Survival skills

I woke up as a fairy in the empty restaurant next to the woods.  I suppose I always knew when I wanted to live in the dollhouse in the attic that my hopes and dreams beat inside of a tiny heart.  But not until I opened my eyes and found myself crouching in the furthest corner of the kitchen pantry did I know for certain.

            I had been gone for a year—where, I couldn’t say.  But I did know I’d been very ill, and that during this illness some industrious housekeeper within had thrown huge dust covers over much of my memory.  I wasn’t sure I minded.  Something about the twilight endlessly falling over the woods told me that the last good day had been long ago.

            The restaurant, however, I remembered.  Quietly elegant, its white tablecloths, spotless place settings, and crystal water glasses spoke of another time.  Windows ran the length of the entire outside wall:  restless trees and half-lit sky filled the view as far as the eye could see.  In the cramped kitchen, steel gray units and panelled cabinets housed the pots, pans, and other cooking items.  And then there was the pantry, nearly empty, where I now found myself.  I had never seen anyone cooking in that kitchen.  Save one, I had never seen another soul in the restaurant at all.

            In this endless sunset that enveloped the restaurant, no customers ever came.  Instead, my friend Marietta, the hostess, usually sat at one of the perfectly made tables by herself, doing paperwork of a kind we never discussed.  Only the fading light that rippled through those whispering trees dared enter the large T-shaped room.  Why were there no customers?  On my previous visits I’d only seen Marietta in that hushed hour of solitude.  Like so many other questions I must have forgotten to ask her this one, too.