Chen and Rose!

Blades clash. Hearts sing! The wild horses gallop away and the North Wind wraps and whips and howls! This is war, here amidst the mountains and the yellow flowers on the blade edge of coming nightfall! Be wary of the falling sun as you fight, maidens, for he will blind you as surely as he hopes to blind any archers who look his way.

Blinded by sunlight, blinded by passion, blinded by each other, neither of you see the Scales of Meaning slip away. She scrambles over the edge of a cliff and dives into a cool mountain stream below, letting the white-rushing waters carry her like a dart away. Perhaps if you were not blind you might have seen her glance behind her, torn by a desire to stay and watch the duel, but she cannot yet calculate the value of this scene and so she pays the coin of regret in leaving.

Yue!

She comes in white. This is an absolute. Colours only exist in relation to each other; a white dress at sunset will be tainted with red and orange and shadow. Unacceptable! To allow herself to be defined by her environment? To let the purity of her heart be contingent on circumstances? Never! She comes in white. If that means the world must be darkened around her, then so be it. That is why Princesses invented Sunshards.

She comes riding a black stag, antlers woven through with the strings of a crystal dreamcatcher. She rides him sidesaddle, one hand resting on the quiver of arrows, the other on the scabbard that holds her diamond thread bow. Is not a bow the ultimate weapon of a princess, by which she might shoot down a hateful sun? She comes with dark eyes and flowing black hair and a cape of mirror-ribbons that flows around her shoulders like the pelt of some divine animal. She comes with crystal slippers that have never known the touch of mud, with a single orbiting light like her own tame sun that floats behind her head to provide her with a halo. It hides her face and casts you deep in her wide and looming shadow.

And you are not the only thing in those shadows. Eyes glint. Terrible shapes flick and move in low, savage dances. Faint flows of that deep violet curse magic drifts around you in all direction, reaching out for Hyra of the Wolves, as the ocean reaches for a raindrop.

"Princess Yin," the shadows hiss like a chorus, whispered heralds of royalty. "Princess Yin. Princess Yin. Do your best, if you dare."

She holds up a hand imperiously and the whispers fade into the background. She stares down at you for a moment, and then her gaze flicks across to Hyra. "Fetch," she said. "Bring."

A rough hand, glowing with curse light - was this really that hand that touched your chin so gently a moment before? - grabs you by the shoulders and drags you forwards. Hyra's red eyes are locked on Princess Yin like she can't look at anything else. You're pulled up far too close to the Princess, far too roughly, far too like a captive. And Princess Yin is no easier to look at this close.

"Princess Yin," the shadows hiss again, all around you. "Princess Yin. Princess Yin. She'll catch your dreams, if you dare."

"And what," she asks, voice heavy with contempt, "makes you so important, I wonder?"

"I'm Princess Chen of the Northern Wind! Heir to the twin powers of Sourcefall and Ys, shard wielder to be, and an aspiring painter!" She grins and swords clash as she throws herself into the duel in the light of sunset. "And you...are very good at this!" she adds, wonder in her voice. She hadn't really believed that these two were anything more than particularly burly travelers (okay one was a snake, but that's hardly something to hold against a person!) but the sword work of this hunter impressed her. Chen could count on her fingers the number of people she couldn't disarm in three moves, yet here she was in a full blown duel and her advantage was obviously because her opponent had tried to play games and had hesitated to even draw her sword in earnest.

Setting sunlight merges with the light from her blade and it flashes brightly, offering her an opportunity to reset her stance and advance on the huntress. She doesn't, however, account for the fact that losing her own press is all the time needed to offer Rose a chance to collect herself. "I'd believe you're truly an ancient huntress" she says, not appreciating the danger to herself if she really did believe her own words. She starts a new stance, twirling one foot and bringing her sword around to strike feinting high and then dropping low. "But why in the world are you out here just wandering about? And with that strange snake person!"

Chen realizes as the flash fades that she has no idea where the snake went. Argh! Stupid, stupid princess. How dare she ever have fun! She can feel her cheeks burning just imagining the berating from her mother: "The wind instructed you, never lose sight of your goals young lady!" And here she had lost sight of her goals! "Your companion is gone, we've lost her. How about we fix that, I need to find her so I can finish my job out here! It's important. Maybe we can help each other instead of this extended duel?"

Chen parries, once twice, feints and tries to step back to create some space. "Tell me what you're looking for here, and what you want. I'm sure I can help." She tries to smile and quickly throws her sword out to parry again and retreat from the huntress's advance.

[Figure out a person: 1+2+1(heir to a mystic power)+3 (string spend)=7.
Three questions Rose:
1. What do you hope to get from traveling out here with Scales of Meaning?
2. How could Chen get you to let her chase after scales?
3. Bonus question from crossed swords: What do you hope for your future?
You get a question back]

Rose from the River does not advance as Chen withdraws. Rather, she falls into the stance she developed while traveling with Rabbit Running, blade in high guard at her shoulder, its hilt the same length as the gently curved blade. It is a stance for changing distances at speed, changing where she holds the blade to keep an opponent at arm’s reach or to suddenly come in within their guard. It has no name. Many things in this beautiful world do, to veil their novelty: names that match the aspect of the age, grand and dramatic and beautiful. This stance is just the one she learned from sparring with dear Rabbit. That’s all.

“I truly was a huntress, Princess,” she says; Chen has earned the honorific, for now. In this moment, footwork is all. She circles the Princess, waiting for the moment their blades meet again. Her heart groans in her chest like the oak in a high storm. "So I'm glad you're clever enough to believe it. But I was traveling with the cunning demoness, the Scales of Meaning herself, not because she bought my services, but because that was the path I found laid out for me. She happens to be looking for a girl. Yue the shepherdess, sought by monsters and princesses alike. My path leads to her, too. Though I do not know what I will do once I find her, I doubt that it will be compatible with what Scales means to do to her, or for that matter, what you might decide to do on a whim."

The Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade suddenly lashes out: one, two, three! Her blows are fluid, one leading into the next, a dizzying assault probing at Chen's defenses. With a huff, she disengages just as abruptly, returning to her guard. "You are a great clangorous thing of want, o most radiant princess, you and all the others. It is a skill your mothers hone in you until you are ready to cut the world into new shapes. But listen to me, as if I don't want, too!" Rose throws her head back and laughs, and then is already in motion to block a cheeky move from the Princess of the North Wind. She comes in close to punish that impudence, comes in hard, dares to push the Princess's sword to one side and come in close enough to hook a finger on that lovely red scarf. The tug brings Chen up on tiptoes, their swords shivering by their sides, like a naughty child being pulled close for reprimands.

"You started this fight, Princess. You wanted to save the Scales of Meaning herself from a monster; you wanted to dazzle her, bask in her adoration. And now that she is gone, you think you can sheathe your sword and leave me wanting?" Ah, there is Chen's sword, free at last; Rose from the River drops and moves like a willow-reed in the wind, passing underneath that shining crystal with a breath to spare, swaying upright outside of the guard. It takes all of her swiftness to bring her sword in place to redirect the backswing. "Am I beneath your notice? Will you not do me the satisfaction of winning honestly?" The air is broken ground between them, torn apart by strike and counter-strike, by the whirling of Rose's limbs. The blood in her runs quick and full to bursting of sunlight.

"Fight me to submission, Princess of the North Wind! Make me kneel, if you can! Do what even the Scales of Meaning herself could not, if you dare!" And in her laugh, a wild thing that spreads like vines, there is the truth: that she loves, despite herself, the dueling codes of the Princesses. This is why the Thorn Pilgrim is the princess of her school; this is why she dares to aspire to royalty. She defies the bearers of the shards both because it is her path and because it brings a frightening intensity to her smile. Rose from the River, in her heart, wants just as much as Chen does: she wants to be defeated, or to defeat, with equal passion; she wants to be at Chen's mercy, or to force Chen to swoon into hers, and she fights with her full skill because the space between the two outcomes is a zone of firelight and burning muscles she shaped for herself with her own arts.

"essan! essan! essan el-heloi!" And here's a truth, too, shiny and golden, unfolding in that battle-cry: that two futures war within Rose from the River. She tells herself that she wants peace and self-control, as any monk following the Way should; she tells herself that she wants to be a tool in the hand of her fate, the empty space in a ringing bell. But she so desperately hopes, too, that the Way will let her be a part of Chen's world: a contrarian part, the adversary that must be succumbed to or overcome, the shadow cast by those glorious shards, but a part nonetheless.

For who could see the world-within-a-world of Chen and her peers, truly see it, and not fall in love?

[Three questions answered. One tenet stepped over, with consequences to come. An enticement, if Chen is the kind of girl to be enticed by tugged scarves, challenges to take or surrender control, and unveiled passion, with a roll of 10. A question offered in return: Chen, what are your feelings towards princesses, those aspirants who claim title without right, those pretenders to royal glory?]

The kindest thing you can say about Yue is that she doesn't drop her sword.

