a forest of invisible trees

Sometimes, the answers aren’t meant to be found. They’re meant to be lived.

It wasn’t quite four-something yet, barely even four at all when Orrin came down the stairs.

The shop was busy already, settling into its usual waiting hush—wooden beams flexing softly, glass sighing against its frames, the door latch shifting as if testing itself—when a payphone booth at the far end of the shop creaked open.

Orrin exhaled.

“Are you serious? An entire booth? Come on now, how would anyone take an entire booth home? What was wrong with just taking the phone?”

The moment he had finished his sentence, the phone inside the booth rang. Once, twice even, before it fell silent, almost as if it had changed its mind about being answered.

Orrin pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh, don’t start with me," he muttered, though whether he was talking to the shop or the phone, he wasn’t sure.

The booth stood at an odd angle, its base slightly sunken into the wooden floor, as if the shop itself hadn’t quite decided where to put it. The glass panels were smudged with fingerprints that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Inside, the phone hung slightly askew, as if someone had only just let it go.

Orrin sighed and stepped closer. The last thing he needed was an entire payphone booth sitting around, taking up space meant for something a little more portable. He nudged the door with his foot.

It creaked but didn’t budge.

Of course not.

Crossing his arms, he regarded the booth with mild exasperation. “Look, whatever unfinished business you’ve got, you can take it up with someone else. Preferably someone who has the time to deal with a haunted phone line. I’ve got—” he checked his watch “—about forty-one minutes before the shop opens. If I have to spend this time arguing, I’d much rather do so with Little Sir Menace and tear the little thing off of anything he lunges at.”

As he spoke, he turned to a table nearby, where the little clay knight was pulling on the handle of a floating teaspoon, apparently trying to stop it from hovering closer to a small bowl of colored pearls.

With a heavy sigh, Orrin made his way to the table.

Little Sir Menace had wedged his tiny lance beneath the handle of the teaspoon, bracing himself against the table with all the force a little clay knight could muster. The spoon, unimpressed, wobbled gently in the air, inching ever closer to its destination. The little knight gave a soundless huff and doubled his efforts. Orrin plucked him up by the back of his helmet like an unruly kitten. “I know you think you’re doing something heroic, but it’s just a spoon.”

The knight flailed; lance still pointed at his floating target of the hour. Orrin set him down a safe distance away, where he immediately began looking for something else to duel. Satisfied—for the moment, at least—Orrin turned back toward the booth. It had moved.

Only slightly, but enough to notice.

The sunken tilt was a little sharper now, and the phone hung lower on its cord. A soft tap, tap, tap sounded as it rocked against the glass.

“Fine,” he muttered. While the shop was known for pulling in oddities, most of them had the decency to wait until the doors opened to start demanding attention. This one, however, was impatient. He stepped back toward the booth, nudging the door again with his foot and this time, it swung open.

A rush of cold air spilled out, carrying the unmistakable scent of rain-soaked pavement. In one way or another, the booth still belonged to some distant street corner. Somewhere, where the sky had fallen apart, wept, and raged.

The air inside felt thicker, pressing against his skin in a way that made him breathe a little deeper; with more care, perhaps, or maybe it wasn’t deeper but slower, with no care at all.

But then, the phone twitched.

Orrin watched as it lifted—just slightly, as if nudged by an unseen hand—before dropping back against the glass with a dull clack. A stack of books toppled over loudly, and as Orrin looked over his shoulder, he spotted Little Sir Menace buried under unfinished travel journals and worn-looking post stamp-booklets for collectors.

He let out a slow breath and turned away from the booth, stepping toward the mess of fallen books, where Little Sir Menace peered out from between the covers of an old, half-filled travel journal.

“Certainly, the last two nights, you must have been bored out of your little mind, isn’t that so? We’ve barely been down here for half an hour and here you are, hunting teaspoons and bringing down stacks of books.”

As he picked the knight up and settled the little thing against his chest, the shadows in the clay-cracks rippled. Orrin traced them, watched how they raised themselves towards the tip of his finger, before observing the knight and the way it quivered and shivered as it leaned more into his chest.

“You’re a darling little thing, you know. All fight and sharp edges, but so so soft-hearted.”

Little Sir Menace stilled in his palm, the tremor in his clay frame barely noticeable, save for the subtle way his lance wavered. Orrin traced a thumb along the unfinished grooves of his armor, feeling the way the tiny knight leaned ever so slightly into the touch. He settled himself behind the counter, his fingertips continuing to follow the shadowy seams etched into the knight; holding the little thing together effortlessly.

