It begins the way it began: too quickly, and all at once. Black currant and grapefruit burst overhead, tart and bright and slightly too loud, and then mint arrives cold and clears your head entirely...which is not the same as helping. Then the flowers, and there are too many of them. Peony, pink and weightless, a bloom with no gravity to it. Orange blossom, sunlit, honeyed, the flower people have worn in their hair for centuries while promising things. What remains at the end is only vanilla: warm, plain, unspectacular. The part that comes after. The part you keep. It was an ordinary afternoon; It has not been one since.
