The House of the Hearth was never a stranger to strange occurrences. After all, it had seen everything from kings of frogs to seagull wars, phoenixes that roared like gods, and even pastries that sang in baritone. But nothing—nothing—quite prepared Father Hearth and Mother Goose for the moment they found Delirium sitting upside-down on the ceiling of the reading room, drinking tea with a spoon and humming a tune that sounded suspiciously like a nursery rhyme being played backwards.
"Oh, good! You're home!" she said cheerfully, her mismatched eyes—aqua blue and yellow-green—twinkling with the kind of innocent madness that made even the wildest children of the hearth tread carefully.
Mother Goose blinked. "You're… in the ceiling."
"Yes!" Delirium chirped, happily spilling her tea upward. "I lost my keys, so I came in through the cupboard of forgotten biscuits. Hope that's okay!"
"Cupboard of—what?" Mother Goose said, voice cracking just a little.
Father Hearth stood silently in the doorway, eyes narrowed but unreadable. "This house doesn't have a cupboard of forgotten biscuits."
Delirium giggled. "Of course it doesn't. Until it does."
She gracefully floated downward, her skirt folding like clouds and her mismatched socks fluttering behind her. The moment her feet touched the ground, several books leapt off the shelves and started reciting bad poetry, which she shushed with a wave of her hand.
"I was looking for you," she said matter-of-factly, her hands swaying like seaweed in water. "Or maybe for toast. But you'll do."
"You were looking for toast and settled on us?" Mother Goose muttered, rubbing her temples. "That's somehow both flattering and insulting."
Delirium nodded solemnly. "That's because it's truth-shaped."
Gunther peeked around the corner, took one look at Delirium whispering to a potted plant (which had just sprouted feathers), and backed away slowly. The children of the House had already learned that this woman—who smiled like sunrise and spoke like a crossword puzzle left out in the rain—was best enjoyed from a distance.
"We really need to talk about locking the doors," Mother Goose muttered.
"She doesn't use them," Father Hearth replied.
True enough, because just as Delirium skipped past them, she stopped abruptly in front of the pantry. With a grin, she reached into her coat and pulled out a doorknob.
"Where—did you—" Mother Goose began, but was shushed gently.
"Shh… It's time for everything to happen."
With a twist of the knob, the pantry door morphed—its wooden surface melting like candle wax into prismatic hues, the hinges spiraling into fractals and musical notes. Then the door creaked open, revealing—
A realm that made no sense at all.
Beyond the threshold was a dimension where:
The sky was under the ground.
The sun blinked like an eye and occasionally sneezed glitter.
Books wrote themselves while singing lullabies in twelve languages simultaneously.
Fish floated through the air like balloons, mooing like cows.
Buildings made of teacups danced in waltz formation with lamp-posts.
A clock kept turning backwards, forward, and sideways depending on whether you looked directly at it.
Colors did not stay still—they wandered like fog, changing the grass to peppermint pink and the clouds to polka-dotted raincoats.
There were whispers of every conversation ever had—and never had—echoing through the wind, and somewhere in the background, a chorus of ducks performed Shakespearean tragedy while wearing top hats made of jelly.
It was, simply put, everything happening at once.
Delirium stepped just inside and turned back to wave. "I like your house. It's warm. Like jam on toast on a snowy day."
"You opened a door to—whatever that is—from the pantry," Mother Goose said, deadpan, her eye twitching slightly.
"Well, technically it's the door to my living room-slash-bedroom-slash-daydream. But I didn't want to be rude and leave through the ceiling again," Delirium explained brightly.
Father Hearth had yet to say anything. His jaw was tight, but his eyes followed the clouds of flying shoes that began tap-dancing midair, the river of marmalade flowing uphill, and the flying cat with five monocles that just bowed to him respectfully.
"I… see," he finally murmured.
"Do you, though?" Delirium asked, giggling again.
Then she leaned in close, whispering conspiratorially, "I left a gift in your cupboard. It might be a spoon. Or an idea. Don't eat it."
And with that, she skipped backward into the swirling madness, the door slowly closing behind her as the sound of children's laughter, thunderous applause, and bubble wrap popping echoed one final time.
When it finally shut with a click, the pantry door returned to normal.
Silence.
"…I don't think I'm okay," Mother Goose muttered.
"You are not alone," Father Hearth said, dusting invisible glitter from his shoulder.
A tiny meow came from the teapot. They both stared.
"I'm going to bed," said Mother Goose.
"Wise choice."
As they turned to leave, the cupboard rattled once.
Inside, wrapped neatly in a ribbon, was a note that read:
"Thank you for the tea. Tell your walls to sing softer next time. Love, D."
They burned the note just to be safe. The cupboard now occasionally giggled at night, but no one dared open it again.
After all, when Delirium visits, reality never quite returns to normal.
And the House of the Hearth simply learned—again—to roll with it.