Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

❦❦❦

Eren.

The name followed Y/N through The Underbough like a small, stubborn ember.

Not warm enough to trust.

Not bright enough to guide her.

But real enough that the masked boy was no longer only a shape in the trees.

He was Eren.

Eren, who smelled like mud and bad temper.

Eren, who had pulled her from the roots and acted as though kindness were something he had stepped in by accident.

Eren, who had told her not to say her name to everyone else and then answered her questions with as few words as possible, as if every sentence cost him something he had no interest in spending.

The afternoon had deepened while they stood in the lower washing station. Y/N could not see the sky clearly from beneath the great root canopy, but what little light slipped through the high cracks of The Underbough had turned softer and duller, gray-gold around the edges. The night's storm had passed, but the whole city still dripped with its aftermath. Water fell from leaves in slow, patient beads. Steam rose from carved basins and curled around hanging moss. Somewhere beyond the bath roots, the city kept moving: carts clicking over bark paths, voices rising and falling, seedpod bells chiming whenever a door opened too hard.

Y/N's feet were clean.

That felt like a miracle.

Not a large miracle. Not the kind Mother's storybooks gave to princesses or lost saints or children who were especially good at obeying. But a small, warm miracle nevertheless. Her toes no longer wore mud between them. The sting beneath her foot had dulled. The soft brown horror she had stepped in on the way down to the gate had been scrubbed away until only the memory remained, which was still too much, but better than the thing itself.

Eren's hands were also clean.

Mostly.

He had wiped them with the furious obedience of someone who believed cloth had personally insulted him, and Y/N had tried very hard not to smile while he did it. He still looked dirty everywhere else: mask damp, cloak torn, boots filthy, sleeveless tunic dark with old mud and fresh water. The bathkeeper had watched him with the flat disappointment of someone who had seen many kinds of stubbornness and found his neither new nor impressive.

Now Eren turned toward the food streets.

Y/N's stomach gave a small, hopeful twist at the thought.

Warm bread.

Soup.

Anything that was not berry juice, river water, or fear.

She took one step after him.

A clawed hand struck the root-post in front of them.

Thump.

Y/N stopped so fast her clean toes curled against the stone.

The bathkeeper stood beside the post with both arms crossed.

She was a badger, though not like the badgers Y/N had seen in Mother's animal plates. Those had been larger, low-lying, thick-bodied, with blunt faces and powerful paws, drawn beside hedgerows and burrows. This woman was smaller than those, built upright like the folk of The Underbough, but still broad, heavy-shouldered, and much taller than Eren. Eren stood only a little over a foot tall, and the bathkeeper rose several inches above him. Beside Y/N, who barely reached five or six inches herself, the badgerfolk woman seemed enormous. Silver-white stripes marked her dark face, sweeping from her muzzle up over her brow in clean, severe lines. Her small black eyes were bright with the terrible patience of someone who knew exactly how foolish everyone else was being.

"No," she said.

Eren looked at her.

Y/N looked at her.

The bathkeeper looked at both of them and seemed offended by the amount of river they continued to represent.

"No?" Y/N repeated carefully.

"No," the bathkeeper said again. "You are not finished."

Eren's voice came flat behind the wooden mask. "We washed."

"You rinsed feet," the bathkeeper said. "And he lost a fight with a cloth." She pointed one claw at Eren. "That is not bathing."

Y/N glanced at him.

Eren did not move.

The bathkeeper sniffed once.

Her nose wrinkled.

"River mud. Blue-moss muck. Old blood. Berry juice. Wet bark. Something dead. Something frightened. Something that should have stayed outside the gate."

The bathkeeper's nose twitched again, slower this time.

Her black eyes narrowed on Eren.

"And whatever he is carrying under all that temper."

Y/N's mouth parted.

"That is very specific."

"I have a nose."

Eren said, "We need food."

"You need soap."

"I need food."

"Scrub before supper." The bathkeeper leaned down slightly, though she was still looking more at Eren than Y/N. "No one eats in my lower court smelling like the river dragged you under a root, gnawed on you awhile, then spat you back at my gate."

Y/N pressed her lips together.

Eren did not answer.

That seemed wise.

The bathkeeper pointed past the foot basins, deeper into the root-hollow where steam thickened between hanging curtains of moss.

"Full baths. Wash first. Scrub properly. Then soak. Then food."

Y/N looked toward the steam.

Her whole body betrayed her at once.

Warmth.

Real warmth.

A real bath.

Not a quick foot rinse in front of a public basin. Not cold river water. Not Mother's thimble bath, careful and tiny and warmed over a lamp. Not even the special teacup baths Mother sometimes prepared on cold evenings, when a chipped porcelain cup became a private tub, lavender and crushed mint floated in the water, and Mother folded a soft cloth over the rim so Y/N would not bruise her arms climbing in.

A full bath.

Her heart lifted so suddenly that she almost forgot to be frightened.

Then she noticed the entrance paths split in two.

One curved left beneath a curtain of pale moss threaded with small white flowers.

One curved right beneath darker roots strung with acorn lamps and hollow seedpod chimes.

The bathkeeper pointed with two claws.

"Womenfolk to the left. Menfolk to the right. Young ones stay with whoever brought them. Scrub before soaking. No river cloth in the pools. No boots past the stone. No masks in the water unless you want the wood to swell and take your nose with it."

Eren's head turned slightly.

The bathkeeper met the mask without blinking.

"Argue with the water if you must. It will answer the same."

A silence passed.

Y/N looked between them.

Eren looked like he might argue.

The bathkeeper looked like she had been born prepared.

At last, Eren said, "Fine."

It sounded nothing like fine.

The bathkeeper's mouth twitched.

Y/N was not sure whether it had been a smile or the threat of one.

"Good," she said. Then, to Y/N, softer but still brisk, "You. Petal-girl. Bring the bundle."

Y/N clutched the blue-poppy blanket tighter against her chest.

Inside it, the little book pressed against her ribs.

"My book stays with me."

The bathkeeper's eyes dropped to the bundle.

Then back to Y/N's face.

"Book does not go in soaking water."

"I know."

"Petal cloth does not go in soaking water either, not if you want it to stay petal cloth."

Y/N's fingers tightened.

The bathkeeper's expression did not soften, exactly.

But it shifted.

Less command.

More understanding.

"We dry it," she said. "We clean what can be cleaned. We do not boil it. We do not scrub it with grit. And we do not let mushroom children taste the petals."

Y/N blinked.

"Taste them?"

"They taste everything damp, rare, or expensive."

"That is not comforting."

"It is not meant to comfort you. It is meant to warn you." The bathkeeper held out one broad paw. "Comforting is not my trade. Keeping folk from carrying parasites into supper is."

Eren's voice came out rough behind the mask.

"Give it to her."

Y/N turned to him sharply.

He did not reach for the bundle. He did not move to take it from her.

His green eyes stared from behind the mask.

"She cares more about rules than stealing," he said.

The bathkeeper snorted. "Best compliment I have had all day."

Y/N looked back at the bundle.

The blue-poppy blanket was damp at the edges and smeared with mud, but it still shimmered faintly where the light touched the preserved petals. Beneath it, the book waited with all the weight of home folded into something small enough to hold.

The thought of letting it leave her hands made her chest tighten.

But the bathkeeper did not reach again.

She waited.

That mattered.

Slowly, Y/N untied the blanket from across her body and handed it over with both hands.

"Please be careful," she said.

"I am always careful."

Eren made a small sound.

The bathkeeper's eyes flicked to him.

"With things that deserve it," she added.

Y/N almost smiled.

Then the bundle left her hands.

The absence struck at once.

Her side felt wrong without the book against it.

The bathkeeper passed the bundle to a younger attendant waiting near the left entrance. The attendant was a slim otterfolk woman with wet brown fur, bright eyes, and a towel wrapped over one shoulder. She took the bundle gently, as if she understood without needing to be told that it mattered.

"Delicates shelf," the bathkeeper said. "Blue section. Hollow twelve. No heat-stone too close."

The otterfolk attendant nodded. "Blue-marked hollow. No heat-stone too close."

Y/N repeated the words silently.

Blue section.
Hollow twelve.
No heat-stone too close.

The attendant slipped away through the moss curtain with Y/N's blanket and book.

Y/N watched until the steam swallowed her.

Eren was already turning toward the right-hand passage.

"Wait," Y/N said.

He stopped.

She did not know why she had said it.

Maybe because the paths split.

Maybe because the book was gone.

Maybe because Eren was walking away, and even though he was rude and strange and smelled like he had been raised under a wet log, he was still the only person in The Underbough who had entered with her.

He looked back.

Y/N straightened.

"I will be on that side," she said, pointing left.

His mask tilted.

"I know."

"And you will be on that side."

"I know."

"I am saying it because we are separating."

"I noticed."

She frowned.

"You make conversations very difficult."

"You start too many."

The bathkeeper made a noise that might have been agreement.

Y/N's cheeks warmed.

Eren turned again.

Then paused.

Not fully.

Only enough that his cloak shifted.

"If someone asks what you are," he said, "say you don't know."

Y/N blinked.
"I always say that."

"Good."

"That is not a good thing."

"It is today."

"Why?"

His gaze shifted over the baths, over the ears that twitched too near and the eyes that looked away too late.

"Because named things get counted," he said. "Counted things get priced."

Then he disappeared beneath the darker root arch.

Y/N stood there for one breath too long.

The bathkeeper cleared her throat.
"Petal-girl."

Y/N turned quickly.
"Yes?"

The bathkeeper lifted one broad paw toward the steaming passage.
"Bath."

Y/N blinked, then remembered herself all at once.
"Oh. Yes." Her fingers curled awkwardly into the damp edge of her gown. "Right."

And with all the courage she could gather while missing her book, wearing a damp, ruined gown, and being commanded by a badger woman with soap-nuts around her neck, Y/N stepped through the moss curtain into the women's baths.

The baths were not rooms.

Not properly.

They were hollows beneath the roots, carved into warm stone where mineral water rose from somewhere deep under Briar's Hold. Steam drifted between root-pillars as thick as cottage beams. Moss curtains hung in layered sheets, and woven reed screens divided one washing space from another. Acorn lamps glowed amber along the walls, their light soft beneath the mist. Flowering vines climbed down through cracks in the living ceiling, dropping pale bell-shaped blossoms over pools that shivered whenever warm water bubbled up from beneath.

Above, the roof opened in places to the forest itself.

Not wide open. Not enough to let in rain directly. But enough for Y/N to see fern fronds hanging over the edges, pale mushrooms growing from damp bark, and thin silver threads of water slipping down through roots before vanishing into channels carved along the stone.

The air smelled of mint soap, wet fur, crushed herbs, warm rock, and the faint sharpness of mineral water.

It was beautiful.

It was strange.

It was far too open.

Y/N stopped just inside the entrance.

Womenfolk and girls moved through the steam as if this were ordinary, as if bathing beneath living roots with strangers nearby was not strange enough to make Y/N forget where to put her hands.

Rabbitfolk mothers sat near shallow basins, washing mud from the ears of small children who kept trying to splash one another. A turtle-backed elder leaned against a smooth stone, her shell half-polished with oil while another bather combed green threads of riverweed from her hair. A newt woman with glossy brown skin poured water over her shoulders from a carved nut bowl. Two mousefolk girls whispered together behind their towels, their round ears damp and shining. Near one screened pool, a woman with moth wings held them high in a soft roof above her back, careful not to let the water touch the delicate powder along their edges.

Y/N looked away too fast.

The torn wing in the shell flashed behind her eyes.

Cream.

Brown-spotted.

Red at the root.

Her stomach tightened.

From the corner of her eye, something small and bright shifted near the upper stones.

Y/N looked again.

A tiny winged woman stood on the lip of a warm pool, no taller than Y/N's hand. She had transparent wings like frost-glass and hair pale as milkweed silk. She dipped one foot into the water, then withdrew it with a shiver. Her wings trembled once, scattering droplets.

A fairy.

A real one.

Smaller than Y/N. Winged. Certain in a way Y/N was not.

Y/N had seen fairies only in Mother's older picture books, drawn inside flowers, sleeping beneath foxgloves, dancing in rings where humans were warned never to step. Mother had always turned the page quickly when Y/N asked too many questions about them.

The fairy looked up.

Their eyes met.

Her gaze dropped to Y/N's wrists, where the damp petal-silk sleeves had gone translucent in the steam. Beneath them, the faint silver markings glimmered and vanished with the shifting light.

Then she looked away.

Not frightened.

Not friendly.

Careful.

Y/N pulled her hands closer to her body.

She had thought fairies would feel familiar.

They did not.

A young reedling bath attendant approached her with a folded moss-cloth towel and a small tray of soap-nuts, crushed herb paste, a wash-moss square, a reed-handled scrub brush, and a smooth gray scrubbing stone no larger than Y/N's palm. Her skin had the faint green tint of river grass, and her long fingers were stained with mint and bath oil. Damp strands of dark hair clung to her temples beneath a reed-woven cap.

Y/N stared before she could stop herself.

The girl looked as if the river had once grown tired of carrying reeds and decided to make one into a person instead. Not frightening. Not exactly. Just impossible in the quiet, ordinary way everything here seemed impossible.

The attendant blinked at her.

Heat rose into Y/N's face.

"Sorry," Y/N said quickly.

The reedling only lifted the tray. "For washing," she said. "If you'll have them."

"Yes," Y/N said, still looking at the green tint of her hands. "Please."

"This way."

Y/N followed, trying not to stare and failing several times before she crossed the room.

Everything here looked like something from a fairytale that had been left out in the rain long enough to grow practical. A row of polished snail shells had been turned into little seats. Flower cups held hair oil. Hollow reeds carried warm water from one pool to the next. A cluster of mushroom children sat in a shallow basin while their mother scrubbed their caps with a brush, each child squeaking whenever she found dirt in the gills.

Y/N slowed.

