Chapter Text
Early one morning, Bamboo Rice called his rats to breakfast.
"Big Ah... Little Ah... Oh? You're a new guy."
He was surprised to see a tiny, rotund panda cub wearing a matching vest and cap trundle over. The panda sniffed the bamboo rats' food trough, looking expectantly at Bamboo Rice.
"Are you hungry?"
The panda rolled itself to the rice container that Bamboo Rice usually kept at his hip. It was, of course, made of bamboo; the panda promptly tried to tug it off and nibble at it. Bamboo Rice laughed, startling the panda into dropping the container. Still chuckling, Bamboo Rice reached out a hand and petted the panda's head.
"It's okay, little guy. Here, I'll give you some food of your own."
A quarter of an hour later, the panda had polished off the serving that Bamboo Rice had apportioned to it, and was lying lazily on its back. The bamboo rats had begun to play around it, climbing over and hiding behind it.
"Scallion? Scallion?" a worried, feminine voice called.
Soon the voice's owner came into view. She was a handsome woman in the prime of her life, with long, smooth, and shiny dark hair that she kept tied behind her, and long, delicate fingers that bore the scent of spices and charcoal. She was also wearing an outfit that matched the panda's.
"Hey, lady. The little round menace yours?"
Bamboo Rice pointed at the replete panda, smiling to show that he didn't mean it as an insult. The woman looked at him and then at the panda, and her face broke out into a smile of relief.
"Scallion! There you are."
She came over and picked up the panda, casually flicking off a bit of rice from the critter's mouth. "Been eating til you fell asleep again, I see, you little rapscallion," she observed to the cub, not that the panda was paying her any attention.
She turned to Bamboo Rice, cradling the sleeping panda in one arm. "Thank you for taking care of him. He has a mind of his own."
"It was no problem. My little ones enjoyed him," Bamboo Rice said, pointing at his rats.
She smiled at him, and Bamboo Rice thought it was a beautiful smile, full of sweetness and affection. It was probably mostly for the panda she was holding -- she plainly loved it a lot -- and for a sense of camaraderie with a fellow furparent, but it was beautiful nonetheless.
"I'm Mapo Tofu," she said. So she was a Food Soul, just like him?
"I'm Bamboo Rice," he replied automatically, and her smile got wider, perhaps as she recognized that they were the same.
"I run a Sichuan food stall in town," she told him. "The best spicy food you can find anywhere. Why don't you come visit?"
I don't really go into town all that much, Bamboo Rice thought, but she was still smiling at him and he felt a little light-headed. "I will," Bamboo Rice found himself saying instead.