Elsewhere, a kingdom is still saved. Elsewhere, a war is waged and peace is won. A table is still broken, and four chairs filled. But for others, and by others.
Elsewhere, a wood grows strong, but here, in a small cafe, there sits a woman. She sits alone, because she is comfortable and unhurt there, near the stairs leading up to the roof. Once she was a newcomer, and noticed, but now only her absence would be remarkable.
Every day, at the strike of six o'clock, she enters, and then it is a mug of hot chocolate every thirty minutes until two in the morning. What she does for work, they don't know. If she works at all, they don't know. But her routine is clockwork, and for all that she interacts with the other patrons she may as well be a machine (perhaps they will replace her with a cardboard cutout when she dies).
There is no remembrance of other worlds to sing in, no knowledge of worse or better histories, only a tantalizing dream that withers in the light of morning, whose gossamer threads are too weak to keep a hold on her waking mind. She feels nothing missing, but then, she does not know her own hunger.
So she sits, and she waits, but for what she does not let herself know. That she is waiting at all is perhaps a well-kept secret to herself, but only a fool would suppose that she sits there as an exercise of her freedom. She may sit with the air of contentment, but she has had to strangle her thirst to achieve it (she does not hunger, but that is because, so close to the starvation of her soul, there is nothing left to feel).
In the distance, something roars. She shivers, and tells herself that it is only the cold.
She takes another drink of the hot chocolate cradled in front of her. Almost, almost she believes it.
Follow-up: Partnership with God
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