The door swung open not towards light but into shadows that whispered forgotten names. Ella paused, sensing a paradox threading its way into her understanding: every doorway was simultaneously an end and a beginning, locked in a perpetual conflict that needed neither resolution.
Most of the time, symbiosis was quiet, unnoticed, beneath layers of perception dense as fog. But symbiotic paradoxes sang a different tune. They hummed aloud in shadows, danced in the flickers of torchlight dancing on the store’s dusty shelves. Here was a secret language of opening and closing, of presence masking absence.