This is the home dimension, the vortex’s town square, where a tea party has been going on so long that no one remembers starting it and no one wishes to stop. Every day is everyone’s unbirthday, which means every day there is cake for no particular reason, which is the best reason there is.

Journeys begin here and journeys end here; whichever world you wander to, the compass needle is secretly always pointing back. You came because — well, you didn’t come, exactly. You returned. You always do. Taste it: that’s the flavor of being expected, of a chair already pulled out, of a celebration that was never about you in particular and somehow entirely for you.