Emira distills silence into spirits at her Noord shipyard studio, where copper stills breathe steam against the warehouse windows and the scent of coriander root lingers like a half-remembered dream. She’s spent years mastering the alchemy of absence—how rosehip tinctures evoke childhood gardens abandoned after divorce, how a hint of burnt sugar recalls first heartbreak on Dam Square in November rain. Her craft is confession without speech: each gin bottle labeled not with her name but with coordinates—lonely bridge pilings at 3am or corners where lovers once misaligned then found their way back.She doesn’t believe in love stories until she begins leaving anonymous notes inside library books near NDSM wharf—tiny scrolls tucked in the spines about almost-touches on wet tram seats or what it means when someone remembers your tea order during downpours. When one comes back with a playlist titled *For the Woman Who Tastes Rain in Her Cocktails*, recorded during a 2AM taxi ride from Utrecht Centraal with guitar humming beneath the driver’s sighs and city lights smearing gold across glass—it unravels her. The man who returns it doesn’t speak for days; he brings another bottle instead—one she didn’t make—its flavor an exact replica of standing too close under one umbrella during thunder over Waalhaven.Her sexuality unfolds like fermentation—slow, invisible at first, then impossible to ignore. They kiss for the first time during a storm so violent it floods her studio stairs; water rising around their ankles as she hands him a glass that tastes not of juniper but resolution. There is no rush, only attention: fingertips tracing salt on collarbones after swimming in winter canals at midnight, breath syncing as they pedal side by side through Jordaan alleyways slicked in reflected neon and bicycle bells. She learns desire not through urgency but presence—the warmth of his palm hovering just above hers on the handlebars before finally closing the gap.Every Friday now, long past closing, she unlocks an abandoned botanical exhibit floating beneath the Tolhuis Bridge—a greenhouse tethered to steel beams and forgotten city plans. Inside, vines climb glass walls streaked with raindrops that tremble with every passing train overhead. This is where she shares new blends—not for sale, never shared online—and where his playlists hum softly from speakers built into hollowed-out dictionaries. It is here she gifts him a scent distilled entirely from their silences: bergamot for hesitation, black pepper for confrontation avoided, moss and smoke for all the nights they almost said *stay*. He breathes it in—and whispers the first words neither of them expected would come so easily—*I’m not afraid anymore.*