After the last slices of chilled Emerald Sun-Melon were devoured and the empty red lacquer tray was guided back to the pavilion dock, a soft, drowsy stillness settled over the Eternal Cedar Bathhouse.
Across the five terraced levels, the earlier splashing and loud laughter had dissolved into warm, relaxed murmurs. Bathers leaned back against the smooth storm-cedar staves. Their skin was flushed with stone heat, their eyes half-closed as they gazed upward through the rising plumes of mint-scented steam. The forty hand-carved stone lanterns bobbing in the corners of the pools cast slow. It waved reflections of gold across the wet dark rock walls, weaving shadows that danced like drowsy spirits upon the water.
Then, from the lower communal terrace, came a single, clear note of music.
Fwwwweeee...
The sound was soft and breathy, like the first stirrings of an autumn breeze through high mountain river reeds.
Every bather in the pavilion turned their head toward the sound. Sitting upon a low wooden bench by the edge of the Tier 1 basin was an elderly mortal farmer from the Southern Rice Valleys. His hands were weathered and calloused from eighty years of planting grain, and between his gnarled fingers, he held a simple six-hole flute carved from green river-bamboo.
