Soup and Teeth

From where Rishi stood, Maeril’s canopy made its own small room in the crush—cloth stretched tight, steam rising from a pot that never seemed to stop breathing. Bridge traffic slid past in close inches: boots, wheels, shouted prices, wet wool. Her hawk familiar perched on the ridgepole above, talons hooked into damp cloth, head ticking in small, exact turns.

Rishi stayed on his feet to eat, tucked close to the counter so the line could move. He took measured sips, letting heat and salt settle around the ache in his ribs. The broth did not mend him. It made being hurt easier to carry.

He watched Maeril over the rim.

Green skin, weather-dulled, like leaf-shadow on stone. Horns swept back from her temples. Dark hair braided for work. Practical layers, carved charms, and a tail that never quite stopped: counterbalancing a reach, punctuating a turn, tightening when someone edged too close.

But he did not watch the horns for long.

He watched her timing.

Pot to bowl. Herbs between two fingers. Coin taken without looking down. A name given before a complaint could sharpen. A joke placed exactly where a temper might have risen.

Her eyes moved constantly: the line, the pot, the hawk, the crowd, him. His swelling. His careful breath. The way his posture tried to hide pain and failed.

Children came and went at the edge of the canopy, too quick for most eyes. Maeril noticed without calling attention to them. A heel of bread appeared at the counter’s corner. A biscuit shifted beneath a folded cloth. Small mercies, given in motion, so no one had to be seen receiving them.

Rishi watched what the giving did to her.

Not pride. Not performance.

Relief, hidden almost before it appeared.

The counter gathered people until the bridge felt, briefly, like a place where someone could stand without being lost. Maeril did not feed them because she had plenty. Small givings kept her among them—held by names, held by need, none of it tallied.

The bowl was nearly empty now, and his grip was steadier despite the pain.

He held himself the way he always did when violence had left its signs on him—quiet, contained, already mapping the simplest way back to Lantern Hall.

Maeril caught him before he could step away.

“I live out on the edge,” she said, as if she were placing a fact on the counter between them. “Doorless hut.”

“No door?” The question left him before he decided to ask it.

“No door.” She shrugged. “Still sleep. It’s protected. I’ve got eyes at night. The hawk, and wards besides.”

Next to them, the hawk shifted closer on the ridgepole. Feathers rasped against wet cloth. Its weight settled with a deliberate surety.

Rishi’s eyes flicked to the familiar, then returned to her. “You watched the alley.”

“I watched.”

“The fight?”

“Not a fight.” She said it the way you fixed a wrong name. “A man risking flesh and bone to keep a boy breathing.”

Rishi looked down at the cloudy remains of broth.

Maeril turned back to the counter before the moment could harden, took a coin from a waiting hand, and slid another bowl into place.

“Anyway.” She wiped her hands on a cloth. “I’m Maeril. Some call me the Green Witch of Wyrm’s Crossing.” She smirked. “Just bridge talk.”

“Green witch,” he repeated, letting the title sit there and show its edges.

“You don’t look impressed.”

“I watch hands,” he said. “Titles are often misleading.”

Her smile cut sideways. “Then watch carefully.”

Rishi considered this with the same grave attention he had given the soup.

Then his eyes moved over the stall again: the hawk settled on the ridgepole, the satchel of herbs tucked within reach, the books kept at the counter’s edge beneath a folded cloth.

“Not only talk,” he said.

“No,” Maeril said. “Not only.”

The bridge closed around them again by degrees.

Boots. Wheels. Steam. The hawk shifting above. The late day thinning between awnings.

Rishi finished the broth and set the bowl down carefully.

“I should go,” he said.

“Tea, sometime?” Maeril didn’t push. She didn’t reach. She just offered it into the air like a thing that could be accepted later. “Not now. Just—sometime.”

He hesitated. Not refusal. Not agreement.

“Maybe,” he said—careful.

Maeril’s eyes held his. “I didn’t get your name.”

He nodded, aware that he had taken the bowl and her attention without offering the simplest thing back.

“Ṛṣiśūra,” he said, careful with the sounds. “But most call me Rishi.”

Her mouth twitched—a small wince, like the sound caught on her tongue. “Rishi-shura,” she tried, slower. Then, candid: “I haven’t heard that pronunciation before. Where is it from?”

“Mount Celestia,” he answered, plain. “It’s my monastic name.”

He hesitated, then added, “Rishi means Sage. And Shura—” he paused, as if the word needed a different mouth, “—Warrior.”

Maeril inclined her head, brows lifting—disbelief edged with tease. “A name from the Seven Heavens.” Her mouth threatened a smile. “For someone who watches hands, that is a very large name.”

A quiet breath left him, too small to be called laughter and close enough to count.

“It’s also a vow,” he said.

He let the word stand between them a moment.

Then he turned to leave.

At the edge of the canopy, he angled his head back and bowed—hands folded behind his lower back, quiet and formal, a monk’s shape in the middle of the bridge’s churn.

“You may send your familiar with me,” he said, voice low enough that it was only for her. “If you want to know the way.” He didn’t wait for an answer.

As he stepped away, the hawk lifted from the ridgepole and slipped into the air behind him.

He left Wyrm’s Crossing and felt the noise fall away in layers. Past the last crush of stalls, the boards gave way to uneven cobble, and the air off the Chionthar slid cold along his cheeks.

Brampton took him in on the other side: tar, rope, salt, lanterns under eaves, wet stone dark between their pools of light.

He slipped into a recessed doorway where the wall stole him from view and checked himself quickly.

Hand wraps first. Arm guards seated into their familiar grooves. Then the studded leather over his knuckles, the kind of thing the neighborhood made you carry after dark.

When he stepped out again, he was already moving as if he had never stopped.

Readiness.

He had gone only a few paces when a tavern door burst open behind him and threw lantern light across the wet cobbles.

A man stumbled out with it—broad-shouldered, drink-heavy, furious enough that the street seemed to lean away from him.

“Out,” someone snapped from the doorway. “I said out.”

The drunk turned back, face twisting.

Rishi stopped.

The tavernkeeper stood in the doorway, one hand white around a leather leash. At the end of it, a lean dog strained forward, teeth bared, the sound in its throat low and breaking.

“Don’t,” Rishi said.

The drunk surged toward the door.

The tavernkeeper’s bluff broke. His grip loosened—and then released.

The dog launched.