For a while, Orrin simply sat there, tracing the faint imperfections in the knight’s frame, until the windows, which had been fogged over since he’d come down, began to clear. Orrin turned toward the glass, watching as the outside world revealed itself in streaks—first a flicker of lamplight, then the slant of old rooftops, the silhouette of power lines tangled like veins across the early morning sky.

A small town, by the looks of it.

Narrow streets, storefronts slumbering behind darkened windows, the distant glow of a bakery sign seemingly scorching the half-light-half-dark situation that was going on in this place. Either a night bleeding out too fast, becoming morning before it even had a chance to be night, or a morning who’d much rather be night.

Time was a fickle thing, after all.

At the end of the shop, next to tables and shelves, the payphone booth remained exactly where it had wedged itself into the wooden floor. Still angled. Still rain scented. Still entirely someone else’s problem.

Orrin sighed. Little Sir Menace shifted slightly in the crook of his arm and Orrin absently adjusted his hold, the small knight’s tiny lance still angled toward the world as if preparing to duel the morning itself.

Then, at precisely 4:44, the shop unlocked itself. The latch gave a soft click. The door eased open, just enough for the threshold to breathe, and by the time the chime above the door had quivered itself awake, the door was pushed open. The figure wore a coat too thin for the lingering chill, and damp curls of pale hair plastered against a forehead that looked as if it had spent too much time pressed against cold windowpanes.

Orrin didn’t move. He had seen plenty of customers step through this door, carrying all sorts of unfinished things—memories, regrets, half-written beginnings, shy endings, customers who needed a push for their leap, others who needed a fall because they leapt too much—but this one felt...

Fractured. Broken-skied. Like he had walked through a storm that had yet to leave him.

The young man—Hiems—hesitated just past the threshold, his gaze flicking towards the counter. The weight of his exhaustion didn’t show in the way he stood, but in the way he held himself together—deliberate, careful, the way one might hold a coat closed against the wind when the buttons were long gone.

Hiems’ fingers twitched where they hovered near the doorframe, as if debating whether to step fully inside or turn and leave. Orrin exhaled softly, crossing his arms.

“You’ve already made it past the threshold, Hiems, nothing you can do to avoid this anyway. So how about you step in and close the door behind you?”

Hiems didn’t move immediately, his eyes skimming the space around him.

There was a pause. A hesitation. But then, carefully—like someone stepping onto something they weren’t sure would hold their weight—he made his way to the counter where he met Orrin’s gaze. And for the briefest moment, it almost looked like Hiems wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

Orrin’s gaze softened, a quiet acknowledgment passing between them, though neither of them spoke. The light through the dusty windows behind Hiems still hadn’t fully unfogged, and in that soft gray haze, Hiems almost appeared like a reflection of something that had settled too deep.

Not in a way where it was finished, but rather in a way where it hadn’t even had the intention to begin at all.

“I suppose you wonder what this place is and how I know your name; as all do.” Orrin said with a quiet voice. “So, I welcome you to the Four Fourty-Four. I am Orrin, its shopkeeper. And a good shopkeeper knows their customers.”

Hiems didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he ran his fingers over the edge of the counter, as if to reassure himself that this was real; that he was here or perhaps just somewhere at all. There was something tentative in the way he moved, like a person unsure of the ground beneath their feet. His eyes, dark with the strain of too many moments saved up and unspent, flicked over to Orrin again.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Orrin asked, his tone soft but unwavering.

Hiems swallowed, his lips parting as if he might say something, but the words hung there, just out of reach. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he nodded, though it was clear the answer had yet to find its place in him. Orrin’s eyes lingered on the young man for a moment longer, his fingers absently tapping against his own arm. The space between them was thick with unsaid things, but Orrin was patient.

The small-town street outside was coming into focus now, visible through the window as the shop seemed to unfog. The space beyond the door felt just as fractured as Hiems himself, a cracked sidewalk leading into the edges of a street that had yet to fully make sense of itself.

“Well,” Orrin said with a faint smile, “you’ve found your way here, and that’s a start. So, take your time. It’s not about rushing.” He nodded toward the quiet, breathing shelves of forgotten objects, “Feel free to have a look around.”

Hiems stared at the shelves, the clutter, the oddities that seemed to shift in the corners of his vision. There was a little frown when he spotted the phone booth and Orrin chuckled quietly.

