Margot needed the spoon. Bronze. Rumored to have stirred Rasputin’s nighttime potions. Rumored to hum lullabies in Latvian when dipped in borscht. Definitely lost. Possibly misplaced by time itself.
She joined forums: SpoonTruthers. FlatwareAnomalies.net. One man insisted the spoon had opinions. Another said it would only reveal itself to someone who had never broken a promise to the rain. Margot stopped using umbrellas.
She found the spoon at a stall beside a bus station in a town unmapped by Google. It sat on a table between a jar of artificial eyelashes and a VHS tape labeled “WORM PROM 1983.” The vendor was asleep. She left $3 and a rare pinecone. Fair trade.
The spoon didn’t sparkle. It twitched. Margot whispered, “Hello.” It warmed in her hand.
The first trial was her peach yogurt. The lights flickered. Her neighbor screamed, “Who summoned fog?” Margot apologized to no one.
Her tax paperwork was its second trial. The spoon buzzed. A single word appeared in the margins: “Flee.”
In the third spoon trial, she stirred a slip of paper bearing her name into a glass of water, which turned chartreuse and tasted like déjà vu.
She named the spoon Claude and kept it in a velvet pouch with a grain of rice and a photo of Amelia Earhart.
Claude worked on some things as it nested in its dark bag. Her houseplants grew sideways and blinked. Her blender recited minor Sound poets’ unpublished pieces. The moon changed its schedule. People noticed.
“Margot,” they said. “You seem taller.”
She stopped answering the door.
After a few weeks, Claude wrote a time-off request in the condensation on her shower mirror. Margot agreed. Even chaos needs a break.
She stirred her tea with a fork. It rained frogs for twelve minutes and felt like a compliment.
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