"Experienced?"

"Yes, experienced."

Philomel blinked, before letting out the breath her body needed and forced herself to relax right back.

It was fine. She was safe. Clearly the matron of this inn downstairs had immediately acted when Philomel had fainted. Somehow she had got her up here, and at some point Sakura had come to assist. Likely Veridian had shown them where one of Philomel's six stashes of coin were. Glancing down she saw that her dirty blouse had been removed, and someone had placed it with a cleaner tunic. Aside from that she had no other clothes on. Just the crossed hooves beneath her of her own legs.

"Where is my ...?" she asked, a hand going to her belt.

The question, being unrelated entirely to that which Philomel had asked before, made Sakura pause and be taken aback.

"Your ..." she furrowed her brow for a moment before realising what the gesture meant. "Ah, your luggage you mean? Yes, it is right ..."

She did not get up but she gestured under the bed. With a small strain of her neck Philomel could just peer past the edge of the piece of furniture and spy the end of a sheathed sword poking out the end of a tightly twisted told of material. Nodding once to herself, she looked back up to Sakura and asked another question, still unrelated to the original topic.

"Veridian?"

A pause. "Your kitsune? He is downstairs, apparently trying to order food. Apparently he writes?"

An image, all too familiar, of Veridian with a quill in his mouth, scratching out words on a piece of parchment, however rudimentary, came to Philomel's mind. She nodded.

"Yes, he does. Awful hand though. Seeing as he has only his mouth to do it with."

Sakura blinked. Clearly she had not been expecting an answer like that.

"But he is a fox?"

"He is clever," Philomel shrugged. And offered no further information. Not that he was an earth-spirit, anything. The geisha would simply have to put up with that.

"Right."