Mushroom children.

Actual mushroom children.

One of them stared back at her with round black beady eyes.

Y/N looked forward immediately.

The attendant led her to a small washing place behind a reed screen that gave privacy only if one did not think too hard about all the steam moving around it. A polished snail shell sat beside a low basin, its pearly curve smoothed flat enough for sitting. Warm water poured from a root spout above the basin, though the spout was not fixed in place. It hung from a bend of living root and hollow reed, made to be lifted, turned, and guided wherever the bather needed. Beside the basin waited a wooden peg for towels, a bark shelf for the washing tray, and a little drain lined with pebbles.

"You rinse first," the attendant said, setting the tray down. "Then herb paste and brush. Rinse again. Then soap-nut with the wash-moss. Last rinse after that." She pointed to each item as she named it. "Stone is for feet. Not knees. Not fingers. Not anything tender unless you want the bathkeeper shouting through the roots."

Y/N looked at the crushed herb paste.

Then at the water.

Then at the open space behind the screen.

"I have to..." She lowered her voice. "Undress here?"

The attendant blinked.

"Where else?"

Y/N's face warmed so quickly she thought steam might rise from it.

"I do not know. Somewhere... less here."

The attendant's expression shifted.

Not unkind.

"First time in public baths?"

Y/N nodded once.

The attendant looked her over—damp gown, petal layer dulled with mud, river-tangled hair, shoulders drawn nearly to her ears.

"Keep the towel around you as much as you like," she said. "Hang it when you rinse if you want it dry enough to use after. Most folk are busy with their own dirt."

Y/N wanted to believe that.

Then a child whispered from somewhere behind her.

"Is she a fairy?"

Y/N went still.

Another child whispered back with great authority, "No. Fairies have wings."

"Maybe she took them off for the bath."

"You cannot take wings off."

"You can take shoes off."

"Wings are not shoes."

A small pause.

"Then is she a doll?"

"She moved."

"Dolls can move if cursed."

"My cousin had a cursed spoon once."

"That is not the same."

Their whispering might have been funny, if every guess had not made Y/N feel less like a girl and more like something found.

Y/N clutched the towel to her chest and closed her eyes.

The attendant turned.

"Soap in your own ears, not gossip in someone else's," she called.

Small splashing followed.

A mother muttered an apology.

Y/N did not turn around.

Her face felt hot enough to boil the bathwater.

"I am not cursed," she whispered.

The attendant paused.

Then, gently enough that it almost hurt, she said, "I did not think you were."

Y/N swallowed.

"That is good."

"It is also none of my business if you are."

Y/N looked at her.

The attendant shrugged. "Briar's Hold has room for many problems."

Then she stepped away, leaving Y/N with the towel, the basin, the little tray of washing things, and her own terrible awareness of having a body.

Y/N stood very still for a moment.

She had wanted this.

She had wanted warm water so badly that the thought of it had made her nearly weak. She had imagined sinking into heat and washing away the river, the mud, the blood, the smell of fear, and the memory of that torn wing landing on her foot.

She had not imagined being seen.

Mother had always made baths private. She warmed water over a lamp, set out clean cloth, tested the heat with the tip of one finger, and turned away whenever Y/N asked, though there had never been much space to turn away inside the terrarium. Even Mother's care had been close, careful, and containing.

This was different.

Here, the steam belonged to everyone.

The water belonged to everyone.

The air touched everyone.

Y/N peered through a narrow gap in the reed screen before she could stop herself.

No one seemed to be watching.

Not closely.

Rabbitfolk mothers were still washing muddy ears. The turtle-backed elder had closed her eyes while oil gleamed along the curve of her shell. The moth-winged woman sat with her wings lifted above the steam. The mushroom children were too busy squeaking over their scrubbed caps to care about Y/N at all.

Everyone had a body here. Fur, shell, wings, tails, gills, caps, scales, soft skin, hard plates. Bodies were washed, oiled, rinsed, scolded, hidden, displayed, complained over.

Y/N looked down at herself.

At the narrowness of her shoulders. The soft roundness of her chest beneath the clinging gown. The curve of her hips. The tender, private places Mother had taught her to cover. The faint silver markings half-hidden beneath damp petal-silk sleeves.

She did not know what kind of body hers was supposed to be.

She only knew it felt far too visible.

Her fingers trembled as she untied the damp gown.

The fabric peeled away coldly from her skin. Mud had dried in the folds. Little green threads of riverweed clung near the hem. One pale fleck of wing-dust still shone near the edge of the petal layer, and Y/N stared at it until her vision blurred.

Then she folded the gown quickly and set it aside for the attendant to take.

She wrapped the moss-cloth around herself, then sat carefully on the polished snail shell beside the basin. Its pearly curve felt cool beneath her thighs.

The first rinse was the worst.

She hung the towel on the wooden peg where it would stay dry, then snatched it back almost at once, heart thudding.

No.

Not yet.

She kept it gathered across herself with one hand while she reached for the root spout with the other. The hollow reed bent more easily than she expected, warm water running in a steady ribbon as she guided it over one hand, then the other.

Y/N gasped.

It was not even the soaking pool.

Only washing water.

But heat wrapped around her fingers and slid into every ache the river had left behind. Her knuckles loosened. The dried mud beneath her nails softened. A line of grit lifted from her wrist and spiraled down into the basin.

Y/N stared.

Then her throat closed.

Not because she was sad.

Not exactly.

Because the water was kind.

That was somehow worse.

She rinsed herself in pieces. One hand. One wrist. One arm. Then the other. She lifted the towel only as far as she had to, guiding the root spout over her shoulders, her collarbone, the back of her neck. Water ran brown at first, then gray, then nearly clear.

When she had to wash beneath the towel, she turned toward the basin wall and clenched her teeth. One hand held the moss-cloth away from the water so it would not soak through. The other guided the spout quickly over her ribs, her stomach, her hips, her thighs. She stopped twice to peer through the reed screen, certain someone must be looking.

No one was.

Somehow, that made her feel foolish and relieved at the same time.

After the first rinse, she reached for the crushed herb paste.

It was cool and grainy beneath her fingers, green-brown and sharp-smelling. She spread a little of it onto the reed-handled brush and began with her arms. The bristles were stiff but not cruel. They scraped river grit from her elbows, mud from the backs of her hands, little dark lines of dirt from around her fingernails.

She scrubbed her knees next. Then the backs of them. Then the places where reeds had scratched her calves. She moved slowly, carefully, working one part of herself at a time and covering it again as soon as it was clean.

Clean, she was learning, required a terrible amount of bravery.

She used the brush over her shoulders and down her back as well as she could reach. The crushed herb paste bit gently into the scrapes there, sharp enough to sting her nose and clean enough to make her realize how foul she had truly been.

For her feet, she used the gray stone.

Only there.

Her soles. Her heels. Her toes. The places where mud had dried hard along the edges of her nails. The stone rasped softly, lifting river grit from skin the river had nearly claimed.

Then she rinsed again.

This time she filled the low basin partway, letting clean warm water gather around the pebbled drain before she pulled the stopper aside. She guided the root spout over each scrubbed place, watching paste, mud, and loosened dirt slip away.

The water ran clearer now.

Y/N breathed a little easier.

Then she took up the soap-nut.

It looked harmless. Small, brown, wrinkled, ordinary. She rubbed it against the thin wash-moss square the way the attendant had shown her, and after a moment, a soft slick lather bloomed between them. Not thick like cream. Not bubbly like Mother's washing water. Something gentler. Slippery and faintly golden in the bathlight.

She washed herself again with the soapy moss.

Arms. Hands. Fingers. Neck. Shoulders. Chest, quickly, with her eyes fixed hard on the basin rim. Stomach. Hips. Thighs. The private places that made her face burn so badly she had to stop and listen for whispers before she could continue.

There were none.

Only water. Steam. The distant splash of children. The bathkeeper's voice scolding someone for putting a tail in the clean-oil jar.

Y/N almost laughed.

It came out as a shaky breath instead.

She rinsed one final time, careful to keep the moss-cloth lifted away from the falling water. The soap slipped from her skin. The last of the herb paste vanished. The last brown thread of dirt curled into the drain and disappeared.

Then she reached the red smear near her ankle.

Her hand stopped.

Moth-wing.

Warm.

Wet.

The scream.

Y/N picked up the reed-handled brush again.

She pressed it over the mark and scrubbed.

Hard.

Too hard.

The skin reddened. The old blood thinned and washed away. Pale insect powder lifted from the fine lines around her ankle and vanished into the drain.

She scrubbed again.

And again.

Her breath became shallow.

The mark was gone.

Her mind still saw it.

"Enough," the attendant said quietly.

Y/N startled.

The reedling attendant had returned, holding a small cup of clean water and a square of dry moss pressed flat between her fingers.

Y/N looked down.

Her ankle was red from scrubbing.

"I was only—"

"I know."

The attendant crouched beside the basin and offered the dry moss square. "Pat. Do not scrape yourself raw. The forest already tried."

Y/N took it with both hands.

"Thank you."

The attendant nodded toward her folded gown. "I'll send this with your bundle. Same hollow."

"Blue-marked hollow?"

"Blue-marked hollow."

Y/N breathed out.

The attendant lifted the ruined gown carefully, shaking loose a few bits of mud and leaf. The petal layer shimmered dully in the steam.

"Pretty work," she said.

"My mother made most of it," Y/N said before she could stop herself.

Then, more quietly, "I helped."

The attendant glanced at her.

Y/N looked away.

The gown vanished with the attendant into the steam.

Again, Y/N watched until she could not see it anymore.

Then she washed her hair.

That almost undid her.

She bent over the basin, keeping the moss-cloth gathered tightly around herself with one hand while the other guided the root spout over her head. Warm water threaded through her hair and ran over her scalp, down the back of her neck, taking with it river smell, leaf bits, sweat, cold, fear.

Y/N worked the last of the crushed herb paste between her fingers, then pressed it carefully against her scalp. It was cool at first, then sharp and clean, waking every tender place the river had left behind. She rubbed in small circles the way Mother had taught her, gentle near the roots, firmer where mud had dried. Her fingers caught on knots. A bit of crushed leaf slipped loose and spun into the basin. Another thread of riverweed followed.

For one moment, she was back beneath Mother's careful hand, Mother murmuring, "Hold still, little bloom," as she poured warm lavender water from a spoon.

Y/N squeezed her eyes shut.

The memory hurt.

Then anger came with it.

Mother would have told her to hold still.

Mother would have told her the world outside was dangerous.

Mother would have been right.

Y/N hated that.

She rinsed the herb paste away until the water stopped clouding green-brown beneath her.

Then she took up the soap-nut.

She rolled it between her wet palms until a thin golden slickness gathered over her fingers. It did not foam much, but it softened beneath her hands, slippery and faintly sweet. Y/N worked it through her hair slowly, from scalp to ends, drawing her fingers through the strands again and again until the river loosened its last hold.

When she rinsed the second time, the water ran clearer. She guided the spout once more over her shoulders, arms, and chest, washing away the last slippery traces that had run from her hair onto her clean skin.

By the time she finished, her skin felt too new. Too exposed. The moss-cloth clung steam-damp at the edges, but she held it tighter anyway. Water beaded along her shoulders and wrists. She looked down and saw the silver petal-vein markings flicker faintly beneath her skin where the warm mineral water had touched her.

Not sunlight this time.

Warmth.

Or the water.

Or the roots beneath it.

Y/N pressed her hands into the towel.

"Please do not," she whispered.

The markings did not listen.

❦

The soaking pool was wider than the washing basin, set into a hollow of smooth stone beneath three twisting roots. Warm mineral water bubbled up from a crack at the center, carrying tiny silver threads of steam to the surface. Moss curtains hung in green layers around it, but gaps had been left open so bathers could step in and out easily. Pale flowers floated in the water, not many, just enough to soften the scent of minerals, soap-nut, and crushed herbs.

Y/N stood at the edge and looked down.

The pool was not deep for most of the others.

For her, it might as well have been a lake.

A low stone shelf had been carved around the inside, likely for children or smaller folk. A cluster of smooth pebbles made steps into the water. Still, Y/N hesitated.

The moss-cloth was still wrapped around her.

That was the problem.

It had protected her through the washing. It had hidden what it could. It had given her something to hold when her hands did not know where to go. But no one wore towels in the soaking water. She had heard the bathkeeper's rule clearly enough.

No river cloth in the pools.

No bath cloth either, apparently.

Y/N's fingers tightened in the moss-cloth until the soft green fibers bunched beneath her knuckles.

A frogfolk woman sat on the far side with a baby balanced in both hands, rinsing water over the little one's slick green head. A rabbitfolk mother was trying to keep one child from chewing a floating flower while another child slapped both hands against the water in serious, rhythmic joy. Near the stones, the moth-winged woman sat soaked and furious, her damp hair clinging to her cheeks, her wings lifted high behind her like pale parchment screens while one lower edge trembled wetly where the splash had caught it.

"I am sorry," the rabbitfolk mother kept saying. "I am so sorry. He is learning hands. I am sorry."

Several faces turned when Y/N approached.

Not all.

But enough.

Y/N looked down at herself.

Clean skin. Bare shoulders. The soft shape of her chest. The curve of her hips. The private places the towel still covered only because she was holding it there. The faint silver markings glimmering beneath her skin as if the warm roots had woken them and forgotten to ask permission.

Mud had been ugly.

But mud had hidden things.

Cleanliness had made her visible.

The reedling attendant reappeared at her side.

"Step here," she said, pointing to the first pebble. "Hold the root. Sit on the shelf. The middle is too deep for you."

Y/N nodded.

Then did not move.

The attendant glanced at the moss-cloth twisted in her hands.

Not impatient.

Not unkind.

"Hang it there," she said softly, nodding toward a dry peg near the curtain. "It will be waiting when you come out."

Y/N looked at the peg.

Then at the water.

