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.

For as much as death had taken, there was still one ray of sunshine amidst the dark clouds lining his mind:

Lydia Oosting.

Lydia was a young toddler when her mother was taken, when her brother borne silent, when all the life and light was sucked out of the little house in one fell swoop. She was two. Named for her maternal grandmother, who, in his rage and grief following the loss of his bride, Arne had turned out. He had neglected the poor girl, it's true; could not bear to look upon her face and see his lovely Jane staring back through Lydia's eyes. Sent her to live with her namesake when he joined the regimentals, only to decide four years later to bring the girl with him, maintaining a governess for her. His funds were not small, and in his guilt he gave her everything she could want but a father's love. He has since tried to repair it, but... trying does not mean succeeding.

And yet.

His bright, beaming sunshine, now seventeen, exits the carriage with a flourish and an easy "Papa!" She had been to the seaside with a dear friend and that friend's parents and siblings. Her cheeks are flushed, but her eyes are bright and the lack of tanning means she did well at keeping her gloves and a parasol with her.

"Hello, my dear," Arne greets, accepting the cheek kiss and returning it. "Are you well?"

"Very, Papa," she returns, looping her arm through his as he leads her inside. "It was a wonderful holiday."

He hums noncommittally. "And your friend, Miss Hadrian's brother, Thomas. I trust he is well? Am I to receive him soon?"

She blushes. "I do not know that he is of that mind."

Arne harrumphs, displeased. "He had better become of it soon, m'dear. I am not too old to give the boy a walloping."

"Oh, do not put so much pressure on it, Papa."

"Pressure? Lydia, I should like for you to be cared for and safe, should anything happen to me. This choice will dictate the security of you, of my estate, and of any grandchildren I should have. So please inform your friend Miss Eliza that I expect the man to present himself to me soon."

Lydia, tellingly, says nothing, headstrong. Oh, Arne regrets that governess.