Nicolas Spickelspack was a very orderly man: his bookshelf was arranged alphabetically, his shirts never strayed from their allocated drawer, nor his socks from their designated partners.
Yet he kept a tea set in the linen cupboard. The tea set was kept there to ensure it was not accidentally served to guests, which could be awkward as it contained an ocean. The ocean, though mysterious, was very much alive, for some days it was cheerful and sparkling, and others it was dark and brooding, and Nicolas speculated the tea set was the origin of the phrase "storm in a teacup".
He liked to take the teacup into his lounge and gaze into it, for it was a very beautiful sea, and even though he knew his body wasn't physically leaving his armchair, he felt his mind journey through salt licked shores, across wind-whipped waves and islands of strange fearsome birds who often clacked their beaks at him. Nicolas in return attempted to wink his mind's eye back in what he hoped was a friendly gesture.
Sometimes when he got out the tea set he questioned what the purpose of it was, or whether it was meant for him, or he for it, and on these days he found he could not get to the ocean at all, but remained watching from afar.