A fox wakes up in a cheerful forest clearing. She feels like she just had the best night of sleep ever. There are distant, muddled memories of something else, but this body feels natural and whole.

There are berry bushes, and yellow daffodills, and wild rice rustling gently in the wind, and cedar and pine trees surrounding the little clearing, and the sounds of rabbits and mice in the low grass, clear and distinct to a fox's sensitive ears.

"Mrrrmp?"  She streeeeeeetches, yawning.

Something about this feels like it should be happening to her sister - what does that even mean?  - but the berries are sweet and her instincts are functional and her body knows more about how to survive than she does.  Yet.  She will be learning.  And that is a threat.  (To whom?  About what?  She doesn't know yet.  She'll find out.)

The berries are bright yellow and are extremely sweet, with a faint hint of something almost citrus to them.

...Also: Was she sleeping... out in the open... in the middle of the woods?!  That's just wrong.  Time to go look for somewhere to dig a den!  She's probably going to be here for a while!

It's old growth. There's lots of downed logs, root hollows, low bushes, churned ground, and other scrub that would get in the way of something bigger. Depending on what exactly she wants from a burrow spot, one can probably be found. 

...Actually. Maybe avoid that one direction. It smells ominous and faintly evil. Albeit not in a very active way.

...Yeeeeeahhhh avoiding the smell that makes her hindbrain go !!DANGER!!, even if it's more like !danger! right now, is just... good sense.  ...She should find somewhere not too near water, but not too far from a nice flowing river...  (Why does it matter that the river's flowing?  ...Reasons?  Something is very insistent that flowing water is probably safer than not-flowing water.  If there's not [- ---- -------] --????  ...That's weird.)

But having somewhere where the tunnels can't be much bigger than her is pretty good, actually.  ...Ideally somewhere she can duck under something and vanish.  And come out somewhere else, if she's lucky.

A good hour or two's wandering will produce a rough map: In the center, the little clearing. To the northeast, the bad smell. In the east, a lot of relatively stagnant water and wetlands. It's flowing, but slowly. To the south, a rockier and more barren area, and a proper creek flowing clear over water-smoothed stones. It's quite pretty. The trees change to tall crowning oaks with less undergrowth over to the west, it's quiet out there.

...Definitely not the wetlands.

There's some part of her that thinks she might be able to Do Something with the rocks.  ...She'll figure out precisely what she could do with the rocks later.  Right now...

Right now she's just going to let her instincts look for where the best spot for a den might be.  The things in the back of her head don't seem to have much input.

...Which way is the river flowing?

The river is flowing east, into the wetlands.

The soft soil on a hillside would be good. Taking over an existing burrow would be fine, especially if it can have multiple exits as a backup plan, as long as it's actually abandoned. There are multiple spots that seem fine for digging, but the best... The oak grove by the rocks is the most readily tangled and burrow-y already, and is relatively near the river while being far from the swamp. Plus, there are squirrels nearby, and they smell delicious.

...Yeah, that seems like a good spot to start a burrow.

She'll take a sniff for any abandoned-smelling burrows, first, though.  Better to have something to start with.

There's a few empty ones scattered around, one in the clearing she woke up in even, but none in the ~ideal spot~. Also, she gets to meet the local badger! It hisses at her, but nothing more so long as she keeps a distance. What fun.

...Yes, fun, that is how she would describe that, not.

...Well.  Time to start digging!

Digging is strangely easy, in addition to being satisfying to some deep part of her that wants to be snug and safe and sleepy.

[I'm a fox and I'm dig-ging a hole; diggy diggy hole, dig-ging a hole,]

...?!

It doesn't stop her from digging, but she will never admit that she bonked directly into the ceiling in her surprise at whatever that was.

Something from the other things in her head...  Sounds, with meanings, meanings beyond those simple things her instincts already recognize.

Strange.

She needs to know more.  She doesn't know how she could know more, yet.  But she'll find out.

(But right now, she needs to dig.)

Nothing disturbs her as she digs.

...Then there will, time and food permitting, be a rather impressive tunnel network starting to exist around her new den - perfect for ducking through if she's being chased, sometimes even mazelike.  [Like that thing with the soldiers and the tunnels through the mountains.]  ...Why does she know any of that?

Eventually, though, curiosity takes her upriver, because [Most towns start out built around rivers] and [If there are humans near here, we need to know where they're coming from and where they'll go.  If, and what, they hunt.  What they hunt with.  ...It's a risk to go near them.  But to have them surprise us would be worse.].

