Book One – Chapter 19

Other bottles bore names he had never heard or could not read, some still sealed, others half-drained. Yu knew none of them and did not dare try. Not only because pulling them down and prying the corks would be a pain prone for another disaster. Not even because Bubs might object. But because fina could not stomach most of what the tairan and the traders brewed, and Yu did not assume the rest of the world to be any more considerate. Everything that Tria had ever received from outlanders had been strange spirits and corrupted concoctions, like their many dishes of dough that soured the gut and sickened the blood. There ought to be a law against that sort of food. It was as though they made it unfit on purpose, to keep it to themselves.

Disappointed and disillusioned, Yu gave up on the cupboards and shelves. The sink opposite the hearth offered something more immediate. It was cut from the same stone as the wall, with a crude pipe system much like the one in the bathroom, which meant one singular spout above, and one broad drain below, at the centre of the sink. Like with the barrel and the toilet, a thin slate blocked the downward outflow. Yu pulled it halfway, and a stream gushed forth, striking the basin and spreading over the darkened trough before coiling into the drain.

He watched it. Yu just stood and watched the water. His eyes followed the flow as it bled across the shallow curve, sometimes fixing on the slit where it gushed in, sometimes on the grated hole where it vanished. After a while, he noticed that the stone beneath the stream was darker than the rest. It was grey shading to black, while the sides of the sink kept the same pallor as the walls. The stone was neither damp nor did it seem stained on the surface, but the colour had permanently changed. Yu wondered why. The water was clear, the rock was pale, and yet, where they touched, something had deepened over time. How did that work? How could one transparent thing make another bright thing darken? Where did the dark come from?

While surely interesting for all of ten seconds, this was not an observation to distract and fixate on for long, so eventually, Yu bent down and drank straight from the flow.

It did nothing. It did not change any feelings of hunger or thirst. His stomach only swelled with the same dull pressure.