The ticket booth sat at the end of the world, just past the shimmering, unstable horizon. Elias was the attendant, a man whose age was impossible to guess, wearing a neatly pressed uniform from a long-defunct railway company. His job was to sell the final ticket to the void.
Most people who reached the edge were desperate, sad, or simply exhausted. They arrived on foot, in tattered clothes, their faces marked by a lifetime of hard travel.
A young woman approached the window. She didn't look exhausted; she looked curious, vibrant even, carrying only a small backpack.
"One ticket, please," she said, pulling a single, perfectly smooth gray stone from her pocket and placing it on the counter.
Elias inspected the stone. "Accepted currency. Where are you going?"
"Everywhere," she smiled.
"There and back again requires a different currency," he noted, sliding her the plain white ticket. "This is a one-way fare."
"I know," she said, taking the ticket and gripping it tightly. "I'm not looking for an escape, just a change of scenery."
"What's it like?" she asked, looking past the shimmering curtain of light.
Elias paused, thinking back over millennia of selling tickets to the lost, the hopeful, and the desperate. "It's quiet. And it's blank. A place of pure potential, without the noise of the past or the weight of the future."
The woman nodded, her eyes bright with anticipation. "Perfect."
She took her ticket, smiled at the attendant, and stepped through the shimmering curtain. She disappeared instantly into the pure white light.
Elias sat back in his chair, a rare, faint smile touching his lips. It was refreshing to sell a ticket to someone who was choosing the unknown over the known. He closed the window, placed the gray stone in a small dish marked 'Curiosities', and waited for the next customer.
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