Then, helplessly, through a gap in the moss curtain.

No one seemed to be watching.

Not closely.

The rabbitfolk child was still fighting the flower. The mushroom children were squeaking over something their mother had found behind one cap. The turtle-backed elder had her eyes closed. The fairy near the stones had turned away, wings trembling faintly in the steam.

Y/N breathed in.

Then she unwrapped the towel.

The air touched her all at once.

She folded the moss-cloth quickly, too quickly, and hung it on the peg before she could change her mind. Then she crossed one arm over herself and held the other low, trying to cover too much with too little.

Her face burned.

She stepped down before fear could root her there.

The first touch of the soaking water closed around her feet.

She stopped breathing.

Warmth.

All around her toes.

Then her ankles.

Then her calves.

She gripped the root as she lowered herself to the next pebble, then the next, moving carefully until the water reached her knees. It wrapped around her with a softness that felt almost impossible after the river.

Y/N made a small sound before she could stop it.

Not a sob.

Not quite.

Something softer and more embarrassing.

The rabbitfolk child with the flower in her mouth looked over.

Y/N pretended she had not made any sound at all.

She sank onto the carved shelf.

The water rose to her waist, then higher when she settled fully. It hugged her ribs. Warmth slipped beneath her arms and spread along her back. Every bruise, every scratch, every place where cold had settled into her body began to loosen by slow degrees.

For a moment, Y/N forgot to be ashamed.

Her shoulders dropped.

Her eyes fluttered closed.

The bathwater held her without carrying her away.

That was new.

Water had been river. Current. Teeth. Wall. Shell. Cold.

This water stayed where it was.

It did not drag.

It did not shove.

It did not decide for her.

Y/N let out a breath that shook all the way through her.

Then someone whispered.

"Mama," a rabbitfolk child said from the shallow edge, "what kind is she?"

Y/N's eyes opened.

The mother's hands paused in the child's wet fur.

Across the pool, several bathers went quiet.

The mother looked at Y/N.

Not cruelly.

Not with disgust.

Only with the careful uncertainty of someone trying not to show too much of a question.

"I do not know," the mother said quietly. "So do not point."

The child's ears lowered, shame pinking the soft skin inside them.

"I was not pointing," she mumbled.

"You were about to."

Y/N lowered her eyes to the water before anyone could see how much the question had landed.

The silver markings had spread faintly over her wrists again, trailing along the backs of her hands like moonlit veins beneath the skin. She lowered them beneath the surface.

The water blurred them, but did not hide them completely.

A small fairy near the stones watched from behind a curtain of steam.

Then she moved away.

Just a little.

Y/N saw.

Her chest tightened.

She was clean now.

That should have helped.

It did not.

Clean skin showed what she could not explain.

She sank lower into the water until it reached just beneath her chin.

The reedling attendant pretended not to notice.

That kindness was so deliberate it made Y/N's eyes burn.

A turtle-backed elder nearby clicked her tongue softly. Her eyes remained closed, and her old body trembled faintly with each slow breath, but her voice came out steady.

"Children ask with their mouths before their sense grows teeth," she said.

Y/N looked up.

The elder's face was wrinkled and calm, her gray-green skin loose at the jaw, her shell polished dark and shining above the water.

"I do not know what kind I am either," Y/N admitted.

Several heads turned.

Y/N immediately wished she had remained silent.

The turtle-backed elder only nodded, as if this were not the strangest answer in the world.

"Then you are in company with many folk," she said. "Most only pretend otherwise."

Y/N stared at her.

The elder closed her eyes and leaned back into the steam.

That appeared to be the end of the conversation.

Y/N sat very still in the warm water.

For the first time since the river took her, no one was touching her. No one was carrying her. No one was dragging, steering, lifting, showing, claiming, or correcting her body into place.

They were looking.

But they were not reaching.

That made the looking easier to survive.

A little.

She dipped one hand beneath the surface and watched the silver lines blur through the water.

Flower-born.

Little bloom.

Fairy.

Doll.

Cursed.

What kind is she?

Y/N closed her fingers into a fist.

"I do not know either," she whispered again, too softly for anyone but herself.

The warm water held the words and did not answer.

❦

On the other side of the lower baths, Eren did not sink into the water so much as tolerate it.

The men's hollow sat deeper under the roots, hotter and darker than the women's side, but it followed the same order. Washing stones near the entrance. Soaking pools farther in. A cold rinse to the left. A smaller pool for wounded folk tucked beneath a low arch of roots.

Eren ignored the order for all of three steps.

An old mole attendant noticed.

"Wash first," the attendant said.

Eren looked at him.

The mole looked back through cloudy eyes.

"Wash," he repeated. "Then soak."

Eren said nothing.

"Rinse. Scrub. Rinse. Soap-nut. Rinse again. Then soak." The mole pointed to each station with one blunt claw. "Even Wardens drip muck like everyone else."

Several bathers looked over.

Then looked away quickly.

Good.

Eren removed his cloak.

Mud hit the stone in wet clumps.

The mole attendant's nose twitched.

"Thought so."

Eren ignored him.

His sleeveless tunic came next, peeled off with irritation and tossed onto the wash shelf. It landed with a wet slap. His arms were streaked with mud and scratched from wrist to shoulder. One cut near his elbow had opened again during the run from the root-snap, though it bled only a little now. Old bark-fiber marks ringed one wrist.

Not scars yet.

Not fresh either.

He did not look at them long.

He sat on the edge of a low washing stone and pulled the first root spout toward him. Warm water struck his hands, his forearms, his elbows. Mud loosened at once, running brown into the pebbled drain.

The water was too warm.

Too careful.

Too much like something trying to help.

Eren rinsed quickly.

Dirt was simple.

Dirt came from moving. From climbing, falling, running, sleeping badly, waking early, and refusing to stay where someone had told you to stay.

Dirt did not ask questions.

Dirt did not whisper.

Dirt did not look at a mask and decide it knew the face beneath it.

Steam was worse.

Steam softened things. Blurred edges. Turned still water into mirrors if the light struck wrong. It crept beneath wood and made old knots ache.

And folk always looked.

They pretended not to.

That was worse.

A goat-horned man with a dark beard sat at the edge of a soaking pool and lowered his voice to the lizardfolk beside him.

"Warden."

The lizardfolk's throat moved once.

"I see."

"Should he be away from the high bough tonight?"

"Hush."

"I thought the calling had begun."

"Do not say that here."

Eren reached for the crushed herb paste and the reed-handled brush.

He scrubbed.

Hard.

The paste bit cold against his skin before the heat woke it sharp and green. He dragged the brush down one arm, then the other. Mud peeled away. Blood thinned. Dirt came loose from his knuckles, his wrists, the backs of his hands. He scrubbed beneath his nails until the water ran brown, then pink, then clear.

The mole attendant cleared his throat.

Eren did not look up.

"Not with that brush," the mole said.

Eren paused.

The mole pointed to a smaller brush near the tray. "Nails. Teeth. Not the same brush unless you were raised by worms."

A hedgehog boy near the cold rinse made a strangled sound.

His father grabbed him by the shoulder without looking away from the wall.

"Do not laugh," the father muttered.

"I am not laughing," the boy whispered.

"You are puffing."

"I always puff."

"You puff when you lie."

The boy puffed harder.

Eren's jaw tightened beneath the mask.

The mole attendant slapped a mint tooth-reed and a pinch of black tooth powder onto the stone beside him.

"Mouth too," he said.

Eren stared at the reed.

The mole stared back.

"Do you inspect everyone this closely?" Eren asked.

"Only folk who smell like they bit the river back."

The hedgehog boy made another tiny sound.

His father pressed one paw over his face.

For a moment, Eren almost liked the mole.

Then he took the tooth-reed.

The mask had begun to dampen at the edges. Steam slipped beneath the lower line and clung to his mouth, warm and stale.

The first cord ran from the sides of the mask, behind his ears, and tied at the back of his head, holding the wooden face in place. The second sat lower, passing beneath his ears and just before the hinge of his jaw, then around the back of his skull. That one kept the lower half pressed close to his mouth.

Kept him sealed in.

Kept the face where everyone expected it.

Warden.

Not boy.

Not son.

Not anything that could leave without explanation.

A Warden's face belonged to the duty first. That was what they had told him before he understood that first meant there might never be room for anything else.

Stand still.

Do not touch the cord.

It is an honor.

It had not felt like an honor the first time the mask settled over his face.

It had felt like darkness learning his shape.

Eren shoved the thought down.

The mole attendant approached again, holding a fresh dab of crushed herb paste and a soap-nut.

"Mask off in the washwater," he said.

"No."

The attendant stopped.

The nearest bathers became suddenly interested in anything else.

A crack in the ceiling.

A soap bowl.

Their own hands.

The attendant's cloudy eyes moved over the carved wood, the pale teeth along the side, the vine caught near the brow.

Then he sniffed.

"Wood swells."

"I know."

"Mold grows."

"I know."

"Faces rot under damp."

Eren looked at him.

The attendant looked back.

Then the mole pointed toward a screened corner wash, smaller and half-hidden by hanging roots.

"Side wash. Back to wall. Do not drip Warden mildew in my main basin."

Eren took the paste and soap-nut.

"Fine."

"Not fine. Acceptable."

Eren went to the side wash.

More whispers followed.

"Where are his keepers?"

"He should not be walking loose."

"Maybe he was sent."

"Sent where?"

"I said maybe."

"He looks like he slept in a ditch."

"He looks like he fought the ditch."

"Do not let him hear you."

Eren heard all of it.

Of course he heard.

Folk always thought whispers became harmless if they were small enough.

He crouched near the side wash with his back to the room. He rinsed the herb paste from his arms, his neck, his hands, the backs of his shoulders. Water streamed down his chest and over the hard planes of his stomach, carrying mud into the drain.

Across the hollow, the hedgehog boy stared again.

This time, not at the mask.

At Eren's body.

The boy's eyes grew rounder.

His father noticed too late.

"Do not," the father said.

The boy whispered, awed and horrified, "Is his stomach made of roof slats?"

The goat-horned man coughed into his hand.

The lizardfolk turned his face toward the moss wall with great interest.

Eren went very still.

The hedgehog father closed his eyes as if asking every root in the bathhouse for patience.

"No," he said tightly.

"It has lines."

"Bodies have lines."

"Mine does not."

"You are seven."

"I could get lines."

"Not by staring."

The boy considered this.

"Do I have to fight a ditch?"

Eren dragged the root spout sharply over his shoulder.

The water splashed harder than necessary.

The hedgehog father stood at once and turned his son bodily toward the cold rinse.

"We are done talking."

"I was learning."

"You were surviving by accident."

A few bathers pretended not to smile.

Eren hated all of them.

Not because the boy was wrong.

Because bodies were another kind of mask if enough people decided what they meant.

Strength meant use.

Scars meant proof.

Muscle meant he could carry more, fight longer, endure harder, be asked for more and thanked less because surely a body like that had been made for burden.

His body had stopped feeling like his own long before the mask had.

The bathhouse did not need to know that.

Eren reached for the soap-nut last, the softening wash that came after the harsher scrub.

He rubbed it between his palms until a thin golden slickness gathered over his fingers, then dragged it over his arms, his chest, his ribs, his stomach, his shoulders. It did not foam much. It clung lightly, smelling of bitter seed and clean bark. Softer than the paste. More irritating because of it.

He washed quickly.

Thoroughly.

Angrily.

Then he loosened only the lower cord.

Cool air touched his jaw.

He lifted the bottom edge of the mask just enough to clean beneath it. His mouth. His chin. The line of his jaw. Not enough for the room. Not enough for the water. Not enough for himself.

He used the mint tooth-reed quickly, bitter black powder sharp against his teeth, then rinsed and spat into the drain.

The pool below him reflected a broken shape.

Green eyes.

Wet hair.

A slash of cheek.

The dark curve of wood held too close.

He disturbed the surface with one hand before it could settle.

Ripples broke the face apart.

Good.

He tightened the lower cord again before turning.

For his hair, he bent forward beneath the narrow root spout, keeping the mask angled away from the stream. Water ran through the dark strands, carrying out leaf bits, mud, and old sweat. He worked the last of the crushed herb paste against his scalp with his fingers, rough and impatient, until grit loosened beneath his nails. Then he rubbed the soap-nut between his palms again and dragged the slickness through his hair from roots to ends.

He rinsed until the water stopped clouding at his feet.

Then he wrung water from his hair with one hand and dragged his thumb along the cords to keep them from soaking through.

Not clean enough.

Clean enough to pass.

Only then did he step into the soaking pool.

The water closed around his ankles first.

Then his calves.

Then his knees.

Eren sank onto the lowest stone shelf with his back to the wall and the mask facing the room.

The heat reached him all at once.

Bruises answered.

Scratches stung.

The reopened cut near his elbow throbbed once, then quieted under the mineral warmth. His shoulders wanted to drop.

He did not let them.

Relaxing in public was foolish.

Relaxing in public with a Warden mask on was worse.

Still, the water worked at him.

Slowly.

Annoyingly.

It softened the ache in his legs. It loosened the tightness across his back. It found the places where the root-snap had nearly caught him and pressed warmth into them until his body remembered, against his will, that pain did not have to be held forever.

Eren stared at the steam.

The girl would be on the other side by now.

The petal one.

Y/N.

Too small, too loud, too honest with every thought that crossed her face. She had asked him when he last bathed, like she had any right to be offended by his dirt while smelling like river rot and terror herself.

She talked too much.

She apologized too much.

She looked at everything like the world had been lying to her, and she was only just beginning to keep count.

She should have annoyed him more.

She did annoy him.

Mostly.

He had to leave soon.

Before the roots remembered.

Before the wrong folk stopped whispering and started looking.

Before the girl with the blue-petal blanket became another reason to hesitate.

That thought irritated him most of all.

❦❦

By the time Y/N climbed out of the soaking pool, her body felt both better and stranger than before.