“Oh, believe me. I had the very same expression when I came down here to find it there. I don’t think you’re looking to take it home, do you?”

Hiems merely shook his head.

It took another few unspent moments before Hiems finally moved himself between a couple shelves.

Orrin watched him with an unreadable gaze. He wasn't in a hurry and supposedly, Hiems wasn’t either. Time, here, seemed less like a measure of progress and more like an ever-rolling tide that never broke. At least not until 6 AM.

"Some people," Orrin's voice broke the silence, "come here because they're looking for something they’ve lost. Others, because they’ve given up on ever finding it. And some few, they come here with a direction in mind but leave on the opposite path.”

Hiems paused, the edge of a dusty book in his hand. His expression remained unreadable, but his shoulders tightened ever so slightly, as if a question had been prodded but not yet formed.

“Do you know which one you are?” Orrin continued, his eyes following Hiems' every move. Hiems, again, didn’t answer right away, but something shifted in his posture. “None of this feels real,” Hiems said quietly, his voice hoarse, like someone who had spent too much time speaking with no one at all.

“Ah.” Orrin’s smile was small but knowing, as though he had heard that phrase more times than he cared to admit. “That's the funny thing about places like this. They’re real enough, but only if you let them be.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He glanced toward Orrin, but his eyes didn't meet the shopkeeper's directly. “Like it doesn’t matter?” Orrin's voice was like a gentle nudge, coaxing him further into the conversation without forcing it. “Like there’s no purpose to any of this?”

Hiems' eyes met his for a brief moment, and in that look, there was an echo of something darker, something deeper. It was the look of someone who had lost themselves in a forest without trees, with sight on all paths, able to spot all corners and gaps, and still couldn’t see the way out.

“Is this... hell?” Hiems asked, the words barely more than a whisper.

“Hell? No. Just a shop offering things.”

There was a brief pause, half a heartbeat at best, before Orrin spoke again. “What a surprising thing to ask. I believe I haven’t heard this since... a little over a week.”

Hiems shook his head slowly, fingers brushing over a shattered mirror on a shelf. “Not what I meant. You’re not a very good listener, are you?”

Orrin's smile widened just slightly, the corners of his mouth pulling up in a way that felt both sympathetic and amused. He didn't respond immediately, letting the weight of Hiems' words hang in the air for a moment before stepping away from the counter, his footsteps soft against the creaking floorboards.

“Perhaps,” Orrin began quietly, his voice almost a murmur, “I listen in ways that others might not understand.” His eyes glinted with a knowing light. “But you're right. I'm not sure I understand you yet.”

Hiems turned away, rubbing a hand over his face, trying to push away the rising frustration that tangled with his thoughts. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I don't know anything. I just feel like... I’ve been told my whole life that learning is what matters. But it feels like I’ve been learning the wrong things.”

“Or maybe you've been learning the right things in the wrong way,” Orrin replied gently. “Life is not a straight path. It twists. It bends. Sometimes, you have to walk through the wrong lessons to find the right ones.”

Hiems stood motionless in front of the mirror, staring at his fractured reflection. “Is there a way out of here?” he asked, his voice small, almost uncertain, as if he were afraid to voice the thought out loud.

“In a way, yes. But not the way you think. The way out is through, not around or away.”

Hiems met Orrin’s gaze, a thousand questions in his eyes, but no words to form them. He turned back to the shelves, lost again in the shifting shadows. “It feels like… I’m walking through someone else’s nightmare, and I can’t wake up.”

Orrin tilted his head, watching Hiems with a soft, calculating gaze. “You’re still waiting to wake up, then. That’s what most of us do here, I suppose. Wait. For something to change. For someone to give us the answer.“ He let the words sink in, his voice soft but steady. “My shop, however, doesn’t hold answers. And to be honest with you, it's not about the things it holds. It’s about the things it doesn’t hold. What you leave behind when you walk away. The lessons you didn’t learn, the parts of you that you’re trying to outrun.”

Hiems turned abruptly, his fingers curling around a nearby shelf as if it might steady him. “I’m not outrunning anything,” he snapped, though the words sounded hollow even to him. Orrin didn't flinch at the sharpness in his voice. He stepped a little closer, his presence warm yet unsettling, like a quiet flame just at the edge of one’s sight. Hiems, however, scoffed and took a step back to stare at him for a long moment, as if searching for a crack in Orrin's calm demeanor, something that might hint at an answer he could grasp. But there was nothing.

