The Merchant of Steam and Secrets

I once believed tea was made for quiet mornings and gentle company. That it belonged in porcelain cups, between friends or lovers, steeped with soft conversation and sunlight. But that was before. Before I learned what the leaves could whisper if you dared to truly listen. Before I became something else entirely—a merchant, yes, but not of comfort. I trade in desire. I sell tea like others sell gold, and mine is more potent.

They think I offer beauty. They see jasmine buds hand-rolled into pearls, blooming as they steep. They inhale the honeyed perfume and think it is sweetness I sell. But sweetness is for the naive. What I offer is control. Power, cloaked in ritual. Knowledge, wrapped in the curl of rising steam. Every leaf I brew carries weight. Every cup I pour is a promise—never spoken, always hungering.

They come to me from every corner of the city. Men with ink on their hands and secrets on their tongues. Women cloaked in silk and sorrow, their voices tremulous with questions they dare not ask aloud. Scholars, dreamers, thieves. They slip into my shop with wide eyes and cautious steps. They do not ask for tea. They ask for clarity. For courage. For answers they can’t put into words.

I offer them cups—ceramic, cast iron, gilded with dragons and blossoms. I watch as they lift them to their lips, expecting warmth, maybe comfort. What they find is ache. The kind that lingers in the chest, somewhere between longing and revelation. They think they are tasting jasmine. They are tasting my hunger.

Because I do not sip. I devour.

Each cup I brew is a ritual. The steam rises like lace woven from serpents, curling into ancient shapes no scholar has yet translated. But I know them. I lean close. Closer than any wise man ever would. The steam speaks, and I listen. I always listen.

Tea, you see, is not gentle. It is not the humble drink you find on dainty tables beside shortbread and gossip. It is alchemy. A silence laced with fire and root. The hush that comes before a secret is spoken—and the scream that follows once it’s known.

Honey drips into my brews not for sweetness, but to seduce. To coax the tongue into softness, to make those who drink pliable, open, eager. A single drop on the rim of a cup can unravel even the most guarded soul. It lingers, it lures. And when they speak—because they always do—it is not to me. It is to the ghost of the thing they once craved. Love. Power. Truth. They name none of it. They don’t have to. I can taste it in their silence.

They call me merchant, but I am more than that. I am collector. Keeper of riddles. I gather each whispered truth from the steam, each half-formed dream that brews beneath the surface. I lock them away in lacquered boxes, dark as sin and stacked high in my backroom. Every secret has weight, and I carry them all. They haunt the air long after the last customer has left. Some nights, I sit in the dark and brew only for myself.

Not for thirst.

Never for thirst.

I drink to consume. To know. To swallow the marrow of desire, to taste the pulse beneath the petals. There are flavors no ordinary merchant dares seek. Bitterness laced with prophecy. Sweetness that weeps with old grief. I chase them all. Each cup demands more, and I offer it willingly. Because I want more.

Still, I want deeper.

I want the root. The truth buried beneath a thousand infusions. I want the final note—the one no other ear has heard. The taste that defies all names. I brew for that. For the ache of it. For the knowing.

They do not understand, those who visit. They see a merchant in fine robes, hands stained with tea leaves, and they imagine I serve them. They imagine they are in control. But the truth is more bitter.

I serve no one.

Even now, jasmine fades in the jar. Honey thickens into something clotted and strange. The bloom shatters before it ever reaches full beauty. Still, I brew. Day after day. Night after night. Greedy. Vigilant. Listening.

Because somewhere, beyond all this ritual and hunger, there is a final cup. A last truth. One that only I will hear.

And when I do—

Ah. Then I will know whether desire was ever meant to be satisfied, or whether it was always a hunger meant only to burn.