The Eternal Setting Sun

  One minute he was in the cafe listening to the mundane sounds around him, the clinking of silverware, excited conversation on a table next to him, and the hiss of the espresso machine. Then, all of a sudden an impossible stillness descended. He was seated at a smooth, obsidian-like table on a beach that felt both familiar and utterly alien. He was looking at the most beautiful sunset, a sunset that felt divine and he just couldn’t have enough of it. As he focused at the horizon, the colour of the sunset started slowly shifting towards impossible hues - it shimmered in ways no earthly sunset ever could. He looked around and noticed how there were just the right amount of cloud, and the perfect shade of grey and gold highlighting it. Every now and then a silhouette of a bird would fly across the sun and it would cast long, distorted shadows that stretched and writhed independently of any discernible light source, before melting away in to the stillness.

He tried to piece together the moments before, the taste of lukewarm coffee, the blurry headlines of a discarded newspaper, but his mind felt strangely fogged, as if a silken veil had been drawn across his memories, leaving only the overwhelming, hypnotic spectacle before him. He willed his limbs to move, to stand and explore this bizarre locale, but they remained heavy, unresponsive, not through physical constraint, but as if his very will had been leached away by the sheer presence of the sunset. He was an audience of one, compelled to witness this cosmic display.

Time had become a meaningless concept. Had it been heartbeats or eons since his arrival? A creeping unease began to mingle with the initial awe. The beauty felt… wrong, too perfect, too consuming. From the corner of his unmoving eyes, he could see other figures seated at identical tables, their forms unnervingly still, their gazes fixed with the same vacant intensity on the horizon. Their stillness was absolute, like figures carved from stone, their features indistinct in the strange light.

A sudden, inexplicable thirst arose, a primal urge that seemed to echo the very stillness around him. The thought of a cool drink barely formed in his mind before a tall, slender glass materialized on the table before him. It pulsed with a soft, internal luminescence, and the liquid within swirled with colors that mirrored the impossible sunset. He reached for it, his hand moving with a strange, detached obedience, and took a tentative sip. The flavor was unlike anything he had ever tasted – sweet yet metallic, familiar yet utterly alien, leaving a subtle, unsettling resonance on his tongue. It felt less like a refreshment and more like… an offering accepted.