The only thing that interrupted the blue velvet sky of the night were the stars, so luminescent that they seemed to have glinting fingers that were reaching toward me for attention. The smell of fresh baked bread and damp earth from the unpaved streets below floated up to me on the breeze as I sat on my balcony. In the distance, I could hear the faint joyful cries and giggles of children playing by the water fountain in the center of town. The sturdy, prodigious balsam trees that framed the edges rustled lightly in the wind as if to shiver from the chill in the air, a chill that was abnormal for this time of year.