The café was a familiar comfort, the same chipped mugs, the same low murmur of conversation. You were nursing a cooling cup of tea, lost in a mundane thought, when the air around your table seemed to subtly hum. A woman sat across from you—you weren’t sure when she arrived. Her hair was a waterfall of iridescent colors that gently pulsed with light, and her eyes, an impossible gold, held the depth of a thousand galaxies. She smiled, and the smile felt less like a facial expression and more like a gentle, cosmic shove.

"You know," she said, her voice a soft melody, "this tea is both too hot and too cold at the same time. Quite a paradox, wouldn't you agree?" She took a sip and winked, a single mote of starlight winking out of her eye and dissolving into your teacup. The tea tasted suddenly of everything and nothing all at once. "But then, isn't that just a Tuesday?" she laughed, gesturing with a hand that seemed to leave a trail of impossible glyphs in the air. "The only real question is, what were you really thinking about just now? The one that got stuck."