The scent of chocolate ((Because I like reading your drabbles))
Sitting atop the little available table space that a number of diagrams, papers and trinkets had left behind was a little white mug. The man approached it carefully, suspiciously, waiting for the shaped porcelain and its olfactory illusion to disappear as quickly as it had appeared. To think that a cup of hot chocolate would stop him in his tracks would be ridiculous — but so it happened.
There were no concrete images, no utterable words that came to his mind as the scent wrapped around him, solidifying itself in reality with each passing second. Flashes of emotions came first, things that felt like nostalgia, pricks of happiness -- the sound of laughter and the consequent smile that it always brought to his face. Autumnal and wintry colors always came with such a treat or, from days not since long passed, a pile of blankets and a few whispered secrets would always be used and exchanged over matching cups of different colors. After those sources of warmth and light had walked out of his life or otherwise been removed from his presence, so too had the delicate treat that now stared at him.
A product of his own unconscious creation? He doubted it -- he hadn't the patience to make something like that, much less learn how to do it in the first place. There was a time when she tried to teach him, to show him how simple it was, but there was always something missing each time he brought the ingredients together. The taste was never quite the same and he was often left unsatisfied. It wasn't until years later that he would figure out that the real treat he'd associated with the mug was her presence.
That night, he let it sit there. When dawn came and it hadn't disappeared, he could hardly bring himself to take it away.
