So You Want to Run a Temporal Coffee Shop: a story by R. P. Sand

This is a story from the December 2024 issue of Worlds of Possibility. You can listen to the author narrate it on the OMG Julia podcast and also read the full text of the story on this page.

Two quick reminders before we start the story:

1) It's the beginning of 2025, AKA awards season. If you like Worlds of Possibility, it is eligible in the Semiprozine category of the Hugo awards, and every story and poem from 2024 (including this one!) are also Hugo eligible because there's a poetry category this year! I am also personally eligible for Best Editor Short Form for my work on Worlds of Possibility and well as Why Didn't You Just Leave, the ghost story anthology I co-edited with Nadia Bulkin.

2) The magazine version of Worlds of Possibility will have three more issues (February, April, and June of 2025), and then it will end! I am currently reading submissions for the last three issues, so if you have art, stories, or poems you would like me to consider, or if you know anyone else who does, please check out the guidelines and send them my way!

So You Want to Run a Temporal Coffee Shop
by R. P. Sand

Believe you me, the work is harder than it looks. You still have time to decline this position, gather your things and leave. 

But, if you’re certain, take this apron of 15th century linen, embroidered with basilisk thread by the callused, experienced hands of a mermish seamstress, stained green with dye from the 20th, and listen closely, for this is what you must know.

Number one. Listen to our customers, and I do not simply mean listen to what they say. Pay close heed to each breath, pulse, chirrup, twinkle, snort.

We are the caretakers of our patrons’ hearts. All who tread through our amber-studded doors are equal, whether demonically or benevolently inclined, from oni to apsara to fairy godmother, each swathed in their own triumphs and tribulations.

They enter, vulnerable and trusting — yes, even those with wild eyes and grim snarls (that manticore is a regular of ours, whose drink of choice is cold brew matcha peppered with beetle wings) — and it is our charge to make them feel at home. This means protecting the secrets they unfurl within these sylvan walls; their confidence is to be tucked safely within our hearts, away from prying eyes and ears and spores. This means deciphering from their gait whether they wish to chat or whether they wish to be left alone. This means remembering their usual orders, or, when they peer indecisively at the menu, matching the perfect beverage to their mood.

An anxious twitch in a rakshasa’s third arm may call for a vanilla-infused hot chocolate. Creases of frustration in a griffin’s fur-feathered brow may call for the soothing lineaments of peppermint and moonwinkle green tea. Silver-lit twinkles in a valkyrie’s eyes may call for a jovial cappuccino, spiced with cinnamon and paprika.

I share now the example of Anisana the fauness, lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon. Anisana has a proclivity for court politics, delighting in cunning maneuvers, betrayals, coups, and has a titanic sweet tooth. She inserts herself as minor courtier personas, most recently in 16th century England, and takes to giggling over heavily sugared beverages with a side of cake, regaling the latest (to her) gossip-worthy court occurrence. 

There’s always been a sheen of disconnect to her tales, indicating her to be no more than an impartial albeit voyeuristic observer. But, to my surprise, I’ve ascertained a subtle shift in her demeanor when she speaks of Catherine. Stars of affection bloom in her pale eyes as she talks, and no wonder, for this queen is skillful, crafty, a fierce warrior not only on the battlefield, but in court, a relentless spirit, so unlike other women Anisana has known.

“God’s blood, that Henry,” Anisana will say, pounding a fist on the polished wooden bar, cake crumbs dancing on her plate. “And that preening, soggy fern—” followed by the name of whoever caught the king’s eye at the time. (On her last visit it was twilight plum cake and Anne. I could not, of course, tell her things were about to get worse, that Anne would proceed to supplant Catherine.) “If I could get my hands on their necks I would snap them both.”

And I have no doubt she would, but there is a reason she’s remained hidden so successfully, the same reason any of us do not draw attention to ourselves; magicals who walk among humans, no matter how oriented to good or chaos, are all agreed on one thing: that our world shall remain hidden from theirs. Humans have an insufferable tendency to ruin things. 

I assess Anisana’s mood whenever she visits and if she appears particularly melancholic, I select masala chai with any number of soothing add-ons. I went so far as to add spider myrrh when she despaired that Bessie, once maid-of-honor to Catherine, had borne Henry VIII a son where Catherine could not; she took to wailing, a spine-piercing undulation that risked the chagrin of my other patrons, hence the particularly potent choice of ingredient. (Spider myrrh is the extent to which I’ll go; I do not allow alcohol on these premises, not after the Rhenish Incident.) It worked, of course, and she soon calmed to hiccupping and sniffling into her leaf-patterned mug, shoulders hunched. I slid over a slice of chocolate fudge cake on the house.

