Row is still an unborn baby. His mother dreams, and fragments of that dream drift into his unformed mind.

News arrives: his father has died in the war. Then comes the long journey, the relocation, and the pain buried far away.

During the three months before his birth, with only a faint consciousness, Row experiences a secret part of his mother’s life — her grief, silence, and unspoken despair — things he would never know after he is born.

Without a complete brain, he can only feel through weak sensations, sharing her emotions and pain in fragments. That was the world before his birth.