"W-what?" said Foxpearl. "[i]Mother[/i]? Foxfire? She's not my mother." Thoughtfully: "Unless you are saying that, as a foreign contamination that settled near her hips until eventually breaking off and becoming an independently realized person, she is metaphorically my mother and virtue itself is metaphorically my father. That is... hmm."

[b]Concept[/b]: Virtue is my father

She was talking to the Princess still, as the only one left present, as much as she was herself. She was reassuring to talk to. A good listener.

"Irregardless," she said, thinking deeply. "No... I'm a wayward soul aspect, aren't I? Like a conscience, gone out into the world to gather wisdom to redeem the origin. She'll want her tail back, after all, I just need to be sufficiently powerful that I can influence her once we reunite." She stopped again. But... what if? "I just need to develop the righteous part of my personality so that it becomes more powerful. But if I'm still sounding like her then have I developed the right aspects? Or is the moral truth something deeper still?"

She thinks about this so hard that she kind of forgets that both of her arms are stuck inside the vending machine. Occasionally her hands do a foxy little scrabble up at the bottom of the tofu bar. A keen eyed observer might notice that she could easily grab one of the bars on the lower shelf from where she is, but those aren't mapo flavours and she wants the ones she can't reach.