The White Void

A small, presumably child, stands by the counter awaiting an order as a larger entity helps keep everything functioning behind him. He looks almost unnerving by the amount he's smiling, almost as if it's forced, yet nobody currently resides in the area.

What is this? Where am I? I was just walking in the forest and from one moment to the other…. nothing, all trees have gone, all plants, all sounds and smells and now I’m here, but where is here?
All these thoughts go through the mind of this doe, an anthropomorphic tender doe, used to her forest and all within and now, now she’s lost in nothing. Here is nothing, one can’t be lost as there’s nothing to loose. Very strangely, she doesn’t fear, as there is nothing to fear, nothing to run away from.
The only awkward feeling of being alone rises in the doe’s mind, alone and far from everything. She, who is very warily towards anything, feels like put away and forgotten. Should she be sad, or angry. No she’s never angry, anger is gone, forever. Should she be glad, happy?

The deer doesn’t know.
She only knows that this emptiness is awkward, strange, but yet warm, welcoming. If nothing can be welcoming…. Nothing is anxiety-provoking, as you start to think about yourself.

Relief, a building, movement, life. So there, or here, or wherever is life.

Lizbeth can’t read the sign but smell the odors from inside. As there is nothing else, the doe enters the café

As the doe enters the Cafe, Tato awaits far across the room behind the counter, waving at Lizbeth as if he had expected here to arrive.
The Cafe is almost larger on the inside than it looks to be outside, and feels plenty more active than the nothingness that consumes the area stretching for miles around the place.

"Hello!" Tato says eagerly, seeming pretty excited for only one customer in who knows how long of a time. The seats adjacent to each other that crowd the walls and center of the Cafe look oddly clean yet dirty, cobwebs seen in multiple spots yet the tables wiped clean of every speck of dust that would have collected over time, the floors dull as if treaded by many yet not a trace of dirt or grime tracked from anywhere outside, like if the people that came in somehow made the place cleaner with every step.

"What can I help you with?" Tato blurts out almost instinctively, his voice childish but demeanour oddly adult like, not hesitating asking before Lizbeth could even think about taking another step through the doorway.

Lizbeth is like mesmerized, seemingly a well known place, a place to be comfortable and yet it's oddly strange, unknown. All is weird, if compared to the real world. Or is this the real world, and all around is to be forgotten as pointless uselessness. The place is clean and abandoned at same time, used and almost new, as if using the place makes it newer.
No, this is too much for that simple doe, she's only dreaming. She fell asleep due to exhaustion on a secure place and has entered the void of her own brain. But still this is all real, more or less, as real as that seemingly child waving at her, waving from behind a counter quite further away than expected. What else can she do than close in to the being waiting for her.
With every step she takes the counter seems to go further away until she stands right next to it, surprisingly close. Lizbeth doesn't realize this absurd bend of time and space. Here in this void anything is possible. Even a presumed child run a café, an empty café, as empty as the wideness out of it.
A timid "Hello" comes over her lips. Is she hungry, maybe thirsty, no both, but not longing for anything. Soon this simple brain of this doe will just stop working, refusing to admit the place she's in.
"Where am I? What is this place?" millions of questions could be asked, is there an answer to any of them? But then an urge, a wish, yes a wish to drink something soothingly well known, something that could give her an answer.
"Can I have a tea, lemon verbena, chamomile and peppermint?" the question just gushes from her mouth, unaware if even this could be served, as it is a café after all.

Tato stands still with a bright smile on his face, as if buffering his mind trying to picture what was told to him.
"On it!" He says happily before stepping down from a step-stool and going to- try- to make what was said, but from the looks of it can't even figure out how to properly pour water into a cup without managing to spill it everywhere but inside of the glass.

A minute or two passes of whatever odd shenanigans Tato is pulling off to make the cup of "tea" he's thinking of, before the one other person behind the counter steps in and slides the correct drink to Lizbeth.

"I might have gone a little overboard with the peppermint." An odd, brightly colored paper mache being says before taking two mitts off their hands and setting them aside, watching as a mess unfolds across the counter she know she'll have to clean up.

Lizbeth tilts her head, watching that obvious child vainly trying to pour water into a cup. She was almost leaping over the counter as he or she is spilling boiling hot water over those hands and counter. At least the doe assumes it to be boiling as this would be the case with a tea, like she would prepare.
Is this child just clumsy or doesn't it realize what it's doing?

Here everything is different, even the service is done by odd creatures. Lizbeth instantly stops her urge to help that child pouring water as she's suddenly being served by this said odd creature. Does she look right, it's made of mashed paper. Where did it come from.

The doe's brain tilts, stops thinking, the doe freezes in that gazing posture, the creature excusing itself having put too much peppermint into her tea. Time is playing tricks on her, the space is like torn and twisted but looks straight.
The tea smells and looks like tea, but is it tea?

