Pushed away: Vanilla (II)

It routes each choice through its own ease first and assembles the justification afterwards, so the preference always arrives looking like principle. What formed it was a household where every member tended only to themselves, and nobody demonstrated the small inconvenient act of turning toward another, which made convenience the family language rather than a private vice. What it asks for is one deliberately inconvenient kindness, performed without an audience.

Whatever costs me least is what I decide I wanted all along.

It echoes Siduri, the alewife at the edge of the world who counsels the traveller to abandon the hard road, sit down, and take the comfortable life instead. The form implies a task: to recognise when that counsel is speaking in one's own voice, and to walk past the tavern once.