The trays of tea

Original fiction extract.

The drying room smelled faintly sweet when we entered. Leaves lay across broad trays, their edges dull in the light from the high windows. A worker asked us to stand close to the wall while she moved the next frame into position. She had been doing this long before the visitors arrived and did not change her pace for us.

The frame rolled forward like a shallow field on wheels. As it passed, the leaves released a warm green breath which filled the space where the door’s cold air had been. The worker lifted one corner of a tray, and a small dry whisper travelled from edge to edge. Her hands made no unnecessary journey. A turn, a pull, a pause: the heavy arrangement answered each slight movement as though it had been waiting to obey. Around us, the room’s many shelves seemed less like stored objects than separate stages of one long, quiet action.

She returned the tray and looked at a clock above the doorway. Someone asked how she knew when it was ready. She answered without searching for an impressive word, then went back to her work. On the way out, I noticed the room’s scent again. It no longer seemed simply a property of the building.

Choose three powerful words or phrases from the extract above. Analyse how the writer uses language to describe the worker’s effect on the room as she moves the trays.

Write about 200 to 250 words.