The Heady Scent Of Clarity

20250610

Prompt from PrideOnThePage

The shopkeeper was barely visible in the shadows, his faded coat blending in such that his pale face and many hands seemed to float in front of her. “Magic? Of course I sell magic. Did some fool paint over my sign?”
“No, no, I just…”Sam forced a polite smile. “I wanted to make sure I’m in the right place.”
“Well. You’re in a shop that sells magic. Whether that’s the ‘right’ place depends.” Those watery, bulging eyes peered at her. “What do you want?”
“Erm… what do you have-”
He huffed. “I sell bespoke solutions. There’s no browsing here. Either decide what you want or get out.”
“I… I want to disappear.”
One hand scratched his chin. Another tapped the counter. “Go poof? Turn invisible? Wake up in an entirely different place where nobody knows who you are?”
“Can you do that?”
“I wouldn’t suggest it if I couldn’t. Now, what do you truly want?”
Sam rubbed her arms and tried to pick apart the muddle in her chest. Knots so old and tight they’d practically crystallised.
“I want… to be enough.”
“Enough what?”
“Enough anything. Gay enough, straight enough, woman enough, man enough, funny enough, serious enough…” Sam huffed, then sighed, her annoyance dissolving into comfortable self-disgust. “I guess I want to be normal. Can you do that?”
All of the shopkeeper’s hands were resting on the counter now. Each slowly tapping, slightly off-beat. The effect was grating and mesmerising. “I could. But I think you’re better off buying some clarity and coming back.”
“Clarity, huh? Go on.”
At once the shopkeeper vanished into the darkness.
Sam’s senses strained.
Rattling. Scraping. Bubbling.
Acidic tang. Floral scent. Smoke, oily, like from an old-fashioned burner.
“Here.”
The sudden word made her jump. Or perhaps that was the shopkeeper emerging from the gloom, one hand outstretched. It held a little stoppered glass bottle. Perfume?
“Take a sniff.”
Sam gingerly complied. The whiff tickled her nose. It smelt of… It smelt of…
Silence. It smelt of silence.
The voices muttering at the back of her mind fell quiet. The words sticking to her slipped off. The vague buzzing itch of her life grew still. It was suddenly clear. Not simple, in fact it was complicated and confusing, but she was able to study it. Like a snapshot of a bustling crowd.
A pale finger gently nudged the stopper closed, and she was jolted back to reality. The words swarmed around her once more. But… with the memory of that deep silence so close, they felt less like darting attackers and more like cheeky flies.
She clasped the bottle tight and met his gaze for the first time. “How much?”
“Twenty-eight pounds, fifteen pence.”
Exactly what she had… minus her bus fare home.
As she pressed the money into a hand he added “Your next purchase will require an ounce of doubts. So do have those in order before you come back.”
Sam blinked, then flashed a smile. “Yeah. Alright.”

Prompt was “Silence”.
[Don’t get me wrong - I love words. What writer doesn’t? But words illuminate and constrain in equal measure. Sometimes pinning something down with words makes it harder to understand, while staring blankly at clouds for half an hour lets understanding percolate. I find that often what I need for the right words to coalesce is silence.]