Albanie is 30 years old, her daughter Maria is four, and the two are on their own. But luckily, Albanie's work at the local library allows them the rare freedom to pursue a life of the imagination. Out of the passing of days, the flow of words, the aspects of life they explore together, a love story unlike any other is woven between Albanie and Maria, one that enables them to feel and hear the "sound of living things" which connects them to the world and its images, even if "images don't say everything about the things that happen." Maria declares that solace must be found for everything, for living beings and for objects, for varieties of love, even for speech itself, which tries to express what is inexpressible about life, "a stolen thing." In the poignant details of daily life, mother and daughter rediscover their capacity for joy.