[b]Chen![/b]

"Bold of you to assume that this is indeed a person we're talking about," said Qiu. "We could be discussing an under-monster in disguise, or one of the Pyre's lost souls, or a goddess, or something even stranger. All I know is that when I asked the Scales of Meaning what in my new realm was the most valuable, this was her response."

She's a step away, looking out over the waters, fingers twitching in those little patterns that indicated thought, the hint of a smile. "And of course, it's so very dangerous to start letting a demon give you advice and solution with the same hand. A little competition will work to keep everyone honest."

Her smile is mysterious, but not impossibly so. She has a heart like any other if you wish to read into her motives.

[b]Rose![/b]

[i]Once there was a demon who pretended to be an angel...[/i]

At one time, the Scales of Meaning had pride - but pride is another vice entirely, and it was torn away from her. She schismed with her sister-vice and was left with a hole in her heart of amorphous bitterness. Refine vice enough and it can become an entirely different entity, for it can take more willpower than the corrupt possess to hold all that evil in your heart at once.

But even though pride does not constrain her, inexperience does. She is [i]insufficient[/i]. She does not possess the coin to buy this treasure. She had not stopped to observe the mountains or wonder at the world's mysteries or learned the words to deceive maidens. She did not think these things were of worth and yet, here, a treasure she can buy no other way! She fumes! She sparks! Her horns glow in ferocious calculation as her valuation of the world and its treasures shift, as she realizes that a new form of currency has risen and in it she is bankrupt. She lashes out as she realizes this, as she fights, but only because such demonic frustration must have outlet and you happen to be close - but not so close that you are yet in danger.

"Fine, then!" she spits. "You trade in alien currencies indeed, river-daughter, but I shall [i]not[/i] be found wanting. Let me go and I shall rearrange my accounts, filling them with all that you crave, and you shall eat your fill of them and beg me for more."

[b]Yue![/b]

Grass grows thick and lush underneath the trees, for in this new world they have forgotten the secrets of herbicide to guarantee empty brown dirt beneath their branches. It climbs thick and lush, and the branches weigh heavy with patterned ivy with edges of magenta. In the evening's shade with the sun still golden on the horizon you see that it is not that this curse is pouring into Hyra of the Wolves - it pours out from her. It knits her wounds, true, but it also darkens the grass and ivy she rests her head against and draws the colour from your clothes. As you wash her with the cloth it fades until the threads themselves come unspooled, and by the end you have a ball of ancient and fritzy fluff in your hand. This was not a curse placed upon her by a demon, it is one that she has been carrying with her for some time, and it makes her fingers twitch and nails sharpen and wolf-ears prick at the slightest sound.

But she manages to drink the tea and seems for a moment like she's all right after all.

"Thank you," she said, "you saved -" she stops, but you don't think she was going to say 'me' there. Of everything that was damaged by that dark energy, she alone was not.

She took another sip and held that tea in her mouth for a long time, as though trying to drown some wicked taste. She swallows and then takes several long, deep breaths of the tea's scent, again seeming to wash away something from the air. Finally she relaxes against the tree, bringing up one knee and folding her hands behind her head, settling into a languorous, cool posture that implied if not control then comfort with the situation.

"You're... more than I expected," she said. "I've tried a lot of medicines but none of them... you're not hurt, are you? I mean you're clearly not, but... there wasn't any need to carry me. I can take care of myself, so you keep yourself out of danger, all right?"

As she's speaking colour is rising to her cheeks and she isn't making eye contact. If it wasn't impossible this might seem like shyness, awkwardness - the coin offered by a woman who only felt valuable as a protector, whose pack did not trade in kindness and so she only knew how to offer strength and safety.