The Tea House – Part 1: First Flush

"Not yet," said Mei. "Let it open."

Lucy took her hand off the cup. Steam curled up from the glass, and in the water the tiny green leaves slowly unfurled, dancing, drifting downward in a soft spiral. Rain drummed on the roof tiles. The tea house sat on a hillside above the lake, a low wooden room with paper lanterns and one long table, and its windows looked out over terraces of bright green tea bushes dissolving in mist.

Lucy, thirty-two, a landscape photographer from Manchester, had been walking the hills for a week with a camera and a bad sense of direction. She had ducked into the first door she saw, soaked to the skin. Mei, thirty-six, the owner, had looked her over, put a towel in her hands and a kettle on the stove without saying a word.

"Now," said Mei, at last. "Drink."

Lucy sipped. Grassy and sweet and faintly nutty, with a long, cool finish. She closed her eyes. "That's the best thing I've ever tasted."

"It is the first flush. Only for two weeks each year."

"Why are you showing me?"

"Because you waited." Mei smiled, and her whole serious face changed. "Most visitors do not."

Lucy stayed the afternoon, and then the next, as the rain fell in thick silver curtains and the hills vanished. She learned to rinse the leaves, to pour from a height, to taste the difference between a spring leaf and an autumn one. Mei talked about her grandmother, who had planted the terraces, and the strange quiet joy of a life measured in harvests.

"You don't talk much," Lucy said.

"I talk less than I should. With you I talk too much." Mei hesitated. "Lucy. May I ask you something personal?"

"Of course."

"Would you stay for dinner? And after?"

Continue the story: Part 2 – Steeping.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Steeping.