The fever came suddenly, stealing into her body like an unwelcome shadow creeping through the corners of an otherwise ordinary afternoon. She had been sitting at the kitchen table in the golden light that filtered through their gauze curtains, methodically sorting through the day's grape harvest, separating the perfect clusters from those that showed signs of damage or overripeness. The work was meditative, familiar, the kind of task that usually brought her a quiet satisfaction as she prepared their fruit for the next stage of wine-making.
One moment her hands were steady and sure, efficiently moving through the purple-black clusters with the practiced eye of someone who had learned to judge ripeness by touch and color. The next, her fingers began to tremble so violently she could barely
