The chirping of birds was the first thing that Emilia was aware of, as she came back to consciousness. The second thing she became aware of was the dull ache over her entire body, making her wish she could fall back into that bliss of blank existence. She forced her eyes open as the smell of a cookfire reached her, the sound of the fire and the fain sizzle of something boiling catching her attention. She saw her maidservant, once again dressed in the many layers of a civil servant, white tunic, with the navy-blue over-robes of a maidservant as clean as ever.

  Emilia groaned, as she tried to move an arm, and Nai called out. "I apologize for not removing the paint. I was not sure if there was a ritual needed as part of it's removal. Your goddess is... unusual. I did not wish to offend."

  Nai lifted a shaky hand to her eyes, and saw the white paint still covered her skin, the black lines still giving her the vague appearance of bones. She groaned, forcing her hands to push her upright as she ignored the splitting pain that threatened to part her skull down the middle, holding as still as she could as the mysterious servant stirred the pot on the fire. It looked like rice. Emilia didn't smell anything special about it.

  "How did I..."

  "I ordered one of the woodcutters to carry you. I ensured you were sleeping soundly."

  Nai tapped the spoon against the side of the pot, knocking some grains of rice from the wooden utensil, and the woman paused, turning her head to glance at Emilia. "Would you like a wash-basin?"

  Emilia nodded, and Nai quickly brought one over, sighing as the girl grabbed a scrap of cloth and began to remove the skeletal paint that covered her skin.

  "I believe you now, Emilia-Yun."

  Emilia paused.

  "Believe me? About what?"

  Nai paused, setting the wooden spoon across the pot in a stable position before turning to face her charge, hands folded respectfully in front of her.

  "I believe that you are in fact summoning the spirits of the dead. That somehow, you can contact them and reach out to them."

  Emilia fought the urge to buckle in pain as her headache intensified.

  "You... didn't?"

  Nai pursed her lips.

  "I may have hoped you were lying. Execution for lying to a Jut'layi is brief. A quick beheading, or a willshaper's spell to stop one's heart. But there is no arguing with the truth, once it has become irrefutable. A truth which may place you in infinitely more danger moving forward."

  Emilia registered that Nai was tense, stiff, somehow, and she wasn't sure what to do about that.

  "Thank you."

  "Don't thank me yet, Emilia-Yun." Nai turned back to the pot on the stove, splitting the rice onto the pot into two portions, extending a plate out to the young spirit-guide.

  "You still need to prove to me, and to Hyungjae-Langshen, that these spirits are not restless. I will need to determine that they have in fact returned to the afterlife where they belong."

  Emilia grabbed the plate, surprised when Nai held on to it with a vice-like grip, forcing the girl to meet her gaze.

  "I pray for your sake that they return to their sleep. Emilia." Nai met her gaze, an emotion Emilia did not dare to name burning within their depths. "I hope I do not have to remind you of how creative the Jut'layi's Willshapers can be, should the opposite prove true."

  Emilia said nothing, turned to her bowl of rice, and ate in silence.

  Emilia led the way to the forest at the edge town, passing through the spirit stones for the first time since they had passed through on that first night. Nai sat astride her horse, while Emilia walked hers to the edge of town, leading the reigns before they came up to the edge of the woodland. Low berry bushes bordered the fields, brambles and vines ringing the town, with a few clear paths left behind by woodcutters. Stumps scattered over the landscape, interspersed with new saplings that had clearly been tended to.

  Nai kept her gaze on the trees around them, as their horses passed into the trees, bow in hand as she gripped the reigns, her quiver tied to her saddle, ready to draw an arrow at a moment's notice. Emilia mounted her horse once they were through the saplings, and passed into the forest beyond.

  If you have never entered a true forest, you should know that there are many kinds. Many ways the trees can reach up to the skies, and permit or limit the growth beneath. It is very different passing through a young forest, and an old one. A drastically different thing to pass through towering pine trees, like elegant columns holding up the sky, and through the gnarled roots of a towering jungle. Emilia felt those differences now. She had grown up at the foot of a mountain, where towering pine trees reached for the sky, leaving a mat of needles on the ground, preventing other plants from growing, from challenging them. But importantly, it was bright. She remembered the light filtering through the needles, flitting between the birch trees.

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  This forest was not so friendly.

  The trees around them stretched high enough that they could easily pass underneath the branches astride their mounts, passing along a path that had clearly been used often by the woodcutters. discarded equipment was already being claimed by the vines of the forest, and the air stilled, unable to pass between the leaves of the trees. While Emilia could see a few trees ahead of her at all times, it didn't take long before the path behind them became blocked to her eyes, before there were only endless rows of trees, and dark shadows behind. Ferns sprouted up from the ground around them, interspersed with broad leaved plants that were shedding their leaves in the growing chill as winter approached. Emilia imagined the darkness would have been worse, if it weren't for the changing of the season, as a carpet of orange and red leaves covered the ground round them, crunching under their horses' hooves, but letting the occasional lance of light penetrate into the dark.

