Not usually one for displays of emotion, Evgeniya nevertheless returned from her working vacation pink-cheeked from more than just snow exposure. Her friends, when they visited the shop, were shown a tiny pearl of ice, secreted away in the walk-in freezer, that beat like a heart and pulled the warm breath right out of their mouths. It had come from the mountains, Evgeniya explained only vaguely and with eyes already half focused on future culinary experiments, and it would allow her to freeze words, whole sentences, into something you could taste.
