Food is plentiful, and so is time. It seems to be late spring verging into summer, and the heat and long days inspire a sort of lazy vibe to the world. All is well. Survival is not a struggle, with many subtle advantages over a true fox- Not to mention the boon of intelligence.

A viable path upriver requires wending southwest through the rocky areas for a while, then back east- Or swimming across the river, which is not too strenuous, but does leave one soaked.

The first sign of habitation is about an hour's walk upriver. A field of reeds, cut, soaked, and laid out in neat rows on the riverbank to dry. They've also cleared out some of the overgrowth here, with sandal marks and cutting marks from hand tools visible. Also, the smell of them is kind of unmistakable. Not unpleasant, maybe even slightly pleasant, but definitely unmistakable as 'human'... And maybe some cats, too?

The river water is cool, and it is hot.  She'll go for a swim; why not?

Interesting.

-- foxes are cat software on dog hardware --

That's rather irrelevant right now, surely --

Not exactly.  Cats domesticated themselves.  Foxes can be domestic too.

There's a few other random tools around- What might be some kind of brick mold? A wooden shovel. And a large sieve. Some baskets, halfway completed weaving.

--Oh, there's the people here. A woman up at the north end of the clearing, in a rough cloth tunic and sandals, with a flint axe, carrying a stack of firewood pieces. Plus a child maybe five or six slightly struggling to carry a handbasket laden with some sort of vegetable and some mushrooms. They're chattering away at each other happily enough, the kid babbling in the rambly way kids do and the mother indulgently responding, but... She doesn't understand the language at all. It sounds vaguely Asian?

Of course it does, I've been isekaied.  Why wouldn't it be Asiatic.  Aside from the concurrent question of how that happens.

Well!  Time to see if she can learn by observing the language the hard way.  When she has time.  Wonder if I know any of it.  ...Oh, gods, not ideograms.  I do not want to memorize seven bajillion characters for each individual word I might want to write!

The village is called 'Kua', with a down-and-up sort of tone (it's a tonal language)... Though that might just be the word for 'place' or 'home' or something. There's about eighty people, with solid palisade walls and a scattering of fields and foraging/forestry areas. The houses and construction and most of the tools are wood and flint, but there's some copper and iron around, too. A few times she's spotted, bright orange fox coloration sticking out against the forest's green and grey and brown. People treat the sight with... Vague indifference, really. A few adults will shoo her away, others won't care. One time, an eight-year-old sitting on a low stone wall will spend however long she'll tolerate the game tossing berries for her to acrobatically catch and giggling. Listening to parents talk to their small children is perhaps the best way to actually learn- 'Got your nose!' is fairly universal.

She identifies a total of four people with magic! One man is a waterbender, or something quite like it, and uses this power to fill cisterns on roofs while humming cheerfully. One woman will do little rituals and charms, incense or herbs or embroidered paper (...It does seem to be a complex character based language, unfortunately). They don't do anything really dramatic but she can feel the subtle power to them. One old lady has some sort of cleaning magic, or possibly a magic broom- A gaggle of teens assembly-line clothes and rugs and the like to her. She bops them with a raggedy old broom and all the dust magically falls away in a little pile, and they fold it and return it to others. Lastly, there's someone who has what seems like proper book magic. It involves a lot of drawing in the dirt or on chalkboards and careful positioning of his hands and rhythmic chanting and frequently checking a slightly raggedy scroll. He seems to mostly use it to repair tools and other small objects.

Oh gods preserve her, tones.  That's even worse.  She's in fantasy not!China.  She was only braced for fantasy not!Japan.

At least she has reasonably good hearing.  And - she hadn't noticed she had human color vision, still, taking the existence of colors like orange for granted - but she has human color vision.  Not the colorblindness she vaguely recalls seeing charts of gradients about.  What the fuck.  That's weird.

...Does anybody recognize the English alphabet, if it's scratched out in the dirt by a paw (overnight)?  It's a long shot, but until she figures out what the actual fuck is going on...  She may as well take long shots.

Scroll Magic Guy spends a while WTFing over the alphabet!

...Then Scroll Magic Guy finds that there are More Letters the next day, and a fox!

CAN YOU READ THIS?

Apparently he can't. He does very carefully copy both sets of writing down into a loose-leaf paper with a fountain pen.

...Except, ahhhhh. A fox. Upon observing her standing near the writing he seems to come to a big realization.