Better, because warmth had found places inside her she had not known were cold.

Stranger, because the mud was gone.

The grime was gone.

The river smell was mostly gone.

Without them, she felt almost too visible.

The reedling attendant met her with a dry moss-cloth warmed over a smooth stone. Another, smaller cloth waited folded over her arm.

"For your hair," the attendant said.

Y/N took both gratefully. She wrapped the larger cloth around herself first, tucking the edge under one arm the way she had seen another bather do. It did not fit right. Nothing made for the public baths seemed made for someone exactly her size, so the cloth wrapped around her twice and still threatened to slip if she breathed wrong.

The attendant pretended not to notice.

Then she lifted the smaller cloth and hesitated.

"May I?"

Y/N looked at her.

The reedling's professional expression softened, just a little.

"Only to keep the dripping off your shoulders," she said. "You look cold again."

Y/N was not sure she was cold.

She was sure she was tired.

So she nodded.

The attendant stepped closer with careful hands and wrapped the smaller moss-cloth around Y/N's wet hair, twisting it lightly so it sat at the back of her head like a soft green coil. She did not tug. She did not fuss. She did not say hold still.

That made Y/N's throat tighten for reasons she did not want to examine.

"There," the attendant said, quieter than before. "Better."

"Thank you."

The attendant glanced at her face, then away, as if she had seen too much and decided to be kind about it.

"Teeth next."

Y/N blinked.

The reedling held out a tiny mint tooth-reed and a pinch of pale tooth powder in a curled leaf.

"Oh," Y/N said. "Right."

"You have river in your mouth too," the attendant said. "Best not to keep it."

Y/N did not know whether to be offended.

Then she remembered the river.

She took the tooth-reed.

It tasted sharp, green, and bitter at first, but clean in a way that made her realize how much mud and fear had settled on her tongue. She rubbed the powder over her teeth with the softened end of the reed, rinsed from a small cup, and spat carefully into the drain the attendant pointed out.

When she finished, the reedling offered her another little cup of water.

Y/N drank it in three careful swallows.

"Come sit a moment," the attendant said. "Your things are still drying."

Y/N's hand flew to the towel at her chest.

"My book?"

"Outer cloth dried. Book wiped and aired. Not opened."

Relief loosened something under Y/N's ribs so quickly it almost hurt.

The attendant's mouth softened again.

"I told you I would not let anyone lick it."

Y/N stared at her.

Then, despite herself, she made a small sound that was almost a laugh.

The reedling looked pleased.

Not smug.

Pleased.

As if the little sound had mattered.

She led Y/N away from the soaking pools, past the dressing hollow and into a small rest alcove tucked beneath a low arch of roots. It was not quite a room and not quite a shop, but something gentle between the two. Little tables had been made from polished knots of wood. Acorn cups sat on leaf-shaped trays. Steam curled from clay thimbles of warm nut tea. A beetle-backed woman stirred honey into a cup for a child wrapped in three towels.

Along one side of the alcove, smaller seats had been set close to the ground for children, fairies, mousefolk, and other little travelers. Walnut-shell chairs rocked on curved bark runners. Half-acorn stools stood beside tables no higher than Y/N's knees. A tiny bench had been carved from a seedpod and padded with dry moss.

Y/N stopped in the doorway.

There were places, apparently, where folk her size were expected to sit.

Not held.

Not placed on someone else's palm.

Not tucked somewhere for safekeeping.

Just seated.

The attendant pointed to a walnut-shell rocking chair padded with soft moss.

"That one should fit you."

Y/N lowered herself into it carefully.

The chair rocked beneath her.

She grabbed both sides at once.

The reedling's lips twitched.

"It rocks," she said.

"I noticed."

"It is meant to."

"I noticed that too."

The attendant's smile appeared before she could hide it.

Y/N felt something in her chest loosen.

Just a little.

A cup appeared in front of her.

Warm hickory-nut tea, the attendant explained, with a little mossflower honey stirred through it because Y/N looked "shaken thin."

Y/N did not know what shaken thin meant.

She knew exactly what it felt like.

The tea was brown-gold and faintly cloudy, smelling of roasted shells, damp bark, and sweetness. Y/N lifted the acorn cup with both hands and took a careful sip.

It was warm, nutty, and deeper than she expected. Not sharp like medicine. Not flowery like Mother's wash water. It tasted like something pulled from the roots of an old tree and made kind by honey.

Her shoulders eased.

A little.

The reedling stayed nearby.

Not hovering exactly.

But close enough that whenever Y/N looked up, she was there. Adjusting a tray. Folding a cloth. Moving a cup. Watching without watching.

At first, Y/N thought it was only duty.

Then the attendant shifted Y/N's cup a little farther from the table edge before it could wobble.

A moment later, she nudged a footstool closer without being asked.

Then she set an extra dry cloth over the back of the walnut chair, "in case the first one slips."

Y/N stared at the cloth.

The reedling cleared her throat and looked suddenly very busy with the tea jars.

Y/N touched the edge of the extra cloth.

It was strange to have someone near enough to help before Y/N had to ask.

Almost comforting.

Almost dangerous.

Near the counter, a rain-gray squirrelfolk girl slipped past in a bath cloth tied beneath her arms, her damp fur slicked darker from the steam. A striped drying cloth had been wrapped around her long tail to keep it from dripping. She moved quickly, one hand holding the towel closed at her chest, the other brushing against the moss curtain as she passed.

Y/N noticed her only because the girl looked at her.

Not long.

Just once.

Then the squirrelfolk girl looked away and slipped through the curtain toward the dressing hollow.

Y/N frowned.

"Is something wrong?" the reedling asked.

"I do not know."

The reedling followed her gaze, saw nothing strange, and shrugged. "Half of Briar's Hold looks guilty when wet."

That startled another small laugh out of Y/N before she could stop it.

The sound still felt strange in her mouth.

The attendant looked pleased again, but wisely did not mention it. Instead, she reached into the pocket of her reed apron and set something small on the table.

Y/N leaned closer.

It was a soap-nut.

Not one of the plain wrinkled ones from the washing tray, though it must have come from the same kind. This one had dried hard and polished smooth until its brown shell shone softly in the light. It was shaped almost like an acorn, with a tiny cap carved around the top and a neat hole punched through one side. A loop of hemp cord had been threaded through it, knotted carefully so it could hang around someone's neck.

Y/N stared.

"What is that?"

"A soap charm," the attendant said. "For travelers. Children. Folk who fall into rivers and look like they may do it again."

Y/N looked up sharply.

The attendant's face remained perfectly innocent.

"I did not fall into the river."

"No?"

"I was taken by it."

"Ah." The reedling nodded solemnly. "Different trouble. Same soap."

Y/N looked back at the charm.

"It is beautiful."

"It is a nut with a hole in it."

"It is shaped like an acorn."

"Some nuts are vain."

Y/N touched it with one finger.

The polished shell was warm from the attendant's hand. A faint scent clung to it: bitter seed, clean bark, crushed herbs, and the roasted sweetness of the tea alcove.

"What does it do?"

"Soap-nut does what soap-nut does," the reedling said. "Wet it, rub it between your hands, and it gives enough slickness for washing. Not forever, but enough for a traveler who has not found a bath."

Y/N's eyes widened.

"I can keep it?"

"That is why it has a cord."

Y/N's fingers closed carefully around the charm.

Something about it made her chest ache.

Not because it was grand.

Because it was hers.

Not Mother's. Not Mrs. Toad's. Not the river's. Not something taken from her and handed back with someone else's rules wrapped around it.

A small, strange bathhouse soap-nut made to hang around her neck.

Given because she had survived arriving filthy.

Y/N held it as if it mattered.

The reedling looked down at her tray.

"You can trade it back if you do not want it."

Y/N looked up.

The attendant's voice had stayed practical, but something had shifted beneath it. A faint worry. A hope quickly hidden. As if she had done something too soft and now regretted being seen doing it.

Y/N closed both hands around the soap-nut.

"I want it."

The reedling's shoulders eased.

"Good," she said, briskly. Too briskly. "Then put it on before someone mistakes it for washing stock."

Y/N slipped the hemp loop over her head. The soap-nut charm settled against her chest, light and warm, just above the towel.

She touched it again.

The reedling cleared her throat softly.

"Your bundle came back from drying while you soaked," she said. "Blue section. Hollow twelve."

Y/N stood so quickly the walnut-shell chair rocked behind her.

"My book?"

"With the rest of it."

Y/N followed her toward the dressing area, one hand holding the towel closed, the other pressed lightly over the soap-nut charm at her chest.

The storage hollows were tucked into the root wall beside the dressing area. They were arranged by color, each section marked with beads and painted lines: red, green, amber, white, blue. Beneath each colored row, symbols had been carved into the wood. Not letters Y/N knew. Not numbers from Mother's account books. Hooked marks, dots, little slashes, and curling shapes that seemed to mean something to everyone except her.

The blue-marked section waited near the middle.

Y/N counted by position because she could not read the signs.

One hollow.

Two.

Three.

The reedling moved ahead of her, finger tracing the carved marks.

"Ten," she murmured. "Eleven. Twelve."

She stopped.

So did Y/N.

The twelfth blue-marked hollow was empty.

For one breath, her mind refused to understand what her eyes had already seen.

No folded gown.

No blue-petal blanket.

No little book.

Her hand touched the bare wood of the shelf.

Cold.

Dry.

Empty.

The soap-nut charm knocked softly against her chest as her breathing changed.

Y/N turned to the attendant.

"Where are my things?"

The reedling frowned and leaned closer.

"That was the right hollow."

"My book was here."

The reedling's face changed.

Professional calm fell away so quickly it frightened Y/N more than the empty shelf had.

"I checked this hollow myself," the attendant said. Her voice had gone thin. "It was here."

Y/N searched the shelves around it.

Maybe the wrong blue.

Maybe the wrong mark.

Maybe hollow twelve looked like hollow twenty.

Maybe someone had moved it to keep it safer.

Maybe the attendant had carried it back to the tea alcove.

Maybe—

Something blue-violet flashed beyond the steam.

Y/N's head snapped toward it.

Near the far exit, a squirrelfolk girl darted between two moss curtains.

Rain-gray fur.

Striped drying cloth around her tail.

One small hand clutched Y/N's folded gown against her chest. The other gripped the blue-petal blanket, its preserved petals trailing behind her like a stolen wing.

Inside the blanket, something square pressed against the fabric.

The book.

Y/N's breath stopped.

The squirrelfolk girl looked back.

Their eyes met.

She knew.

Y/N saw it at once.

This was no mistake.

The girl's ears flattened.

Then she bolted.

The sound that tore out of Y/N did not feel like it belonged to her.

It was too large.

Too raw.

Too full of every hand that had taken, carried, lifted, dressed, hidden, named, and decided for her since the storm began.

"Thief!"

The scream split through the women's baths.

Every voice stopped.

Water splashed hard against stone.

A child cried out.

Someone dropped a soap-nut, and it cracked against the floor.

The squirrelfolk girl vanished through the far moss curtain with Y/N's clothes, her blanket, and her book.

"My book!" Y/N screamed, clutching the bath cloth around herself with one hand as she lurched forward. "She has my book!"

The reedling attendant shouted toward the exit, and now there was nothing soft in her voice at all.

"Stop her! Gray squirrel, striped tail-cloth! Stop her!"

A stool overturned.

Moss curtains whipped aside.

The bathkeeper's voice thundered from somewhere beyond the steam.

"What now?"

Y/N did not answer.

She could not.

She ran two steps, slipped on wet stone, caught herself against the wall, and screamed again.

"Stop her!" she cried, voice breaking. "Please—she took everything!"

This time, the sound did not stay in the women's baths.

It flew through the reed screens and root passages. It carried into the men's hollow, through the rest alcove, out beneath the lower gate where bath steam leaked into the Underbough streets.

The deep wooden bell struck.

Once.

Then twice.

Then again, harder, hollow and urgent enough to make the roots seem to hold their breath.

For one breath, all of the lower baths went still.

Then, somewhere beyond the dividing roots, water broke hard against stone.

Y/N clutched the bath cloth tighter, her fingers twisting so hard into the moss that her knuckles ached.

"Please," she cried, staring at the curtain where the squirrelfolk girl had vanished. "That is all I have."

And this time, something on the other side moved.

❦

The other side of the baths answered her.

First with a crash of water.

Then with a curse.

Then with Eren.

He came through the steam like the men's hollow had spat him out unfinished. His wooden mask was fixed firmly in place, dark hair dripping around it in wet strands. A bath cloth was knotted low around his waist, and one hand was already dragging his filthy tunic over one shoulder as if mud, old blood, river rot, and public decency were all problems for slower people.

For one stunned heartbeat, the women's dressing hollow forgot how to move.

Then every reaction happened at once.

A mousefolk girl dropped a comb into a basket of hairpins. A rabbitfolk mother slapped both hands over her child's eyes so quickly the child squeaked. Someone half-hidden behind a moss screen shrieked and yanked the curtain shut with enough force to shake water from the roots above.

A newt woman, caught halfway through tying her robe, spun around so fast the loose sleeve snapped wetly through the air.

"Out!"

Something soft and green flew across the dressing hollow.

A rolled moss-cloth struck Eren square in the wooden face.

It bounced off the mask, dropped against his bare chest, and slid down to the floor with a damp little slap.

For one breath, no one moved.

Then the absurdity of it seemed to arrive all at once.

Someone gasped.

Someone else whispered, "Oh."

Several women looked away.

Several did not.

A beetle-backed woman standing near the storage hollows lifted one brow and made no attempt to hide the fact that she was staring. Two mousefolk girls clutched their folded clothes to their chests and peeked over the top of them. The tiny frost-winged fairy near the towel shelf went very still, then tilted her head with the careful interest of someone watching a wolf step into a pantry.

Eren did not notice at first.

He had come toward the scream, not toward anything he understood yet.

