YEARS
OLD
On the table, a glass of first-fill sherry cask whisky rested, its color deep as mahogany.
The room went still. M watched the surface tremble under the lamplight, fragile yet steady. She lifted the glass, closed her eyes.
In an instant she was elsewhere: lying on a wooden deck, sunlight pressing warm against her skin, the sea breathing beneath her. The scene was simple, yet infinite, both real and impossible.
She did not add water. She wanted the whisky as it was, raw, unsoftened, powerful.
Water might have revealed another side, but tonight she wasn't searching for softness.
She was searching for strength. The burn was sharp, but inside it lived something more: a pulse, a memory reawakened. Every sip carried wood, sun, salt. Every note was memory and decision intertwined.
She stared into the glass, wondering if whisky could carry emotions,
if the oak itself had captured summers long gone, the echo of conversations, the hush of evenings that never fully end.
What she tasted was not flavor alone but a distillation of time itself.
If another had sat in her place, they would have found something else: a forest, perhaps, or ash, or childhood sweetness. But for her, it was power. The kind of power that stirs what you thought was gone, that resurrects feelings you believed had long dissolved. She would not tame it. Not tonight.
She set the empty glass beside the bottle. Strength and tenderness lingered in her chest, side by side. The world outside would go on, days arriving and fading as always. Yet this moment would remain, untouchable. It was not only her choice but her renewal. The whisky had given her a spark, and she chose to let it burn.
Maja's Choice.
