Si'Wren looked up at him in involuntary surprise, and when he smiled further encouragement, she bowed low, and raised herself again to full upright sitting posture.
After a moment's awkward hesitation, she dropped her eyes shyly as, unsmiling, she reached back with both hands, her countenance downcast in deep modesty, and self-consciously undid the tie that held her long braid secure at the end.
She played her fingers through her hair, unraveling it until it fell loosely across her shoulders and she was able to shake it out in a glossy reflective black that shone with red-orange highlights from the dancing flames.
Tired from the day's riding, she gazed again into the fire pit, feeling infinitely more relaxed by the loosening of her braid and secretly gnawing a corner of her lip in unconscious self-doubt. First she was instructed to eat in her tent so as not to unduly arouse the troops, and now—this. She did not know quite what to make of it.
"The Invisible God who hates idols," said Emperor Euphrates. He paused thoughtfully, before going on. "Is he not like unto this fire before us, a 'living fire', as it were?"
Si'Wren frowned at this new idea. Then, after a long hesitation, she finally wrote on her clay tablet, 'It is possible', and tilted the face of the tablet so the fire itself could illuminate it.
"Then, is not the Invisible God the same thing as our very own Sun God?" asked Emperor Euphrates quickly, as if pouncing on the winning point of a most cleverly-worded argument.
'Not so', wrote Si'Wren, without hesitation.
She showed this to Emperor Euphrates. Then she turned the tablet towards herself, and wrote further upon it. Finally, she turned it towards Emperor Euphrates again.
'The Invisible God,' Si'Wren had now written, 'in Whom, like water, all things are reflected, is the Creator of all things. But if He made all things, then He must be higher than all things or idols.'