natural

Cinnamon.
I could smell cinnamon.
I jumped up and ran to the kitchen.
I yanked open the oven door.
I gasped.
Just in the nick of time.
Just barely in the nick of time.
Cinnamon biscuits, brown and bubbly.
As I placed the steaming pan atop the stove to cool, I remembered my sister.
She had mixed up a batch of cinnamon buns.
She had stirred and kneaded and rolled and cut.
They were soon in the oven, rising and resplendent and she was on the sofa reclining and relaxing.
She was tired.
The couch felt so soft.
The air was sweet and warm.
Just a few more minutes and she would rise and pull those buns from the oven.
The apartment was deliciously quiet.
So quiet.
Quiet.
She slept.
Perhaps she dreamt of home, of kitchens fragrant.
Or of wood smoke on the autumn breeze, or campfires, the air thickly acrid....
She woke with a start.
She could smell cinnamon.
She jumped up and ran to the kitchen.
She yanked open the oven door.
She gasped.

Her voice was still tinged with regret as she told me her tale days later.
They had been the best cinnamon buns she had ever made.
She could tell.
The charred remains were so plump, so well risen.
Those cinnamon buns had started out with such promise, but ended up looking like relics from Pompeii; a natural disaster.