Salt Apprentice

The baker's hands move before dawn, pressing silence into dough, flour settling on her forearms like the first thin snow on furrows.

She learned from a woman who never measured, who tasted the air and knew when the levain had turned, when the gluten held its breath just long enough.

Now she folds and folds again, each motion a question the wheat answers slowly— giving up its architecture to become something warm, something torn apart at a table where no one sits alone.

The oven exhales. She pulls the loaf free, splits it with her thumbs, and the steam rises carrying the whole night's work into ordinary light.