The rain Elias remembered from his childhood was a transaction. His grandfather would stand on the porch, looking at the scorched cornfields, and offer a prayer. If the prayer was right, and the sky was merciful, the rain came. It was a call and response. The ritual was a request for intervention.
But Elias lived in a fourth-floor apartment in a city of concrete and glass. The sky here did not bargain. It was indifferent.
He stood by the window at 6:00 AM. If he wasn’t careful, the day would dissolve. That was the danger now—not drought, but diffusion. Without the farm, without the seasons, without a god demanding tribute, time had no natural shape. It was a liquid that would spill across the floor, leaking from morning into afternoon until the sun went down on a day that felt like it had never actually started.
He turned away from the window. He had to build the container himself.
He walked to the hallway. Here was the first tool: The Doorway.
To a guest, it was just a painted wooden frame leading to a small spare room. To Elias, it was a membrane. He paused before it. He didn’t look for a feeling of readiness—feelings were weather, and he couldn’t rely on weather. He simply aligned his body.
He stepped through.
Inside, the room was sparse. A desk, a lamp, a chair.
He approached The Chair. It was rigid, unpadded oak. It offered no comfort, only support. In a romantic world, he would sit here waiting for inspiration, for the “mood” to strike, for the universe to bless him with a creative surge.
But this was the mechanism. He didn’t sit to write. He didn’t sit to produce. He sat to establish the edge of the hour.
Elias pulled the chair out—scraping the floor, a sharp, defining sound—and sat down. He placed his hands flat on the desk. He did not open a laptop. He did not pick up a pen.
He breathed in. He breathed out.
Nothing happened. The heavens did not open. No sudden clarity washed over him. The room remained exactly as it was: quiet, dust motes dancing in a slat of light, the hum of the refrigerator in the other room.
And that was the victory.
In the old world, the ritual failed if the rain didn’t come. In this world, the ritual succeeded because Elias had decided to arrive. He had carved a distinct “Here” out of the shapeless “Everywhere.”
He felt the hard wood against his back. He felt the specific gravity of the room. The anxiety of the leaking morning receded, hitting the hard boundary he had just erected.
Arrival is the decision, he thought.
He wasn’t waiting for the day to be good. He was making the day inhabitable.
He checked his watch. 6:05 AM. The structure held. He was inside the time, not drowning in it.
“Okay,” he said to the empty room.
He picked up his pen. Not because he had to, but because the ritual was complete, and now, finally, he was free to begin.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co
Travel in Life 