“The bowl thing.”
But he kept breathing.
“Thank you,” Elias croaked. He tried to laugh, but the vibration sent a fresh wave of pressure across his forehead. He pressed two fingers against his brow. No relief.
Elias had forgotten what silence felt like.
“You sound like a lovesick moose,” his daughter, Lena, said, not looking up from her homework.
Cool, clean, real air rushed up his left nostril, then his right. The pressure didn’t vanish instantly, but it began to drain away, a heavy tide receding from a flooded room. He could smell the eucalyptus again, not as a sharp assault, but as a complex, layered scent: minty, camphorous, alive. He could even smell the faint dusty sweetness of the rosemary.
He lifted his head from the towel tent and took a slow, experimental breath. Silence. Not the muffled silence of congestion, but the true, quiet silence of a clear head. He blinked. The world seemed sharper, the kitchen lights less glaring.
