The tea room had softened corners and a low, round, central table. The dark wood of the tabletop glowed with bits of mother-of-pearl inset in a glittering random scatter. The table stood on a thick carpet patterned in swirls of green, purple, and rose. Around the edges of the room were puffy pillows covered in cloth of the same colors, some large and some small. A door in the left wall was ajar. Noona stood with her hands clasped in front of her, and beyond her stood someone taller than Maya, taller even than Noona, a person who looked like a stretched pyramid with its base toward the ground and its point toward the ceiling. His skin was the color of bricks, and he had three pale eyes just below the pointed end of the pyramid. He had a lot of arms lying against his body, long, softly furred brown limbs with their hand-ends pointing downward, as though he wore a coat of foxtails. Maya couldn’t see if this person had feet. One of his arms was twice as long as the others, and it was a darker color, too, and almost in the center of what might be his chest.