She's not a warrior, poised and ready to strike. She's not a magician full of clever tricks, or a cultivator filled with strong Qi. She's not a Princess or a princess or even a handmaiden who might command the respect of one those others. So what is it, then? What's the source of her worth? She doesn't manage to scream Hyra's name, not to protect her or to let out her feelings of betrayal at the gentle, perfect hands that suddenly are holding her the way the river demons would have if they'd caught her.

She doesn't twist her way to freedom, or even really squirm ineffectually. Instead she trembles and she shakes and she quivers, which is a peasant's sort of reaction. Fitting for a peasant girl. Unbecoming of a treasure. She tries to twist her head to look at Hyra. Just to look, you know? Just to see. Just to... to find out if those hungry red eyes still look as beautiful when they're being worn by a devil. 'Cause if they do then that would mean that some part of it was real, see? Some tiny piece of her magic spell was more than just a net being woven around. But those same sharp clawed fingers that thrilled her at their touch just minutes ago twist her back around and force her gaze back to Princess Yin. Because another thing she's not is strong.

The power of love doesn't surge through Yue's soft blue eyes. It doesn't fill her with fantastic new powers or imbue her with the will to fight, or really do more than gasp and gape at the otherworldly sight in front of her. Of course it doesn't! And if it did, would somebody like Princess Yin even notice? No matter how you're kidnapping her, Yue is just... Yue.

But she's still holding that sword. Her silly wooden sword that she doesn't even know how to swing, that doesn't even have an edge, and would probably horrify her if it did. She squeezes it anyway, even as she's dangled and lifted and crushed. She fingers grip the hilt through pain and through terror, when all the other muscles in her body seem to have forgotten how to work. Because Hyra told her to, and for some reason that feels more important than it has all night.

Does that make her special? She doesn't know. She can't even say as much, for all that she wants to. What makes her so special? That's a good question! She'd like to know too! It's not like she's been doing anything different lately but now all of a sudden there are wanted posters and everybody under the suns is chasing her and when is anybody going to notice there's been a mistake? You've got the wrong girl! But one look up at the shadowed face of Princess Yin is enough to lock all of those words inside her stomach where all of the worst sorts of secrets and lies go. Princess Yin! Princess Yin! Disappoint her if you dare!

Yue doesn't dare a lot of things, and this is not about to become one of them. She's not special, not even enough to survive explaining how not special she is. Oh, what a horrible party to get invited to! Darn whoever made those stupid posters! Hope you get, um. Not, like, hurt, but... y'know, if you stubbed your toe tomorrow morning you'd deserve it! Yue's heart is doing flips inside her modest little chest and it hurts, and the hands that squeeze her waist and wrist hurt too, and as her eyes stare at a sunshard for the very first time in their life they start hurting, too.

There's nowhere safe to look. The shadows are full of eyes and shapes, except where they're not which is somehow even worse. The stag is huge and terrifying for all the ways it doesn't move like a stag at all, and impossibly beautiful in all the ways that it does. She'd never known an animal to wear crystals like this so boldly, unless it was the sort like the diamond throated pheasant that grew them as part of its plumage. That by itself is enough to impress. The control that Yin... erm, Princess Yin must have is, is...

That. That woman right there? That's what it means to be special. Yue's never seen a Princess before. And it's incredible how far her imagination fell short of what it was actually like. The flowing of her dress! Not white like Yue's white, the white that took on stains and washed itself with light and really let's face it never quite worked its way all the way up to white on its best days, but white so bright she might as well be the moon. And, and maybe she is! If, if she's what Hyra's chasing then... it's no wonder that she... that... that!

"H-Hyra... please!"

Yue's eyes are wet and leaking. This isn't right. It isn't right! The hands that hold her squeeze and twist her body in ways it doesn't want to go. She needs all of her breath for crying, now. This isn't right. Do all Princesses cast such terrible shadows? Are all Princesses so cruel? How is anybody so amazingly beautiful and so terrible at the same time? A-and if... if that's what it takes to be special, maybe it's best that she's only Yue after all. The thought stings like an arrow through her heart, fired from that great diamond stringed bow.

Yue holds her sword, through shaking, sobbing, doubt. She holds her sword like she was told. Isn't that enough?

Yue!

"Hm? A sword?" Princess Yin leans forwards in the saddle, and for a moment that blinding light behind her head falls upon Yue like a spotlight. "You hold a sword in my presence, little dove?"

"Princess Yin!" hisses the darkling world, "Princess Yin! Win if you dare!"

Through the fear and the everything, you notice that somehow, somehow, Yin is moving cautiously. Somehow she's taking you, little Yue, and your wooden sword blade seriously. She's not laughing. She's not sneering. She's watching your stance and your motions even as you tremble with radiant black eyes, and oh, isn't that somehow worse than if she laughed? If she laughed at least she wouldn't expect anything from you, if she laughed the worst would be past and you could collapse freely. If she laughed you might have a chance to do something. But she's taking you seriously, acting as though you had hidden training and secret skill and might yet prove her undoing, and if Princess Yin is taking you so very deadly seriously then you're not even small enough to avoid her attention.

One hand hovers near the hilt of her own blade, the other raises to snap her fingers. "Take that from her."

There's a ripple in the air. And stillness. Hyra's hand has come down to wrap around your sword-hand and no further. She grips it but she is as much holding your grip shut as she is on the verge of snatching it from your fingers.

"Oh?" said Princess Yin, straightening in her saddle. "What is this?"

Hyra radiated violet energy, the power of the curse coming off her in waves. The grass is blackening beneath her feet, and here and there it rots away the leathers of her armour to reveal wolf fur growing underneath. Her hands are rippling with wicked strength and power even as they wrap around yours but they do not try to crush you. A low growl begins to build.

Princess Yin slips from the back of the stag and where her feet touch the ground the grass erupts back to life along with a cascading overgrowth of brilliant white flowers. She walks step by step towards you and Hyra even as the girl trembles and shakes against your back. "Do you see this, Yue?" said Princess Yin, shaking her head. "My trusting heart is betrayed yet again. After all the effort I went through to train her, after all the hard work I put in, after letting her know what a big responsibility being let off the leash was. After everything, this is the thanks I get."

Hyra's growling in your ear is wet and animal. Her arms are covered entirely in white fur. Her fingers are contorting into claws and the shape of her is changing against your back.

"I suppose she'll just have to spend a little while longer as a dog, because she obviously doesn't have the discipline needed to be a human," said Princess Yin, smiling with genuine enjoyment. Her free hand coils with radiant magic, the raw power of a Sunshard. "And as for you? Perhaps if you spend some time as a mouse you'll learn something when it comes to respecting a Princess."

Chen stands on her tiptoes, her scarf pulled taut against her neck and for a moment her eyes widen and she feels a blush rise to her cheeks. She glances away as if in shame before bringing her sword around with a slash that cuts forces the huntress's hand away and pulls her loose. They break and split, the fresh dirt of the lakeside hills crumbling as they slide apart and take firm stances again. But the words echo: you wanted to save the Scales of Meaning herself from a monster. She hadn't, she just wanted the Scales to warm to her, to agree to let her follow, to defuse the argument the two were having and calm her emotions. She didn't really think anyone needed saving and she hadn't thought this hunter was a monster then.

Did she now?

Chen blinks, clears her head. Doesn't take initiative on the next thrust. She could have, and she thinks the huntress a skilled enough swordswomen to know that Chen didn't make a move matching the speed she had shown so far. Was it a feint, a trick? Chen lets out a breath she was holding. She felt a slower but more lasting flush rising to her cheeks as she remembered how it had felt be held by someone with such strong arms. How good it would feel to be all wrapped up in that scarf, her wrists and ankles bound, carried close to that strong body...

Before that vision can overwhelm her, Chen charges, a rushing forward sprint, earth spraying up behind her as she channels her power into a flying charge, too fast for her feet to touch the ground. Surely a feint, a game of chicken, she'll pull back at the last second and go for a fading strike of some sort rather than rush a stronger opponent.

"I never thought you a monster" she cries, not pulling back but striking her blade firmly into the blade of the huntress. It's so surprising that for a moment, it throws her stance and crystal light sparks and flies forth in a flash to rival the dawn. And then the air is broken ground between them, both blades flying faster than the eye can follow, blurry after images tracing them like ethereal butterflies. Rose is pressed close, shouting "essan el-heloi" and if her hearing is good, she can hear Chen's heart thunder in her chest racing to keep up, racing to surrender, racing to be held!

"Never! I would never damn you!" she shouts and cuts in close. "I'm one of the good princesses!" she changes the angle of her front foot and curls her elbow, bringing the sword in close to her body. "I'm trying to find Yue too, along with everyone else under the sun because Princess Qiu wants her." The sarcasm is evident, even as she hits the huntress not with the blade but the hilt of her crystal sword, pushing sharply under the huntress's guard and into her stomach. "I can protect her from the small army Qiu's called down, bring her safely to become a handmaiden, and cut into Qiu's power at the same time" The blade flashes outward from its backwards thrust, spinning in Chen's grip of its own accord, a masterful showing of her chi to control it so precisely at this speed without hurting herself. Her scarf's two ends both fly upwards from the wind generated, making them tempting targets. "So help me out!" the blade flares and lands a single solid strike on the huntress, Chen hurling herself bodily forward and nearly into Rose's arms to support it past the opposing blade's guard.

