Hammam Tamina

The building is constructed around an atrium with a mosaic skylight in the middle depicting the constellations in the night sky above the Icon City on Mira. The soft light from above makes the shallow pools below shine like silver, illuminating a beautiful Deckhand statue in the middle. The statue is of a small child with short hair hunched over a stone bowl with a rag in its hand, as if just about to polish the surface of the water. Both the statue and the walls of the atrium are covered in lush, green vines.

Tamina receives all new visitors in person and remembers the face of everyone who has ever bathed here. Already on your second visit, she will greet you by name, offer you your favorite kawah, and ask how that aunt of yours back on Algol is doing. For about the price of a night out, she supplies you with fresh towels, soap, and a copper washbowl after which one of her employees guides you to a room referred to by the regulars as the Water Temple – a room with high ceilings on fluted columns where small waterfalls shoot from cracks in the walls high above. The next room in is the steam sauna, followed by the central bath chamber with its three larger pools and corridors leading to private rooms where a more intimate bath experience is offered, along with rose tea and massages, for a few extra birr. These back rooms are where trade agreements are finalized, marriages negotiated, and deals struck. When you leave, your clothes are freshly washed and ironed and Tamina wishes you the Icons’ grace with a conspiratorial wink.