Tea with the Duchess on Vacation

Another day of tea with the Duchess, and this time we are on vacation, hidden away in the mountains, far from the hectic world that is my home. I cherish these moments, because they are so very rare, and because tea with her is always an adventure.

The tea today is a green, though it is so dark that she sees the dry leaves almost as a dark gray. When I turn the cup to look I see the darkness, but it throws off a reflection of deep olive green, like fir needles under snow.

Wet the leaves are lighter, but still very intense in color. I smell in them seaweed and sweetness and rainforest rolled together in confusion, not a one overpowering the others. I am intreagued by the combination; green teas are ofted very vegetal or grassy to me, or very floral. I find myself wondering if the sweetness will blossom into flowers.

I bury myself in the aroma of the brewed tea, and find myself in a world of morning dew and springtime clover laid over purple and velvet and opium dreams. A green for sure, but a green as deep and dark as the leaves promised; a green carrying secrets and sensuality and the soft slow movement of a primordial river. A hint of something astringent behind, catching at the very back of the throat, just enough to snap you into awareness before heavy night flowers drag you back into it's grasp.

The first sip - surprisingly astringent, almost salty, but sweet like violet petals. I don't know what this tea is, she didn't tell me and I didn't ask, but to me is soft and dark and decending into stillness. A longer taste and the bitterness is more appearant, but so is the depth. I want to drown in this tea. A slight smokiness lingers like gunpowder in the air.

I close my eyes and I find myself in a dark back room in some squalid city south of the equator, a sense of danger and intrigue and paramilitary troops in the streets in green fatigues and berets. No tribal drums here, just heat and danger and that sweet current of adreneline that comes with the territory if you are the type that dances on that particular knife's edge.

I come to the end of the cup unexpectedly, lost in the vision and wanting to return.