Suddenly the room starts to turn, the deer's vision is troubled. Her eyes turn upwards, and she starts to fall backwards, slowly, as if time is set to slow-motion. The deer faints, but the twisted reality she's in prevents her from knocking the floor hard. "Oooh" comes from her mouth, the back of her wrist goes instinctively to her forehead. It all looks theatrically exaggerated, still the deer has a moment of unconsciousness, maybe hoping everything turns back to 'normal'

"Are you okay ma'am?" The other being says in a panicked tone, quickly darting around the counter and standing above Lizbeth in confusion and concern, hesitant on helping.

"Sh-" She halts herself, turning to Tato for a split second before looking down at Lizbeth again, the fear rising in her as she tries to keep herself calm and not send the kid into a panic. "Crap-" she finally spits out, pausing herself to recollect her thoughts.

After momentarily thinking, she calmly but hastily walks back behind the counter and dials a phone number into a built in phone in the wall, chanting "Please pick up" silently to herself before someone is heard to pick up from the phone, albeit hard to hear. Nothing is said by the paper person other than a disappointed sounding yeah, and the phone is hung back up, leaving her to hope Lizbeth is okay. She tries talking, wondering if Lizbeth would need any further assistance, but can't say the words, fearful to say anything not knowing the current state of the situation.

The doe just lost all notion of reality, and all these weird and awkward new things, were simply too much for this simple mind. Her own body reacted strangely, as if she were no more conscious of it.
In this empty void, Lizbeth misses the wary feeling that keeps her alert. The nothing almost feeling warm and cozy, but these new awkward sensations of loneliness and anxiety are overwhelming.

She opens her eyes again, still seeing this strange paper creature worry about her. She’s still here, still not knowing where ‘here’ is. Her body aches strangely but it’s not discomforting. She slowly sits up.
“Where am I, what is this place, why am I here? What is ‘here’?” finally all the questions can come out, getting the thoughts of that doe straight again.
She ordered a tea, she’s in a café, all is weird around and strange creatures are surrounding her, is it time to panic?
“Please tell me where I am!” she finally says, her eyes glistening and full of life again, the doe is alert again, all concentrated, all herself.

"Oh thank Sear-" The paper being says, mumbling it to themself in relief before responding to Lizbeth.

"You're in the White Void, more specifically a cafe called The Sweet Potato. Did you mean to come here on purpose, or did to stumble upon it on accident?" She says with a concerned look on her face, yet her voice subdued, prioritizing the befuddled doe.

Before Lizbeth can respond, she contemplates for a second before restating her question. "Did you by chance walk through any rift like tears in your reality before ending up here, or tread through a narrow forest that eventually wound up near the edges of here?"

After the awkward moment where nothing seemed to go right or consciously, Lizbeth seems to be able to think clearly again.
Even if this place is oddly strange to her, she doesn't feel that instinctive urge to flee again, go back, wherever this 'back' might be. For the deer it's very anxiety-provoking not to know where they are, not to know what direction they'd have to flee in moment of emergency and/or panic. So even if Lizbeth seems to recall her memories, she can't think totally free, always that fear lingering in her back-mind not to know where to go.
Yet she listens attentively to that paper-woman, as it seemingly were female.
"The White Void? No I didn't come here on purpose, I don't know where I am. I...", she looks around, the 'White Void' outside the cafe being just white, nothing else but white.
"The Sweet Potato Café? And you serve anything? This is the only place around here? So you are in a place, in the middle of, well, nothing and serve all what's written on those panels. Are there many like me?" Liberty realizes that she's nervously asking way too many questions. "Oh please excuse me, I must be bothering you with all my questions. Maybe I'll just have my tea and sit over there thinking what I'm doing here."

The origami-woman then asks THE question and all is like passing as a flash in front of her eyes. "Yes, yes, that's it, how do you know? I was looking for comestible mushrooms as I came into a very narrow forest, I told myself this is a good place for chanterelles and a moment later, well, I was here. Can you tell me what happened?

The paper being tries to understand the barrage of questions, missing most but answering what she can.

"We don't get many people around here, and when we do it usually ends up uh... let's just put it at "Not well." And as for how you got here is something us three have been trying to figure out for a good amount of time now. All we know is that whatever forest people describe treading through before ending up here is always the same weird telling of some narrow pathways through trees way closer together than they should be," She says with a little more confusion towards her own answers.

"I wish I knew the specifics, but all I can say for sure is that there's a way in, and hopefully a way out. But as to how to get in and out, that's a lot of science my art degree can't explain." She adds on before standing up and walking back over to the counter, sliding on some hand mitts and bringing Lizbeth's ordered tea to her.