In hindsight I think I was probably hangry and tired from jetlag.
"Can you really not speak?" asked the woman. She was sitting against one of the few unoccupied bits of wall, legs crossed and hands on knees. Up until now she had been napping or meditating or whatever it was that she was doing with her eyes closed, but she'd stopped that now and I kind of wished she'd go back to it.
I think I probably also felt embarrassed about being tricked so easily.
I gave a low growl that didn't mean anything in particular then went back to ignoring her. I was lying in the centre of the room, curled around the coffee table and your sitting cushion.
"You have an interesting friend," the woman went on, almost as if she took my growl as a reply.
I glanced at her and was surprised to not find a hint of anger or resentment towards you. Did she not care that you'd skewered her through like a BBQ stick?
"You should be wary of him. Only someone with an insatiable greed for power would agree to host a demon blade."
Of all the things she could have said, that wasn't even something I had imagined, and for the first time I actually felt grateful that I wasn't able to reply in my current state.
My initial reaction was anger - I don't like it when people talk badly about my friends, especially about one who had already done so much for me - but there was also something else. A note of fear. Could she be right? And if she was, the term 'demon blade' sounds pretty bad… But then again, maybe she was just trying to rile me up, make a mistake, or something. I really didn't know.
All I could do was wait for you to come back.
And eventually you did, this time through the front door like usual.
"Oh good. You haven't killed her," you said as you kicked your shoes off and came into the living room barefoot.
"The girl?" the woman immediately asked.
"She's fine," you replied. "Asleep. Her grandfather's in the hospital so she's being cared for by government services while they contact the rest of the family."
The woman nodded, clearly relieved.
I unwound from the table and went to you and tried to help with your instrument case, but you put a hand to my nose. "Thanks. I can handle this," you said before dropping the case down in your room. When you returned, you had a few pieces of clothing hung over your arm.
You stopped in the doorway and waved me over, then put the clothes on my back and pushed me into the room.
"Balance this on your head," you said, putting a sheet of paper on my head, then closed the door.
The piece of paper was tinted yellow and had small, black markings on it that were too blurry for me to properly get a look at and to be honest, I was still thinking about all the demon blade talk so it took me a few moments to realise what all this was about.
It seems that my usual body temperature as a dragon is different from when I'm a human, though I'm not sure which is hotter. Either way, I was freezing when my mostly human skin and body suddenly returned, and I stood there naked in the room with pieces of clothing sitting at my feet.
I quickly grabbed them and pulled them on, making a mental note to find somewhere to write down how many sets of clothing I owe you, then headed back to the living room.
You were pouring the woman a cup of tea when I emerged which immediately put an end to any wide-eyed curiosity I'd had about the paper on my head trick.
Instead, I sat on my usual cushion and scowled.
You poured me a cup.
I gulped down the whole thing.
"Alright. What's going on?" I asked.
You looked to the woman. "Care to explain?"
"I don't think the little dragon trusts my words very much," she replied.
My scowl deepened.
"I think that's justified," you said, making me feeling better. "Alright, how about you ask the questions, Misha?"
I knew you were just trying to placate me - maybe you were worried I'd rip another set of your clothes to smithereens - and it worked.
"Do you have a name?" I asked, directing my question at the woman.
She gave a polite smile. "Amethyst," she replied.
"Okay. Amethyst. Did you kidnap the little girl?"
The woman's eyes lightened. "You figured it out?"
"No, I just don't think Bran would let a kidnapper walk around freely." Or at least, I knew it had to be more complicated than just a quick nabbing.
Amethyst sighed and nodded slowly. "I like to... watch children. To be near them," she said. "It's a compulsion born of my... affliction."
"He knows you're a gu-huo-niao," said Bran.
"Gu-huo-niao," the woman repeated, tasting each word. "Gu... Huo... Niao. Yes, I can understand the name, but it does not quite apply to me, not completely at least.."
"You don't kill people?" you asked.
The woman smiled demurely. "Not all the time."
A chill ran down my spine and I poured myself another cup of hot tea to warm up.
"But I do not kidnap children. I will not, cannot, harm children."
"Why is that?" I couldn't help asking.
The woman's eyes shifted and seemed to stare off at some place in the distance. Her arms went to cradle her stomach.
"I do not harm them, because my child was not harmed. My child lived, you see? He lived." her eyes gleamed.
The lights were switched on as always but, in that moment, they began to flicker like they were instead candles on a windy day.
"My love, my love will return for me. He wrote to say he would, and he never lies."
You refilled the woman's cup. "Drink."
The woman ignored the cup and instead crawled on the ground towards me, spilling tea across the floor. "Have you seen him? He said he would be here, he said-"
"I..."
You quickly took your own cup of tea and pressed it urgently to her lips. She spluttered a little but eventually drank and slowly that eerie gleam receded from her eyes.
"Things from the past..." she mumbled, "should stay in the past."
"Indeed," you intoned.
You let her go and she righted herself, using her shawls to dry the floor.
"I'll get a mop," I said, making to get up.
"No, it's fine," said Amethyst. "This is enough."
I glanced at you, but you merely watched her dab at the floorboards, so I sat back down again.
It was after about a minute of silence that she began to speak again.
"I live a simple life," she said. "I go to the roofs to watch the children. I watch over the children in the kindergarten. All of them, all of them, are under my protection, under my wings."
Finally, she finished wiping and looked up at me.
"Yesterday, on the roof, I learned from you that a little girl had gone missing. You even showed me her picture. I thought, how could this be? Were not all the children of this place under my care? I could not understand it. I could not!"
I picked up the woman's cup and filled it with tea then offered it to her. She took it and sipped. Again, the rage subsided.
"So, I decided to look for her. I had failed to protect her, but I could still find her. Save her." She finished the tea and set the cup down beside her then drew her legs under herself. "But I could not find her. I knew her to be here, yet... she was not. I could not understand it, until you helped me to."
She looked again at me.
"You pushed me through the crack in the wall," I said.
"You had found what I could not, and you opened what I could not." She shook her head. "I must confess, it surprised me to be bested by a little dragon."
Earlier that comment would have made my blood boil, yet I found myself oddly calm. I looked down at my teacup then glanced at you.
You sipped your cup and avoided my gaze.
I turned my attention back to Amethyst. "So why did you run?"
"Run?" she asked, confused.
"After we both ended up inside the Coil with the little girl, you grabbed her and started to teleport away, or something, right?"
Amethyst blinked a few times. "I..."
"Perhaps this is where I should continue," you said, setting aside your cup of tea on the table. "Misha, you saw the symbols on the wall and the symbols in Amethyst's blood, am I right?"
Your sudden question took me by surprise, and I took a moment to think. "You mean the little red marks dripping down the wall? Yeah."
"What did they make you think?"
"Make me think...?" I turned the question over in my head. "It made me think that Amethyst here created the Coil and put the girl inside it.
You nodded. "Logical, but incorrect. You are right in thinking they are connected, but the direction of the line you've drawn between them is incorrect."
"Incorrect? How?" I asked.
"It's going in the opposite direction."
"Opposite..." What did that mean? Opposite direction? "You mean... Amethyst's blood came from the Coil?"
"The spell in it did, the one that was compelling her to take the child and run."
Amethyst put a hand to her mouth, seemingly finally understanding what had happened. "I was bewitched..."
"Yes."
"And the same person who did that," I continued, "also made the Coil, am I right?"
"Yes."
"But who was it?" I asked.
Both Amethyst and I looked expectantly at you, eyes wide.
"The little girl," you replied.