By late morning the honey jar had laid a pair of tiny gangplanks over its golden rim. Each spoon greeted the amber shore, nodded to the kettle, and took exactly one drop, as if a visit were complete after a single sweet sip.
We asked at the kiosk. "I used to plunge straight in," said a man with a thermos. "Now I wait. The kettle already knows which spoon is coming down the stairs."
The next day the same spoon came back and climbed again. The kettle only nodded, and the whole kitchen smelled a little more like tea.