Outside, the aurora. Inside, the kettle.
On the kind of tea that comes from a jar a stranger filled in summer.
The owner pulled thyme from a jar she'd dried in summer. The wind was moving the windows in their frames. We didn't talk much.
She put the kettle on a stove that had probably been there since her father's time, and stood with her back to me, looking out at the black sand. The aurora was doing what auroras do. Her dog was asleep against the radiator. [^1]
Iceland is a country that has, on most nights, more wind than people. The thyme tea tastes like the hillside the thyme came from, which is a hillside you have probably been driving past all day. It tastes, in other words, like the place you are already in.
She poured me a second cup without asking. The aurora was, if anything, getting better. Neither of us mentioned it.
[^1]: Foraged thyme is what people here drink when they're not feeling well, when the weather is bad, when there's company, when there isn't. So: always.
- Find it
- Any guesthouse in the south will have something like this. Ask.
- Order
- Whatever they have in the jar.
- Pay
- Free, or the price of the room.
- When
- Late, after the aurora forecast has done its worst.