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 [i]want[/i], 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, [i]if[/i] you can! Do what even the Scales of Meaning herself could not, [i]if[/i] 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.

"[i]essan! essan! essan el-heloi![/i]" 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 [b]10[/b]. A question offered in return: [i]Chen, what are your feelings towards princesses, those aspirants who claim title without right, those pretenders to royal glory?[/i]]