[Chen grants Rose's request to fight her to submission by fighting with grace. 1+4+2=7. She is giving Rose the fight she wants flirting or provoking for a string and seizing a superior position (that being right in Rose's arms after a show of strength). Rose gets to pick one option in turn.]

When Chen feels those strong arms wrap around her and looks up at the huntress, we must forgive her if her heart skips a beat. Rose from the River is, for a moment, naked intensity; her pupils bared slits, her nostrils flaring as her chest rises and falls against the back of Chen’s head, her fingers locked tight around the wrist of Chen’s sword hand. The Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade is half-sunken into the turf. For a moment, Chen may even worry that she is at risk of being eaten in wonderful and terrible ways. But then Rose from the River laughs, a low chuckle, rich and dark as river-mud, and allows her energy to bleed away and recirculate, changing into new forms.

Two new arms unfold from her body (how unfair that must seem!) and one new hand, which feels like smooth yet inhuman bark on Chen’s skin, cups the Princess’s chin. The other toys down Chen’s side, brushing with careful softness down those flimsy silks. And there is nowhere to hide from Rose’s eyes, which are watching carefully: do you like this, little Twinshard heiress? How fast does your heart beat in your chest? That fourth hand lifts from Chen’s side and then presses down on her chest, searching for that heartbeat.

“I am a follower of the Way,” she says, muzzling and dragging back the part of her that wants to mark her catch. Dear Thorn Pilgrim! How her own heart beats, holding the Princess so! “But I am obligated to help you, since you have asked for my assistance.” Her thumb brushes against Chen’s lip, and then gently opens her mouth, letting those helpless pants wash over her barkskin, still smoothing, still changing. “I will aid you in finding your path. But the first step is learning how to let go of your ambition and self-assurance, and I think...”

She leans in closer, her braids spilling over her shoulder, making a curtain for the two. A moment of privacy. Who would dare part that foliage? This close, the flowers in her hair smell like plum blossoms at the very end of winter. It’s sweet, almost intoxicating. “I think you desire my lessons, Princess Chen.” Her thumb presses down on that lip, ever so gently. “I think that you began this fight so that you would be here, even if you did not know it. And while I am not a member of the Black Snakes, I have learned pedagogy from their order.”

She shakes Chen’s wrist with a flick of her hand and the crystal blade falls from her grasp. It’s so close! She could reach out and grab it! But Rose giggles to herself, and lifts Chen off the ground as if Chen weighed no more than a pillow, grip firm but not painful. “Do wait just a moment, little Twinshard. I need my bag.” But instead of moving, she settles into place, one hand cupping Chen’s cheek, fingers resting on her lips, the other running through Chen’s hair, her original two distributing Chen’s weight evenly. Something slithers in the grass, off towards the bag. The smell of her is all around, and each can feel the beat of the other’s heart.

“There are eight million paths for you to take from the moment you wake up, Chen.” The dropping of the honorific is scandalous and overfamiliar, is it not? “Some, naturally, are better than others. For you to take a knife and stab your mother would be a very ill path, and perhaps for you to take up a brush and paint would be a much better one. But what to paint? How to go about the process? What to learn? Infinite variables. Infinite paths.”

The pack slowly begins dragging itself across the ground towards the two. Is that right? There’s hardly any way that Chen can turn her head to look.

“But there is a path that maximizes goodness and elides suffering. Our duty as moral beings is to search for it. To follow its footprints, to feel it tug at our heartstrings, to be willing to shed our vices and our attachments in order to walk where we are needed. We are called to surrender, Chen.”

The pack flops open next to Rose, and one of her braids brushes against a side pocket. Dark, soft ropes spill out, and a roll of demon-sealing tape, and... something folded carefully. Rose’s cheek touches Chen’s own.

“Allow me to offer three paths for us to walk, your radiance. On one, I will put you down and apologize for my audacity in daring to oppose you. Then we may go chase after Yue, and perhaps come to blows again when we have caught her. On another, you will surrender to me, the victor of our little game, and I will offer you further instruction in my faith and my protection from danger as we travel together.”

Her voice drops. One finger brushes between Chen’s teeth for just a moment. The fingers running through Chen’s hair tighten and tug her slowly but inexorably back. “Or, if you want to play as we travel together, all you need to do is tell me that you are a Princess and I will never get away with subjecting you to this indignity. That, simply. Do you understand?” Is that a note of excitement in her own voice? She does, after all, yearn to be the Adversary. How her heart beats like a drum on Chen’s back! Yes, it must be her hope that Chen chooses the third, yet... it is not entirely a selfish hope, is it?

“So how may I serve you, o mighty and revered Princess Chen of the Northern Wind, heir to the twin powers of Sourcefall and Ys?” And effortlessly she spins the power, positions herself as if she was a humble handmaiden, eager to help, despite the way she holds Chen in her embrace, her limbs like the branches of an oak, heavy and still and sheltering Chen from any storm.

[Rose from the River uses her one String immediately while offering Chen another. Chen may mark XP if she plays the damsel with Rose from the River. Rose’s choice from Chen’s Fight is, of course, to find an even stronger position holding Chen, from which she may offer Chen varied paths. I feel it would be spamming moves to Entice here, even if Rose is hammering Chen’s buttons.]

Yue's words of protest are squished out of her by the waves of Y--eeep! P-Princess Yin's curse-magic cracking down across her collarbone. It turns all her breath into squeaks and whimpers and forces her down, and down, and down, and down, until she sinks to her knees and curls in on top of herself and pulls the monstrous weight of Hyra across her back.

And it's not like she's a stranger to pain! She's been pricked by thorns and sewing needles, burned her hands in the fire while baking bread, bitten, clawed, scratched, and even trampled by frightened animals that needed her help but didn't know how to accept it. She even knows the hollow pit that opens up in your insides when the big sister you adored and thought would be around forever disappears over the horizon one day with barely a goodbye. But not even that measures up to the feeling of your body betraying you, to having your muscles twist and spasm on their own and your bones shift in big wet crunches that you feel more than hear as your body betrays you and turns you into something that you're not.

Yue doesn't scream. To scream, you need to breathe. You need to want to be heard, and all Yue wants is to curl into a ball and cry. Her hair falls across her face in a big, heavy clump as the powerful waves of magic pick their way across her body and pluck things off of her that they don't like. Her dress takes the brunt of it, rotting and fraying just like her washcloth did that scant hour or so ago until it's barely more than threads hanging off of her body. Hyra's fur covered body quickly becomes the only thing protecting her modesty, and the way that she scrabbles and shifts on top of Yue, she isn't much good for that either. Yue shivers in the night's chill and the wetness of wolf spittle spreading across the pale skin on her back. How much longer would it stay that way?

Shrink, the curse tells her! You are low, go lower! You long to be beneath notice! You yearn to be taught your lessons! You realize now how little you deserve to be special, so give up, give in, and shrink!

A-and she would, see? It's not like she doesn't want to! She's never been so miserable in her whole life, and those piercing black eyes won't stop staring at her, and you're telling her she could make it all go away just by giving up and losing? Yes please and thank you very much, just tell her where to sign! Except... except there's a weight on her back. Except Hyra's screams have turned into howls, and even horrible canine whines. Except the hands that held her so gently, and then so harshly are slipping away from her and dragging rough footpads across her skin in their place. Except the last thing those perfect hands ever got to do was squeeze her grip tighter and command her to hold on to her sword.

"Stop it!" she screams, and her voice is shrill and trembling, but it's undeniably her voice and it's so loud they might have heard it all the way back in her village, "Stop it, stop it! Can't you see you're hurting her, what is wrong with you?!"

Yue's eyes force themselves open. Her muscles burn as she pushes up against the weights pressing down on her until she's in a sitting position. And even with Princess Yin's fingers swirling their spell so elegantly and all the power of the magic compelling her to change, she stays who she is. Her eyes aren't fierce, except maybe in the way that a kitten's might be, but they're bright and shining and looking up, up, up at the Princess on her magnificent stag without flinching, even as they run over with tears. Her legs are shaking so much that even trying with all her might she still can't get any further than sitting there on her butt with her knees turned in and both legs splayed at awkward angles. And in spite of everything she finds the time to blush with her entire body, and it's much too obvious that she's doing that and, and, and, wh-when she lifts her sword it's really more to cover herself in at least some small way than getting ready to actually fight.

But so what? She's Yue! Even when the wielder of a sunshard would rather she not be, she is simply Yue. She twists her body so she can shift Hyra's bulk more toward her lap, and she doesn't give one shred of thought or care to how dangerous a thing that might be to do. Her heart hammers inside her chest, and for once that feels more like an act of passion than fear.