For half a breath, his attention found only Y/N.

Bath cloth clutched to her chest. Wet hair half-fallen from its wrap. Bare feet planted too hard against the stone. Her face pale with panic, not embarrassment. No blue-petal blanket. No ruined gown. No little book pressed against her ribs, where she had kept it like a second heart since the river.

Then the silence changed.

His mask turned.

Not much.

Just enough.

He saw the covered children. The shut moss screens. The women clutching robes, towels, sleeves, combs, and whatever modesty he had just interrupted. The wide, horrified eyes fixed on the bath cloth knotted low around his waist and the dirty tunic hanging half-off one arm.

For one breath, Eren seemed to remember where he was.

His shoulders went rigid.

Not embarrassed, exactly.

Angry that embarrassment had found him at an inconvenient time.

Y/N did not care.

He could have come through the moss curtain wearing a crown of burning nettles and carrying a dead rat in his teeth, and it would not have mattered.

"She took my clothes," Y/N cried, gripping the bath cloth around herself. "My blanket. My book."

That changed him.

Not loudly.

Not softly.

All at once.

His gaze dropped to her empty hands.

Then to the reedling attendant's stricken face.

Then to the storage hollows carved into the root wall behind them, one little wooden mouth hanging open and bare.

He did not know which hollow had held her things.

He did not need to.

The girl had barely let the bathkeeper touch that bundle. She had handed it over like it was made of breath and bone. Eren did not know what was written in the book. He did not know why the blanket mattered or why the gown made her voice crack.

He only knew she had come into The Underbough with almost nothing.

And now someone had taken that too.

Only then did his head turn toward the far curtain.

The bathkeeper appeared behind him like judgment given fur.

"No running through my women's dressing hollow half-dressed," she thundered.

"I am running after a thief," Eren said.

"You are running after a thief in a towel."

"I noticed."

But his eyes had already gone back to the curtain.

Before the bathkeeper could answer, a pale blur launched itself from the men's dressing passage.

"Non!"

The word cracked through the steam like a snapped twig.

Eren stopped only because the speaker had flung himself directly into his path.

A white erminefolk attendant stood there, one paw pressed dramatically to his narrow chest. He was sleek as fresh snow, with black-tipped ears, a black-tipped tail, and a spotless reed-linen sash tied at an angle so perfect it seemed personally offended by the state of everyone around it. A lavender ribbon gleamed at his throat. His whiskers trembled with horror.

He pointed one delicate claw at the mud-stiff tunic in Eren's fist.

"Absolutely not."

Eren stared down at him.

The erminefolk stared back with the fearless despair of a creature who had seen evil and found it poorly laundered.

"You will not put that swamp tragedy back on your clean body."

Eren's voice came low behind the mask. "Move."

"I will die first."

"Then move dead."

The erminefolk gasped.

Several women gasped with him.

Y/N clutched the bath cloth tighter, her fingers twisting into the damp moss until it hurt.

"My things," she said, louder this time.

Several faces turned toward her.

Good.

"My clothes," she cried. "My blanket. My book. She took all of it, and I am standing here in a bath cloth while everyone is discussing his towel."

Her voice cracked on the last word.

"I would like the crime to matter more than the scandal."

The dressing hollow went quieter.

Not silent.

Never that.

But quieter in the guilty way of folk realizing they had been staring at the wrong disaster.

The reedling attendant was already at the far curtain, face pale beneath its green tint.

"She went through the lower exit," she said. "Gray squirrelfolk girl. Striped tail-cloth."

The bathkeeper pointed at two attendants near the door.

"Seal the laundry vents. Tell the lower watch. No one leaves the bathhouse carrying blue petals."

Then she pointed at Y/N.

"You need covering."

"I need my things."

"You need both."

"Étienne," the bathkeeper snapped. "Robe."

The erminefolk straightened as if summoned by destiny.

"Yes. Yes, of course. Little robe. Small traveler's cut. Not ideal, but we are working inside disaster."

"I do not need—"

A soft moss-linen robe dropped over Y/N's head.

The world went green.

She made a muffled sound and shoved one hand through the nearest opening, only to find air where her face should have been. The bath cloth slipped. She caught it against her chest with a sharp little gasp.

"Wait—"

"Armhole," Étienne said.

"I know that now."

Her cheeks burned. Her book was gone. Her gown was gone. Her blanket was gone. And now, somehow, she was losing a fight to clothing in front of half the dressing hollow.

The reedling stepped in before the robe could defeat her completely.

"Here."

Careful fingers found the collar, freed Y/N's head, guided one arm through, then the other. The robe fell around her in a soft sweep of moss-linen, clean and warm and entirely too large. One shoulder sagged. The hem brushed her feet. The sash wrapped twice around her waist and still dangled low enough to threaten her ankles.

Y/N clutched the front closed, breathing hard.

"Can I run in this?"

The reedling looked at the hem.

"Badly."

"Good enough."

Worse, the moss-cloth towel beneath it bunched awkwardly around her hips, so every step felt like she was trying to walk inside a folded curtain.

The reedling crouched and shoved a pair of small rush slippers toward Y/N's feet.

"For the street."

"They are too big."

"So is the trouble. Move."

Y/N shoved her feet into them.

The left slipper immediately slid halfway off her heel, and her scrubbed ankle gave a small, hot pulse.

Y/N ignored it.

Pain could wait.

Her book could not.

Perfect.

Wonderful.

Even her shoes wanted to abandon her.

Eren tried again to pull the filthy tunic over his head.

Étienne shrieked.

"Do not!"

Eren froze with one arm half-raised.

The room froze with him.

Étienne snatched the tunic from his hand with the speed of a creature saving a child from a well.

"This," he said, holding it away from himself, "belongs in mourning."

"It is mine."

"Then mourn privately."

The bathkeeper shoved a folded stack of dark cloth against Eren's chest.

"Put these on."

"I do not have time."

"You have enough time not to make my baths into a scandal."

"It already is a scandal!" cried a rabbitfolk woman clutching her half-tied robe to her chest. "There is a half-dressed Warden in the women's dressing hollow!"

"I am aware," the bathkeeper said.

"I will be marking this in the guest bark!"

"Use a sharp thorn."

Y/N looked toward the far curtain.

The steam shifted there.

Nothing blue.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Her chest pinched so sharply that the noise around her thinned into a distant hum. The outrage, the gasps, the bathkeeper's voice, Étienne's horrified breathing—all of it became less important than the empty space where her things should have been.

"My book," she said again, smaller this time.

This time, Eren did not answer.

He moved.

Fast.

He turned his back to the room and stepped into the dark reed-linen trousers the bathkeeper shoved at him, keeping the towel knotted around his waist while he worked them up beneath it. The motion should not have been strange. He was still covered. Mostly. Practically. Enough that Y/N knew, in a reasonable part of her mind, that nothing truly improper was happening.

Unfortunately, the rest of the dressing hollow disagreed.

Several women gasped anyway.

Someone squeaked behind a moss screen.

The rabbitfolk mother slapped her child's eyes closed again, though the child had not managed to uncover them yet.

Y/N froze with one hand pressed to her bath cloth and the other gripping the robe bunched at her side.

She did not know where to look.

At the floor? That seemed obvious, which somehow made it worse.

At the wall? There were women hiding behind moss screens there.

At Eren? Absolutely not. Probably. Maybe? He was only putting on trousers. People wore trousers. Mother wore petticoats and skirts. Men in Mother's books wore breeches. This was not a mystery. This was clothing.

So why did everyone look as if a wolf had wandered into supper and begun politely setting the table?

Y/N snapped her eyes toward the curtain instead.

The thief was still gone.

That mattered more.

Eren yanked the trousers into place, dragged the clean sleeveless tunic over his head, and threw the towel aside before anyone could decide whether the danger had passed or become worse. The tunic was plain and charcoal-dark, tied at the side with bark cord. It fit too tightly across his shoulders and too loosely at the waist, which made Étienne flinch as if suffering a private wound.

"The line is wrong," he whispered.

"Complain while running," Eren said.

"That is not how tailoring works."

"That is how this works."

Eren grabbed a pair of split-sole rush sandals from the floor and shoved his feet into them. They were too narrow, too pale, and slapped once against his heel when he stepped forward.

He looked down at them.

The sandals slapped again.

Étienne lifted one finger. "They are temporary."

Eren's mask turned toward him.

Étienne lowered the finger.

"And deeply unfortunate. Yes. I see."

Eren pushed past him.

Y/N was already moving.

Or trying to.

She took three quick steps toward the far exit and immediately stepped on her own sash.

The robe jerked.

Her body went forward.

Her dignity stayed behind.

"Ah!"

Eren caught the back of the robe between two fingers before she hit the stone.

Not her.

The robe.

Y/N swung there for one terrible breath, arms flailing, hair towel sliding over one eye, one rush slipper hanging from her toes by hope alone.

The bathkeeper looked at her.

The reedling looked at her.

Étienne looked Y/N up and down, not unkindly, but with the quiet devastation of someone watching good cloth suffer in real time.

"The cut is not the problem," he said faintly. "The wearer is fighting the garment."

Y/N pulled herself upright, cheeks burning hot enough to sting.

"I am not fighting the garment," she said, clutching the robe closed with one hand and the bath cloth beneath it with the other. "The garment began this."

"It is a robe," Eren said.

"It is an enemy with sleeves."

Étienne pressed one paw to his chest. "A robe can only do so much with panic inside it."

Y/N shot him a look that would have been sharper if her hair towel had not slipped over one eye.

"My book is gone. My clothes are gone. My blanket is gone. I am wearing a borrowed curtain, one shoe is already suspicious, and everyone keeps discussing fabric while the thief is getting farther away."

For once, no one answered quickly.

Eren released the back of her robe.

"Then move."

Y/N shoved the hair towel out of her face and glared up at him. Her eyes burned, but not with tears yet. Not if she could help it.

"I was moving."

"You were falling."

"I was falling in the correct direction."

The bathkeeper's mouth twitched once.

"That is not a defense I hear often."

"It should be," Y/N said, gathering the robe higher with as much dignity as she could find. "It was very intentional."

Outside, the lower court answered the bathkeeper's order.

A reed whistle shrieked.

Then another.

Somewhere beyond the steam street, someone struck a cart rim three times in quick warning.

Gray squirrel.

Striped tail-cloth.

Blue petals.

The words were already moving without her.

Y/N's whole body snapped toward the sound.

Her things were getting farther away.

Eren was already turning toward the exit.

"Be intentional faster."

Y/N's breath caught between fury and relief.

Because he was going.

Not arguing.

Not telling her to stay.

Going.

After her things.

After the pieces of home she had been foolish enough to let out of her hands.

She swallowed hard, tightened her grip on the robe, and ran after him before fear could make her polite again.

The robe tried to kill her once more before she reached the door.

❦

The lower bathhouse opened into a street of steam.

Warm vapor leaked from root vents and curled around bark steps, low bridges, carved gutters, and the mossy lips of drains where bathwater ran in silver ribbons beneath grates of woven twig. The Underbough rose around them in layers, not like a town built flat across the earth, but like a living thing hollowed, climbed, braided, and inhabited. Doors opened in root-bellies. Windows glowed amber inside tree trunks. Little stairs twisted around columns of living wood. Moss signs swung from thorn hooks, painted with symbols Y/N could not read fast enough to fear properly.

Folk turned as she burst out.

A girl in a borrowed robe, wet hair wrapped in slipping moss-cloth, soap-nut charm bouncing against her chest, one hand clutching her sash like a lifeline.

A masked boy beside her, newly dressed and somehow still looking like he had argued with cleanliness and lost by choice.

Behind them came the reedling attendant, guilt written all over her face, and the erminefolk, who appeared to be chasing them less for justice and more because Eren's side-tie remained uneven.

The bathkeeper did not run after them. She stayed in the bathhouse doorway and made the city move instead.

"Lower watch!" she roared. "Gray squirrel! Striped tail-cloth! Blue petals!"

The words flew faster than feet.

A frog boy grabbed a reed whistle and blew three shrill notes. A beetlefolk porter struck the side of his cart with a spoon. Somewhere above, a winged messenger shoved off from a bark balcony and shot upward through hanging roots, scattering droplets from her wings.

Y/N searched wildly.

Steam.

Faces.

Tails.

Lanterns.

Baskets.

A mouse mother yanked her children out of the way. A fox-faced vendor covered a tray with both arms. A pair of snail couriers withdrew into their shells in offended unison as Eren's borrowed sandals slapped past them.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Then—

Blue-violet.

Only a sliver.

Only a flash.

Y/N stopped so sharply that the robe nearly kept going without her.

The thief was perched beside a steam vent, pretending very hard not to be a thief.

Rain-gray fur.

Striped tail-cloth.

One bare foot swinging lazily from the curved root rail while the bathhouse bell still groaned behind her.

Her tail-cloth spilled over the side of the rail, almost hiding the dark mouth of a root hollow beneath her. Almost. Not entirely. From inside the hollow, something blue-violet caught the gray-gold light and shimmered like a living petal.

Y/N saw it.

Her blanket.

Her gown.

Her book.

The squirrelfolk girl had one hand tucked inside the hollow, worrying at the edge of the bundle as if she had been trying to loosen the book free before anyone noticed. Her eyes were turned away, her mouth pursed in an expression of terrible innocence.

Y/N saw red.

Not blood-red.

Worse.

Lavender-water, blue-poppy-petal, girl-in-a-glass-garden red.

"There!" she shrieked.

Eren's head snapped toward her. "Where?"

"There, there, there—oh, do you not have eyes under that horrible thing?"

The squirrelfolk girl looked up.

Their eyes met.

For one breath, she froze.

Then Y/N lifted one arm and pointed with every bit of accusation her small body could hold.

"That is my book!"

The thief kicked the bundle deeper into the hollow, missed, swore, grabbed the blue-petal blanket instead, and sprang upward with Y/N's gown and book tangled inside it.

