The First Margarita

Queen Cleopatra sat like an impenetrable statue under silken awnings on a barge afloat in the Nile. Bobbing and rocking ever so gently to the wavelets. A movement of the hand betrayed her vivid fluidity. She was not crafted of stone, yet she sipped pearls. The Latin word for pearl is margarita.

Her favorite drink was in the works: a concoction which required the labor of three servants. One who painstakingly ground the finest of pearls into a powder with a stone pestle; another who strained sweet white wine through a cloth into an ice-lined pitcher extracted from distant mountains then transported at great cost; while a third servant, with quick motions of the wrist, blended the wine and powdered pearl using a papyrus whisk.

There lounged a little girl at the foot of her seat who now tasted gingerly from her cup in order to test for poison. As if she were a cat lapping cream.

Assured of the wine's purity, Queen Cleopatra took the golden goblet in her jeweled fingers and inspected the nacreous and sweet-smelling fluid of acid and flowers in the grandiose sparkle of the midday sun. She then drank deeply in the face of Ra.

Sparkle of pearl-speck: cheers to the legend of the first margarita!