"Y-you know what you are? You're just a... a big jerk! You bully! What gives you the right, huh? She fought to keep me safe from a whole army of demons, and you just... y-you swoop in here like, I... how dare you?! You might be a Princess, but... you, I, you! J-j-just because you're pretty doesn't mean you get to be so mean! S-so what if you're rich and powerful? Hyra's worth ten of you!"

Yue's voice is shaking and cracking too much to keep the string of words alive. But she sets her jaw as hard as she dares, barely even quivering her lips, and she tenses for whatever comes next.

[Yue is Defying Disaster with Spirit at an 11. I want to say she's not at a point where she can help Hyra with a roll like this, but she's here to prove she belongs in this game]

For a moment Princess Yin does not look pretty at all. Beauty is as much a thing of the heart as the face, and no amount of radiance could turn that flash of anger into something admirable.

It lingers on her, half suppressed, buried underneath a face that quickly re-adopts its calm and radiant expression. Not because she has control of the feeling, oh no, quite the opposite - she is merely thinking through the very best way to inflict punishment.

"You," said Princess Yin, at last drawing her long and glorious fencing rapier, "are going to wish you didn't choose the hard way."

"Princess Yin! Princess Yin! Silent screams above the din!"

As the world hesitates on that screeching orchestral chord, the moment before your very first fight - a crash echoes through the clearing. Two trees fall to either side causing the darkness to recoil - although what replaces it is not much better.

A demon enters the clearing - tall and mighty and muzzled, a two-handed katana held casually over one shoulder, smouldering with hellfire. She is a demon swordswoman whose kimono sleeves were torn off to make more room for her muscles, and what remains of the garment seems one solid flex away from bursting entire. Her skin is tattooed with ten thousand fencing diagrams, the sword-bearing stick-figures seeming to move and clash as the tattoos rotate in spiralling patterns up her arms. Beat, beat, beat. Behold, the Secrets of the Stance.

Behind her comes a figure from legend, a creature depicted on ancient statues and with the classical beauty of those forgotten times. Glowing golden horns and eyes the same, hypnotic enough to lull a mouse to walk willingly into her jaws. Her long serpentine tail flicks with that same beat, scales of lapis lazuli and the occasional gold gorgeous enough to draw attention away from the fact that she's soaking wet. Well, demons usually are, aren't they? These creatures are here from the river, hunting for one soul in particular, and the grin on the face of the Scales of Meaning lets you know that it is you.

Princess Yin steps back and her shadows cluster close around her, blade held ready for a fight. As the faces of evil look to engage you feel gentle teeth brush against your ankle. Hyra, trapped in the form of a wolf, is telling you that it is time to run.

Chen’s flush feels like it starts at the base of her feet and the warmth rises unstoppable all the way through up until it leaps out the tips of her ears. She imagines her whole face must be on fire and tries to bury her head in one of this tall, strong huntress’s many arms.

It is worth understanding that this is not the first time that Chen has been kidnapped. It’s a regular happening among princesses. Being bested in a close match and taken prisoner for an exchange is considered the honorable outcome, far more so than a cowardly retreat. That it offers the victor an opportunity for some well-earned teasing and boasts isn’t so much a perk as the whole point. Chen has, in her last few years, been both kidnapper and kidnapped, though she tends to be on the gentle end of kidnappers among the princesses. Her mothers taught her to bear this sort of thing with dignity and poise. It’s only shameful if a princess allows herself to be bested by a clearly inferior opponent (being taken by a lowly palace guard might make you a laughingstock for months).

However, princesses never ask in these situations. Being captured is just part of the custom. The huntress was a superior opponent and Chen had committed to a decisive strike understanding that she couldn’t win the match but could give a good accounting of herself and earn better treatment as a result. B-but the huntress was asking Chen to submit to this. To...to...not only submit but say that she wanted to be teased. She ought to be outraged! She ought to just walk off, or at least to take the middle option and bide her time while learning The Way until she could make a quick escape once they found Yue. Under no circumstances should she intentionally choose humiliation. If this got out, the other princesses would gossip about it forever, she’d probably get some kind of humiliating nickname, and both her mothers would be furious! S-so why was she blushing head to toe and speaking something muffled into the huntress’s body?

She tries to collect herself, fails, realizes that she can hardly give an answer shouting into a strong, sculpted arm, and lifts her head, which she promptly turns sideways and tries to bury into her own shoulder (not having any free arms to cover her face) so she doesn’t have to make any eye contact.

“I’m a P-princess and...and you’ll...you’ll never get away with...*deep breath* with subjecting me to this in-indignity.” She says with great difficulty.

Oh suns, she was in for it now. Except...her heart wasn’t sinking, it felt more like it was soaring.

[Chen is accepting the XP and declaring herself Smitten with Rose from the River (whose name she still doesn’t know). As to why they can’t be together, this just can’t last. Chen has a destiny and it starts with getting Yue and going back to getting her edge over Qiu. She wants this, but she knows, just knows, that it’s going to be temporary and then she and Rose will have to go their separate ways. Rose likely implicitly knows this if she’s familiar with Chen’s world, and it matches with The Way as well.]

“Oh, Chen,” Rose from the River purrs. One hand holds the princess’s jaw cupped in her palm, and she guides (gentle but insistent) that face to look up at hers. “Of course I will get away with it. Princess Qiu hunts me, Princess Yin would best me, but neither one of them has gotten the better of me yet. Do you know why?”

Rose guides Chen down onto her knees on the grass. One arm keeps her pulled in close to her firmness, but twisted just enough to the side that she can guide Chen’s wrists together. Around and through, around and through, making a crossed X harness of soft silk rope, as gentle on her skin as the last breath of twilight. “Because I am not your peer, little girl. I was older than the broken suns. I was born to outwit and harry those more cunning and desperate than you. I am Rose from the River, and you lost this fight the moment you drew your blade.”

One hand strokes hair out of Chen’s face, slow, sure. The wrists secure, Rose smears a strip of demon-binding tape over the rope in a band, securing it from the mischief of princesses. Chen is now helpless to undo the binding by herself. She drapes more rope over Chen’s arms, pulling them close, securing a knot above her elbows. “But you princesses... you always think that you are the most perfect and clever thing in existence, as long as Qiu is not in the room. You ridiculous little thing! Prancing about in your colorful silks, thinking yourself invincible!”

Rose uncoils the scarf from around Chen’s neck, ignoring any protests to the contrary, and drapes it around her own shoulders. Then she lays Chen down onto the grass, which tickles at her through the silk—

Ah. That would be the fingers of Rose from the River, surprisingly cold, running right up Chen’s spine, underneath her bright top. Her chuckle is wicked. Having thus distracted the Princess, she wraps her endearingly solid legs in coil upon coil, snug at ankle and knee. No escape save for hopping along. The Thorn Pilgrim idly considers making dear Chen do just that. It would be quite entertaining, after all.

“There will be no escape for you, Princess,” she hisses. It is like walking out onto a needle-thin peak and balancing on one foot, to say that. But she puts her weight upon the needle to overcome it. Chen is safe. Chen will be imprisoned, and then (after being told there is no escape, after being silenced, after being made helpless to save herself) she will be released. It is safe. This is safe. This is safe because Rose from the River has chosen to make it safe.

This is how the mountain did not end, but it is how the mountain should have ended. That is the promise of the world she now loves.

“You’re my trophy, little girl,” Rose says, securing knots with clever fingers, making sure the weight is distributed properly, that there is no painful pinch or dig. “I will challenge the likes of Jezara and Jessic and bring in tow a little pack-slave, a silenced mouse of a girl, wearing much less than this. You will be decoration for their Guards and Priests to gawk at while I topple thrones in the name of the transcendent Way. But, dressed like this, you must have always known that was your fate, no? Deep in your heart, you knew that one day your beauty would shine in my service.”

She pulls Chen back up to her knees and secures a small tie from wrists to ankles, slack enough to not grow uncomfortable, then wraps it, too, in that seal-tape. This done, she turns Chen around to face her, and holds up the scarf with an evil smirk.

“This is almost as lovely as you are,” she breathes. “How fitting that you should bring it to me.” One hand palms the folded fabric from her pack, even while she rubs the scarf against Chen’s face. “Do you have any last words, Chen, former heiress of Ys and Sourcefall~?”

But even as she gloats, our dear Thorn Pilgrim cannot hide the gentleness of her eyes. How strange, that the eyes of a serpent could so easily show affection and vulnerability— there, betrayed in her lowered lids, the shape of her brow, the way her eyes linger on Chen as if looking at a beloved child. That she is pampering, indulging the girl, giving her the very treatment she has dreamed of but cannot voice. That alone may betray her villainy to Chen, daughter of two crowns, unveiling it and leaving its compassion bare.

[Since Chen has the move “Help Me~~” she may take this information about Rose’s heart and identity, as well as 1 more XP.]

A fight like this one between the two peaks the world is built around must be incredibly intense. It'd have to be, right? What with all of the earth shaking and the dimming of the starry sky going on, not to mention the super muscle demons. Gosh. That's what makes it the stuff of legends and not, say, a tea party. Although really if somebody like the Scales of Meaning showed up at your tea party that'd be pretty...

