The universe is an egg. Everyone knows this — it’s settled, it’s in the schoolbooks, the children paint it on things. Inside the egg is a sun, around the sun a ring, and on the inside of the ring lives a species that argues about the cost of fish, builds bridges, and forgets to feed the cat. Every so often the egg does a thing called a Quickening: the bread stops rising on Tuesdays, the cats all turn and stare at the same nothing, and the gentleman in row three of the Council chamber goes slightly pale.

This Quickening is going to be the big one.

It will not be met by heroes. It will be met by a baker who can read the cosmos in her sourdough, a three-person government office in a half-basement whose entire job is to notice things and write them down, an astronomer with a chart, an engineer who is furious, a priest about to break with his faction, several children, a great many cats, and an enormous amount of tea. Not one of them can stop what’s coming. Every one of them means to be there anyway.

Tea Helps is about the end of the world as handled by the people who’d actually handle it — quietly, competently, and without making a fuss. Because that’s the work. And the work is the work.