Thus you see the importance of listening. 

But … there is a caveat to the point I make. While, yes, we listen, I fear we cannot always give them what they desire. Anisana requested, numerously, that I break my own rules and grant Catherine sanctuary from emotional mistreatment at the hands of her husband and king, in one of the three rooms we keep for weary travelers. 

I declined, of course, but do not think me wholly bereft of compassion nor heart; a fondness for the queen seems to have bloomed within me as well — unbidden though not entirely unwelcome — from Anisana’s tales. If one looks closely on the eve of Catherine’s death, under a bristling-cold, cloud-heavy night in January 1536, a figure can be seen perched under her window, face shadowed by green shawl. 

I whispered to her a gift: knowledge of Anne Boleyn’s beheading to come, that she may greet Death with peace in her heart, a wry smirk on her lips.

Number two. Ordinaries are not allowed here, as you may have surmised. Every year we must renew the threshold wards that keep non-magicals at bay. (Well, non-magical humans. My bitsy Augustus here is a perfectly ordinary cat — at least he began as one over fifty years ago.)

I consider this ground beyond the primary dimensionals to be sacred, neutral, a harborage for all magicals in need of respite and a hot cuppa. An untarnished retreat where people can lounge before latticed fireplaces whilst listening to bards, or seek quiet in a solitary booth, or browse reading nooks primed with leather-bound titles I plucked from across time against the criteria they be both entertaining and carry minimal spoilage risk.

The last thing our customers need is a human strutting in only to gawk at horns or extra limbs or lavender skin… These wards prevent our doors from appearing for ordinaries, though I regret to say they were erected only once I’d learned my lesson from two unfortunate events in the shop’s early days.

Event number one. A drunken soldier from Byzantium stumbled in on a particularly bustling evening, plume wilting to one side, mud tracking on the cobblestone. He took one gaze about with beady, greedy eyes and, in his inebriety, fancied himself a centurion of old, promptly attempting to revive the glory of a united, undiminished Rome by subjugating the magicals present. 

Now, I consider myself an equanimous sort, but I raged then, hotly, hen-like, for I recognized his sneer (the expression is the same whether worn by a vanquish-hungry soldier or an egomaniacal capitalist) and saw how my patrons shifted uncomfortably under his advances. I proceeded to do something I rarely do; I whipped out my twined bloodwood wand and turned him into a frog. It was common spellwork, hardly to my taste (my bones always ache so after quotidian spells), but it had to be done. 

This sowed the initial seed of my idea for wards, but event number two sealed the deal. Shortly after the Ribbity Centurion Circumstance, while I was still a doe-eyed, naive shopkeeper of the 8th, I optimistically thought to invite a few select non-magical humans. 

My first invite became my last, extended to a man named Fujiwara no Tomoyuki from the same century’s Nara, the second son of a minor noble. At first glance he was perfectly unremarkable, yet on one sunbaked day he visited where his family lay foundations for a temple. Something within him clicked when he saw the freshly churned earth, like a bee to pollen, and in his inspired state he made aesthetic changes to the plans. The resulting pagodas and gardens were breathtaking.

So skilled was he in conjuring perfect asymmetry, in nurturing flora to adorn the temple grounds, that I could sense in him one of those potent, raw, artistic buds that would blossom into poetry and arts and gardens galore down his bloodlines. When I found him, his reputation for a brilliantly green eye hadn’t yet stretched beyond his immediate family, but I had no doubt of his potential to be great.

The hope was to garner his advice for my decor: vines webbed against wood-stone walls and studded with cascades of wisteria, lilies and hyacinths and orchids blooming into table centerpieces, rivulets set in the cobblestone and curling around booths to meet at ponds filled with koi and lotuses, rock gardens underlying each fireplace, on and on and on to reach the striking verdant harmony I envisioned. (I am a green witch, yes, but even I must nod to raw talent such as his.)

In return, I thought to introduce Tomoyuki to an amiable woodland dryad called Rei who loved espresso and whose talent for treesong could enhance his family’s temple grounds. And to give him a taste of chocolate.

It did not go the way I planned at all. 

“This this this!” he cried, eyes bulging in red-veined terror. “What is this evil you entice me with?” And at first it wasn’t to Rei he referred. It was the chocolate. Apparently such a delicacy could only be wrought by diabolic fingers. 