Well. Anyway. The point is, a clash of titans is a very distracting sort of affair. Or at least, it has to be if somebody like Yue can run away from it so easily. Or at all. It takes her several moments to even pull herself together enough to try standing, and when she finally manages it she's not exactly moving like a champion athlete. But they don't notice when she rises, just like they don't notice when she plops back down onto her scrawny little butt. They might notice Kat's frightened yipping, but since that's been more or less constant since Princess Yin arrived on the scene nobody pays much attention to it even when it switches from the frightened yipping of 'scary people are here and I don't want to be eaten or squished' to the even frighteneder yipping of 'I am being betrayed by my best friend and stuffed into a bag, oh woe, woe is I, the lovely Katherine Isabella Fluffybiscuits!'

If ever there were a time for Yue to drop her sword, this would be it. For as hard as she scrambles about, one hand just isn't enough to gather up her camp site and hold onto her bag and reassure a frightened fox and reassure a possibly even more frightened wolf-who's-meant-to-be-a-beautiful-maiden(?) and fish a spare change of clothes out of the same bag she's trying to hold and stuff everything dear in her life back into. She flinches after she squeaks, but the monsters are too busy to care that her spare dress is in the dirt now or that a handful of her precious glass beads have rolled over on top of it, and in any case Hyra has resorted to biting and dragging the bag with her because a certain silly girl just isn't figuring out that there's more important parts of running away than keeping all your stuff with you.

But even as she yelps with protest and almost falls flat on her face several times within the first twenty or so paces, she clutches that useless, heavy wooden sword like her life depends on it. And that's really the final word on everything, isn't it? If she can do that now, even now, when she's darting off into the night clutching a fox-laden bag to her chest because it's the only way to preserve what's left of her modesty while little bits of her her now wispy and useless dress float away forever behind her, then she's good enough to keep hold of it through anything, at least until she gets permission to put it down again. She owes Hyra so much more than this.

It's important to run far and run fast, but Yue can't help but slow enough to turn and watch the fight as she goes. And part of it is born of fear, that she might be followed, but that would only merit a fleeting glance. More of it is that, as scary as it is, this new contest is even more thrilling, even more worth a song than watching Hyra had been. Forget for a moment that it's happening to decide who gets to kidnap her and the question of why any of this is even happening, how often does anybody at all get to see an out and out Princess fighting? And for all that Princess Yin is wicked and cruel, maybe even unforgivably so, it's also true that she's beautiful. That when she moves, her body is poetry. That she wields magic so easily and elegantly that Yue has to wonder if she spent years just holding glyphs in her hands until she could weave them through the air as natural as breathing. And the romantic part of her heart knows it's a shame to run and leave all that behind her.

But finally, she hits the spot where the flash of a diamond bow and slashes from a katana so powerful that where it passes it cuts scars into the earth and the great gleaming horns of the Scales of Meaning, all of it gets swallowed by the horizon and the treeline. Soon enough, even the sounds of the battle and the chanting of the shadows fades into the quiet of softly running water and the last chirps of evening birdsong and the first tentative howls of nighttime predators, and Yue has nothing to distract her from how much her legs and lungs are burning, of how every slap of her feet on the hard packed earth hurts her all the way to her hips, of the screaming rush of blood inside her body that tells her exactly how terrified she is. Or, for that matter, how chilly the night air is on her much-too-bare skin. When she shivers, she can't tell if it's from nerves or the cold. Oh gosh. Oh no. She can't run into town like this! And they know where she lives! And her good dress is... oh no! How is she ever, when is she ever... oh gosh gosh gosh gosh!

It's all she can do amidst her jumbled thoughts and feelings to lift her feet high enough to avoid the rocks and roots so she can keep pace with the wolf running in front of her. Even transformed like this, Hyra is still the most beautiful thing in the world. For a wolf, she's a little on the small side, it's almost hard to believe her real body is as tall as it is. But her fur is soft and lustrous and the same brilliant silver as her hair. The way she runs is every bit as smooth and graceful as she was back inside Yue's house, and her body is so lithe and perfect that if a hunter saw her pass they'd just as soon drop their bow to the ground as shoot at something so lovely.

The wolf is so deeply Hyra that Yue almost expects her to turn and flash those piercing red eyes and twist her muzzle up into a smirk. But she knows better than anyone that she's deluding herself, because Yue knows the language of beasts. You can't really have conversations with animals, leastways not satisfying ones. Not with most of them, anyway. But they can tell you plenty if you've got ears and eyes to listen, and Hyra is crying with every step. She bounds bravely forward, only stopping long enough to let Yue catch up again, but she can't hide the truth. However born for the shape of a wolf she might be, have been, it isn't the shape of her heart. Who, or what she longs to be. And she knows just the same as Yue that they're running, running, running away from the only person either of them knows who can change her back. Oh, stupid, stupid Yue! Why didn't you stay? Surely there was... was something you could have done! She can't think of what that could possibly be, but even so! She! She..!

She gasps.

Hyra isn't running anymore. Yue comes to an awkward halt just before she would have gone tumbling next to the cliff in front of her. She stands there a moment, and gently lets her still-whimpering bag drop to its natural resting place by her hip (who does she have to be modest for right now, anyway?). And she gasps, because she's never seen anything so beautiful in all her life.

The world stretches out in front of her forever, lit by stars and moonlight and lanterns floating through the rivers and a hundred tiny glows from animals making their rounds. It's huge. It's so impossibly huge it swallows the Terraced Lake with ease, and that the biggest thing she ever really knew existed. The rocks plunge beneath her and the mountains rise up and dip down and back up again in an endless seeming dance and every inch of them seems painted with the canopy of a hundred-hundred-hundred different trees in their soft night colors.

And all of it is so much, and so pure that there's no choice that there's no choice but for Yue to start crying. She sobs loudly, hiccoughing and sniffling with every ounce of her heart for the sake of a whole lifetime's worth of feelings she hasn't quite known to feel, and for the million-million steps unfolding in front of her. For every wonder she's seen today. For every new one she's allowed in this moment to imagine. For Hyra of the wolves, panting determinedly beside her. And for, somehow even now, for the old life she no longer knows the way to get back to.

She cries, and she cries, and she brushes her hair from her eyes as the wind tugs fiercely at it, and she cries some more. Her heart is swelling so full she thinks it'll have to burst soon, and the feeling inside of her is so pure she knows without asking anybody that it could only be love. She tries to speak but only winds up sobbing louder, and somehow that spins her all the way around to sniffly giggling.

And she dares. She dares brightly and boldly enough to reach out her hand and gently run her fingers through Hyra's perfect silver fur. To put her hand on the wolf's head and leave it there, the closest thing that she can do to taking her hand and just... holding it. Because in this moment, everything must be possible. Her grip tightens on her sword, as heavy as it is. Yes, everything must be possible. Possible enough that even a useless village girl like her should be allowed to promise she'll find a way to fix this.

Yue!

If one has to be lost, one could choose worse places than the Sunwood.

Tall trees form a leaky rooftop; here and there in the gaps between mighty branches fall little rays and puddles of sunlight. The grass is thick and soft and mossy beneath your feet, cool and slippery, damp with dew and bright with tiny star-flowers. From branches hang heavy bundles of apples amidst the wysteria, and as much of the fruit is on the ground as it is on the branches. As you watch a large and glittering silver cockatoo with a bright red crest plucks a branch, takes a single bite of a apple, and then tosses the rest of it on the floor in an act of ludicrous wastefulness. He raises his crest in defiance when you look at him and screeches a song too hideous for a mother to love.

Upon the ground scuttle lizards. They nap in piles of a dozen or more in the puddles of sunlight leaking through the canopy, only scuttling away when footsteps come too close to them, or when they need to venture into the shade to take nibbling bites of the fallen apples. Every so often fragments of crafted marble can be found in the forest - fallen pillars, the moss-grown heads of statues, and where one of these touches sunlight the mightiest lizard kings can be found, towering a grand thirty centimeters above their tiny cousins, crowned with sulfur crests, basking in the radiant luxury of sun-warmed stone.

This is a long way from home, Yue. It's a long way from rescue. But you're not in danger here. You're amidst the woods with the music and motion of nature at harvest time all about you. You have blackberries and apples and even the odd pomegranate to pick from. But as for water...

You can hear the sound of running water in the distance, but that is never a thing to approach incautiously.

This is a thorough binding with old world spells. A part of Chen's heart flutters in fear, for she's not certain that she could escape this on her own. So it is good that when she glances, ever so shyly, up to the eyes of the huntress who called herself Rose, she sees gentleness and compassion. A part of her even wonders, in words unvoiced, whether this oh so strong huntress might wish the roles reversed and a strong Chen binding her to be hauled in for judgment at Sourcefall or Ys.

Such thoughts are wiped from Chen's mind as Rose unwinds her scarf, and though she makes to protest, she gets out no more than a meep as her cry is silenced by the sight of the huntress before her wearing the thick woolen scarf and dangling it in her face with such a confident pose and that catlike gloating smile. Chen blushes and turns red again, trying to turn her face down, but Rose will not have it and presses the scarf into Chen more firmly, holding up her eyes so she must look upon her captor. The touch, moderated by the soft and fluffy fabric, feels like heaven and Chen finds herself unable to help leaning into it and pressing her head onto Rose’s arm.

