlight on snow." Tima stood frozen in front of it, her mouth parted slightly. "That's like Cerridwen," she said. "She brewed the awen and it got too strong. That's when everything changed." My heart caught. That she remembered. That she understood. We sat for a while in a small wooden boat in the corner of the hall, just the two of us. She told me what she'd do if she met the cat-serpent. "I'd give it a scarf, because lake monsters might get cold." Before leaving, we stepped outside to the open-air portion of the museum—old farmhouses, painted red and ochre, cobbled streets and flower boxes brimming with wild herbs. Chickens pecked between the stones. Tima danced between them with delight. In the museum café, we ended our visit with thick pancakes, served with cream and raspberry jam. Tima ate hers like a scroll, rolling it up and biting it from one end. Her lips turned pink from the jam. "This is the taste of old stories," she announced solemnly. And I believed her.