The kettle begins to hiss on the low blue ring, a thin sound rising under the rain. You stand at the counter in stocking feet, one hand resting on the edge of the wooden board where the cup waits. The window above the sink holds a square of grey light, softening at the corners. Rain runs in slow seams down the glass. The room smells faintly of gas and damp wool and something older in the grain of the boards.
You turn the flame down a fraction. The hiss settles into a steadier note, a low tone threaded through with the rain outside. On the board the cup sits beside the tin of leaves and the small white jug of milk. You lift the lid of the tin. Inside, the leaves are dark and dry, curled tight, flecked with pale stem. A scent comes up of malt and cut grass and something mineral beneath. You take a spoon from the drawer and measure two level scoops into the warmed pot, then set the lid back on the tin with a small ceramic click.
Beyond the window the garden is going dark at its edges. The hawthorn by the fence has lost its shape to the dusk, only the paler lichens on its branches still catching what light remains. Water moves in the gutter along the roof, steady and unhurried, and drops from the eaves into the stone trough by the door. A blackbird shifts somewhere in the ivy, one low note, then quiet. The lawn has given itself over to wet, darker in patches where the moss has taken hold. Farther out, the field beyond the wall is only a suggestion now, a long grey breath between the hedge and the hill.