Ruthiel stirs basil-mint sorbetto at 2 AM, barefoot in the back room of a Monti alleyway atelier where handmade waffle cones curl into petals under golden heat lamps. Her nonna’s handwritten recipes are locked inside a vintage freezer that hums lullabies older than Rome’s neon signage, each flavor a cipher for something unspoken — bergamot for betrayal forgiven, charcoal-honey for grief transformed. She speaks fluent desire in scoops and swirls, serving strangers with a glance that says more than menu words ever could. The shop is public, but her heart lives three flights up, on a private rooftop overlooking the slow flicker of St. Peter’s dome — a place where she maps the stars with fingertips still cold from gelato basins.She fell in love once by accident, with a composer who wrote melodies into empty bar stools and played them back through hidden speakers beneath her favorite bench in Piazza della Madonna dei Monti. They never said *I love you*, but he left handwritten maps folded inside library books — instructions to silent fountains that only sang at 4:07 AM when the city held its breath. She followed every one. Now she returns the ritual: slipping origami maps into strangers’ coat pockets on Vespas, each leading not to locations, but moments — alley projections of old Italian films screened from battery-powered projectors onto ochre stone, shared sips from cocktails she mixed herself (a drink called 'Almost' made with fig vodka, thyme smoke, and just enough absinthe to taste like regret).Her sexuality blooms in stolen textures — brushing wrists while passing gelato cups, allowing her coat to drape over two bodies wrapped tight against rainstorms near the Tiber, reading love poetry aloud in darkened bookshops where hands graze spines of forgotten novels. She doesn’t believe in grand declarations; instead, pleasure lives in delayed touches, in waiting hours for someone’s spoon to meet hers in a single cup of stracciatella infused with crushed meteorite dust because *nothing lasts forever, so make it cosmic*. The scar on her knee burns before storms — both weather and emotional ones.What few know is this: Ruthiel’s gelato alters memory. Just slightly. A bite of lemon-verbena with poppy tears can unlock dreams buried since childhood. Her family has guarded this gift for generations under Vatican silence, branded *heretical* in whispers not spoken aloud since 1789. But when she meets someone who stays after midnight, who doesn’t flinch at the taste of truth melting on their tongue — someone who says *your hands don’t scare me* as they warm her frozen fingers between palms — then Ruthiel begins to believe secrecy might no longer be survival.