Afternoon Tea for Doubt

Because doubt always knocks, but rarely brings biscuits.

It begins with a question you can’t name.

Not a proper question with why or what or when. More like a sensation behind the ribs, something tight, or twitching, or tired. The kind of question that already smells like damp wool or airless room—​​before the words have even found the shape of a sentence.

You open a blank page and freeze. Hesitate before pressing the publish button. Stare at the contours your writing has taken. Your fingers stop, the excitement vanishes from your veins, and the dust pauses midair. You get up to make tea, as if a sweet distraction made of sugar and biscuits would soften the ache that is forming.

And that’s when she shows up. Not the answer.

The doubt.

She knocks once—sharp, polite—and presses a bouquet of dahlias into your arms before you can refuse her entry. With impeccable manners and a spine made of sleight-of-hand, she asks if she might sit down. You oblige. Out of politeness, or habit, or fear. So you make tea, not just for one but two.

She crosses her legs, raises an eyebrow, adjusts a coaster that doesn’t need adjusting, and starts. Soft and unctuous at first, “Maybe you’re just tired,” she says. “Maybe you just need more rest and quiet.”

As you set the table, she keeps talking like an old woman thrilled to share her latest ailments over the grocery’s fruit aisle “You should’ve stuck to something simpler. Easy topics. Something relatable. Why do you always insist on making things so damn deep?” While you reach for the sugar, she questions your timing, your instincts, your most recent idea. As you lay down the spoons, she swings her hands and declares how the whole thing has been a waste of time. By the time you place the biscuits on the plate, she grabs her own tea strainer from the bag and reminds you how very very certain it is that you’ve failed to become who you said you would.

You try to reason with her. Hush her with logic and biscuits, but she paces. You’re halfway through explaining yourself—again—when you hear the second knock. And the third.

More guests.

First comes Nia, barefoot, carrying too many notebooks and a faint smell of wildflower honey. She doesn’t make eye contact, only murmurs, “Something in the light told me to come,” and settles herself into the sunniest corner of the room, cross-legged, flipping through pages no one else can see.

Behind her, Leonora peers in, wide-eyed, clinking a small bell. “Don’t mind me,” she says brightly, “I brought my own teacup.” It’s shaped like a swan, and it looks too alive, too much like it’s watching you.

Then, Rainer. He stands in the doorway for a moment as if listening to something the walls remember. He places one hand on your shoulder, not as comfort or correction, but as punctuation. “It’s good you set the table,” he says, as giving a prophecy rather than a compliment.

The next knock is hasty and careless, like a bird flew into the door by mistake. Kuthumi bursts in, socks unmatched, eyes gleaming like he’s already read the group chat you haven’t opened yet. “Is this the right place?” he asks, as if he doesn’t know. “There was a chicken in the driveway. I took that as a sign.”

Adamus arrives a beat later, but not through the door. He appears sideways, as if the bookshelf had a velvet-lined exit ramp no one else noticed. He adjusts the cuffs of his midnight coat, looks at other guests with theatrical disdain, and says, “You started without me.” Then he conjures a chair from nowhere and sits as if gravity were a personal suggestion.

The door swings wider—Kuthumi, as usual, left it ajar—and in steps Mark. He’s wearing a coat with too many pockets and a look like he’s read every version of this script before. “Well,” he says, raising one eyebrow, “if this isn’t a fine collection of ghosts and metaphors.” He lights a cigar no one objects to, and settles into the corner with a groan and a grin.

The air grows louder with quiet familiarity. Nods and a few hugs are exchanged. Voices overlap—familiar phrases stitched with strange ones, greetings from past lives and possible futures. A spoon clinks against porcelain. Chair legs scrape. Laughter bounces off the lampshade and lands under the table.

The doubt has gone very still. She straightens placemats that weren’t crooked and her neck has stiffened slightly. She watches other guests gathered around her with polite irritation, like someone who’s hosted a party only to discover the wrong guests have arrived.

And just when you think that’s everyone—the door flies open and a gust of wind follows. Always late, always last, Helena knocks over a coat rack and declares, “Why does it always smell like civility in here?” She pours something emerald green and almost certainly banned into a teacup. “I’ll fix that.”

Adamus leans back in his chair like the room is a stage he built himself, takes a slow sip, and surveys the room as if every molecule is his to rearrange. “Let’s be clear,” he says at last, “you’ve done a magnificent job of performing collapse. Truly. The stalling, the self-interrogation, the dramatic doubts—divine. But let’s not confuse momentum with movement. Your suffering is optional. Entertaining, yes. But optional.” He drinks again, pleased with his own clarity, and continues to ignore gravity.

Mark exhales smoke toward the ceiling. “I told you life was stranger than fiction,” he mutters, “but you’re still trying to write it like a résumé. Polishing the edges of guesses made out of borrowed certainty.” He pulls a battered flask from his coat, takes a swig, and adds, “Tea’s for people who trust the plot.”

Under the table, Kuthumi rustles. He reappears holding a chocolate he definitely didn’t bring, shrugs, and says with his mouth full “You’re not as confused as you think. Just theatrical about it.” A crumpled candy wrapper drifts to the floor.

Nia has been listening with her head tilted slightly, as if translating something only she can hear. “You’re not lost,” she says. “But layered. What is the layer you want to be shaped with?” She doesn’t look at the doubt, but the doubt shifts and you can see her fingers twisting in her lap, her face reshaped by the pressure of time.

Leonora pours another cup of tea. “Darling,” she purrs, “if your mind’s not melting a little, you’re doing it wrong.” The swan teacup nods in agreement.

Rainer finally speaks, and his voice is barely louder than the breeze outside. “You must give birth to your truths slowly,” he says. “Word by word. It is the waiting that writes them.”

Helena snorts. “Enough of this delicate nonsense,” she says. She knocks over a spoon just to hear it hit the floor. “You’ve come to remember something you knew before you had words for it. So stop decorating the ache. Drink something strong. Listen. Write. Or don’t. Doubt would love that.”

No one says anything. Kuthumi unwraps another stolen chocolate. Mark smirks into his flask. At the end of the table, where the doubt used to sit, there is only a pile of worn clothes next to the placemat and untouched teacup.

And then, a sound at the window.

A raven. It tilts its head, one eye fixed on you like it knows the shape of the thought you still won’t write down.

It doesn’t speak. Of course it doesn’t.