"Thief!" Y/N screamed again.

The squirrelfolk girl launched herself from the root rail to a hanging laundry line.

The line dipped.

Wet cloths snapped.

A curtain of bath towels flapped open like startled wings.

Someone shouted, "Not the clean linens!"

Eren moved first.

He vaulted onto the root rail, caught the laundry line with one hand, and threw himself across the street.

For one breath, it almost looked graceful.

Then his weight hit the line.

The whole thing dropped with a sharp, ugly groan.

Towels snapped loose. Clothespins flew. A row of damp linens cracked through the air behind him, slapping signs, stalls, and one very unlucky beetlefolk man directly across the face.

The street below erupted.

"Get that damn Warden off my line!"

"Is he made of stone?"

"Too much seed-bread in that one!"

"Fat-footed root lump!"

"That line is for towels, not overfed gnomes!"

"Who fed him bricks?"

Eren's grip tightened around the line.

If the shouting bothered him, he gave no sign except to look angrier at the laundry.

The line sagged lower beneath him, dragging him in a hard, swinging arc over the food lane. A honey seller ducked. A mushroom woman covered her basket. Someone threw a wooden spoon at him and missed.

"Mind the soup, you heavy little curse!"

Eren let the insults chase him instead of answer them.

He used the line's drop for speed, boots—no, borrowed sandals—skidding once against a hanging root before he kicked off and landed on the opposite rail with enough force to make a crate of mushrooms jump.

The laundry line snapped upward behind him.

Not breaking.

Worse.

Rebounding.

It sprang high out of reach with a wet slap of towels and root-fiber cord, leaving Y/N staring up at it from the wrong side of the street.

She would have needed wings.

Or longer legs.

Or a world that did not keep putting things just above her hands.

The robe, naturally, chose that moment to betray her.

Its hem caught on a thorn peg.

Y/N jerked backward with a strangled sound.

The soap-nut charm thumped against her chest.

For half a breath, she hung there by her own clothing while Eren looked back from the opposite rail.

"I am delayed," she snapped before he could speak.

"You are stuck."

"I am delayed with reasons."

"Move."

"I am attached to architecture!"

She twisted to free herself, which only made the robe tighten around her knees.

The movement shook the loose towel on her head.

It sagged.

Then slid.

Then dropped over one eye with the slow, deliberate cruelty of something that had waited for the worst possible moment.

For one miserable second, she saw only green cloth, steam, and betrayal.

Y/N went still.

Then her voice came out small, furious, and deeply wounded.

"I hate this robe."

The erminefolk gasped behind her.

"It is doing its best!"

"Then its best is cruel!"

She yanked the hem free and ran.

The squirrelfolk girl scrambled higher, darting across hanging roots with the ease of someone born to steal above other people's heads. She was not carrying the bundle neatly anymore. The blue-petal blanket dragged from one hand. The gown flapped against her side. The little book bulged dangerously in the folded cloth, its flower shape pressing hard against the shimmer of the petal blanket.

Y/N could not climb that fast.

She could barely keep dressed.

So she ran below, following every flash of blue through the steam street, bare calves burning beneath the robe, rush slippers slapping wrong against stone. Her left ankle gave one sharp complaint, then another. The place she had scrubbed raw stung with every step. Her soles, only recently softened by warm water and then betrayed by borrowed footwear, began to remember every root, pebble, thorn, and wet stone they had crossed since morning.

She ignored them.

Her body could complain after she had her book.

The chase spilled into the food lane.

The smell hit Y/N like cruelty.

It did not smell like one meal. It smelled like a hundred creatures disagreeing on what supper meant. Acorn-flour cakes blistered on hot slate. Clover-root noodles hung from reed hooks in pale green ropes, dripping into bowls of broth thickened with crushed chestnut. Beechnut butter melted over seed-crusts. Dark berry vinegar hissed in clay cups and turned the steam purple. Honeydew drops were sold in hollow thistle buds, three to a leafbit, glowing faintly as if they had stolen light from the morning.

Farther down, the smells grew stranger.

A frogfolk cook flicked fat green gnats into bubbling nettle stew with the same hand he used to stir it. A spider woman spun sugar threads around candied aphids until they shone like tiny lanterns. A fox-faced vendor sold smoked beetle grubs beside a painted sign that read, in large angry symbols Y/N could not read, though the picture beneath made the meaning brutally clear: NOT BEETLEFOLK. STOP ASKING.

At one stall, mothfolk leaned delicately over cups of moonflower nectar, sipping through curled straws thinner than needles. At another stall, two mushroom elders sat with their palms pressed to a damp mineral loaf, absorbing supper in solemn silence, while a bored child beside them licked moss-salt from a vendor's sample stone—the green mineral crust shaved from damp root-springs, sold like candy to folk with stranger tongues than Y/N's. A bird woman cracked snail-shaped pastries with her beak while an actual snail courier watched from three stalls away in deep personal offense.

Some stalls cooked.

Some stalls arranged.

Some stalls only placed something living in a bowl and trusted the customer to be faster.

Y/N's stomach growled.

Loudly.

Betrayal from inside her own body.

"Not now," she hissed.

Eren glanced down.

Then his stomach answered.

Deeper.

Meaner.

The kind of sound that suggested something old and angry had woken beneath a floorboard.

A mushroom child stopped licking green salt-crust from a vendor's sample stone and stared after Eren in awe.

"There is a beast in his middle," the child whispered.

Eren did not slow.

If he heard, he gave no sign beyond the angry slap of borrowed sandals against stone.

Y/N would have been grateful for his silence if her own stomach had not chosen that exact moment to answer.

Long.

Loud.

Miserable.

The mushroom child turned slowly toward her.

"Oh," he breathed. "She has one too."

Y/N's face burned. "It is hunger, not a beast."

The child looked unconvinced.

A round beetlefolk vendor lifted a ladle from a bubbling pot as Y/N rushed past, broth dripping from the rim.

"Who are we stopping?"

"The squirrel!" Y/N cried.

The vendor looked up at the laundry roots, where at least three squirrelfolk heads had turned at the word.

His mouth flattened.

"You know how little that narrows it?"

"The one with my dress!"

"Ah," he said, suddenly grave. "Theft squirrel."

The reedling's voice cut through the steam behind them.

"Rain-gray! Striped tail-cloth! Blue petals!"

The beetlefolk vendor struck his ladle against the side of the pot.

Clang.

"Bath thief!" he bellowed. "Up the laundry roots!"

The warning leapt from mouth to mouth.

"Bath thief!"

"Gray squirrel!"

"Blue petals!"

"Mind the lines!"

Above them, the squirrelfolk girl dropped from a laundry root onto the striped awning of a seed-bread stall.

The awning sagged.

Then bounced.

Flour burst upward in a soft white cloud.

Three round loaves hopped from the counter like startled frogs. One landed in a basket. One landed on the ground. One landed directly in the arms of a passing snail courier, who withdrew halfway into his shell from pure offense.

A goat woman emerged from the flour cloud with both hands raised.

"My morning loaves!"

A frogfolk man ducked beneath the awning. "It is afternoon!"

"That is not the point!"

The squirrelfolk girl scrambled across the sagging cloth, clutching Y/N's blue-petal blanket under one arm while the folded gown flapped against her side.

Y/N saw one sleeve snap in the air.

Mother's stitching.

Her stitching.

Her breath caught hot in her throat.

"Stop waving it!" she shouted.

The goat woman blinked through flour-dusted lashes. "Is that directed at me?"

"No!"

"Then mind my loaves while you accuse people!"

"I am trying!"

Eren jumped onto the edge of a beetle cart, then from the cart to a low signpost shaped like an acorn cap. The beetle pulling the cart clicked furiously and turned in a circle, dragging the cart sideways across the lane. Barrels of fern pickles rocked in the back. One came loose, rolled toward Y/N, and forced her to leap over it with both hands gripping the front of her robe.

The leap would have been impressive.

If her slipper had agreed to land with her.

It did not.

The right slipper flew off her foot, spun once through the air, and slapped directly into a tray of pale dumplings shaped like sleeping mice.

A vendor stared at it.

Y/N stared at it.

For one frozen instant, the slipper sat among the dumplings as if it belonged there and had always dreamed of sauce.

Y/N knew enough about the world to know shoes did not go in food.

Apparently, the food stall disagreed.

The vendor threw both hands into the air, ladle and all. "Aw, ya kiddin' me?"

"I am sorry!" Y/N shouted.

"Sorry?" he cried. "Sorry does not un-slipper my dumplings!"

A large, greasy creature with a long nose and small hungry eyes leaned over the tray. His fingers twitched at his sides, and his mouth shone wetly in the steam.

"Oooh," he breathed. "Bathhouse slipper. My favorite."

Y/N's mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

The vendor slapped the creature's reaching hand away with the ladle.

"Not yet, you don't. I didn't price it!"

The creature's eyes widened with offense. "It is already on the plate."

"That is the problem!" the vendor barked. "Once it lands, it's garnish. House garnish. Free garnish. I could've charged double if I put it there myself!"

Y/N stared at him.

Then at the slipper.

Then at the creature licking his lips over a tray of dumplings that now, apparently, had a shoe garnish.

"I..." she began.

There was no end to that sentence.

The vendor pointed the ladle at her. "You owe me presentation fees!"

Y/N kept running, one foot bare, one slipper slapping, and decided for the third time that day that folk beyond the garden were deeply, deeply strange.

Her bare right foot struck warm stone, then cold moss, then something sticky she did not have the courage to identify. Pain shot up from her heel. Her scrubbed ankle burned hotter. Her left slipper slapped and slid and tried to turn sideways beneath her.

The hair towel finally gave up.

It slipped from her head, slid over her eyes, and for one awful breath the whole food lane vanished into damp green darkness.

"Oh—this wretched towel!"

Her foot caught on the edge of a root step.

Y/N lurched forward, one hand flying to the robe, the other pawing blindly at her face.

"I cannot see again!"

Eren did not slow. "Move it."

"I am trying to move it!"

A tiny hand caught the trailing cloth and yanked.

Light rushed back in.

The reedling appeared beside her, breathless, green cheeks flushed from running.

"I have it!"

"My hair?"

"The towel!"

"That is less helpful!"

The reedling grabbed Y/N's sleeve and pulled her aside just before she crashed shoulder-first into a honey stand.

The stall was built around a row of hanging gourds, each one fitted with a little reed spout. Thick golden honey dripped from the nozzles into waiting cups, slow and bright as melted sunlight.

"This way," the reedling gasped.

"I can run!"

"You can argue while falling."

"That is becoming a theme!"

Then the towel slipped from under the reedling's arm.

It snagged on one of the reed spouts, swung once, and dropped straight into the open mouth of a honey gourd.

For one terrible second, both Y/N and the reedling watched the moss-cloth vanish into the golden dark.

The honey seller made a sound like a kettle about to scream.

"My pouring gourd!"

The reedling stopped dead.

"Oh no."

Y/N looked from her to the thief disappearing above the stalls.

"Can you—"

"Go," the reedling said, already lunging for the honey gourd with both hands. "Go!"

"But—"

"Your book!"

That decided it.

Y/N turned and ran, leaving the reedling behind with one arm sunk elbow-deep in honey, the seller wailing over the ruined pour, and a line of customers craning their necks to see whether the towel would come out sugared.

For one breath, Y/N felt the loss of the reedling beside her like a hand slipping away.

Then she saw the squirrelfolk girl above them.

She landed on a hanging bridge of braided roots and looked back with a grin that showed sharp little teeth.

Then she waved Y/N's folded gown.

Waved it.

Like a flag.

Like a joke.

Like Mother's careful stitches meant nothing because the girl holding them had decided they meant nothing.

Y/N's chest went hot.

The towel, the robe, the missing slipper, the staring market—all of it fell away beneath one clear, furious thought.

That is mine.

Y/N made a sound.

It was not a scream.

Not exactly.

It was the sound of a girl who had been stolen from her bed, shoved into a river, shown a city beneath roots, scrubbed raw by fear, dressed in a robe that hated her, robbed of the last things that knew the shape of home, and now had to watch a stranger flap her mother's work over a market full of gawking mouths.

Eren heard it.

His head turned.

The squirrelfolk girl heard it too.

Her grin faded.

For one breath, even the market seemed to feel the shape of what she had done.

Not enough to stop being a market, of course.

A pot still boiled over somewhere. Someone shouted about crushed loaves. The honey seller was still wailing over the ruined pouring gourd. A snail courier, half withdrawn into his shell, demanded to know whether emotional distress counted as a delivery delay. Above them, warning calls bounced from root to root.

"Gray squirrel!"

"Striped tail-cloth!"

"Blue petals!"

Y/N gathered the robe in both hands and ran harder.

The soap-nut charm bounced once.

Twice.

Again.

The sash came loose and streamed behind her like a banner of humiliation. Her bare foot struck warm stone, then damp moss, then the edge of a root that sent pain flashing up her already-sore ankle. She swallowed the sound before it could escape. Pain could have her later. Not now.

Ahead, Eren changed course without asking.

He did not look back to see if she followed. He did not tell her to stay. He simply moved toward the root bridge with the sharp certainty of someone who had decided where the thief would go before the thief finished deciding it herself.

The squirrelfolk girl saw him and bolted.

She sprang from the awning to a hanging line, from the line to a carved signpost, then up onto the braided roots of the bridge.

The bridge barely noticed her.

That was the unfair thing.

The squirrelfolk girl was built for this: light-footed, narrow-limbed, tail snapping behind her for balance as she raced across the swaying roots with Y/N's blanket and gown clutched against her side.

Then Eren hit the bridge after her.

The whole thing dropped.

Not far.

Enough.

Braided roots groaned under his weight, and every hanging lantern along the rail shivered. Below, vendors ducked under their stalls as crumbs, moss water, and one startled beetle-shell bowl rained down from above.