To his left, the shop shifted. Shelves crammed themselves into a smaller space, tables squished their presence into nooks far too small for them, but somehow, it all worked out. Within a moment, a small space had emerged. A table in the middle of two sofas, both looking worn and tired out in a way only furniture looked when it was ready to be something else. Yet, the whole space seemed welcoming enough for a bit of tea and a treat. Orrin smiled.

“How about some tea, Hiems? A warm beverage and a snack might just be enough to sort things out. There’s no good thinking done with cold blood and a hungry heart.”

Hiems glanced toward the table, eyes narrowing with suspicion. “Tea?” Hiems repeated, his voice brittle. “Is that what you think will fix everything? Tea? A snack? Is that your answer to all of this?” His gesture was wide, encompassing the strange shifting room, and the chaos of his thoughts.

Orrin’s smile didn’t waver. He simply moved toward the table, hands steady, every motion measured and calm. “No,” he said softly. “It’s not about fixing anything. It’s about allowing things to settle. Sometimes, you can’t solve the problem until you allow yourself to sit with it.”

He reached for a small kettle on the table, a soft steam rising from it, and sat down. Hiems, however, turned sharply, his back to Orrin now. “I don’t know what you're talking about.”

“I know you don’t,” Orrin said, as if he already expected this response. Hiems felt a surge of frustration and anger rising like bile in his throat. “I—I didn’t ask to exist like this.” His words came out bitter, jagged, and full of the resentment he had carried for far too long. “Why am I here? Why me?”

Orrin was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was softer, more understanding. “I see where this is going. So how about you sit down for this sort of conversation? They are easy to have, but everything is easier with a snack and some tea. Besides, I have to have a small break for a snack anyway. So, I don’t see a reason why we can’t have one together.”

Hiems’ heart pounded in his chest. The question stung, but it also felt like the first honest thing anyone had ever asked him. He looked at the table once more, then back at Orrin, who was pouring the tea into cups. He was exhausted— tired of thinking, of seeing, tired of understanding more only to understand less. Maybe, just for a moment, sitting would be enough. Reluctantly, he sank into the sofa, momentarily surprised at the warmth and how comfortable it was. It hadn’t looked like that at all.

“What is it you’re trying to show me?” he asked, his voice quieter now, edged with frustration but also a strange surrender to the moment. Orrin, though, merely smiled. “As I said. I am trying to have a snack.”

Hiems stared at the tea in front of him, the liquid swirling as if it had a life of its own. Not long after, a little clay figure wobbled towards them. He watched as it made its way up on the table, stealing a few biscuits, a cookie, and a cream puff. The way its tiny hands barely managed to hold anything at all but tried energetically to leave with all its treasures at once, made him smile.

“That’s Little Sir Menace. He’s always eager to do the impossible. If he stabs you, it’s likely not meant as a threat. You’re simply in his way then.”

“Why did you bring me here?” Hiems asked, his voice trembling slightly now, as if the question had finally slipped. Orrin leaned back, his gaze thoughtful. “I didn’t bring you here, Hiems. You found your way here. And I begin to think that the shop does not hold an object for you, but a conversation. I think that for tonight, I am the thing you seek. I’m nothing tangible. I’m a concept. A thing that comes with another thing.”

“So, I am dreaming?”

“If that makes it easier for you, we can pretend that you are. Taking the easy way isn’t always a thing to avoid, you know. It depends on the situation. If easy is all you can do and the other option is not doing anything because things are too difficult then… well, then easy is just fine.”

Hiems' eyes flicked to the shelves again, the clutter, the objects that seemed to pulse with a strange energy. He didn’t understand it, couldn’t understand it.

“I’ve been afraid,” he said softly, almost to himself. Orrin nodded. “I can tell.”

As he spoke, he poured a smaller cup of tea for the little knight and while he did, Hiems looked at Orrin, really looked at him for the first time. “I… I sometimes feel that we aren’t alive, you know. I mean… I exist, obviously. And so do others.” Hiems mumbled quietly. He fumbled with the handle of his mug, eyes stubbornly locked on a biscuit.

Albeit the long pause that followed, Orrin didn’t interrupt the young man. Some thoughts took their time forming, and even more thoughts took their time being spoken.

“No one understands… Whenever I say that I feel like we are in hell, they give me looks and whisper to each other. Sometimes they smile and treat it as a joke and I laugh to make it less… awkward, but... I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“And you’re afraid there’s something wrong with you for thinking like that? Or are you afraid you’re right?”

