The sweep of the hillside is peppered with thickets: stiff, brown-edged grasses; trees hunched low like grandmothers in their gardens; bushes beloved of the sheep that pass on by in their roving herds. Here and there are flowers in the soft pink of dawn. But it is dusk, and the slow embrace of night draws a curtain of velvet shadow over the thickets, making them mere suggestions of form, a deeper dark against the grey. From this distance, there is no reflected glint from the lens.

If you came quite close, shielding your eyes from the joyful lights of the Pyre, and let your eyes become accustomed to the subtle distinctions of the gloaming, you might distinguish, here, among the low branches, a long-forgotten tablet. Time has allowed roots to tangle around it, back facing the road, which (should you inspect it quite carefully indeed) is strange, given that it is refurbished in leather and brass, the case distinctly Ysian in its fusion of disparate design elements. It must have been tossed aside immediately after it was made. Who would be so careless? By it lies a fallen tree, bush-buried, something to step over carefully lest there be a serpent slumbering beneath.

One silent, unblinking eye watches the procession. Occasionally, there is the muted chirp of a silenced camera, lost in the sound of night-birds and crickets at play. The wind makes the branches of the trees overhead shudder and clutch at themselves as if pulling a shawl tighter over bony shoulders. Above, Archer’s Ladder shines, almost as bright as the procession and the fires of understanding.

Below, the bells and drums swell to climax and then recede into the distance, leaving behind a mud-trampled serpentess. The lidless eye watches her as she pulls herself up, hissing and cursing the air scarlet, redistributing the filth on her face with each angry smear across her cheeks. Perhaps she suspects the observation from how she glances about, but the world all around is soft and shifting shadow. Then she slithers away, on her own path, seeking Yue of the Terraced Lake. Then there is deep indigo dusk, and a rabbit content to graze in the stillness, and for a time there is nothing here to hold the eye.

If there was anyone here, peering into the dark, staring at the lost tablet, they would be very suddenly surprised. The effect is much like suddenly seeing a picture within a picture, or a young woman in the portrait of the old; various elements and shadows cohere all at once, no longer harmonizing with the world around them. What seemed for all the world roots were truly braids, which whip and entwine of their own volition, releasing the tablet now taken up in mottled hands, slowly bleeding away the pattern of light and shadow that broke form and outline. The moon’s thin light catches teeth as white as mountain snow, bared in a triumphant grin. “Got you,” Rose from the River says, flicking through her gallery.

Here it is: the gaudy, enticing carnival of desire, whirling and whorled, a familiar expression of excess. In another life, on another path, they would be rivals. Goblin-bushes and hunting-stags would harry the Pyre and trap stolen sub-souls in prisons of vine and flower, all for the glory of the Princess of Undermountains, crowned in the full glory of spring. And instead Rose stands on a hillside, alone but for the distant rabbit, and leans against a twisted trunk as she lets herself be briefly enticed by the colors, the cloths and silks, the gags— she exhales quick through her nose, imagining the lovely sensation of a full mouth and a soft cloth pulled tight over her lips. A shudder runs through her braids, flowers unfurling their petals and retracting in turn, all shades of dawn muted in the moonlight. Then, in reflexive embarrassment, she glances to either side, and then back to her task.

Having been a prisoner trapped in unquiet sleep for centuries gives one a complex relationship with restraint. So does not knowing if your desires were written into you as a means of control by your creators. So does not having a private space any more to experiment with one’s new body. Say what you would about Yin, but at least she was willing to tie her knight down...

(When it didn’t feel wrong. When her body didn’t feel too heavy, too ill-made. When their schedules coincided. When the Knight made himself open for her.)

But self-indulgence for the sake of self-indulgence is selfish. While not the worst of sins, sloth and excessive self-pleasure are dangerous enticers that keep many pilgrims from pursuit of the Way. There is work for her to do, heroics to enact if she plays her part, people to help. Taking the place of the Voice of Ballet, dressed like a Ysian concubine, is a thought that will keep her company when she lays down to sleep tonight, but it is only a fantasy, and one to only lightly indulge in lest it cause her to falter in the face of the Pyre.

A moment’s consideration, pausing on a shot of the Scales of Meaning. Here. A smaller, more comprehensible aspect of the Pyre. As inviting as the wild carnival may be, her instincts are telling her that her own path is entangled with that of the serpent. (A fellow serpent, even. It’s been some time since she took on a serpentine aspect, but she was still fondest of her eyes.)

The tablet is holstered in one of her pack’s outermost pockets. A fine silver wand is retrieved from another pocket, where it lay hidden from the moonlight. A wave, and it becomes a walking stick, light but steady. Thus armed, Rose from the River begins to follow her quarry, humming a half-remembered jingle from a neon-shadowed ramen bar. The rabbit raises its head and scurries away.