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TWENTY ONE WINTER SONG
🍒💌🕊
The first dream that comes to Ina during the winter holidays—a week in—is tinged in sepia and steeped with cardamom, star anise, and black assam tea.
It finds her standing in her kitchen early in the morning, with sunlight streaming in through the windows. Her hair is tied back in a thick plait, and her mother stands next to her. The woman is waving around the wooden spatula in her hands and saying something, Ina imagines—but whatever it is, she cannot hear it.
Her mother's voice is far away... Far, far away, and so fuzzy that Ina can't make anything out. It's like everything that funnels through her ears is outlined with static, and all her movements—every lift of her arm, every curve of her mouth—it all seems just that more difficult, as if she is trapped underwater.
Yet, despite the strange, dampened quality of the dream—there is one singular thing that Ina can't help but focus on: the steaming pot of water and tea leaves that hisses on the stove top. She takes one step towards it, and then two, and finds that the closer she gets to it, the clearer things become.
It feels like she is the one responsible for making the chai today, but—no, that can't be possible. Her mother always make the chai. In fact, she always makes it a point to let everyone know that nobody can make chai as well as her.
She's a control freak, in that sense.
But today—in this dream—the whistling of the pot, the boiling water, it's all too much. Ina feels inexplicably drawn towards it, and as she takes another step forward, the pot starts to bubble up, up, up, up—!
Ina's eyes fly open.
"Ina, beta!" She hears her mother's voice call from downstairs. Her heart is still racing—practically beating out of her chest, even as she pushes herself into a sitting position in bed—when she calls back to answer.
"Yes?"
"Come help me with breakfast!"
She sighs, her eyes drooping shut as she clutches her chest.
"Okay," she calls back. "Coming!"
Ina waits for her heart to slow down to a normal pace. Then, she stumbles out of bed and runs a hand messily through her hair as she treks down the stairs.