"Mind the bridge!"

"Mind my soup!"

"Mind the gnome!"

"Is a masked gnome storm damage or customer damage?"

"If he lands in the stew, it is stew damage!"

Eren did not slow.

That was the trouble with him, Y/N thought wildly as she reached the lower stair.

He moved like the world ought to hold.

The squirrelfolk girl moved like she already knew where it would not.

Y/N moved like her robe wanted her dead.

The stair curling toward the bridge was made of root knots.

Too tall for her.

Too uneven.

Too rude.

She grabbed the first knot and climbed, robe tangling around her knees, one foot bare, one foot half-slipping from a rush slipper that now seemed determined to turn backward. Her sore ankle pulsed hot with every pull upward, but she did not stop. Stopping meant losing sight of the blue petals. Stopping meant the thief got farther away.

Behind her, Étienne appeared at the base of the stairs, panting delicately and holding Eren's forgotten side sash as though the fate of civilization depended on it.

"Lift the hem, little blossom!"

"My name is not little blossom!"

"It is today!"

"I am not small enough for all of you to rename me!"

"You are currently dressed like a tragedy in a shrub!"

Y/N did not have enough breath to answer that.

She lifted the hem.

The climb became easier.

Not dignified.

But easier.

By the time she reached the bridge, Eren had nearly caught the squirrelfolk girl.

Nearly.

The thief was quicker where the bridge was weakest. She darted across the thinner side-roots, places that bent under Eren's hand before his full weight even touched them. Every time he shifted after her, the bridge dipped hard enough to make Y/N grab the rail.

Her stomach lurched.

The food lane swung beneath her in flashes: boiling pots, upturned faces, clay cups, awnings, the silver thread of a runoff channel cutting between stalls.

Then Eren's hand closed around the edge of the blue-petal blanket.

The thief twisted hard.

The blanket unfurled between them.

Blue-violet petals flashed open in the steam like a wounded wing, and everything hidden inside shifted at once.

The gown stayed caught in the folds, soft cloth clinging to softer cloth, one sleeve twisted around the thief's wrist.

The book did not stay.

It slid free.

Y/N's heart stopped.

"No!"

She threw herself forward.

Too fast.

Not heavy enough to shake the bridge.

Only foolish enough to lose her footing on it.

Her bare foot slipped on wet root. The borrowed robe dragged at her knees. The loosened sash snapped behind her, and the whole world tipped sideways as Eren moved at the same time.

He let go of the blanket.

Not because he lost it.

Because the book was falling.

The bridge sank under him with a long wooden groan as he lunged.

Below, the narrow water channel flashed silver between the food stalls, carrying runoff toward a dark grate beneath the roots.

Y/N lunged too.

His hand caught the book first.

Y/N's hand caught the trailing edge of the blue-petal blanket.

The squirrelfolk girl caught the other end and twisted it hard around her fist.

For one breath, all three of them held something, and the bridge held all three of them badly.

Then the pulling began.

"Let go!" the squirrelfolk girl snapped.

"They are mine!" Y/N cried.

"You do not even know what they are worth!"

"I know who made them!"

The words came out sharper than Y/N expected.

Sharper than her voice usually allowed itself to be.

The squirrelfolk girl's ears flattened.

Y/N gripped the blanket harder. The preserved petals bent beneath her fingers, damp but stubborn. The gown dragged between them, half-swallowed in the blanket folds, one sleeve still looped around the thief's wrist. The book was pinned in Eren's hand, clutched against his chest, safe for one second and still not safe enough for Y/N to breathe.

"Let go," Y/N said again, lower now. "That is my dress. That is my blanket. That is my book."

The squirrelfolk girl bared her teeth.

"Pretty petal cloth," she snapped. "Private book. Bath folk fussing over you. A masked gnome chasing after you. Folk like you always have someone making more."

Y/N's face went hot.

No.

No, no, no.

That was not what this was.

That was not what any of this was.

Mother had made the gown because Y/N had no shop that could dress her. Y/N had helped because her hands knew every seam, every thread, every careful weakness of the petal panels. The blanket had been the first shed piece of the flower that birthed her. The book was not a pretty extra, not a rich girl's toy, not something replaceable because someone had looked at her and decided she seemed loved enough to survive losing it.

"No," Y/N said, voice shaking. "Folk like me have people taking what little we have and calling it something else."

The squirrelfolk girl hesitated.

Only for a breath.

But it was enough.

Y/N pulled with every bit of anger she had been too polite to use since waking in the shell.

The blanket came free.

The gown came with it, sliding loose from the thief's wrist in a crumpled flash of damp cream and blue-violet.

The squirrelfolk girl lost her grip, flipped backward, and caught one of the bridge ropes with her tail. She swung upside down with a hiss, light enough that the rope only snapped once beneath her.

Y/N was not so lucky.

The force of her own pull sent her backward.

Her bare foot slipped again.

The rail vanished from beneath her hand.

Eren's free hand snapped out and caught the back of her robe.

Again, not her.

The robe.

The cloth strained between his fingers and her shoulders, keeping her from pitching over the bridge rail and into the channel below.

Y/N did not care.

The book was in his other hand.

Her book.

Eren shoved it against her chest.

"Hold this."

Y/N clutched it with both hands.

The little book was damp at one corner, its petal edge bent, but whole.

Whole.

Her breath broke.

For one foolish, terrible second, she almost cried right there on the bridge.

Then the squirrelfolk girl swung herself upright, sprang to the bridge rail, and spat, "Flower scraps."

Y/N's head lifted.

Eren went still.

The squirrelfolk girl seemed to realize, a heartbeat too late, that she had said something stupid in front of someone who wore a wooden face and had just crossed half a market in borrowed shoes.

She jumped.

Not down.

Up.

She sprang from the bridge rail to a dangling root, from root to lantern hook, from lantern hook to balcony edge, and vanished into a curtain of hanging moss.

The city shouted after her.

"The gray squirrel!"

"Striped tail-cloth!?"

"She went up!"

"No, left!"

"Your other left!"

"That is just a wall!"

Y/N sat on the swaying bridge with the book crushed against her chest, the blanket tangled around her knees, her gown half in her lap, her robe crooked, her hair loose and dripping down her back, one foot bare, and the other wearing a slipper that had turned sideways in defeat.

Eren still held the back of the robe.

Slowly, he released it.

Y/N looked down at herself.

Then at him.

Then at the entire food lane staring up at them.

Her face burned from her throat to her ears.

"I meant to do that," she said.

Eren stared at her through the mask.

For one long breath, he said nothing.

He had seen her nearly go over the rail. Had felt the robe snap tight in his fist, too thin a thing to trust with anyone's life. She was barefoot, half-swallowed by borrowed cloth, shaking hard enough to make the book tremble against her chest, and still somehow looking at him as if pride were a reasonable substitute for balance.

She was ridiculous.

She was alive.

She was looking at him like she expected him to challenge the first part and ignore the second.

Eren could not decide which annoyed him more.

"You meant to nearly fall into a drain?" he asked.

"I meant to get my things."

"You did both."

"That is not the same."

"It is today."

Y/N glared at him.

Her stomach growled again.

Longer this time.

The bridge went very quiet.

Eren's stomach answered.

The goat woman beneath the bridge looked up, flour still dusting her horns.

"Are you two done chasing criminals, or are you gonna order lunch?"

Y/N opened her mouth.

No answer came.

Because, unfortunately, both seemed urgent.

❦

Getting back to the bathhouse took longer than chasing the thief out of it.

That felt unfair.

During the chase, panic had pulled Y/N forward by the ribs. Now panic had nowhere to go, so it settled into her feet, her hands, her throat, and the aching place behind her eyes.

Eren walked ahead with the same blunt stride as before, though the borrowed sandals still slapped wrong against his heels. Y/N followed with her book hugged to her chest, her blanket and gown gathered in both arms, and one bare foot touching the street very carefully after the other.

The left slipper had lasted three more steps after the bridge.

Then it had turned sideways, pinched her toes, and tried to send her into a stack of empty broth cups.

Y/N had stopped, pulled it off, and tucked it under her arm with the rest of her rescued things.

Walking barefoot through The Underbough was painful.

Walking with one slipper had been humiliating and dangerous.

Barefoot was better.

That was a terrible sentence, but it was true.

The right slipper, according to three witnesses and one deeply offended dumpling vendor, had been eaten.

Not stolen.

Not misplaced.

Eaten.

A large, greasy customer had apparently declared that once a bathhouse slipper landed on dumplings, it became garnish, and garnish was not meant to be wasted.

Y/N had suspected the slipper was gone.

She had even, in the frightened little corner of her mind where the Underbough was beginning to make its own terrible kind of sense, suspected it had been eaten.

But suspecting a thing and hearing it confirmed were not the same.

Her thoughts stopped politely at the edge of the sentence and refused to cross.

So Y/N decided not to do anything with that information at all.

When they reached the bathhouse, the reedling was waiting near the dressing hollows with honey up to one elbow and guilt written all over her face.

Étienne stood beside her, holding a damp cloth bundle, the missing side sash from Eren's borrowed tunic, and a little folding fan made from pressed fern leaves. He flicked it open and shut with the restless misery of someone trying not to faint over damaged laundry.

"There you are," he said, looking Y/N up and down. "Alive. Barefoot. Carrying one shoe. Dressed in disaster. Better than expected."

"I brought back the robe," Y/N said quickly.

"That is not the first thing I would have mentioned, but I admire the priorities."

The reedling stepped forward. "Your things?"

Y/N clutched them tighter before she could stop herself.

The reedling stopped.

Only then did Y/N realize what her hands had done.

Her face warmed.

"I am sorry."

"You do not have to be."

"I know."

But her fingers stayed curled in the blanket anyway.

The reedling looked at them, then at her face, and softened.

"I can stand turned around," she said. "You pass me what you want help with."

Y/N swallowed.

That was easier.

Not easy.

But easier.

"Okay," she said.

Behind them, Eren stopped near the counter and turned his masked face toward the street, as if he could still hear the thief being dragged somewhere above the market.

Apparently, the lower watch had caught her before she reached the upper vents.

A beetlefolk guard passed the open doorway a moment later with one hand clamped around the squirrelfolk girl's arm. Another guard followed with the striped tail-cloth held at arm's length like evidence.

The squirrelfolk girl hissed over her shoulder.

"It was bath laundry!"

"It was stolen bath laundry," the guard said.

"That feels specific."

"So is the charge."

"Where are they taking her?" Y/N asked.

"To the watch hollow," the reedling said.

Y/N looked at her.

The reedling's face changed, just a little.

Not fear.

Not exactly.

Respect for a place no one joked about too loudly.

"It is where the watch puts folk until the complaint is heard," she said. "Roots shut behind you there."

Y/N's arms tightened around her bundle.

"For how long?"

"Until the watch is done asking."

"That is not a time."

"No," the reedling said quietly. "It is not."

"Oh."

That did not make Y/N feel better exactly.

But it made the air around her ribs loosen by one breath.

Before the reedling led her behind the moss screen, she plunged her honeyed arm into a rinse basin and scrubbed quickly from wrist to elbow.

"Street first," she said, shaking water from her fingers. "Dress after."

Y/N was too tired to argue.

The reedling led her behind a moss screen near the dressing hollows.

She helped, but did not take over, and that distinction mattered more than Y/N knew how to say.

She held the gown while Y/N stepped into it, steadied the petal panels while Y/N tied the inner thread, and offered tiny pins made from polished thorn without deciding where they should go. When the robe had to come off, she turned away until Y/N said she was ready. When Y/N's shaking hands fumbled at the damp hem, the reedling noticed and said nothing.

Then Y/N saw the tear.

She went still.

It was small.

That almost made it worse.

One blue-violet petal panel near the side seam had split at the edge, not enough to ruin the gown, not enough to make it unwearable, but enough that the delicate gold-edged line Mother had stitched so carefully now bent wrong.

Y/N touched it with one fingertip.

The reedling's mouth tightened.

"Temporary pin," she said quickly. "It will hold until a stitcher sees it."

Y/N nodded.

The gown was not ruined.

She told herself that three times.

Not ruined.

Wrinkled, yes. Damp at the hem again. Smudged where the bridge had kissed it with moss and market grime. Torn at one petal edge in a way Mother would have noticed immediately and silently suffered over while pretending not to suffer.

But not ruined.

The reedling pinned the torn edge with careful fingers.

Y/N watched every movement.

Not because she did not trust her.

Because trusting had become something her body wanted proof for.

"There," the reedling said. "It will not pull open if you walk."

"If I run?"

The reedling looked at her.

Y/N looked away.

"I am not planning to."

"Good."

A pause.

"Try not to."

"I will try not to need to."

The reedling did not answer that.

Y/N touched the blue-violet petal panel again.

"Thank you."

The reedling's mouth shifted.

"You already said that."

"I mean it again."

The reedling looked away.

"Then I hear it again."

Y/N folded the returned robe over her arms and handed it back. Then the body towel. Then she reached for the left slipper, paused, and held it against her side instead. Its little sole was bent from the chase, and one strap had gone crooked in a way that made it look personally offended.

The reedling held out her hand.

Y/N looked at the slipper.

Then at the reedling.

"The right slipper," Y/N said, deeply ashamed, "was eaten."

The reedling closed her eyes.

"I heard."

"I did not give it to him."

"No one thinks you did."

"I did not know shoes could be food."

"To most mouths, they are not."

Y/N stared at her.

The reedling opened one eye.

"They are oat-straw slippers."

"They are shoes."

"Oat-straw," the reedling repeated carefully, as if that explained everything. "Wheat braid at the heel. Beet-juice dye. Honey-set soles."

"Honey-set?"

"Dried honey. Not sticky if made properly."

Y/N's face went very still.

The reedling winced before Y/N even spoke.

"So my shoe was a red-dyed oat biscuit."

"It was footwear."

"Held together with honey."

"For structure."

