A Fox's Whisper

17: Ҝ卂乙ㄩ卄卂

When Inari began telling her story, her expression was waxen and hollow. She spoke quietly, her tone giving away no actual desire to say anything at all. But as the tale spun itself, I realized there is a great burden in carrying an untold story inside yourself. And Inari's went something like this...

Six hundred years ago when the world was young and everything acted in accordance with one perfect, unbroken melody, fate decided to weave its strings into an unhappy incident.

At the peak of the winter solstice when Teyvat is coldest and the sun does not linger, all the planets aligned in a solitary moment of syzygy...a perfect sublimation of celestial bodies. There was a single moment when the sun, moon, and the earth lay on the same horizon, and when this happened, the Abyss awoke after centuries of dormancy.

That great yawning chasm of the unknown which lies directly opposite of the sun, being everything the sun is not, stirred. The aligning of the planets conveyed superlunary power into the Abyss, and this consolidation of energy among the shadows took on the form of a kitsune, a creature made entirely of darkness. An accident. Something that was never meant to exist.

It is never said how the kitsune escaped the Abyss, but escape she did, knowing only two things about herself. The first thing was that she was not at all like any other being on earth, and the second was that her life was void. And so she called herself the Void Kitsune.

So it came about that the Void Kitsune wandered Inazuma in search of a home. From sunup to sundown she wandered and at night when she felt loneliest, the shadows would come out to play and dance about her feet. They were the only friends she knew, and when the fox wept from loneliness, the shadows comforted her. They were drawn to the only piece of light she possessed--her star ball.

One day the kitsune wandered through a forest and found a group of haradashi yokai. They were ugly, but they sang and danced in ridiculous ways that were enough to make anyone laugh.

"I am searching for a home," the Void Kitsune explained. "May I join you?"

"Yes, yes!" The haradashi clamored. "Sing with us! Dance with us!"

And so the kitsune did from sunup to sundown. But when the moon had risen and the stars shown above, the kitsune felt horribly homesick for a place she didn't have and her paws hurt from dancing all day.

"This is no place for me," she said. "Goodbye!" And so she left the haradashi and was alone once more with the shadows and the light of her star ball.

It was precisely three days later when the kitsune was wandering along the beach that she found a group of shojo yokai, fat little men who while away their days with drink and song.

"I am searching for a home," the kitsune explained. "May I join you?"

"Of course, of course!" The shojo yelled, and they welcomed her. "Drink with us! Talk with us!"

And so the kitsune did just that from sunup to sundown. But when the sun had set and darkness overtook Inazuma, she felt horribly ill from the stench of sake and her head hurt from the noisy songs of the shojo.

"This is not the place for me..." Thought the kitsune, so she took her leave of the shojo and was alone with the shadows once more.

Three more days passed, and the kitsune wandered close by the capital city of Inazuma. She came across three children playing with paper kites.

"I am searching for a home," the kitsune said. "May I join you?"

But the children, so astonished were they at the sight of a talking fox, fled and left the kitsune all alone. The kitsune wept from her loneliness, her tears falling unsolicited to the earth.