He bows and says some things in a more formal register than usual. "Good morning, ------ Fox. -------- Kua is ------- --- ------- --- you."

...She tries to emote moderate confusion, though she does wave a paw -- actually, no, she'll just...

Give her a minute, she's doing art.

stick-figure speech-bubble some-random-imitated-characters; fox, fox thought-bubble same-characters but crossed out, fox thought-bubble English SOME WORDS; stickfigure thoughtbubble SOME WORDS, cross out, questionmark-with-inquisitive-headtilt?

What is 'strength rice rest' supposed to mean?? Is it some sort of joke? It it just nonsense? ...Is that 'rice', instead, 'fertility'? ......He regrets that he does not really understand. (In slightly overwrought formal speech.)

Some other villagers are curious what's going on now and coming over to gawk at a distance. There's a conversation that includes a compound word (something-Fox) several times. She hears, distinctly, the name 'Tamamo'.

...Right.  This is...  Even less comprehensible.

Maybe if she just...

...hm.  Maybe if she does the Three Monkeys?  Is that European?  No, can't be, that's not native -

Um.  Anyway.

She can't really draw monkeys with just her paws...

She might try grawlixes instead.

...Yeah.  That could work.

Human-figure speech-bubble random-characters (not in the same order!)  Arrow from the speech bubble to an intermediate speech bubble filled with nonsense-shapes like ring planets and the @ symbol and suchlike.  Arrow from that to a fox-head's ear.

Fox-head now gets a speech bubble of its own with WHY THIS, because honestly she needs to vent.  Then she draws an arrow from that to the grawlix-bubble, and she draws an arrow from that to the stickfigure.  And then she considers, and tries to be very visibly disrupting the last-mile arrows.

...hang on, what?  Tamamo?  As in Tamamo-no-Mae?

That's Japanese!

Unless it isn't.  Or rather isn't just.  (Or her memory's wrong and it's Chinese, but she doesn't fucking think so.)

That would explain why fox, of all creatures, if she's actually a kitsune...  Or a huli-jing, but she doesn't have Mysterious Liver Cravings.

Considering that there is magic here, maybe she should pick a god and pray.

Buuuuut that might be best saved for later.  Someone who's willingly painting herself the trickster-fox is probably a bad invocation here.  Misunderstandings are, after all, funny according to comedy.  Best not to risk it.

Scroll Guy is still dutifully copying things down but doesn't seem to be any closer to understanding. Some of the kids are inspired to doodle in the dirt too!

...What if Scroll Guy draws a little group of doodle monsters, all spikes and teeth and goop, and makes a point of looking around anxiously and then gesturing at her?

Headshake headshake!  ...Hmm...  Headtilt consideringly...

She adds stink-lines to his drawing, and the fox-face symbol she has been using for herself sniffing at those stench marks and making a yuck face?  ...She will, after a moment, tap the yuckface-notemoji, and make an actual face as best she can.

If it looks like he's following that, she will then add -

-- oh, hey, she could use the trigrams to at least get started, if only she knew which ones were which.  Maybe she could try anyway?  Even if she doesn't have --

...Assuming they replicate here.

Anyway, as she was saying, if he's following that, she will draw him an approximate map - relying on the sunrise-sunset to place a compass rose, as imprecise as that must be - and point out the approximate region of the Stinky Area - though she doesn't want to oversell her confidence, here...  Another considering headtilt.

How to communicate...

...Hmm.

...Okay, she's not, actually, sure if she can communicate this unambiguously.  But she's going to try, anyway.

...She draws a sunrise-sunset cycle.

Then she draws a foxface under that sunrise-sunset cycle.

Then she starts making a tally of the days it's been.

Then - having preserved space to allow her to do exactly thus - she circles the first tally mark, and draws the fox-smells-stinky-yuck, and circles the most recent tally marks, and draws....  Well, a very, artistically lackluster, hut, and some stickfigures, to taste.  Plus a fox.  Can't forget the fox.

(...Dear gods, her poor paws.  She wants her hands back.)

So the kitsune saw monsters a few days wandering up north, downriver? And is obviously foreign of some kind. Or at least having fun tricking them into thinking that. Or possibly is lying about all this or some other sort of elaborate deception. They'll have to be wary; Kitsunes are often helpful, but sometimes extremely nasty.