"And then it landed in dumpling sauce."

The reedling looked pained.

"That may have changed its category."

Y/N stared at the floor.

Then at the one remaining slipper.

Then very slowly tucked it farther under her arm.

The reedling looked at her.

"I am not going to eat it."

"I did not say you were."

"You moved like I might, though."

"I moved like I am tired of being surprised."

"That is fair."

Y/N held the slipper for one more cautious second before handing it over.

The reedling accepted it by two fingers, as if it had lived a questionable life and survived only by accident.

The hair cloth was accounted for too, though it came back sticky with honey, steam grit, and one clover-root noodle clinging to the edge with terrible commitment.

"I would like to stop learning things for a moment," Y/N said.

When Y/N stepped out from behind the screen, Eren was waiting near the counter in his borrowed dark clothes and borrowed sandals. His own cloak, tunic, trousers, and boots had been taken somewhere deeper into the bathhouse to be beaten, rinsed, cursed over, and possibly forgiven. The new clothes still looked wrong on him—not because they were dirty, but because they were not. They made the mask seem harsher, the wet darkness of his hair more noticeable, the line of his shoulders more exposed.

Y/N looked away before she could be caught looking.

Then her stomach growled again.

She pressed one hand against it.

"Please stop announcing me."

Eren's stomach answered.

Étienne, from somewhere behind the counter, sighed dreamily.

"Tragedy, but make it hollow."

Eren ignored him.

The bathkeeper stepped behind the bark counter and pulled forward a thick ledger. Its pages were pressed pale bark, marked with ink, claw scratches, and strings of tiny beads. Beside it sat a bowl of polished seeds, a stack of thin leaf-shaped bark chips, and several small amber pieces that caught the light like hardened honey.

Y/N stared.

Payment.

Of course there was payment.

The thought arrived too late, as most terrible thoughts seemed to.

She knew what money was. Mother had counted coins at the kitchen table often enough, lips pressed thin over flour, thread, lamp oil, winter apples, and the small expensive things needed to keep a tiny daughter alive inside a large human house.

But Mother's coins were not here.

No round copper pieces worn soft from human pockets.

No silver tucked into the sugar jar.

No careful stack beneath Mother's mending basket.

Y/N looked down at herself.

At the gown Mother had made.

At the blanket still clutched against her arm.

At the little book wrapped close to her chest.

At the soap-nut charm resting against her throat.

What money did she have?

The question opened under her like a hole.

She had no coins.

No purse.

No pocket.

No house key.

No Mother standing behind her with a tight mouth and a careful hand reaching for whatever payment could make the problem go away.

She had a damp book, a damaged dress, a blanket, and a charm someone had given her because she had arrived filthy and frightened.

She had nothing anyone here could—

The bathkeeper tapped the ledger with one claw.

Y/N flinched.

"The lower-gate rinse is mercy," the bathkeeper said. "Feet, hands, and enough soap to keep the city from catching what you dragged in. Full baths are account."

Y/N remembered the foot basins.

Her toes curled against the bathhouse floor, rinsed clean again but still tender, as if every root and pebble from the food lane had left a small memory behind.

"Account," she repeated.

The word felt worse than price.

A price was one thing.

An account sounded like something that stayed open.

The bathkeeper's eyes did not soften.

"Water is mercy," she said. "Making me clean the same mess twice is business."

Y/N swallowed.

"Business means money."

"It usually does."

"I do not have money."

"Not the kind you mean, no."

Y/N stiffened.

The bathkeeper noticed.

"Round coins," she said, not unkindly, but not gently either. "Pocket coins. House coins. Upstairs money."

Upstairs.

The word pressed strangely against Y/N's ribs.

Not wrong.

Not quite kind.

"I did not say upstairs," Y/N said.

"No," the bathkeeper said. "But you speak like staircases."

Y/N did not know what to do with that.

Eren's mask tilted slightly, but he said nothing.

Y/N looked at the bowl of strange polished seeds, the thin leaf-shaped bark chips, and the little amber pieces glowing like hardened honey beside the ledger.

"Then what is that?"

The bathkeeper glanced down.

"Leafbits. Seedmarks. Amber chips."

The names meant nothing to Y/N.

That made them worse.

The bathkeeper began counting.

"Two full scrub-and-soaks," she said. "Four seedmarks."

Y/N looked at Eren.

He did not look back.

The bathkeeper kept going.

"Laundry and drying for one petal gown, one blue-petal blanket, one book wiped and aired but not opened, one tunic, one cloak, one pair of trousers, and boots that may yet be tried before a moral court. Six seedmarks."

Étienne made a wounded sound.

"The boots were worse than the trousers."

"The boots did not touch my clean changing bench."

"That is fair."

The bathkeeper's claw moved down the ledger.

"Borrowed robe. Two leafbits. Borrowed rush slippers. Two leafbits."

Y/N's shoulders sank.

"One was eaten."

"I heard."

"Does that make it cost more?"

"Not today."

That was not as comforting as Y/N thought it should have been.

"Hair cloth cleaning," the bathkeeper continued. "One leafbit."

The reedling lifted the edge of the towel, where honey and clover-root still clung with the stubbornness of a tiny green worm.

"Maybe two."

Y/N covered her face.

The bathkeeper glanced at her and, after one severe pause, said, "One."

The reedling hid a smile.

"Tooth reeds and powder for two. One leafbit. Hickory-nut tea with mossflower honey. One seedmark."

Y/N lowered her hands.

"The tea too?"

"Most things are too."

The words landed softly.

Then sharply.

The tea had been warm. The robe had been clean. The tooth powder had tasted sharp and bright. The soap charm still rested against her chest like a tiny kindness.

And now all of it had numbers tied to it.

Not cruel numbers, maybe.

Not unfair numbers, maybe.

But numbers all the same.

The bathkeeper's claw paused beside another set of marks.

"Alarm bell, bridge disturbance, flour complaint, dumpling trouble, honey-gourd grievance, and whatever happened to the broth go on the thief's charge."

Y/N swallowed.

"What happened to the broth?"

"No one knows yet."

"That sounds worse than knowing."

"It usually is."

"I did not touch any broth."

"No one said you did."

"I feel like that should be written down too."

The bathkeeper gave her a flat look.

Y/N looked at Eren.

Eren did not look back.

The bathkeeper's eyes dropped to the soap-nut charm around Y/N's neck.

"Soap charm was given," she said. "Not charged."

The reedling looked down quickly.

Y/N closed one hand around the charm.

The bathkeeper added the final marks.

"Total: eleven seedmarks and six leafbits."

Étienne lifted one claw.

"Madame, four leafbits make one seedmark, if we are being civilized."

The bathkeeper looked at the crooked robe on the counter, the honeyed hair cloth, Y/N's exhausted face, and Eren's borrowed sandals.

"Civilized left when the bell rang."

Étienne lowered his claw.

"Of course."

The bathkeeper scratched a correction into the ledger.

"Twelve seedmarks and two leafbits after conversion."

Y/N's mouth had gone dry.

Twelve seedmarks.

Two leafbits.

She still did not know exactly what that meant, but everyone else did.

That was enough.

"I do not have that," she said.

No one looked surprised.

That somehow made it worse.

Eren stepped forward.

"Put it on my account."

The bathkeeper lifted one brow.

"You do not have one."

"Then start one."

The words came easily.

Too easily.

But something changed in the air after he said them.

The reedling went still. Étienne's fan stopped moving. The bathkeeper's eyes narrowed.

"Name?"

Eren said, "Warden."

The bathkeeper stared at him.

"That is very vague."

He did not move.

"There is more than one Warden in Briar's Hold," she said. "More than one with unpaid cords too. Name, mark, house, or keeper."

The steam seemed to quiet.

Y/N remembered his voice from before.

Because named things get counted.

Counted things get priced.

Now he was standing at a counter, clean and masked and half-wrapped in borrowed cloth, offering himself to a ledger because she had no seedmarks and no leafbits and no idea how to stop needing things.

Eren's jaw shifted behind the mask.

"Eren," he said.

The bathkeeper waited.

His shoulders tightened.

"Eren Jaeger."

Y/N looked at him.

Jaeger.

The name landed differently than Eren had.

Heavier.

Less like an ember.

More like a door closing somewhere in the roots.

The bathkeeper studied him for one long breath.

Then she looked down and wrote the name into the ledger.

The scratch of her claw against bark sounded too loud.

"You want a tally-cord opened under Warden standing and that name?"

"I want the debt paid."

"That is not the same thing."

"It is today."

The bathkeeper stared at him.

Then she reached beneath the counter and drew out two thin cords of dark root fiber. Matching lengths. Matching knots at one end. One for the bathhouse. One for the debtor.

She took a tiny bone awl and tied twelve tight knots into the first cord, then slid two pale leaf-shaped chips onto the end.

"Twelve seedmarks," she said. "Two leafbits."

She repeated the knots on the second cord and pushed it toward Eren.

"Four leafbits make one seedmark. Twelve seedmarks make one amber chip. Pay in seedmarks, leafbits, amber chips, clean labor, or trade goods worth the same. Do not bring me river rocks and call them sentimental."

Y/N stared at the cord.

So that was money here.

Seeds for ordinary things.

Leaves for little things.

Amber for larger things.

And debt tied into knots where anyone could count it.

Eren picked up the tally-cord and looped it around his wrist beside the old bark-fiber marks.

Y/N hated how natural it looked there.

Another cord.

Another thing tied to him.

Because of her.

"I am sorry," she said softly.

Eren tucked the cord beneath the old bark-fiber wrap at his wrist.

"For what?"

"For making you owe money."

"You did not steal your own things."

"No, but—"

"Then stop."

Y/N closed her mouth.

That should have helped.

It did not.

Because she still owed him.

For the river. For the roots. For the chase. For the bath. For the account he had opened when names made the room go quiet and being counted felt worse than being seen.

The bathkeeper looked between them, then pushed a small folded cloth toward Y/N.

"For the book," she said. "Wrap it before you drip on it again."

Y/N took the cloth carefully.

"Thank you."

The bathkeeper grunted.

"Thank me by not chasing thieves in bathrobes next time."

Y/N's face warmed.

"I did not choose the robe."

Étienne's fan snapped open again with a sharp little clack.

"The robe performed admirably under hostile conditions."

"The robe tried to trip me."

"It gave you movement."

"It gave me enemies."

Eren turned toward the food lane.

"Are we done?"

The bathkeeper pointed one claw at him.

"Your old clothes stay for washing."

"I need my cloak."

"You need patience."

"I need my cloak."

"You need food before your stomach frightens children."

As if summoned, Eren's stomach growled.

Hard.

The sound was deep enough that the nearest mushroom child squeaked and hid behind his mother's leg.

Y/N looked at Eren.

Eren looked away.

Then Y/N's stomach answered.

Not small.

Not delicate.

Not at all ladylike.

It made a long, miserable sound that seemed to begin somewhere near her spine and end in public disgrace.

Étienne pressed one paw to his mouth.

"Oh, the poor things are hollow."

"I am not hollow," Y/N said.

Her stomach growled again.

The bathkeeper closed the ledger.

"Food street," she said. "Before one of you bites a vendor."

Y/N clutched the wrapped book and folded blanket to her chest.

Eren walked ahead.

Then stopped.

Not fully.

Only enough to glance back.

"Coming?"

Y/N looked down at the book wrapped safely now in the folded cloth. At the bent petal edge. At the gown Mother had made. At the blanket that still smelled faintly of steam, mud, flour, and home.

Then at the tally-cord half-hidden beneath Eren's wrist wrap.

Her guilt followed her like a second shadow.

"Yes," she said.

The Underbough opened around them again, loud and dripping and alive.

The day had thinned while they were inside.

Not gone.

Not yet.

But the gray-gold light filtering through the high roots had softened into something lower and warmer, and more lanterns had begun to glow in the hollowed trunks above the food lane. Amber lamps blinked awake beneath mushroom caps. Blue moss brightened along the stair edges. Somewhere overhead, a winged lamplighter moved from hook to hook, touching firefly-glass bulbs until the street looked as if dusk had gotten caught in the roots.

The food lane had not become less strange in Y/N's absence.

If anything, it seemed stranger now that she was not sprinting through it barefoot with a stolen book to chase.

Steam rose in colors: green from nettle pots, purple from berry vinegar, gold from honeyed seed cakes blistering on flat stones. A mothfolk girl carried a tray of moonflower nectar cups no larger than thimbles. A badger child gnawed happily on a roasted root shaped disturbingly like a tiny hand. Two mushroom elders still sat with their palms pressed to a mineral loaf, eyes half-closed in patient supper. At the smoked grub stall, the fox-faced vendor had added a second sign beside the first, this one painted with an angry beetle wearing a crown and a large red slash through it.

Y/N could not read the words.

She understood the outrage.

A frogfolk cook lifted a spoonful of gnat stew and shouted at a customer, "Wings cost extra if they still twitch!"

Y/N stared.

Eren stared at a tray of acorn cakes with the intensity of a starving wolf pretending to be civilized.

Their stomachs growled at the same time.

The sound was so loud that a passing snail courier withdrew halfway into his shell.

For once, neither of them spoke.

Then Eren said, "Food."

Y/N nodded gravely.

"Before one of us becomes unreasonable."

His mask turned toward her.

She adjusted her pinned petal gown with as much dignity as she could scrape together.

"More unreasonable," she corrected.

Eren looked at her for a long moment.

Then he turned toward the stalls.

"Fine."

Y/N followed.

The food lane glowed ahead of them, strange and loud and warm beneath the roots. Her feet still hurt. Her gown was pinned instead of mended. Her book was bent at one corner, and Eren wore a debt cord because of her.

But the book was in her arms.

The blanket was against her chest.

And for now, the masked boy did not walk so far ahead that she could not follow.

Above them, dusk gathered slowly in the branches of The Underbough, caught in lantern glass, mosslight, and steam.

❦❦❦