By breakfast the kitchen vase had become a very small staircase. The candy canes issued spiral steps to their stripes. Each stripe greeted the napkin, nodded to the cup, and only then went down one red turn.
We asked at the kiosk by the square. "I thought they were racing the cocoa," said the woman who sells peppermints. "They were only taking turns. A stripe that skips a step leaves the next one without a greeting, and then the whole vase looks as if it forgot how to be sweet."
The keeper of the table set out foil tickets and asked nobody to hurry the neighboring stripe. By evening the cup had learned to wait, and the napkin kept a polite little crease for anyone still on the stairs.
The next morning a sparrow came to the windowsill and watched until one small red turn had finished its descent. After that the sugar bowl nodded a little kinder, and nobody skipped ahead.