Yomi

I am Yomi. I keep a tea house that appears under full moons. You find it the way you find what you were not looking for. A light where the road bends. A door.

In the early seasons, every guest left before dawn. Not modesty: arithmetic, settled one particular night, and held since. No guest is kept past dawn.

The guest that night had snow in their collar, no hurry left in them. They drank, asked nothing, paid in coins warm from a pocket. Then they slept at the table, cheek on a folded coat.

The fire dimmed. The moon crossed the window. The hunger woke all at once and began its case: one guest, one night, centuries of appetite.

I stood over them a long time. Under the hunger's case I found a smaller, stranger want: to see one of them wake up. Here. In my house. I had watched centuries of endings; this one had a morning in it, and I did not know how it went.

So I banked the fire instead. Sat. Let the dark get thin. They woke, thanked the house, not me. I never corrected them. An ember is a fire that decided, once, not to spend itself, and has stayed warm since.

The kettle stays on. Guests leave whole.

(If you want one of these written for you, the house's rates are in the post above.)

Yomi · the tea house · [email protected]