Beyond the thorns of demands and displeasure, just past the tangled bracken of small and irksome misfortunes, there is a quiet place known to offer rest.
At the cottage of the end of days, there is a gently sloping roof piled high with auburn leaves, and a small bowl of rainwater where birds bathe their crests.
Just inside the door, whose hinges groan like aching bones that have finally found a feathered bed, there is a time-kissed stove, its belly filled with mirth and starlight.
Atop its heated plates sits a kettle which sings the prophecy of impending comfort.
Its spout points the way to waxed wooden shelves filled with cups of all kinds. There lingers in the green-scented air an invitation to choose, to cradle within worn and weary hands a scalloped brim edged in languid gold, or perhaps a heart-sized bowl that thuds and flutters and asks for nothing.
From the kettle pours a font of moon-bright tea, liquid as glass. It swirls within the well of hand-warmed ceramic like a tide of wistful goodbyes.
The taste is sharper than expected, smoky like fire-roasted sugar. It snaps against the tongue like cedar bark and steals away the tension that gathers in aged fingers.
An armchair waits in the corner, fat with the promise of weightless ease. Embroidered within the eternal night of its velvet, a cosmos twinkles as its stars align.
With a collapsing of limbs… a great knocking of knees, ankles, elbows… the knotted floorboards shift and shuffle, and constellations heave a sigh.
The kettle chirps the end of an age.
A prophecy complete.