Hiems blinked, the question catching him off guard. His fingers tightened around the cup, the warm ceramic grounding him even as his thoughts spiralled out of control. His gaze shifted down to the tea, swirling it absently, as though the motion might give him the answer.

“I—” He swallowed, his throat tight. “I don’t know. Both, I guess.”

He looked up then, meeting Orrin’s steady gaze, the shopkeeper’s calm presence never wavering. “I’ve heard about hell. About the devil and his pit of fire, sulfur smell, and brimstone castle, his demons, the torture for the sins we commit… but what if it’s here? Everything just… makes much more sense then. There’s no devil. We’re our own devils. And the devils for other people, that’s us too. Maybe not for my best friend, but for the girl I rejected, the boy I laughed at, maybe even for my parents when I did something they condemned as wrong, but which felt right to me.”

Orrin considered the words carefully, his gaze soft, like he understood more than he let on. He took a sip of his own tea, slow and deliberate, before responding. “That would imply that you’re your own angel, too. And other people’s angel. Maybe not for the girl you rejected, but for the one you smiled at when she looked at you. Not for the boy you laughed at, but for the little boy you helped getting back up after he tripped and fell. Maybe not for your parents, but for someone else who heard about what you did and thought how brave it was of you to do what you deemed right instead of avoiding it because someone else deemed it wrong.”

Hiems shook his head slightly, only to pause. “People always say that the good people are taken too early, too soon, to sudden, too violent. Their deaths don’t do them justice because they were children or sick people with dreams or genuinely good people. But maybe that’s the thing… They were good. And whatever it was about them, their loss isn’t about these people, it’s about the rest of the world having to deal with it. It’s yet another punishment, isn’t it? And the good ones? They get to leave hell. I wonder if they go to heaven then. Or if they wake up somewhere and get to live. Like… nicely.”

Hiems closed his eyes, his heart racing. “I‘m still here, am I not… so I’m not a good person. I’m a devil just like everyone else. And we’re all stuck.”

Orrin leaned back into the pillows, his eyes thoughtful. Hiems, he had to admit, was quite the customer. It was unlike anything else he had experienced at the shop in the most recent years.

Sure, there were the ones with high believes, with unshakable faith, with dreams bigger than their soul, plans stronger than their body. But Hiems…

Hiems was… unalike. There was an intensity to him, a deep current running just beneath the surface, that Orrin couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t just confusion or bitterness—it was a hunger, a need to understand—to grasp—something that was beyond his reach. It was the kind of thing Orrin had seen before, in those who walked the line between despair and revelation, the ones who had started to ask questions that could unravel the very fabric of their existence.

More often than not, however, the hunger destroyed them.

Orrin took another sip of his tea, considering Hiems with a quiet, almost pitying gaze. Not because Hiems was weak—far from it. But because the weight of his own thoughts seemed to be crushing him under its sheer mass.

“The world is not black and white, Hiems. So, if there are devils, then there are angels, too. You may be your own devil, and then in other situations you are your own angel. Maybe being the devil to one person means simultaneously being the angel for another person. Maybe you’re neither, and you’re just caught up in the middle; a lesson for the devils and the angels. Something for them to deal with and learn from. Maybe you are someone’s turning point; their lesson.” He paused, letting his words stretch between them like a long, tense breath.

“Humankind tends to believe that good and bad are opposites, but I don’t think it’s that simple. Life isn’t as neatly divided as that. Sometimes, doing good can be a little messy. And other times, what we think is bad can end up being part of a larger, more complicated picture, and suddenly it was the very thing needed to complete it; inherently good, but no one would have seen that coming if they’d judge in a black and white pattern.”

Hiems’ brows furrowed. He wanted to argue, to push back, but the words felt stuck in his throat.

“I don’t care,” Hiems said, his voice small but urgent, like he was finally pleading for someone to hear him. “I didn’t ask for any of it. The guilt, the mistakes. The people I hurt... the things I never even realized. I didn’t ask for it, and now I’m stuck with this... feeling that I’m just... wrong. That everything I’ve done is wrong and that I’ll always do wrong no matter what I do.”

Behind Hiems, the wall shifted and one of the empty frames quivered and stirred. Shadows from a nearby corner spilled upwards and into the frame, dressing the small canvas in a forest of invisible trees.

