Tea in the soft rain

The tea house sat halfway up a green hillside, at the end of a path lined with moss and small smooth stones. It was a low wooden building with a deep roof, and its wide doors were slid open to the garden. Tonight a soft rain was falling. It was the kind of rain that does not so much fall as drift, fine as mist, settling on the leaves and gathering into slow bright drops.

Inside, a young woman named Iri knelt on a cushion beside a low table. She had come in from the evening walk with rain in her hair, and the owner of the tea house, a quiet old man with gentle hands, had given her a soft towel and a warm place near the brazier. Now he was preparing the tea.

He moved slowly and without any hurry. He poured water from a black iron kettle into a small clay pot, and the steam rose up in a thin curl and vanished. He warmed the cups first, turning each one in his hands, and then emptied them into a wooden bowl. Every movement was careful and unhurried, as if he had all the time in the world, and tonight, he did.

Iri watched the rain beyond the open doors. It pattered on the broad leaves of the plants outside, and dripped from the edge of the roof in a string of silver beads. Somewhere in the garden, water ran quietly down a bamboo pipe into a stone basin, and the sound of it was clear and small and constant.

The old man poured the tea. It was pale green-gold, and it smelled of cut grass and something toasted and sweet. He set the cup before her with both hands and bowed his head a little, and she bowed hers in return.

She lifted the cup. It was warm and a little rough under her fingertips, the clay unglazed on the outside and smooth within. She breathed in the steam before she drank. The first sip was light and warm, and she felt it all the way down.

They did not talk very much. There was no need. The rain spoke for both of them, soft on the roof, soft on the leaves, soft in the stone basin. Now and then the charcoal in the brazier settled with a faint tick, and a small bright spark rose and faded.

The old man poured a second cup, and then a third. Each time the tea was a little different, a little softer, a little deeper in color. Iri felt the warmth of it spread through her hands and her chest and her shoulders. The day she had come from seemed very far away now, a small thing at the bottom of the hill.

When the pot was empty, the old man brought a folded quilt and laid it beside her. “Stay as long as you like,” he said quietly. “The rain will keep.”

She lay down on the soft mat with the quilt drawn over her. The floor was warm from the brazier. Through the open doors, the garden was a dim, wet green, and the rain was still falling, fine and gentle and endless.

She listened to it. The patter on the roof. The drip from the eaves. The small clear sound of the water in the basin.

Her eyes closed. The tea was warm inside her. The quilt was warm around her.

And the soft rain went on falling over the tea house, and Iri slept.