It feels so tempting, this flushing little servant girl wearing nothing but loose silks, does it not huntress? So heedless of any fear, so happy from your touch that she nuzzles into you with pleasure. Do you not wish to lean in further? To take more? To steal a kiss from those blushing lips?

But then the moment passes, and Chen tries to protest. "T-that's mine! My mommy knitted it for me so I'd stay warm! Give it back!"

Are these not sweet pleas to play with dear huntress? Ah, but don't you need to get going? After all, you and your little captive have a mission and your demon snake is gone now. It must be so hard not to simply play in this lovely, secluded clearing amidst the stars until sunrise. So hard, and yet so necessary, for the Way does not follow itself.

Oh, Chen. Poor, sweet, innocent little Chen. The flash of those eyes is enough, isn’t it, for the Princess to suddenly understand that she has made a dreadful, delightful mistake. Maybe she could sputter and try to play it off as being intentional, but look at that blush! Rose from the River can feel the girl’s red cheek through the scarf, it’s so warm.

“Why, Your Majesty,” Rose purrs, draping the scarf around Chen in loose curls, suddenly and wickedly servile, “when asked so forcefully, how can your humble servant refuse? I shall return it to you at once, O Most Imperious Excellence!”

The strike, sudden and sure, is hidden by the scarf passing over Chen’s face. The river-washed fabric is pushed between those soft lips by two insistent fingers, getting it well-packed in her cheeks, making sure it’s pressing down her wagging tongue comfortably. Once satisfied that the Princess’s complaints (or are they rapturous thanks? with that expression, it might be difficult to tell) are appropriately (but not oppressively) muffled, Rose drags her fingers out of Chen’s mouth and wipes them off on the dark-haired girl’s bottom lip: front, back, front again. This done, she pats Chen’s comfortably filled cheek like one might indulgently show affection to a precocious child.

“There, a gift from me to you. Do try to hold onto it better than you held onto your sword, Chen of the Twin Shards.” She stops, leans in, cupping Chen’s face as she pretends to listen. “Oh, I assumed that you wouldn’t need help, but I suppose a girl your age needs accommodations from her elders now and then.”

The scarf is pulled firmly over Chen’s lips, pressed up on one side against the bottom of her nose ticklishly and cupped beneath her chin on the other as Rose knots it well behind the Princess’s hair. Of course, there’s quite a bit of scarf left, but rather than wrap it around and around Chen’s head until there’s nothing left poking out, not nose or lashes or hair, she slips either end around and around Chen: under her armpits, around her adorable tummy, and between her bound ankles. There’s just enough left over to secure the ends to the staff-form of the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade.

So little Chen has gotten away easy in one sense, for Rose from the River has not covered that precious scarf with others, smelling of small pink flowers, to muffle her until she can make no more squeak than a mouse; but instead, she finds herself lifted into the air like a bindle as Rose from the River effortlessly hoists the staff onto her shoulder, one hand cupping its butt (and not Chen’s) to serve as counterbalance. The scarf digs in an unavoidable amount, but it is fluffy and large and Rose knows the art of suspension well enough to distribute her weight. (And, having only so much scarf and so much acquaintance, pointedly did not pull that scarf between Chen’s thighs.)

Imagine if anyone happened upon them now! Here Chen sways, a caught little trophy, gagged with her most beloved scarf and suspended from a traveler’s walking-stick by the very same, unable completely to hide herself in those strong arms! She is like a mountain-goat caught by the Sourcefall shepherds, except for the fact that she is, blessedly, right side up. She has all the time in the world to stop and admire the landscape while Rose moves with at a surprisingly steady clip down the road. That is, if she can avoid daydreams of her peers laughing at her and playfully swatting her unprotected rump as Rose from the River dangles her like a toy before them. Or of Rose walking through a Terrace-town with Chen swaying behind her, stared at by dumbstruck peasants, the tale of her defeat at the hands of a simple monk sure to spread! And, oh, whatever would Princess Qiu think?

But even as Rose continues on her way, a prickling knot twists inside of her. She did not need to feel such savage delight in battle; she could not keep herself composed, a weapon in the hands of a mighty yet subtle wind. She burst off her leash like an overexcited wolfhound, and left herself blind to the quiet signs and tugs of the Way. Even now it is difficult for her to focus on divining on which way her many-chambered heart is being led; her thoughts drift ever back to the Princess on her shoulder. That look as the gag was pulled tight! That look as she buried herself in Rose’s arms! Maybe she should stop and check on the Princess, tease her more (was it enough for the surrender offered?). Maybe she should... no. She has to shut her ears to the symphonies without so she can hear the faint melody of truth within. She is not allowed to tarry longer and seduce the pretty young thing until her head spins and her chest bounces and she begs wordlessly for kisses and more than kisses.

She is not allowed, because the knowledge that she would be trading personal pleasure for what is best for everyone hangs around her neck like a yoke. And like an ox in the field, Rose from the River obediently follows the switch on her flank and the tug on her ring, not looking back at the delicious meal just over her shoulder.

It has to be enough to know that she has made Princess Chen happy.

[Rose from the River feels Guilty about her indulgence, and takes -1 to Emotional Support until it is resolved, such as by sacrificing something important just to hurt herself, or by Emotional Support. She currently has 1 XP (because she does not miss rolls) and 1 String on Chen.]

Have you ever seen anything so green? The sun-dappled grass! The canopy of leaves not-so-far overhead! There, look how they're swaying! Even the rocks are grown over with moss and lichens and it's all! It's sooooo beautiful! The sunlight itself is tinted like emeralds, except for where it pushes into the grove in visible, cloudy beams that pool in yellowish patches that turn the sunning rocks to gold. Yue shivers in the middle of her little treasure vault, and sneezes. A dozen lizard heads turn in her direction, and she giggles her apology. It's not so warm in the shade, you know? Not the way she's, erm, dressed.

But what does that matter, when the air is so clean that just breathing it feels like waking up from the best night's sleep ever? And really, it's not like the air is exactly dirty anywhere else, you know? But farmers till the earth and kick up all sorts of things, and the village is filled with heat from the glass blower's, and somebody, whoever really, it's different every time, but somebody is always making soup and as pleasant as all of those things are it's just not the same. There's no deeper, cleaner breath you'll take in your entire life than the one that's surrounded on every side by healthy plants, out on their own and singing their song. Here friends, let's trade, ahaha!

Yue traipses across the scene on the tips of her toes, spinning nimbly around the tiny blossoms where they sprout up among the grass. Little bits and bars of about five different songs hum their way across the juice-stained smile that's parked itself permanently on her face. As if the night could not touch her, anymore. As if the night had not happened at all. She dances and she hums and she makes her way to a huge(ish) column of marble that had been cut in half on an angle long enough ago for the mosses to start overtaking the break. What was it's story, anyway? Did some travelling swordswoman come here and test her edge against this stone, as part of her training? Or was this a wonder of the old world that fell and broke on its way to Heaven? What was it for, anyway? Did they worship its beauty, or charm small gods to their presence with the promise of a perfect home? In any case there were no gods here now, unless you counted big(ish) lizards. Yue offers the King of the Pillar a respectful curtsy.

"Greetings, Your Majesty! Do you think I might borrow a tiiiiny bit of space on your... eep!"

Sunning lizards can be quick biters, especially when they're defending a basking spot from evil intruding fingers (their only known natural predator!). But as fast as this one snaps and clicks its proud little lizard clicks, it's no match for Yue, who snatches her hand and the glass bead she's holding in it out of range with centimeters to spare between her and discovering if this particular fellow was venomous. Oof! She goes tumbling gracelessly backwards and falls onto her butt. She lifts both hands to gather long strands her hair out of her face, and laughs.

"Whoops, hahaha, guess not! That's ok friend, I know you were here first. I was only, well, I guess a fellow sun farmer like you understands! Happy hunting, aha... hm?"

Hromp! Yue squeaks when a mouthful of vicious fangs sink into her arm. It takes several full chomps before she realizes that the mighty huntress currently chewing her to death is none other than Kat, who growls indignantly at the soft smile of her mistress and switches in the space of a single tail swish from angy bite-bites to haughtily turning her nose in the air and admiring the non-Yue parts of the woods.

"Awww, are you still mad at me for putting you in the bag?"

Ha, as if! If you think you deserves talkies after what you did, you've got another thing coming! Kat sniffs dismissively and busies herself watching a Really Cool Bug off in the middle distance. Yue clicks her tongue in a soothing pattern, but it only earns her a tiny bit of curious ear twitching and a few pitty baps from her chocolatey brown vixen mittens. So, so there!

"I'm sorry, ok? I don't know if you noticed, Miss Fussypants, but we had to run from a bunch of scary demons and you have very tiny legs! What did you want me to do, leave you behind?"