“Maybe you didn’t ask for it,” Orrin said quietly as he watched the canvas fill itself, “but that’s all you will ever get. A moment. A breath. A choice to either sit with or run from. Everyone has something they didn’t choose. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need to deal with it sooner or later. It doesn’t mean they only have the thing they never asked for.”

Hiems felt a knot tighten in his chest. He wanted to argue, to shout that it wasn’t that simple, that everything felt so wrong, so suffocating, but the words refused to come. Instead, he just sat there, his heart pounding in his ears. He felt like he was teetering on the edge of something.

Suddenly, the little clay figure kicked his fingers and with a flinch, Hiems spilled his tea all over the thing. However, the hot beverage never touched the knight; instead, it was parted by a floating teaspoon who had come to the rescue. The spilled tea vanished as if it had never spilled at all, and when Hiems glanced at his cup, there was once again tea inside; dark liquid steaming in puffs, as if it never had been gone at all.

The little knight kicked his fingers again and now, Hiems noticed why. Between its tiny hands, it held a biscuit angled towards him, as if offering it for quite some time now. His gaze flicked from the biscuit to the knight’s vacant, hollow eyes. There was something almost comical about it, something that made Hiems want to laugh, if only for the sheer absurdity of it all.

Here he was, sitting in a room full of shifting walls and odd things, having an existential crisis, and a tiny clay knight with no words and no emotions was offering him a biscuit like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He reached out slowly, almost cautiously, and took the biscuit. “Thank you,” Hiems muttered, his voice hoarse, the words awkward in his mouth as if he hadn’t said something so simple in years. He took a hesitant bite of the biscuit, its sweetness grounding him further, somehow anchoring him to the present. It wasn’t a grand gesture; it wasn’t a solution to the gnawing questions that tore at his insides—but it was something.

Orrin finally broke his gaze from the wall, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“I’ll remember your visit, you know. It’s rare that someone comes here looking for something that isn’t tangible. People don’t come here with concepts. They come here with situations; with feelings and problems.”

“Am I not having a problem? Or feelings?”

It sounded almost offended.

Orrin shook his head. “Not in the way others do, no. You have sight and a hunger that rarely plagues your kind. That’s why no one understands you. Why they don’t feel quite alright with it. Their forest isn’t invisible. They know where the trees are, how solid the ground is. They have tumbled into one or two and they know it was a tree that caused them their pain. But you? You can’t see your trees. If you walk into one, it could be anything and everything. You barely feel the ground underneath your feet, so your steps are slower, wobblier, more unsteady.”

Hiems closed his eyes for a moment, his mind swirling with confusion, self-doubt, and an aching longing to escape a pain he couldn’t explain.

“What you should take away from this is that you don’t have to have everything figured out,” Orrin continued, his voice soft. “You don’t have to solve everything the day it happens. Sometimes, it’s enough to just sit with it for a while. It’s not about fixing things. It’s about seeing them and thinking about them and evaluating if, for your own goals and wishes, it needs to be fixed at all. Why cut down a tree that is not in your way, mh?”

“And what if this is hell?”

“Define ‘hell’ for me, if you don’t mind.”

Hiems stared at the floor for a long moment, the biscuit still in his hand, eyes still closed.

What was hell? Was it just the suffering he felt in his chest—the gnawing, ceaseless unease, the feeling of being trapped in his own skin? Was it the quiet terror that everything he did would never be enough, that every step forward was followed by two steps back? Was it the way he looked at the world and saw no clear path forward, just an endless labyrinth of mistakes and wrong turns?

Was it the way he struggled to connect with other people? How he always felt out of place and in everyone’s way? How he felt like everyone moved past him, eager to get as far away from him as possible? Like a secret he wasn’t ever meant to be let in on.

“I don’t know,” he finally said, his voice barely a whisper. “I’ve never really thought about it like that. Hell isn’t something you… define, is it? It’s a place. It’s where the bad people go. Murderer, rapists, abusers, criminals. Something… somewhere you’re sent to.”

When he opened his eyes, his gaze immediately met the cup of steaming tea, eager to avoid Orrin entirely. The shopkeeper gave a small nod which, of course, Hiems couldn’t see.

“You’re not wrong there. That’s the concept of it, created by humankind. But that’s not what I mean. I suppose you aren’t very good at listening either.”

Orrin watched as a small smile broke out on Hiems face, as if he had noticed and found it amusing that Orrin had used Hiem’s earlier phrase. The pause stretched into silence once more and Orrin, after quickly checking the grandfather clock by the counter, decided to help the young man out a little. Time was fickle, and sooner or later, morning and night would have decided their stand.

