The Twilight Transformation
The sun dips below the Western Hills of Kyoto, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and gold. In a small, overgrown shrine dedicated to Inari, a fox wakes from its slumber. It is not an ordinary animal. Its fur glows with the soft luminescence of starlight, and behind it fan not one, but nine tails.
This is the Kitsune, a spirit of supreme intelligence and magical power. Today is the night of the Gion Matsuri, the great festival. The air is thick with the smell of roasting squid and sweet bean paste. For a spirit who delights in the sensory world of humans, the temptation is irresistible.
Transformation is a delicate art. Placing a reed leaf on its head, the fox focuses its will. Bones shift and lengthen with a sound like rustling silk. Fur retracts, smoothing into pale skin. In a heartbeat, the creature is gone. In its place stands a young woman in a yukata patterned with autumn leaves. Beautiful as she is, her eyes retain a golden, predatory slit.
The Streets of Celebration
Into the city she walks. The streets have become a river of humanity, lit by thousands of paper lanterns. Drums beat a rhythm that resonates in her chest. Moving through the crowd like smoke, she remains untouched and unnoticed.
To be a Kitsune is to live in two worlds. Humans appear to her not just as flesh and blood, but as bundles of desire and fear. A young man praying for luck at a stall catches her eye. Further down, a merchant cheats a customer on the price of a mask.
A food stall beckons. The scent of aburaage—deep-fried tofu—is overpowering. It is the favorite food of all foxes. Buying a skewer, her movements are graceful and precise. The vendor blushes as he hands it to her, unaware he is serving a creature who was old when his great-grandmother was born.
The Game of Shadows
She is not here merely to eat. A trickster by nature, a festival without mischief is like a drum without a beat.
A group of samurai—or men pretending to be samurai, loud and drunk on sake—bully a stray dog near an alleyway. Dust flies as they kick at the animal, laughing at its fear.
Cruelty to her distant cousins is something the Kitsune does not abide. Stepping into the alley, she does not need to draw a sword. A simple exhalation of kitsune-bi, or fox-fire, is enough.
Blue wisp-lights manifest in the air around the men. They dance and flicker, taking the shapes of angry goblin faces. The men freeze. The temperature in the alley drops twenty degrees. One of the men screams as a blue flame touches his sword hilt, making it freezing cold to the touch. Weapons clatter to the ground as they flee, sobering up instantly in their terror.
Smiling behind her fan, the Kitsune watches them run. The dog barks once in gratitude and scampers away.
The Unwelcome Discovery
As the night deepens, the crowd grows rowdier. Navigating toward the riverbank, the Kitsune seeks a moment of peace.
A shadow detaches itself from the darkness. An old monk, leaning on a staff, blocks her path. The scent of incense and old paper clings to him.
"The disguise is good," he says, his voice raspy. "But your shadow betrays you, Spirit."
Looking down in the light of the full moon, she sees the truth. Her shadow is not that of a woman in a yukata. It is the silhouette of a nine-tailed fox.
An illusion of a sudden gust of wind answers him. Leaves swirl around them, obscuring vision. When the leaves settle, the woman is gone. The monk is left standing alone, holding a single autumn leaf that was not there a moment before.
The Return to the Wild
The festival winds down. Lanterns dim, and the last revelers stumble home. The Kitsune returns to the shrine in the hills.
Dropping the human form brings a sigh of relief. Walking on two legs and suppressing the urge to chase mice is exhausting work. Shaking out her fur, all nine tails fluff up in the cool night air.
Curling up at the base of the stone fox statue, her true kin, she rests. Her belly is full of tofu. The wicked have been punished, and the wise confused. It has been a good night.
Golden eyes close. Tomorrow might bring the role of a scholar, or a lost child, or simply a fox sleeping in the sun. But tonight, she drifts into dreams where the lanterns never go out and the tofu is always crisp.
