Roughly two weeks after meeting Asiya in the coffee shop, Erin set down her PS4 controller to drink some tea. She found it as cold as the room was, and grumbled at the hot water pot being half way across the small studio apartment from her. Lofts were cold in April in Maine, especially when you didn’t have the money to add the cost of natural gas to your utilities bill. She’d been meaning to move the hot pot closer to her all day and just kept forgetting to. It began to boil quietly, which would be useful but she’d still have to drink cold tea first. Ugh.

Erin drank a lot of tea during the day. She, on average, went through two pounds of loose leaf Chinese Iron Goddess Ginseng every three months. At a hundred bucks for a two pound bag, that was an excessive amount of tea. She drank at least three pots of tea everyday, five if you counted the brews in her ‘tea bottle’ (a plastic bottle with a strainer attachment) during work. Somedays, she drank more tea. Others, she drank less. It varied with what day it was, and how stressful it had been. Erin also varied her teas, depending on what she needed it for. Medicinal tea for allergies and fighting off nausea - especially during moon sickness, which was the best phrase for ‘that time of the month’ she’d ever come across and adopted it immediately - as well as puerh to cut greasy foods and help her sleep. Oddly enough puerh put her to sleep, as opposed to keeping her awake.

She also threw out an excessive amount of tea. Since loose leaf tea really shouldn’t be left for more than a few hours without water, regular changing of the tea leaves is necessary. Given that Erin often would get sucked into a computer repair or video game, tea either went bad, cold, or both in rather short order. This lead to a rather large compost pile of rotting tea leaves out on her small balcony, and a quickly dwindling tea supply.

Not something particularly pleasant for anyone, especially when the tea was thrown out because it was cold.

Grumbling, Erin stared down at the small cup, more of a bowl than a cup that allowed for slow sipping of tea and scrunched her forehead up, willing the damn cup to be full of hot tea instead. It was one of those futile, ‘I know this won’t work but damn if I’m not going to try anyway so I don’t have to get up’ moments. She stared at it as the hot pot whistled and shut off.

Steam rose from the cup.

Erin jumped, almost spilling hot tea all over herself, and blinked at the cup. She lifted it, stuck a finger in it, and finally tasted it. No, it was hot. The perfect temperature actually. She placed the cup down, pressing her hands to her face. Her hands weren’t hot - warm from the cup, yes, but otherwise there was no temperature change there. Erin glanced back at her tea after fully investigating her hands to find it steam less, and cool.

She picked it back up, holding it in her hands, and willed it hot again.

The cup warmed beneath her hands, steam rising from the liquid.

On a whim, she tried cooling the tea. Low and behold, the tea reached almost icy temperatures. It seemed to be something she could do at will, but she couldn’t make the couch or blankets any warmer (she tried in vain). Handheld objects only could be temperature modified. Not necessarily a bad thing. Meant she could keep her phone from overheating, or make metal easier to bend (in theory).

Hot tea all the time with just a little thought, though? She could live with that. She could definitely live with that.

That was the second clue.

[ wc: 657 ]