...Anyway, alright. Good to know. An old granny type brings out a plate of roasted pork and rice with soy sauce for her. She sets it down unhesitatingly, ignoring the slightly wary comments from everyone else.

...Oh, goodness, she wasn't really expecting this... (Inasmuch as a fox can have a very surprised face, this one is doing that!)  ...She'll have to do something nice for this sometime.  ...You know, when she has things like "hands" and "actual language knowledge".  And, hopefully, magic powers.  ...She really needs to put that further on the front burner; if she's going to be a fox for long periods of time it would behoove her to be a fox who can move things with her mind.

...She's not putting the old lady out by partaking, she hopes, but she can't even ask.  She can only be given this gift, and hope that they won't come to regret it.

...She hopes that they know enough about cats to know that rubbing up against someone's legs like this is cat for "we're friends", as long as she's correctly informed about that herself.

Yep, that seems to be recognized as a friendly gesture. Mrs. Grandma Type is now telling a rambly story about... Well, only maybe one word in ten is recognizable, maybe about her children? But it's a comforting sort of background noise.

(Scroll Guy is pacing, frowning in thought. Many of the other villagers are returning to work, farming, weaving, collecting wood- There's never a shortage of it!)

...She just parks herself there and listens anyway, no matter that she can hardly understand a word.  You have to be kind to the little old ladies.  You just gotta.

The story seems to have a happy ending! The old lady looks like she's considering petting her a couple of times, but apparently decides against it.

...Scroll Guy comes back with a sketch on his paper of various concepts they've been trying to communicate with character labels next to them- Days, wandering, the emotions of happiness and disgust, and the different languages.

Then, expressed via a fairly lengthy and halting sketch-and-label routine: English letters and this guy (distinguished by his square hat) scratching his head. Local characters and Scroll Guy nodding in understanding.

Wandering many days: Dozens and dozens of scrolls on a shelf, and then more and more shelves, and three guys with fancier hats.

Two possible outcomes, uncertain which: Fancy Hat looks at the letters and scratches his head, and Fancy Hat looks at the letters and nods in understanding.

Her fur is very soft.  She wouldn't mind.  She was chronically touchstarved in her old life.

And then, The Return Of Scrolls Guy.

...Considering headtilt!  Decisive nod.

...She is going to introduce him to the question mark, gods help her.  She points at the confused-square-hat-guy picture, then draws her own; square-hat-guy, AEIOU, and a couple of question marks above his head.  (Well, a little above, a little to the left.)

Yep, they can agree that this strange marking means confusion, at least.

...Snow - leaf - sun - leaf is a year. Here is something that happened before and after. Here are characters for big and small. Here are some numbers, one through twelve, and then it switches to a decimal system. Twenty thirty etc. Hundred, two hundred etc.

Then he writes out a short passage in Roman Alphabet-style letters, if slightly weird ones- 'Empire ea Tirra - Dominet u Natura ea Printa u Militar'

And under that in the local characters, 'very big village, three thousand years before'.

(When the numbers come up, she reciprocates with 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, 100, 1,000...)

She tilts her head at the not-Latin, consideringly.

...Now how the hell did that get here?

She shakes her head, but then does the headtilt again.

She then tries: Latin?!

...Yes, the exclamation point is entirely superfluous here, but dammit, she's earned an interrobang!

Then she adds more, mostly in native characters except where the words simply aren't available.  (...She hopes this guy knows what a comma is.  It will help him, immensely, to get even hints of distinctions.)

Fox no before 'Empire ea Tirra'.  Fox before, no 'Empire ea Tirra'.

Fox no 'Latin'.  Fox yes 'English'.  'English' '2,000' year after fox 'Latin'.  Fox very ??? 'Latin?' (before after) day after 'English'.  'English' very yes before.  Very big village village yes 'English'.  No village yes 'Latin' 0 year before fox.  [speech-bubble containing a random character] ??? very yes before.  'Latin' very small.

Fox no 'ea Empire'.  Fox ??? 'ea Tirra'.  Fox very very very wander small before!  Fox wander? thirty days before, fox wander? zero days, fox ??? wander very very very very years!

(It should be noted that the 'parenthetical' in the above text is actually "Alicia circles them in an attempt to indicate 'present'".)

...She'll just do...  One more thing, too.

Fox very ????

Fox before wander? no fox.  Fox before wander?, human.  Fox before, no human very yes yes wander?.

??? wander? ?

........No, there's really nothing coherent he can confidently get out of this. It's guesses upon guesses upon uncertainty.

