[i]Slate-grey rain runs in rivulets down slate-grey buildings. Far, far above, the sea roars and crashes. Puddles gleam in neon shine. The world is made of blocks and blocks, monolithic buildings in their rows stretching out forever, and between them lie the dank, rotten alleyways. Step onto one, and the noise of the roar of railtraffic and adgrams is cut off, and instead there is harsh-edged wind roaring between the crustscrapers, bringing with it the smell of trash and mildew and stagnant water. Above there is another street, and below there is construction work, and crammed in here there are stalls and vendors advertising fifteen-minute lunches and five-minute fucks to the vassals of the towers; even thirty-minute grid realignment and reconsecration, for the desperate or those secure enough to have their own servants go to get phones repaired. Inside those blocks, lidless eyes watch the coming and going of office chattel, and chronofuries stalk the halls murmuring their numbers: minutes spent in the relief blocks, minutes spent speaking to each other outside of meetings, minutes spent with hands left idle. Keeping those numbers low is a matter of survival and continued employment, which are the same thing for those paying off their training debts; the plastic bottles stacked under their desks are often nicknamed the Furies’ Due. This is the world, and there’s nothing more to be said about it. Not when the hunt is on. Not when any mistake could alert its prey. Not when rival kingdoms might have their own spies watching for it. The world simply is. No more, no less.[/i]

The sword of Scales may be long, but with a flourish, the Conciliatory Ice-Star Blade is still longer: a graceful glaive, its shaft as slender as a bamboo rod, made of bronze that gleams under the fickle light of the moon. Two-handed she takes it, sweeping, seeking to catch a serpent’s tail underneath a hooked edge, but more than that, looking to dismay the demon so certain of victory. It is as if the blade is staying still, and it is Rose from the River who moves around its axis: an illusion, one that Scales of Meaning will see through easily, but may still admire for its artistry.

But it is not the sword that Rose from the River loves most. If she was called upon to cast it away, she would, even if it tore part of her heart away with it. It is not this that would make Rose from the River turn her face away from the Way. Look again, assessor of worth. Find what would not be sacrificed; find what is worth sacrifice in and of itself.

[i]In the light, he is a hero. His hair is like white gold, expertly made, and he is slim and elfin, the kind of vulnerable and sensitive soul that made the hearts of young boys and girls flutter. There is an ancient sadness to him, but that just makes him more amazingly crushworthy, and every day he receives letters and tokens thanking him for his service as First of the Radiant Knights. He is beloved. He is a hero. He shares the bed of the beautiful princess who saved him. He has risen from the long sleep of the tomb into glory. And yet when the crystals dim and the lights die, when he is the only one awake, when he paces in Yin’s suite, the breathless letters of thanks feel like bars on a cage. He has to keep it up. He has to be their hero. He has to be an upstanding consort-in-training. And all too soon, the lights go out again. And the world is a black rag choking him out.[/i]

There is no audience here. Rose from the River does not flourish to entertain anyone else. She does not care whether anyone witnesses her victory. (Not that she wouldn’t mind, mind you. Not that she wouldn’t mind.) She used to be a hero, a celebrity, beloved by an entire kingdom and its commanding princess. And now she is this: river-nymph, flower-faunus, beautiful and quietly inhuman. What can you offer to Rose from the River that the Radiant Princess could not, o demoness?

Scales of Meaning feints, then rushes in, looking to overwhelm her opponent with a carefully calculated push. Rose from the River, in turn, plants her blade in the yielding earth and vaults over the demoness’s head. When her pole is batted to one side, Rose does a somersault and hops onto that shining-scaled back for a brief and impudent moment, before springing off onto the grass. Scales of Meaning coils around the wonderful glaive and seeks to put the Thorn Pilgrim on the back foot, despite knowing that if Rose from the River can get hold, she merely need press her weapon still firmer to her opponent to win concession...

There. There it is. The glance upwards, suddenly distracted away from battle, glorious opponent and all, her eyes fixed for the span of a chickadee’s wingbeat on the great and glittering belt that spans the sky. The huff of breath is a traitor; the fleeting reverie an opening of the gate to her heart.

[i]Once, there was a queen who owned a songbird, born to the cage. She fed it delicacies from far-off lands and bid it sing for its supper. It knew no want. Yet when the queen opened the cage door for but a moment, the songbird was out the window and gone forever.

It is winter, says the crow; food is scarce and the winds are cold. What is there to love in the world outside your palace? I sing anyway, says the songbird, free.[/i]

Rose from the River loves the beauty that lies hidden beneath the currents of the river, the beauty which lies gleaming in the feathers of the violet and lavender doves singing [i]tu-wit tu-wu[/i] from the berry-bush, the beauty which lies languorous beneath the swell of the mountains, the beauty which shines down broken in a great arc across the sky. She loves this beauty in the manner of a child, wide-eyed and excited to see quite ordinary things made wonderful by their novelty. There is no overfamiliarity, no contempt of long regard, in how Rose from the River approaches this ancient and remade world.

To defeat her, o frightful and wonderful demoness, draw her in with revelations. Shine with the patterns of dusk and dawn. Hide your pride behind the veil of the aurora playing on the mountain peaks. Promise her wonders beyond the turn in the road, known only to demons, who remember what others blithely forget. Take on the aspect of the world unexplored, with its mysteries and soft beauties, and Rose from the River will step into the waiting coils despite herself, and take the gag from your grasp to fix between her teeth with her own hands.

Feign compassion for her, and win her heart as well as the duel, again despite herself. She has always wanted to be loved for herself.

Or do none of these things, out of pride and an unwillingness to win by the virtue of a love that you can no more catch than seize the moon in your coils, o shard of the glorious Pyre. To trick the Thorn Pilgrim so is to admit that your coils could never have caught her on your own, and your lips not ensnare her but that they shine with the light of the broken suns high above. To admit yourself insufficient to the task.

This, then, is a second question: victory by guile, or striving to succeed by your own merits, Scales of Meaning? Which would you pick, if offered the choice?