Large mythical bird with clouds across a back

The ovens were lit at half three, same as always, and I stood at the mouth of the big one with the peel in my hands and thought about your mother's old copper kettle. You'll say I'm soft. Maybe. But the sky over the car park went the colour of dishwater and then the colour of a pigeon's chest, and I swear the cloud bank behind the chimney stacks looked like it was tearing open to let something through.

Nobody believes me about the bird. Dev says the starter had gone off and I was dizzy from the flour dust. Perhaps. The loaves came out hollow-sounding and golden, though, every one of them, and when I tapped the base of the last one it rang like a bell. I set it on the cooling rack and it steamed in the grey light, and the steam curled up in long feathery threads the way smoke does off a fire that's been put out and wants to start again.

I've decided the bakery is haunted in the kindest way. Every morning someone has to climb out of the dark to feed the fire, and every morning the ash gets raked from the firebox and the flames catch again from a single coal left glowing at the back.

Come home for Easter. I'll save you the heel of the first batch, the one with the burnt crust that you always fight me for.

Love, Tomasz