Twilight Bargain Hollow

Rain had chased us here, though no drops reached the porch—just that whispering mist coiling through fir shadows while the neon question burned above like an oath we’d sworn but never signed. The shop seemed stitched from dusk itself, boards sagging with secret weight, and jars on the counter humming low as though they remembered what mouths once called out from inside them. A raccoon crouched sentinel, its ringed eyes unflinching, pupils shimmering with a ledger’s final page, daring me to read it aloud. Marcel claimed he heard chimes beyond the treeline when we stepped closer, yet only this wavering light answered. He asked if the bottles bore contracts, if any held a taste of yesterday, savory and binding; I could not tell, but my gloves felt heavier lifting them. Each breath blurred the boundary between barter and faith. We found the sign again—WHERE VOJTA?—not as a question, but as a verdict glowing over every refusal. I left a coin, and still the dusk deepens; Vojta does not return.