This project was born from a journey that began among the castles of the Loire and ended in Normandy. Moving north felt like shifting from a children’s fairy tale to the tragic song of a medieval minstrel. The heat of the Loire slowly dissolved into cold air, clouds and rain. Northern France carries itself like someone guarding a secret — or nursing an open wound. Coastlines interrupted by noisy bunkers, rising where once there was only the lull of wind. Endless cliffs, dry grass, memorials scattered everywhere. Fading lighthouses rise from the edge of the sea, silent sentinels between storm and horizon. Normandy is saturated with history, with American presence, almost to the point of expectation — as if the language itself might change. It doesn’t. What remains is a land marked by war, but still deeply, stubbornly alive.