But when he did turn his attention to her, lips stained with brown, he pointed and gawked and sputtered, as if the sweet dryad were a wretched exhibit to be leered at from a safe distance behind glass; he clawed at his chest and died.

Thorns sprouted from where Rei had backed into the wall, horrified, and it took me a week to dispel the stench of human urine and decay from the air. (It was how I discovered corpses decompose more rapidly out here.)

I never saw Rei again after that, though I did search for her extensively, dispatching countless feelers and ravens and owls. To this very day I carry a guilt in her shape that eclipses my regret at the premature loss of Tomoyuki’s green potential.

I thought then: no more invitations, no accidental visitors. No siree. 

(I did, of course, manage to decorate to my satisfaction, but it took at least a quarter century for me to tweak and prod and nudge these interiors into what you see now.)

Number three. We must be vigilant to preserve the sanctity of the gilded timeline. To this effect, there is another spell in place, as potent as the threshold wards. 

But in order to appreciate what this spell does, you must first understand there is always risk when people from different times interact. Conversations may unravel, quick and devastating as viper rot, and we must skillfully divert attentions before this happens. (I usually dispatch Augustus to the contending parties, whose purrs and insistence on head rubs can tame any wildfire heart.)

Our patrons have free rein to roam about and enjoy one another’s company knowing full well they may be consorting with someone from the future, but most have the good sense to avoid awkward questions and leave their occasionally-inexorable loyalties for human-made borders at the door. We are all brethren, in a way, us magic folk. 

But, in the off chance two souls cross paths at an unfortunate moment, or a conversation veers into dangerous terrain, the parties are at once doused in a lambent, purple cloud, visible only to my eyes. 

The Temporal Peace Alert, so named by its inventor, my paternal great grandmama. (“It is a perfectly valid descriptor,” she huffed any time I offered a more creative alternative.) These days I call it Purple Pinocchio, for, like a growing, twiggy nose, an emergent purple cloud is a sure tell that something is awry. 

(My great grandmama was not a green witch like my maternal line but one of timecurling descent, whose blood in me makes this entire establishment possible. But where she lacked in imaginative nomenclature, she more than compensated for in innovative spell-casting.)

The spell works like so: each individual is considered a thread on a tapestry that is neither a real tapestry nor a tangible thing, but I call it such because it is a striking metaphor. In the event any two threads cross at a point where they should not, the spell detects the risk of a knot.

Purple Pinocchio works only for witches with even a dollop of timecurling blood in their veins, but I am not without resourcefulness myself and have tweaked it that it may work on you. 

Take this needle-toned powder and rub it into your eyeballs while I share now the example of Mhaliq and the unparalleled Liliʻuokalani  of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi.

Mhaliq is a poltergeist — when he was of flesh he was a descendent of devas and rishis, alongside … a few other species I’ve quite forgotten. A poltergeist with a pernicious gambling habit, who I briefly banned on two occasions when his encounters devolved into blows over cards or coins. 

I urged him to embrace the sage and scholar facet of his heritage, and, for a time, he seemed reformed, wholly engrossed in the target of his new study: Liliʻuokalani. Mhaliq, upper lip endowed with froth from his favored Viennese coffee, would animatedly relay his observations of her tremendous social endeavors, her steadfastness, her music compositions—so melodious our bards have select pieces in their rotation. His tales depicted a champion for women, brave and bold and kind, and I, rather surprisingly, began looking forward to his visits, such a stark contrast to the wariness I felt when he visited before, dice rattling in his palms. I even dared to hope he had shed the mantle of poltergeist entirely, and was simply now a wayward spirit.

I was wrong in my supposition, for on one quiet afternoon with the soft lull of flutes in the air, I relaxed my alertness to check on the koi in the northern pool. And so, I did not immediately notice the flare of purple around Mhaliq and the pair of pixies with whom he shared a tray of cinnamon rolls. Mhaliq hurled the tray into the fireplace, stunning the bards into silence. The pixies, with easily bruised egos, bristled and huffed and swore, causing a tangle of vines to lurch from the walls and smack Mhaliq across the face. Heads turned. I rushed over, cursing at my being distracted by how the koi wove playfully through my fingers, the feel of cool water against my skin.

“He called us liars!” the pixies, no bigger than my palm, burred ferociously, glaring darts. “How dare he how dare he how dare he.”

