Sitting on the warm, smooth floor of Mantle, Auri shivered at the thought of moving through a joyless world like that. Nothing perfect. Nothing beautiful and true. Oh no. She was too wise to live that way. Auri looked around and smiled at all her luxury. She had a perfect loving leaf and lavender. She wore her favorite dress. Her name was Auri, and it was a shining piece of gold inside her all the time.

So she twisted off the silver stopper from the ice-blue jar, and poured the perfume in among the well-ground nutmeg powder. The smell of selas flower filled the room, so sweet and light against the prickle sting of nutmeg.

Auri smiled and stirred the two together with a kindling stick, then poured the thick, wet, pulpy mass into the linen sack she’d set inside a wide-mouthed jar. She used two sticks to twist the ends of the sack, and her makeshift wringer squeezed the fabric tight until it oozed a thick, dark oily liquid that spattered down into the jar. It was barely a slow trickle. Just a spoonful of the liquid. Two spoonfuls. Three.

She turned the sticks, her mouth a line of concentration. The linen twisted tighter. The dark liquid welled up, gathered, dripped. Dripped again.

Despite herself, Auri wished she had a proper press. It was so wasteful otherwise. She strained against the sticks, shifting her grip and giving them another half a turn. She grit her teeth, her knuckles going white. Another drip. Three more. Ten.

Auri’s arms began to tremble, and despite herself she glanced toward the iron-bound door that led to Boundary.

She looked away. She was a wicked thing, but she was not so bad as that. Idle wishing was mere fancy. It was another thing entirely to bend the world toward her own desires.

Finally her shaking arms could bear no more. She sighed, relaxed, and pulled the sticks free, upending the linen sack into a shallow pan. No longer a dark, pulpy mass, the nutmeg pomace now looked pale and crumbly.

Auri lifted up the glass and eyed the viscous liquid, clear as amber. It was lovely, lovely, lovely. It was like nothing that she’d ever seen before. It was thick with secrets and sea foam. It was prickle-rich with mystery. It was full of musk and whispers and tetradecanoic acid.

It was so fine a thing she dearly wished for more of it. The jar hardly held a palmful. She glanced over at the pan and thought of squeezing out the pomace with her hands to gather up a few more precious drops…

But reaching out, Auri found that she was oddly loathe to touch the gritty mass with her own naked skin. She paused and tipped her head to look more closely at the pale, grey, crumbling pomace and her stomach pulled into a knot at what she saw.