There is an art to walking on air. It is to step so forcefully that the air beneath you is forced into solidity for a moment. And, if you have already come so far? What is the difference, really, between a step and a leap? So don’t you worry, Rose from the River was never really in any danger—

But she follows Princess Chen.

The air is firm beneath her feet as she spins a net from her bindings, works it around a very well-tied fox so that it’s easy to sling her over one strong shoulder. The breeze runs its fingers through her hair as she spins about Chen of the North Wind, an accent to her dance, a backup dancer here to make the princess look good (and to swing a certain mischievous fox along with her, just to make Cyanis close her eyes and squeak and burrow closer).

She pulls the scarf from her lips and it becomes wrapped around her throat, rippling and dancing along with her, and she lifts her head and out comes the water-brook-song of her joy:

[i]Love, come and dance with me by the river
and let the water brush over our feet!
I have tasted the world upon my tongue
but you alone I deem sweet![/i]

How she smiles!

Do you see it, Chen?

White and shining, the flash of her teeth, the wrinkling of her flushed cheeks, the flaunting of her daring outfit? How she [i]looks[/i] at you and joy just bursts from her?

By the time she sinks onto a sheep, cradling Cyanis in her net, she’s already starting to retreat back into herself a little. She is, after all, a follower of the Way; she has been rather delinquent, all for the sake of dreams and girlfriends. She will have to leave.

But you saw her, Chen, and you saw her too, Yue, and that is a treasure that you can never misplace, because it will always be in your heart, won’t it? Won’t it just. Rose from the River, freed from bondage, dancing on the very wind with a captured vixen over her shoulder, the image of a merry-making goddess doing the kind of dance that would tempt a sun out of hiding.