They continued on, and the boy saw and sometimes sampled a flavour here and there. There was Quiet (translucent but wondrously rich), Darkness (so intensely black it hurt his eyes), Rainbow (colourful and maddeningly elusive), Chocolate (just for familiarity’s sake), Toasty Toes (as implied, warm in the toes, no sensation in the mouth), and Yusuf’s Super-Duper Taste Sensation (hard to describe: bubbly, tangy, zippy). Just as they were about to exit the freezer, Yusuf stopped at one more shelf, opened one last tub, and held it out.

“Boy, this is your Uncle Yusuf’s favourite: Stars. Try it.”

The boy dipped a finger into the container, scooping out a small blob of velvety dark blue and, atop it, a tiny, twinkling, sparkling shard.

As the ice cream melted in his mouth, the boy felt violets and chocolate and warm honeyed peaches and coconut milk and the spine-tingling sensation that the universe was a very, very vast place indeed. As he bit into the shard, it exploded and he felt his eyes and ears and throat aglow with firelight.

“Wow,” the boy whispered. He was quite overcome.

book one of the oddfits series