Mhaliq, his translucent form fuming even brighter than the flames devouring the cinnamon rolls, grimaced and spat and hissed.

“You are liars, nothing but tiny, flippety, liars. How dare you suggest Liliʻuokalani will be dethroned.”

“But it is true it is true and ha! look at you. You lost you lost and you deserve nothing but loss.”

 I raised a palm as Mhaliq opened his mouth in retort, and it may have been the threat of yet again losing access to his favorite coffee, but he clamped his lips and stormed out the doors, though not without inadvertently inciting a trail of destruction in his wake, toppled chairs, jostled tables, beverages spilled onto frazzled customers (to whom I offered towels, words of apology, and free scones.)

Later, when the ruckus had subsided, the bards taking up their flutes once more, I sought explanation from the pixies, now quieted from their peals of laughter.

It turns out Mhaliq wasn’t furious at the thought of a beloved queen being overthrown, no, he carried no attachments for her, not in the way I seemed to have developed; he had placed a substantial bet on the longevity of her reign. The knowledge he would lose infuriated him. 

Now, I strive to refrain from judging my customers, indeed, some have done far worse beyond these walls. But the tableau of disgruntled customers, the queen’s stories fresh in my heart, and the vexing recollections of Mhaliq’s past behavior all syphoned to a single decision: I lay a permanent ban against him.

As for Liliʻuokalani… Wretched, conniving businessmen in the 1890s, with greed-ridden demeanors reminiscent of the amphibious ‘centurion’ succeeded in a coup, and when she sought to reclaim what was wrested from her people, she was thrown captive into a bedroom suite. I caught word of her weaving a quilt during her imprisonment, a quilt with her life’s tale in its sinews, not unlike the tapestry for which we are all threads. 

I always say humans can resolve their own sordid affairs… But on one velvety 1895 evening, if those guarding her paid close heed, they’d spot a green blur flitting around corners. 

Curse if I didn’t slip a spool of thread and a cut of fire-hued fabric under her door.

Numbe—hmm? 

Ah, no. People cannot meet their future and past selves, of course they cannot. I should think I made that obvious, but I’ll be the first to admit my blathering has a soul of its own.

I shall make it clear now. There are no walking paradoxes or space-time implosions or quantum thises and thats or whatever silly terms post-19th ordinaries concoct sans accurate knowledge of what they speak. 

Our doors, no matter where they appear for a patron — a pit shadowed by some laird’s castle, a hillock in Queen Njinga’s expansive domain, an alley in Budapest, New York City, Moscow — simply unclose to a time in our shop when said patron is not present. And, before you ask, no, people cannot travel to another time the way I can, well, unless they are timecurlers themselves; the exit only ever leads to their own.

I must add a caveat: these doors cannot open to a time before the shop was established, just as I cannot travel to a time before I was born. Nor can we follow in the humans’ wake when they eventually take to the stars, leaving behind a dastardly withering Earth; this shop is Earth-bound.

You know, it was a monumental disappointment for me, to learn the limitations of timecurling. It was on the day of my Initiation, and I—but a wee girl in the early 8th clad in her newly-earned green shawl—wailed piteously in the copse. I wailed because I’d just been informed my intended first act was impossible: to grow startlingly vibrant flowers for the ancient queens of Egypt, the likes of Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Merneith, or those lost to history written by men. 

Vines rose gently from the earth at the twitch of my mother’s finger, growing to engulf me in a hug. My great grandmama tugged her purple shawl about her shoulders with a sniff and barked to her, “Well, what did she expect? Time certainly doesn’t work that way.” And to me, “Now, dry up child, you’re a proper witch now. Act like it.”

While I did sober then, I’ve spent a great many years ever since lamenting the lack of foresight in my ancestors. If only they’d opened a coffee shop when ancient civilizations effloresced on Earth, that I could visit those regal queens said to have consorted with witches of all persuasions, from black to red to green to silver. They say those queens petitioned the gods to anoint the dearest of their witchy friends, giving rise to the first timecurlers.

Perhaps then it would have been my ancestors and not me who invented door magics allowing others with timecurling blood to travel even before their own time. (Indeed, I’ve guided a number of young purples born in later centuries to venture back to the 8th because of my humble shop.)

But it seems I am the first of my blood to carry an ardent desire not only to visit times before, but for hospitality, encouraged by a rather insatiable appetite for cold brew.

Ah, well. What is past is past, and I fear I have lost my direction of thought. 