  It was, overall, a somber place, and everywhere Emilia looked, sparks of light, or flitting shadows, were constantly on the move, constantly warning that they were being watched - and not necessarily by a being of flesh and bone.

  "This is called the spirit wood, can you sense anything?" Nai asked, as an animal, or, more likely, monster, called out somewhere deeper in the wood.

  Emilia grimaced.

  "I know most Spirit-guides can. I think something about my tie to La-Catrina makes my relationship to them... different. I can't really feel them the way people tell me Spirit-Guides do. I can talk to them, Lady Death has taught me how to handle them, what songs to sing, how to present myself with her authority but..." Emilia patted her horse's mane. "It's different. I guess. That or the other spirit-guides lie about being able to do that, I haven't met enough to say."

  Nai shook her head with a small smile.

  "You and your goddess. Couldn't go and become the shrine maiden to a normal god, like that of a field, or a mountain, or even a forest like Meili'yeostli. No, you had to go and become a shrine-maiden to a goddess of death."

  Emilia raised a finger.

  "Of the dead - not of Death. Xip'oli has solitary domain over that aspect of existence."

  "Then what does your goddess actually do, Emilia-Yun? I have been trying to piece it together through out interactions, and I am, at best, confused."

  Emilia ducked under a low-hanging branch.

  "She protects the souls of the departed. Those who worship her get a bit of a grace period. A delay to their judgement, where they have a chance to continue changing, continue improving."

  Nai frowned, though Emilia couldn't see it.

  "I imagine that Xip'oli cannot be pleased by someone delaying his judgement, and taking his souls."

  Emilia laughed, though she tried to keep it quiet to prevent from bringing down creatures or spirits of this forest upon them.

  "No, no - she cannot keep souls, not forever. She can allow them to stay, as long as someone here, in the land of the living, remembers them."

  Nai stayed quiet for some time as she thought.

  "That's remarkably benign. I remember my ancestors, and... what, give them an offering? I noticed that you requested an item important to each person be brought to the gravesite. That was important, I assume?"

  "Exactly-bah!" Emilia rode right through a spider's web, flailing as she tried to clear it away, eyes squinting to keep from loosing the trail deeper into the woods. "Exactly. At least once a year, the families of the dead should give some kind of offering. Most of us do that anyway, to venerate our ancestors, but in Qua we were taught to share their stories, moments from their lives. The promise, is that as long as we did so, they could remain in the halls of the remembered, where they can feast, dance, laugh, and... live, essentially."

  "Do they have to stay there?"

  Emilia shook her head.

  "No, La-Catrina says many chose to leave early, ready to face judgement, and they pass from her halls, to the halls of Xip'oli. Once someone is forgotten though, once no one living remembers them..." Emilia's face fell. "They have to leave. La-Catrina's power cannot hold them any longer, and they are forced to begin their final journey to the stone hall of Xip'oli."

  "I understand why the practice of the Jut'layi to erase each other's achievements disturbs you so, given the circumstances of your worship."

  Emilia said nothing, but shrugged, and nodded. They entered a particularly treacherous patch of forest, roots twisting up around them, sharp stones sliding off where the forest crept along a hill into some wooded valley they couldn't see.

  "Hence the correction, Nai. I would say La-Catrina is mainly the goddess of the remembered dead. She values community, and she makes great effort to protect people in the living world, because, well... we're the key to her domain. The souls she protects are only under her protection for as long as they can be remembered. If an entire town is destroyed..." Emilia's face fell, as she thought back to the sun-bleached ruins of a town she had encountered roughly a year and a half before. "then an entire town's worth of ancestors must pass with them into the realm of Xip'oli."

  "Is that why you're so dedicated to helping people?" Nai asked, one eyebrow raised. "You could have a very comfortable life, with the divine gifts you've been granted. You're skilled, for your age, and more blessed than most Spirt-Guides who must make deals with multiple lesser gods, rather than what you have done, in securing the favor of one true goddess."

  Emilia smiled at Nai.

  "I just do what I wish others would have done, when the restless came for my village. If I had heard about the troubles of Liyung, there's a small chance i might have come anyway, although it looks like I would have arrived too late to help, given the timing of the Demon's appearance."

  "what is our plan to find Meili'yeostli then? If you cannot sense spirits, how are we supposed to locate her?"

  Emilia grinned.

  "Easy! We find a different spirit first, and ask them for directions."

  "Directions."

  Emilia nodded.

  Nai sighed. "If it's worked for you in the past, I suppose it's worth a try."