It's a coffee shop.
And it has always been the same. It was the same before she came here, and she knows – she knows – she will be the same long after. Though the residents change with the varying seasons, he will never change – and neither will she, sitting here in this basement, nursing the same scorching cup in her numb hands.
"Drink up."
It's been years now, maybe. She never kept count – neither does anyone else in this town that has forgotten time. Weeks pass, and days are easily identifiable, with the routine arrival of the town regulars – the fox, the camel, the boar. The seasons change, and with it, the festivals. But how many have passed since her moving is lost to faded memory.
She graciously accepts the cup in her hands, downs it willingly; though it scalds and burns the flavour wins through, and she laughs with joy at that familiar shot of caffeine that is so familiar, so common to her system.
She has earned her place. She came to this town as a stranger, a foreign face – such a humiliating experience, running errands, wearing the hideous uniform as a symbol of her disgrace. But slowly, so slowly, she earned her place. Her house grew in size. She communicated with the others; she added to the museum. What had once been a strange, foreign creature – a human – was now accepted; grudgingly, at first, and then genuinely, honestly, willingly.
He may be on tonight. Behind her, on that same stage, he may come and stay – and she will sit before him, and listen, as a child does to a parent, paying unwavering attention to a bedtime story. His songs have no words, but it does not matter. She understands what he means no matter which way he says it.
She will rearrange the stars. Between them she will draw lines, create constellations that mean something to her, and perhaps to another, too. The one to whom she sends those messages in bottles out, washed away to a distant shore where they might receive it, and smile.
"…Thanks."
She keeps the cup in her hands a moment longer. The endless, wavering music plays constantly, circuitously, and it will never end. Not while she sits here, in her roost, and gazes into the empty cup. It was not always like this – there was a life before, far more busy and complex than this. This is far, far simpler, almost endlessly simple, and it does not end.
She does not regret it. As she steps out of the museum, shovel in hand, she glances up at the night stars. She smiles. These stars are hers, and this human does not for a second regret her new life here in this Wild World; not for a moment, not for a moment.