My Short Stories

A Kitsune's Cry

A yowl emanated from the throat of the fox, her long legs quickly losing her assailant. The orange-yellow fur glistened and ruffled as the wind brushed past it. Her amber eyes were narrowed as she ran.

Coming up to a creek, she jumped and, in midair, shifted. Instead of a lean, tawny fox was a young woman with curly orange-yellow hair and burnt orange eyes, full lips and flushed pink cheeks completing her appearance.

She braced her hands on the ground and did a backflip, landing on crouched legs and burst forward as she continued to run. She knew that she had to get to the den before they caught her.

Humans were annoyingly persistent.

She ran and ran, hoping to put more distance between them, not realizing that humans were smarter than she gave them credit for.

She ducked behind a large bush, keeping completely still in case anyone could hear her. She sighed in relief as no strange sounds appeared.

She shifted back into her fox, the size much larger than other foxes. People thought that she was a mutation, but that wasn't true; she was a Kitsune.

In the world of the shifters there are different stages, or levels if you will. A Level Four is a normal animal, one that people see every day. They are the most common of the shifters. Level Threes are also regular animals but enhanced. Instead of a normal wolf they would be a wolf nearly the size of a horse with strange colors and markings on them. They are a lot less common; you find one Level Three shifter in every five Level Four shifter.

Level Twos are animals that have gone extinct; like the saber-tooth tiger and dodo bird and mammoth. You find these kinds of shifters every once in 15 of Level Threes.

But Level Ones are the rarest. There couldn't be more than 100 in the world at one time, whereas there are at least several hundred of even the Level Twos. They are the mythical animals. The most powerful of all the shifters, each able to control one or more of the elements, depending on how they shift. Dragons, unicorns, Kitsunes, griffins and many more mythicals are the Level Ones. Kalama herself can control the element of fire, although fire is very wild, so she did not use it often.

It was a great honor for Kalama to shift into a Kitsune on her 10th birthday because of how incredibly rare they were.

Unfortunately, when shifters came out into the world, some humans rebelled. They said that shifters were merely animals and began capturing them and selling them to others as pets. More and more humans agreed and helped capture more shifters until a law passed that no shifter could be captured unless they lived in the wild or were not registered as shifters. Those kinds of humans were chasing Kalama now.

She carefully and quietly padded out from her place behind the bush, looking around to make sure that no humans were in sight since she was upwind and unable to smell anything downwind. She relaxed as her examination passed.

Suddenly, a net cast over Kalama. She yowled in surprise and alarm, hoping that any from her family might hear and come to help.

She thrashed and kicked, struggling to get away from the net, but the human was prepared. They swiftly tangled Kalama in the net so much she was barely able to move, and then, in one quick movement, they attached a collar on her neck.

A collar?! Kalama practically screeched in her mind. They put a collar on me?

A snarl rumbled from her chest as Kalama reached for her flame, preparing to destroy the net and burn the human alive for this.

She called out to the fire and. . .

Nothing.

Nothing happened. No flame came, not even a little spark. She was alarmed to feel not even the tiniest bit of heat inside her.