A story is already over before we hear it. That is how the teller knows what it means.

Slowed time is -- or should be -- a way of pointing to what's important.

This is fictional time, where events play out and possibilities are exhausted, so that meaning can emerge.

[S]torytelling, in ancient and modern practice, is always a contemplation of the experience of time passing. A story depends on things not standing still, on the built-in condition of impermanence.

A story is entirely determined by what portion of time it chooses to narrate.

Length is weight in fiction, pretty much.