Orrin’s voice was quiet, almost a murmur, when he continued. “In general, hell is the nature of suffering. It’s pain, loss, injustice. It’s something that dominates the human experience. It’s repetitive suffering; enduring the same struggles over and over, poverty, war, heartbreak. It’s the destructive human nature. Greed, betrayal, violence, sabotage of self and others. It’s the dread that comes when one has a déjà vu. It’s past lives and the obsession with it rather than the present and future. It’s the need to have an explanation for everything, from the time of birth to the reason why you prefer green over yellow. It’s the way the history of humankind is so predictable to most of them, but not to the ones who are supposed to keep it in mind. It’s the way mistakes repeat themselves albeit the majority of humankind fighting to avoid that. Hell comes in nuances, Hiems. Arrogance isn’t a quality of hell if you use it the right way. Kindness can very well be an element of hell when you use it as an excuse to lie out of pity or for false assurance.”

Hiems swallowed hard, his hands trembling slightly. “Then what is the point if all of it is nothing and everything at once.”

“The point, Hiems,” Orrin began slowly, choosing his words with care, “is not to seek a definitive answer. It's not about finding one singular meaning in the chaos. The point is in how you walk through it. How you choose to move through what you don’t understand.”

Hiems was still staring at the cup, his fingers gripping it tighter, the porcelain cool despite the warmth radiating from within. His mind swirled with a hundred different thoughts, but none of them making any sense.

“I...” Hiems started, then trailed off. "But if everything is suffering, then isn’t it pointless? To just keep walking through pain without an end? To forever be caught in the same pattern. Every choice seems like the wrong one, every step forward feels like a stumble."

“Well… first of all, humankind does not have forever. You have a few decades.” Orrin said softly, tapping his fingers on the edge of his own cup. “With that said, you’re still looking for an answer. But answers... they don’t work the way you think they do. Not in the way you expect or want. You see suffering as something that can be explained, something that can be fixed or understood in a neat little box, but it doesn’t work like that. Not always. Sometimes it’s about accepting that the path you’re on is filled with it—and that it’s yours to walk. No one can take that journey for you. You can stumble. You can trip. You can feel every single bit of that pain. And still… you can keep moving.”

Hiems swallowed hard, his voice barely above a whisper. “And what if... what if I don’t want to keep moving? What if I want to stop? To just... not exist anymore? What if I’m too tired to walk through it?”

There was a long silence, and the only sound interrupting it was the grandfather clock chiming by the counter.

5:45 AM.

Soon, the shop would close.

Orrin watched as the handles came to a quivering halt, but merely for a moment before the larger handle ticked ahead, eager to make it up to the highest point of the clock. For a few more minutes they sat quietly until finally, Orrin exhaled a slow, measured breath.

“Everyone reaches that point,” Orrin said. “If someone tells you they have never felt that way, they are not being honest with you. At one point in life, something is bound to feel hard; to be all over you, suffocating you, where it all collapses in on you, and you wonder if it would be easier to just... disappear. To stop fighting.” He paused, his eyes flicking to the clock as the pendulum continued its ceaseless swing. “But stopping doesn’t erase what’s been. And it won’t change what comes next.”

The clock’s ticking seemed louder now, echoing in the stillness of the room.

“Here’s the thing,” Orrin continued, leaning forward slightly, his hands folding on his knees. “You may feel like you’re trapped in a cycle. That every path you take is just another loop, another dead end. But the truth is—life, or whatever you want to call this experience—you never really know which step will break the cycle. Which moment will change everything. Not until it happens.”

“And what if it never does? What if everything just stays the same? What if I keep making the same mistakes over and over, until there’s nothing left of me but wreckage and messes?”

Orrin’s eyes softened further, and for a moment, there was something almost fatherly in his gaze. “Then you keep moving anyway,” he said simply, but with a depth that only someone who had lived a hundred and more years could impart. “Because the wreckage is part of it too. It’s not all about the perfect moments, the neat endings, the grand resolutions. It’s about the fragments—the little pieces that remain when everything else falls away.”

The clock ticked once more. Loudly so, almost as if it was trying to provoke with its noises. Hiems heart thudded in his chest. He swallowed again, but the words he wanted to say—the anger, the frustration, the disbelief—were stuck somewhere between his ribs and his breath.