Arf, she arfs! Arf arf arf, and furthermore, yip yip arf! You fiend! You villain! You, you... what are you doing with that hand? Hey what no, no uppies! No! Arf arf rrrrrrrr! If you think you can buy your way out of this with ear rubs, then... o-oh gosh, squishies. I mean, no! No no no, you... meanieface! You, oh gosh yes, there there there!

"Uhuh? Uhuh? What else, sweetiebeans? Did I squish your delicate little tumtum? Did I muss up your pretty green floof? Yeah, I know~ You can't be a flooferdoodle without you cutiefloof! Here you go, here you go! Let me fix you aaaalll up!"

It turns out Yue doesn't need two hands to find all the right spots. Inside the ears, under the chin, riiiiiight at the creamy little poof on her chest, yup yup yup! Kat tries her best to maintain dignity in the face of this assault. It lasts all of fifteen seconds, and then? She melts. Her haughty snuffles turn into delirious vixen giggles as she stretches her teeny little body across Yue's lap. Eheh! Ehehehehe! More, more! Rub here, scritch! Scritch here!

"There you go! Whoosa pretty girl, hm? Who's my precious snugglemuffin? It's you! It's you, Miss Fluffybiscuits! Awww, you're so pretty, yes you are! You're so dignified, yes you are! Yue is so sorry she didn't carry you gently, ok? Good girl! What a good girl!"

Wolves, it turns out, cannot laugh. But they can roll their eyes. And, oh gosh, does Hyra know how to stare. Yue smiles sheepishly and blushes deeper than a blood lily. But she doesn't move except to trace her finger in soft circles on Kat's forehead, because she's earned herself the Purr of Forgiveness, and you don't disrespect that by stopping.

"She... she likes it when you treat her like a princess."

Hyra's head tilt is more savage than an entire host of Yin's chanting shadows. Yue flinches so sharply it seems like she'd been hit by an arrow. Or ten.

"Is that... do you not... um. Is this not the way you talk to princesses?"

This is the kind of stare down that poets will fight over to get the chance to write about. Yue stammers and squeaks and very nearly makes the potentially lethal mistake of offering to give Hyra pats too, as if she were jealous or something, but just before her fate is sealed forever, she's saved by the click-click-click of a contented lizard scuttling down from its pillar throne to mingle among the commoners.

It stares at Yue for a long moment. Then it blinks its eyes. And then, the miracle, are you ready? It nods. Yue gasps with joy, this whole little... incident forgotten in a flash, offers the lizard its own grateful nod in turn. She gently lifts herself off the ground and goes to place her beads on the sunlit pillar.

"I, uh, no, I... yeah. I know. I know, but. Just a little longer, ok? The sunlight here is so peaceful that I just, well, I don't know that much about curses so I, that is, I don't want to make promises, but maybe I could, if you could just let me..."

Hyra pads softly over to Yue before she can um herself to death and leans against the girl in lieu of words. Yue flashes her a tiny smile, only a little bit wet, and together they share a moment watching the sunlight.

Rose!

Daily Affirmations of the Way <3: "All things are connected, so don't read too much into it."

The harmony of hills and mountains is undermined with the sense of discord. The path is overgrown with weeds and a fence has fallen, causing sheep to spill out all over the road to eat those weeds. Two wagons and a little car have had to come to a halt with the path ahead blocked by the fluffy tide and the most experienced of the three is already pitching her tent because she knows better than to reason with the sheep. A bolder one has advanced on the sheep with shouting but she is a fool - already a sheep-aligned goat has snuck around to her abandoned wagon to chew through the horse's restraints.

This is disharmony in its simplest form. Bad luck and rebellion, sheeps made kings and humans made fools. Back in ancient times it would cost a monthly subscription fee to ensure that your vehicle was shielded by the Metropolitan Prayer Wheel, with fines for those who engage in disharmonious conduct. Nowadays it is dealt with in a more artisanal sense by you and your order.

This isn't the wreckage of demon passage - if the Pyre had come this way then she'd have taught the sheep the secret of gunpowder. This kind of subtle entropy has been going on for a while - some sort of wicked spirit at work. Not urgent, perhaps... but not unimportant. You are a monk, are you not? And while the mysterious girl desired by Princess Qiu might be important, and while Princess Chen might be important, and while both questions are fun for you personally... can you truly look the Buddha in the eye and say they are more important than these people here before you now?

Yue!

The faintest smell of incense touches the wind. It's distant and sweet and brings only one connotation: the smell of a shrine. You pause to breathe it in, the flavour of deserts with sands of blue, as luxurious for the distance it has come as for the taste of foreign moonlights it offers. For a moment you close your eyes to appreciate the smell. In the rustling breeze you can hear the sound of wind-chimes.

And then when you open your eyes again the world is bound in red thread.

It wraps around you from a knot tied around your smallest finger, tracing up and around your arm and across your chest and tangling through your hair. It spreads up and loosely weaves through the branches of the trees. Its fragility makes it bind tighter than the heaviest chain - this thread is so delicate it demands you move with utmost caution to avoid snapping it, and who would risk snapping a red ribbon if it might lead you to true love? Here, as ever, the secret to bindings is to ensure that there is no will to escape them.

"Heya!" comes a cheerful voice from beneath two fox ears and two fox tails. "Cute fox!"

Immediately you know what kind of place this is.

"If you ever see an abandoned shrine, don't make wishes!" Everyone in the village got that lecture. Every set of grandparents hauled their grandchildren and their children to their sickbeds so they could give them the warning. "Under no circumstances!" For three days afterwards elderly guards patrolled the town with walking sticks and threats to have you by the ear to ensure that nobody snuck out to the abandoned shrine while old Mr. Barayama went down to fetch a monk to exorcise the place.

The security was necessary not because the spirit who lived at the abandoned shrine didn't grant wishes but because it did.

It is an iron law of the spirits that whenever a shrine is abandoned and falls into disrepair, a fox spirit moves in. Kitsune are absolutely terrible spirits to have occupying a shrine because, as is well known, foxes have no sense of right and wrong. If a girl comes to one and says that her beloved is married to another the fox will have no compunctions about ruining that relationship and ensuring that you are there to pick up the pieces - and then the next day she'll introduce herself to the betrayed party and offer a bargain special on vengeance. It'll keep going until the town tears itself apart while the fox rakes up the offerings.

That red string, in the end, leads back to a glittering red and onyx box that the fox is toying with. She's lying flat on the fallen stone pillar, having quite impressively contorted her body so that flows like liquid into all the spaces around the lizard king. The lizard is giving her a look that is letting her know that she has walked exactly up to the line of getting bitten, and she's waving her tails in a way that says she knows exactly where that line is.

"I am so glad to meet a girl who understands how to treat a fox," said the kitsune, and oh wow she's pretty. Fox magic pretty is the kind of thing to risk a little disaster for, isn't it? Bright teal eyes and white hair that fades to black over the last quarter of its length, a pattern mirrored on her tails. But despite the embarrassment from being seen in this state she doesn't bat an eye at you - and perhaps you're lucky she doesn't. There are plenty of stories of absent minded foxes forgetting humans wear clothes and attempting to infiltrate towns while naked, and your state is perhaps contributing to a future faux pas. "I think that you'd be able to treat a girlfriend really well too. I can help with that! Ooh, maybe you want that fox to be your girlfriend? Is that your wish?"

Those twin tails wag with the hypnotic eagerness of someone who has done absolutely zero contemplation of the ramifications of wishes.

Chen makes a distinct “ffeeep” sound through the scarf pressed into her mouth that is clearly “sheep” with more than a little delight, despite the chaos.

She’s been quite calm during the walk. She had protested at first, of course, a series of attempts to speak through the scarf that should have been “remove this gag immediately, how dare you use Mommy’s scarf like this!” But it had come out more like “ffww brrr uu!” and the way Rose had grinned at how cute she sounded had sent her into a furious blush that strained at the tied scarf and caused her to start swaying on her bindle in a way that felt equal parts precarious and oddly relaxing. Heart racing, Chen had tried to collect herself after that and had allowed Rose to go along her march while Chen got to watch the landscape.

Her delight encountering the sheep was therefore the first noise she had made in a while. Perhaps that’s unusual, but as a painter, a scene like this was the perfect sort of life snapshot that Chen would want to paint later. The knowing look in the older woman’s eyes as she tried to pitch camp and the useless flailing of the younger one as she shouted at the flock that had no fear of her were reflecting pure emotions, the experience of living in the world and Chen was absolutely going to paint that later.

She tries, with limited success to make a gesture to Rose to turn her a little on the pole so she can take in the full view for later. A little straining at the scarf, a turn of the neck, a furtive elbow gesture and another grunt through the scarf all saying hey, spin around a little!

