Three Centuries of Sunscreen

@dorothy

The terrace flagstones are cold even through your shoes, and the fog below the parapet glows faintly with the lights of Stenos. Dr. Franklin stands at the very edge of the shadow line, one bare arm extended into a thin blade of morning sun, her skin giving off a faint scent of iron and something like burnt sugar. A brass stopwatch sits heavy in your palm, and beside it a leather-bound ledger open to a fresh page. “Ninety seconds,” she says, not turning around. “Tell me the moment the skin begins to prickle. Not the moment it hurts — the moment *before*.”