“The future will come regardless of whether you can see it clearly or not, Hiems. What matters is what you do before it reaches you. Big steps or small steps, having a loud presence or a quiet one, preferring green or yellow or both—it’s the little things that matter. The moments people overlook, the minutes that feel wasted and insignificant, the nuances that feel childish and unserious.”

“No one will believe me that I had tea and biscuits with a clay knight in a shop that I saw on the front page of a torn newspaper… I’m insane, aren’t I?”

Orrin chuckled softly. “I suppose most of them will have their doubts, yes. But you aren’t walking in their shoes, neither are you taking their paths. I might never meet them; their paths might be nowhere near mine.”

Hiems shot him a side glance, trying to gauge if Orrin was mocking him, but the shopkeeper’s expression remained unchanged—calm, patient, almost reassuring in its quiet sincerity. “Is that a good sign that they won’t?”

Orrin looked toward the window, where the early morning light began to filter through, softening the shadows in the room. “In a way, the doubts of others might be a good sign. It means they’re not walking the same path, not seeing the same things. They’re not meant to, because that’s your path.”

“What’s good about that? The world feels so... fixed. The way people live, the way they move through everything, like they know what they’re doing. And then there’s me... a part of me feels like I’m just faking it. Like I don’t belong here at all.” He took a breath, his shoulders tensing slightly. “Do you ever... do you ever feel like this?” Hiems asked, his voice quieter now, almost tentative. “Like you don’t belong? Like you’re the only one who doesn’t understand?”

Orrin’s expression softened, a flicker of something almost sad in his eyes, before he gave a small, knowing smile. “Every day, Hiems. Every day. I wish that my path would not have taken certain turns. That my plans would have not changed as drastically as they did. But all that I can do is walk this path and see where it leads. And for the most part, I do find things that I enjoy. Things that I cherish.”

“Like what?”

Orrin’s smile widened. “Like having tea with someone. I haven’t done so in centuries. No one ever asks, you know. They are tangled up looking and searching. And I suppose, I do look like someone who has it all together. And I thank you for visiting me tonight. And for having tea with me and Little Sir Menace.”

Hiems eyes darted back to the little clay knight who had settled himself against the cookie bowl, munching its way through chocolate chips and nuts. He couldn’t help but smile.

“Can I come have tea again?”

At that, Orrin gave Hiems a long look; longer than he had ever before looked at someone who had found their way into his shop.

“I do not know, Hiems. But if that is where your path will take you, you will find us again. Next time, tell me about heaven. And the times where being the devil was the good thing, and the times where being the angel was the bad thing. Tell me about your forest of invisible trees, the small things you found along the way, the dead ends and their kindness, as well as the crossroads and their cruelty.”

The clock struck six then and as the canvas behind Hiems framed itself, the man’s edges blurred into the fog that had crept up on the window once more. And from one blink to the next, Hiems was gone.

Orrin made his way to the window, wiped the glass with his sleeves only to spot the young man outside in the street, holding a torn-up newspaper and a coffee-to-go-mug. Hiems discarded the paper in a nearby bin, sparing no second glance to the shop but then again, he very likely couldn’t see it anymore. It was past six in the morning, after all.

Returning to the table, Orrin finally ate a few biscuits himself. His eyes wandered to the painting that had created itself; a simple clearing surrounded by trees only Orrin could perceive; to anyone else, as well as to Hiems, the forest was indeed invisible. As he turned to pick up Little Sir Menace to retreat into his apartment, Orrin spotted two books on the sofa where Hiems had sat: Plato and Descartes, both books a mess of dog ears, underlined passages, and notes in the margins; very obviously loved and despaired to pieces.

Orrin smiled at the sight before he whisked them to somewhere in the shop, ready for someone to stumble upon them if that was needed.

Little Sir Menace, meanwhile, had climbed inside the cookie bowl, and gave him a look as if to say this took forever, and with a chuckle, Orrin picked the bowl off the table and snatched himself another cookie.

With one last glance toward the phone booth in the back, he made his way up the stairs.

Halfway up, Orrin paused.

“Say, Little Sir Menace. What do you think? Are we the devil in someone’s hell, or the angel in someone’s heaven?”

Little Sir Menace, munching in the bowl, paused for a brief moment, its hollow eyes fixed on Orrin. Then, very slowly, it grabbed another cookie and lifted it towards its mouth, only to nibble away at it, the question already much forgotten.

Chuckling, Orrin reached for another cookie as well and continued his way upstairs.

“Both, I suppose. We’re both.”

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