Like a dancer out of the music box they twirl, beckoning revelation of their persistent prey with a joyous taunt; as it is written, [i]Ask and you shall receive...[/i]

She reappears before the smoking branches of the felled tree with hair regrown, balled atop the ground with arms wrapped around her legs and her face pressed against her bare thighs. The snapping heat cannot console her exposure to the nipping winds, nor the melancholy lacing the air as she weeps with shivers from each sharp sob. It is a song of sadness and not laughter, aching for compassion futilely.

What's curious, though, is the absence of the katana from their person; [i]that[/i] revelation hinders entirely upon what the bolt-blasting beauty does [i]next[/i]...