A-Memory-Worth-Making
Marigold had stood in the wreckage of cities and not flinched. She found, to her surprise, that the young man at her counter undid something in her that the cities never had.
"Sit down," she said. It was not a request she made of customers. "I'm closing the door, and you're going to sit down, and I'm going to make tea, because nobody says a sentence like that and then walks back into the rain."
He sat, because tired people sit when someone kind tells them to. She bolted the door, turned the sign, and set the kettle on the embers she hadn't yet let die. The bakery filled with the small domestic sounds of it — the kettle ticking, the scrape of two stools, the rain easing off the glass.
"The spell can't reach back and find a good memory that isn't there," she said, setting a cup in front of him. "You're right about that. I won't lie to you and tell you the loaf will taste of sunshine. It won't." She sat down heavily across from him. "But you've made a mistake in your reasoning, and I've spent two years quietly learning to bake, so I'm allowed to be pedantic about one thing." She nudged the loaf back toward him, and broke off a corner of it herself, and ate it, watching him.
"Bread doesn't only taste of the past," she said. "It tastes of the happiest memory you *have.* And right now, this minute — a warm room, the rain shut out, a stranger who wouldn't let you leave, a cup of