Where was I?

Ah, yes, number four. Though I suppose I should say number five.

Number five. The last for now, but certainly not the least; it just may be my favorite of them all. Each patron has a unique cup, a cup grown by my hand from bits of wood and grass, and you must memorize the pairings.

The elf, Rose, takes herbal teas in this acacia cup and saucer inlayed with petals after her name. That bamboo dabra with gold leaf filigree is for a goblin named Menetex with a taste for South Indian filter coffee. The canarywood cauldron is for a harpy named Lyephyre whose drink of choice is cardamom moth lattes. (I’m particularly proud of the herringbone pattern on that one.)

Each design is intentional, the shapes, the patterns, the feel, down to the very detailing in the grain, as uniquely a patron’s as a witch’s wands are to her. New visitors are given one of those plain porcelain mugs on the third shelf, but by the time they complete their first drink I’d have grown one based on my observations of them, their pulses, inclinations, and gestures.

It may seem a silly, unnecessary thing on the surface: a cup for each patron? But tell me this, who among us wouldn’t delight in a custom gift, knowing it is the only one of its kind in all the universes? And, think of how it must feel to retire to a place such as this after a hard day’s work cultivating or ruining, in merrymaking or shenaniganry, and sip from a cup that is wholly yours?

Our patrons brandish their cups proudly; many an ice has broken over their admiring each other’s designs. It adds to the charm, they say, and on hearing them I feel the very thrill that ignites my core whenever I pour a luscious brew or pull crisp pastries from the oven or conjure a verdurous feast for the eyes.

But, though they are pretty, the matter is not solely one of aesthetics; the green magics woven to complement one’s personality also complement their physiology, briefly enhancing immunity in a way more inherent and powerful than any of my herbs combined. Thus germs are repelled, slicked elsewhen as though by some horologic shield, and our visitors cannot carry bugs across time.

For can you imagine the havoc that may wreak?

How devastating it would have been if Rani Velu Nachiyar’s painstakingly-amassed army perished by, say, the Black Death before her momentous combat against the East India Company. How colossal a loss to art had Vincent van Gogh passed before fathoming the swirls of his starry night, by one of those ancient viruses released in the 21st from softening ice caps. How horrific to think of un-timely reaping among the stalwart Agojie, due to carelessness on my part.

No, there is no changing history within these walls. 

Events unfold the way they are meant to, no matter how abhorrent nor wondrous; each individual with their role in time, each important — uniquely, sublimely, necessarily important... Though my rambles may betray personal partialities, let me make it clear: taken alone, a grand queen’s thread is indistinguishable from that of a washerwoman’s, regardless of species or inclination, each an important strand without which the tapestry unifying us all would hang incomplete. 

How reckless it would be for me to induce a knot, a loose stitch, an untimely contortion, a truncated potential — ah, but I see the question of Tomoyuki in your eyes, the Coronary Garden Commotion as I call it, and yes, yes, that is the very type of grotesque, regrettable occurrence I aspire to avoid. 

When my timecurling ancestors were blessed by gods at the behest of queens I’ll never get to meet, they swore never to impart god-like interference on the gilded timeline. Though my shawl is green and not purple, I honor the oaths borne by my blood. 

Despite my imperfections and fumbles along the way, I do not doubt my place in the boundless tapestry, this role that is undividedly mine: to soften worry-wrinkles across time with exquisite beverages and pastries. To listen to patrons, protect them from ordinary humans, to stand vigilant and upload ancient oaths…

This is how we do at The Witch’s Cold Brew.

And now, our threads entangled, this role is yours too; I thought it about time I hired help.

Follow the systems I’ve lain like clockwork, and I do intend the pun. The feeding schedules are pinned to the broom cupboard — if you delay by even a half-second, Augustus yowls and prowls, the koi whirlpool, and the frogs — (yes, descendants of that pestilent ‘centurion’) — hop frenetically into the cups.

Slow blink twice for Purple Pinocchio to take full effect, clear the plates from the second southeastern booth, and do nudge Augustus off that poor centaur’s back.

I think I shall retreat for a long overdue nap.

About the Author

R. P.  Sand is a theoretical physicist turned science communicator and educator, and writer of speculative fiction. Her words have appeared in Clarkesworld and Asimov's Science Fiction among other places, are forthcoming in Lightspeed, and have made the Locus Recommended Reading List. Cats, coffee, cosplay, and colorful socks are a few of her favorite things. Find her at rpsand.com.