To be continued..

Samuel was not a wizard, nor a genie, or any other kind of magical creature, as far as anyone knew.  

      He was a shopkeeper. His shop: nestled between a bakery that always smelled of warm anise and the best parts of childhood, and a tailor who hummed endlessly as he worked, was called “Samuel’s Sundries & Such.” 

      It was a cozy, but not at all cluttered place.

The extraordinary thing about Samuel’s shop 

was the storeroom, which was really just a broom closet with a single lightbulb, that had… ideas. It seemed to sense what people needed most, even when they didn't know it themselves.

     It began subtly. A woman would buy the last spool of cherry red ribbon. The next customer, hoping for ribbon would lament its absence. Samuel would murmur, “Let me just check in the back,” and would return, not with cherry red, but with a spool of sea green silk ribbon, to which it would be declared was what they’d truly wanted.

    On a perfectly ordinary Tuesday, a small boy with broken heart bought the last licorice whirl. Moments later, his sister entered, craving the very same. 

Samuel sighed, reached under the counter, and produced not a licorice whirl, but a paper bag of honey lemon drops. “My favorite!” the girl gasped, her tears vanishing.

It went on like this, as such things often do.

A man would come in for nails and leave with twine he did not know he needed.
A woman would ask after candles and find herself with matches instead.

No one thought much of it. Or if they did, they found no reason to question it.

After all, Samuel always checked in the back.

That evening, when the bell above the door gave its final, tired chime, Samuel turned the sign to Closed and lingered a moment behind the counter.

The shop settled around him. 

Samuel gathered a few stray coins, straightened a jar that did not need straightening, and then 

Went to check the back, it was as it always was. Small. Bare. The single bulb humming softly overhead.

He stood there longer than necessary.

Waiting.

For what, he could not have said.

At last, he gave a small nod, as if something had been answered, though nothing had changed at all, and stepped back into the shop.

No one knew when the shop had first begun knowing things.
But it had not always been so generous.
Not until Samuel.

The bulb in the back flickered warmly as he passed.

And if one had been very quiet, very still
it might have seemed almost… pleased.