Her aunt closes her tea shop for the day to hold her.

The Brew and it’s witch are quiet against the hustle and bustle of the outside. Breakfast passes and goes with nary a peep from either and the headache that can only come from far too much crying soothes in the silence.

Suddenly Rosa is six years old again, by her Auntie’s side as she regales her with tales of adventures and people from all over the world. She tells her of children who could climb coconut palms like ladders and people in Mongolia with eagles as their closest friends. Rosa feels her lean away from the stories of warm lovers of all kinds and kindnesses and their adventures.

Those were her favourite tales once.

When her belly rumbles at last and tries to eat her from the inside out, her Aunt leaves her and returns soon after with freshly cooked rice and tempura prawns and salmon with sesame. The grease quells the hangover but the tea, a kind of warm barley dances on her tongue and relieves. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep this from your mother.” 

The words leave her Aunt out of the blue, mid-chew, and Rosa finds herself choking.

“S-Sorry?” she asks but her Aunt just looks at her with those knowing eyes. 

“You’re ok to stay here, know that,” the older woman says matter of factly. “There’s a guest bedroom you didn’t make it to last night. But it’s yours as long as you need.”

She opens her mouth to refuse but the thought makes her pausey.

Rosa knows as much as her aunt likely does that she has nowhere else to go.  

Her mother would shame her. She had always stressed how important it was to keep Peter in her life. She had always admired him; the soon to be lawyer. Her father would go along with whatever her mother wished. Rosa can’t remember the last time either of her siblings called her outside of her birthday. She can’t remember the last time she spoke with any of her friends from university either. That was years ago now.

The moment she’d started dating Peter she’d just kind of…faded into his life. 

“...Thank you, Auntie,” she whispers weakly, sadly. 

Chopsticks lower as her aunt sighs.

“You can thank me properly by helping me out,” she grins, grabbing her niece by the hand sweeping her up and ushering her over to the kitchen.

“You were always good at cakes. Let’s prep for tomorrow.”