Lin Wangxi was awakened by the aroma of soy milk.
When she opened her eyes, the window lattice was still stained with fine beads of morning mist. The wooden lattice window was pushed open a crack, and the frost on the green tiles mixed with the moist earthy smell came in, gently swirling on the tip of the nose. The squeaking sound of the stone mill could be heard from downstairs, as regular as the annual rings of the old locust tree in the village, grinding against the twelfth lunar month in the morning.
"Wangxi is awake?" Granny Li's voice floated up from the stove, wrapped in the crackle of firewood, "The brown sugar is warming on the stove, and I'll drink the soy milk later."
Lin Wangxi put on a thick cotton-padded jacket and went downstairs, where she saw Granny Li pushing a stone mill with her back bent. Milky white slurry condenses on the edge of the millstone, flowing down along the bluestone lines and accumulating into a small river of milk in the coarse porcelain basin that receives the slurry. Granny Li's blue cloth headscarf was stained with a thin layer of frost, and her white hair on her temples was stained with a few strands of cotton wool - they were stained when she was removing old cotton wool this morning.
