Tonnerre

Imagine, if you will, the year seventeen twenty-eight.

You are standing in the town of Tonnerre, in the wine country of Burgundy, in the north of France.

It is October, and the vineyards on the hillsides have turned gold and rust.

The air smells of crushed grapes and wood smoke.

We will call this child she.

She asked to be called so for the last third of her life, and the last word on a life belongs to the one who lived it.

Rest here for a moment in Tonnerre by the spring that has no bottom.

Everything that follows begins in this small town, and everything that follows will come back to it.