We would have been caught for sure, but then God split the sea. Children - To Jerusalem. Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, humans would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story.
Children are as puzzled by passing time as grownups.
Literature helps us remember the past with its many moods. To the storyteller yesterday is still here as are the years and the decades gone by. In stories time does not vanish. Neither do people and animals. For the writer and his readers, all creatures go on living forever.