Chiyo cut in before Iruga could answer.

  "Reversing shape-shifting is not easy," he said. "But it's not hard either."

  Iruga and Mina both looked at him. The fire sat between them. Chiyo let the silence run for a moment, then added, "It's a good thing I'm someone important."

  He turned his palm upward and held it open. Something appeared in it — small, soft-edged, catching the firelight with a faint luminescence that had nothing to do with the flame. A single slice of peach, pale orange, sitting in the center of his hand like it had always been there.

  "Here you go," he said, and held it out to Mina.

  Mina looked at it. Then at Chiyo. "What is that?"

  "Shut up and eat it. It's a fruit."

  Iruga leaned forward. "What is it though?"

  Chiyo looked at him.

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  "You fuckers are nosy." He exhaled. "Fine. It's a celestial fruit. I'm not entirely sure what it does in every case, but what I know is that it reverts curses and that sort of thing." He paused. "Who knows, you might become immortal too."

  Mina stared at the slice.

  Iruga stared at Chiyo. "Where did you store that?"

  "You talk too much," Chiyo said.

  "You literally conjured a peach from nowhere —"

  "Too much," Chiyo said again, and looked back at the fire.

  Mina regarded the slice in Chiyo's outstretched hand for a long moment. She looked at him — small, borrowed clothes, sitting cross-legged in the dirt — and the expression on her owlbear face was one of profound uncertainty. Then she reached out, carefully, and took it between two large claws.

  She ate it in one bite.

  "Thank you," she said, after a moment. She said it genuinely, which was separate from whether she believed him, and it was clear from her face that she did not entirely believe him.

  Chiyo shrugged. "Don't thank me yet. Wait until morning."

  The fire burned lower. Nobody added wood. One by one the conversation ran out and the dark and the quiet came back in, and the three of them settled into whatever arrangements the ground allowed. Mina folded herself down at the edge of the camp, her bulk curling inward, her eyes closing. Iruga lay back against the elm root and pulled his coat over himself. Chiyo sat for a while longer, watching the coals, and then he too was still.

  The woods held its quiet around them. The fire went to ember.