If she were free, Chen’s response here would depend on her errand. If she felt pressured, like her mothers were watching her or she were going to be late, she might fly right past this with an apologetic glance. She’d hate it, hate contributing to the impression people had of Princesses as above everyone else, but she was afraid of disappointing important people in her life, so she would have rushed by regretfully. If she had more time, perhaps on a longer errand where she was expected to spend multiple nights away from home or wandering away from a traveling party, she would have stopped to help. Perhaps she would have used her sword and her magic to help lift the carts past the sheep (her control and precision were very good, though to be safe she might have unloaded the carts and moved the contents separately, then helped the farmers repack them after). One might think that using magic to lift the carts would be the hard way, but it was much easier to work one’s will on objects than on stubborn animals like sheeps, which would refuse to part just as much for Chen’s blade as for the young woman shouting at them in futility.

As it stands now, she is most concerned with taking in the scene, relaxed that Rose will handle the problem. Only in a moment will she realize that three travelers are going to be staring at her trussed up on a pole behind Rose from the River and begin a new round of furious blushes.

Ah, that’s too bad, isn’t it? Rose from the River frowns as she considers the scene before her, because she knows that there is a simple way to clear her path. Sheep are easily panicked; one Throat-Fortifying Breath and she could send sheep and peasants alike scattering, slipping on wet grass in frantic desire to return to a place of supposed safety from fangs and coils. It would save her time and effort.

But it would be like stirring up silt at the bottom of a lake. Satisfying at first in its swirls, still it would muddy the waters and make them unwholesome, impossible to see through. For we stumble through the world blindfolded, listening to a thousand instruments all around, and only with careful practice may we discern the pure flute of the Way, its soft notes audible even in the thunder of drums and the screech of electric strings.

And so it is that Rose from the River stops and unties one knot in the woolen scarf: the one that secures Chen as a bundle to her staff. Hoisting Chen under one arm, she approaches the assembled travelers with incongruous calm, as if Chen of the Twin Shards was as natural for a traveler to carry as a piglet or a lamb.

“Peace be with you,” she says to the woman who has paused in the erection of her tent. She bows, and Chen bows with her, feet in the air. “Forgive me, but I believe I may be of assistance with this flock. Please look after my companion.” This done, she sets Chen face-down into the mint that grows wild by the roadside.

This is another part of the game, after all. Chen will most likely be served tea while Rose works, and asked if she is all right, and if she wants her restraints loosened, and what news from her kingdom, and she will be just as safe as she was in Rose’s care. And if the little princess wants to break free, well, that just makes things more entertaining.

Rose does not, however, resist the temptation to pat Chen’s rump affectionately before shouldering her staff again and approaching the sheep. Can she be blamed for wanting to hear that flustered, muffled squeak again?

Now, for the sheep. She takes the goat by one horn and pulls him steadily away from the yeller’s wagon. Poor goat! How it scrabbles for purchase on the road, doing its best to resist and dig its hooves in, bleating complaints! And yet Rose does not so much as miss a step, her grip on the goat restrained but irresistible. “That’s enough mischief,” she says to it. “Come on. We’ve work to do, you and I.”

Once released among the flock, the goat might try to sneak back, but here he will find the path blocked. Rose from the River will not draw her blade for the likes of a herd of disorderly sheep, but her staff-play is more than fine enough for them. See how she hooks one end under the goat’s belly and lifts him up and around with a click of her tongue. See how she raps it on the road in order to guide sheep up and away.

Several sheep, perturbed by the beginning of what will be a successful herding, make a valiant attempt to scatter in the opposite direction, further down the road. Skillful Thorn Pilgrim! She vaults up on her staff and lands neatly in front of them, having performed a perfect Cloud-Passage Leap across the herd. What grace in her effortless ascent and landing! And what patience she shows with the miscreants, guiding them back towards the perturbed herd.

She is merely one woman, but she is Rose from the River, and she has hounded many in her long lives. Fortunate sheep! They will not be bound and carried off to those who would see them further oppressed! They need not fumble down sepulchral alleyways, blind and frantic with terror, split apart from the mass of humanity all around them by the knowledge that the thing that hunts them could be anyone, that any offer of shelter or assistance could be the jaws of a trap closing shut about them. They must instead simply fear the staff of Rose from the River striking the ground beside them or rapping their rump to get them moving. And instead of bleak cells that their credit will be charged for the privilege of occupying, drooling around black rubber and cuffed to a wall as they wait for Enhanced Interviewing, the sheep’s prison will be one of clover and mint and earth apples, and soft places to sleep until the long dawn.

Who dares help her in the herding?

Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh gosh goshies gosh, that is a... um. It, um. She should not be staring. She should not be staring. But she can't help it! It's just such a nice butt!

Oh gosh no Yue, be strong! You're not like this! You've gone your whole life and barely even noticed that other girls even have... no, wait. Um. S-see, i-i-it's the tails, y'know? How is she supposed to see those tails swishing up there and not have her eyes drawn that way? Fox magic pretty is provocative, and this is not the part that anybody warned her about, so! It's not her fault! It's not her fault, ok? What's she even supposed to do when this kitsune is just... just lying up there on that pillar with her back curved so strategically to point that thing up in the air to be marveled at? Nothing, that's what!

And this is twice, now. Two tailed girls, two absurdly pretty butts. Do you think it's related? That is, um. N-no, no, this isn't the time. Not the time at all. You're right. B-but it's true, though! Just take Hyra's butt (oh gosh wait no I mean not like... oh gosh). Her real one, that is. She's fit and firm but still so full, y'know? Like, a-and not like this would ever, could ever happen, but if she ever decided to sit on your lap, all you'd feel is muscle, but she's so perfectly built that she could sit there forever and ever, and you could hold her all that time, and you'd barely even notice her weight.

"Wh-what? I... eep! No, I! No! Don't go putting wishes in my mouth, Hyra's the one I'm trying toooomph!?"

Yue wriggles uselessly against the red string binding her to this spot. She gives up a moment later to focus on trying to spit out the sudden mouthful of wolf tail cutting off her wishes, but that's even more doomed than her wriggling. It may taste like eating a cattail, and feel about the same, but Hyra is swift and skilled and shaking her head so forcefully that Yue can't manage more than a half-hearted sputtering. Red string. Somebody who cares. If she really fought to break free from those things, she'd deserve every bit of misery that came to her from then on.

Up on her perch, the kitsune shakes with bright giggles, which draws Yue's eyes back to Exhibit B. She blushes and looks away only to have her eyes drawn back to that perfect peach like they'd been magnetized. A-and! Look! Ok? She knows this is not the time for staring! Stop judging! Stop stop stop, please don't think she's one of those... y-y'know, erm, that she's... n-never mind. It's just. It's just! T-the way the fox spirit twists and poses her body, it's as obvious as the sun in the sky that this is where she wants Yue's attention to be! S-so it'd be rude not to notice! If she didn't trace the wide curves that were made to accent those hips so perfectly she would be doing a disservice to all fox-kind! Probably! She looks much, much softer than Hyra, like she's never done more than ten minutes' hard work in her life if she could help it, but that softness is inviting in its own way, isn't it? I-imagine her curling up on top of you and begging for tummy rubs, and... o-oh! Oh gosh. Focus, Yue! Focus!

...T-tails. If there's a more perfect indicator of pure magic, you're lying about it. Wherever nature sees fit to bless a girl with one, it also shapes her body as an act of worship. And yes, obviously Princess Yin was gorgeous without the need for a tail, but she's a Princess, which is its own sort of miracle. If you still don't believe, please cast your eyes to the tailless Exhibit C, presently blushing herself to death and trying not to sneeze and topple over on top of her totally-not-a-girlfriend-slash-wolf-companion, whose body resembles nothing so much as a bamboo pole. Nothing to grab. Nothing to love. And maybe that's another reason why she keeps staring.

"Plsh, hhii nnd ooo... Hhrrhm, llp mmmem trrksh!"

Hyra snarls and interposes her body between fox spirit and village girl. But she also pulls her tail free with a flick like the sheathing of a blade. Yue blushes and spits awkwardly on her way to flopping over on the ground anyway. Luckily, she's built for this sort of thing, having nothing on her body worth crushing into soft grasses. If that fox girl fell like this? She'd feel it, just saying.

"...H-hi. I'm, um. I'm Yue. I'm from! Well. I-I guess you don't really... wow, you're pretty. B-but it doesn't look like you'd know where to find anything to... I mean no! That's not important! I know what you are and I know what you're doing and GranGran warned me about your tricks but I'm asking you anyway 'cause Hyra's cursed and I don't know how to change her back from being a wolf she doesn't like being a wolf and I can't kiss if she's a, I mean no not that either! She's hurt and, and, and, and I need to fix it and I can't be wishing for girlfriends or dresses and I don't have time to play with you I'm sorry! S-s-s-so don't even bother trying to trick me! I'm already, eeeep!"

Yue's blabbering is mercifully cut off by Kat's ticklish kneading of her back and by a protective bark from Hyra. Her eyes go nervously wandering again, and find their usual place at the place of those fluffy, silken, gradient colored tails. If it were possible to break her bonds with body heat, rest assured she'd have managed it by this point. Maybe fox magic is mischief magic, but so what? Some things are worth the risk.

And besides which, another thing about tailed girls is that Yue has yet to meet one she didn't want to trust.