In a quaint village nestled between rolling hills and winding rivers, there lived a man who spent his days perched upon a weathered wooden chair on the front porch of his modest cottage. His eyes, a mirror to the vast expanse of his thoughts, gazed blankly into the distance as if searching for something just beyond the edge of his consciousness.

The man's mind was a void, a vast emptiness that seemed to swallow up any stray thought or fleeting emotion that dared to cross its threshold. He sat there, unmoving, a solitary figure against the backdrop of the bustling village around him.

Neighbors passing by would stop and exchange fleeting greetings with the man, but he hardly registered their presence. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the labyrinth of his own thoughts and memories.

Some said he was a dreamer, a man who had wandered too far into the recesses of his own mind and had lost his way back to reality. Others whispered that he was haunted by ghosts from his past, memories that clung to him like shadows in the fading light of day.

But the man paid them no mind. He remained on his chair, a silent sentinel guarding the threshold between the known and the unknown, his gaze fixed on a horizon only he could see. And there he sat, lost in the vast emptiness of his mind, a solitary figure in a world that seemed to have forgotten him.

Despite not being born in Vorden, the man had been noticed by all his neighbors sitting on his worn, beloved chair on the peacefully secluded front porch of his cottage so frequently like clockwork that those passersby couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t there. The man people knew as Mr. Arne Oosting was a sentimental man. He was a more sentimental man than most thirty-five-year-old men like him were. He was a man born of simplicity and habit; he’d been told by many folks growing up that he took after his father in that way. Once, a traveling countryman stopped by his cottage, and he broke bread with them, and he enjoyed the stranger’s company. He told them that the chair he sat in was an old heirloom, crafted out of strong, hard ash wood. He remembered his father, for whom he was named, sitting on the same chair inside their small, one-room, sod house back in Drenth, smoking a tobacco pipe. His father talked of Neopolian and the Battle of Waterloo.

Occasionally, passersby would notice a gold wedding band worn on his left ring finger, but in all his four years of living there, they never saw a wife leave or return to his home.

He had a small box that had once been for women's shoes, filled with mementos of another time, sitting in his closet. It contained a hairpin, a recipe for cherry pie that she always used to make, a photo of them on their wedding day, and a pair of baby shoes that were never used. For Arne, death had proven to be a cruel thief. Before he was eighteen, both of his parents died of the flu. The Grim Reaper had visited him in Drenthe like a dark gray cloud, stealing the life of his poor, beautiful wife, Theodora. While in her prime, her life was snatched away as her own body was being torn violently asunder. The precious babe was born silent; he never cried, never drew breath. Like his mother, the precious babe was already gone; his life had been whisked away before any midwife could swaddle him.

It’d been fifteen years since they were buried in the rain, in the old churchyard, but his memories of their existence never faded. He thought of them daily, always trying to remember to smile for his wife.

Even on this hot day in June, he managed to smile as he listened for the carriage rattling up the road.

The sound of the carriage rattling down the road was faint, no more than a slow tremor in the stillness of his familiar little lane, like a memory stirring before one could name it. Mr. Oosting watched; he'd been expecting this carriage today. He leaned forward in his chair, one hand resting upon the smooth, time-polished arm, and he tilted his head in quiet expectation as the clacking of hooves grew louder and clearer.

He arose, maintaining the tight smile on his lips. His wife would be happy to see him open his heart and be ready to find love again. He knew she would've hated seeing him alone, would've told him he had so much love to give to waste his life wondering why it had to be her. He felt his heart beating again, painfully... but with a strong, healthy, heavy rhythm. His father raised him to be the kind of man who did everything with a purpose; so getting up from his chair wasn't something he did lightly, and standing before the carriage truly came around the bend.

All the while, the world seemed all too quiet to Arne in the moment the sleek black hansom pulled up, appearing at last between the tall hedges, dark yet glistening like a pool of black oil against the bright June sun as it came to a rattling stop in front of his house. The sun was a welcoming sight after a week of rain. The horse that pulled the carriage was a charming dun.

Upon the black carriage pulling up, a tall, lanky cab driver, who couldn't be more than twenty years old, came into view. The spry young lad proved to be quite light and nimble on his feet as he leapt down from the driver's seat in the back of the hansom. It was a quirk of the hansoms; the driver's seat was situated in the back, and the passengers were always let out from the front of the cab. Now the driver rushed to the front of the cab promptly without stumbling once. Arne chuckled in amusement and found himself quite impressed. He gave the lad a small, almost imperceptible nod and a keen smile. It was a silent gesture meant as a compliment. Dark reddish curls peeked from the cab driver’s black top hat, a typical attire for men of his profession. He tipped it ever so briefly, acknowledging Mr. Oosting's praise, but he was a professional who took pride in his work more than he did in receiving ovations from strangers on the street. His face was unreadable as he rushed to the front of the cab, where a woman waited patiently in the passenger seat.

The woman sitting in the passenger’s seat neatly folded and tucked away the handwritten letter that she’d spent the last whole half-day and most of her morning looking over front to back, repeatedly trying to memorize the details of the proposed arrangements. Quietly, she slipped it back into the envelope and pressed it shut before rising from her seat, looking poised yet delicate like a porcelain doll. Growing up, that's all her mother saw of her, a fragile angel sculpted out of porcelain clay that might possibly explode in the firing process if not properly maintained. She could recall all the money her mother and father had spent on her to attend a finishing school in

The driver held out his hand to her like an outright gentleman, one who might've been made from high society. expectantly towards the woman emerging from the cab. It was expected of any gentleman in those days to help a lady get down from a carriage, especially one alone and vulnerable, so as not to keep her from taking a misstep and possibly breaking her neck. But most importantly, it was to maintain her dignity and virtue in the streets.