"I -----------, ------ Fox, no understand. You are not of the Empire of Tirra? Village give fox more words?" He illustrates 'words' by pointing to several different characters and making an all-encompassing hand motion.

The questions get a nodding fox!  ...The "no understand" gets a frustrated, but - resigned, perhaps - fox noise.  'Fox understand you no understand.  Fox ??? more words, yes.  Fox ??? = fox no word, fox maybe no word.  Fox understand of words of 'Latin?' more.  Fox no understand 'Latin', no understand 'Latin?'.  Fox understand 'English'.  'English' after 'Latin', fox no understand of 'Latin?' after 'English'.  Fox no understand of -'

...Hm.

She doesn't understand how this came to be.

'Fox no understand of fox understand of 'Latin?' + you.  Fox wander very very very very much.  Fox wander more wander ??? fox understand.  Fox ? of the understand.  Very very very big wander = no understand.  Very very very big wander no = understand.  Fox understand.  Fox no understand of fox understand.'

'Fox ???', she taps it, '= Two big ??? one.  One small ??? two.  You understand?'

"...No understand. Apology." (Given context, the meaning of that one word she's heard him say a lot is probably 'apology', anyway.)

Pacing pacing.

"...You do not understand why you yes understand Tirra? I do not understand that. Tamamo ---- --------- ---." And he shrugs.

Nodding nodding nodding at the question - and then, Tamamo.

She yips at him.

'Fox understand of 'Tamamo',' she writes, claws digging sharply in emphasis.  'Fox understand of 'Tamamo' before fox wander of 'Tirra'.  Fox no understand of you understand 'Tamamo'.  'Tamamo' of fox much yes of 'Tamamo' of 'Tirra'.  'Tamamo' of fox no -'

'Fox no words.'

'Fox word of - fox yes of fox?  Fox no of human?  Words of?'

He takes a step back at the yip.

"...Tamamo is a ----. ---- are not human, or foxes. They are very [something she's only seen on a talisman]... Words... Not enough."

...A long sigh. "We wander, find person who has 'magic'* of yes yes words many words. -Ah, 'magic' is-" 

He scrolls through his scroll, finds something, and then waves and chants. There is a little pulse of light.

"That is 'magic'."

*new word

...Many things she could try to say go through her head, but she decides against them.

'Fox understand, Tamamo no of fox of fox.  Tamamo of fox fox fox.  Tamamo of fox human.  ...Fox no words of ???, fox big words of of.'

...Anyway.

'Magic.  Magic of many words many yes.  Fox wander, ??? you no wander, you of village?  Fox no of village.  Fox wander.  Village no less of no fox.  ...You -' she gestures, and pantomimes writing, '?  Of fox?  Fox many no of village of less of of fox.  ...Village big of you wander of fox?'

".......I write and a big child wander give write to not here village."

She nods.  'Yes.'  Better plan.

It's really nice to have a solid plan formed to deal.with the confusing trickster spirit!! ...He'll just go and get started on that, then.

....Oh, that old lady has found a hairbrush from somewhere and seems to be asking if she'd like to be brushed.

...She would be so offended at being called a trickster spirit if she was reading his mind right now.  But she isn't, so she isn't.  (On the other hand, she is definitely very confusing!)

...As for the brushing...  Yes, actually, she would like that pretty please, how would little old lady like to do this?  (...She'll just.  Try and get her paws clean, really quick, in case this process involves laps.)

(...Gods, she really needs to do something nice for this woman.  She just doesn't know what the heck she could possibly do.  Unless there are different instincts than the fox ones with something to say about this?  ...She doesn't think that's very likely, though.  She hasn't figured out any magic things yet.)

The process Miss Grandma has in mind does seem to involve her lap. ...Well, it sort of seems like having her tail touched with hands might be a bit... Personal? Brushing is fine, anyway. Her tail is somewhat sleeker, longer, and thinner than other foxes' tails, but it's still eminently brushable. And prehensile, if she hasn't notice that before.

...Well of course it's personal, intimacy is by its very nature.  She wouldn't let just anyone touch her unless they're pretty girls down hormones, you don't even have the right body for that!

But this little old lady has - it's not transactional, it's not "do this much niceness to earn the right to touch fluffy tail", but - the kindness and consideration and unflinching acceptance she has shown has nonetheless earned her the liberty of at least this.

Tail-brushing can go on steadily for a little while, then. She has nothing more important to be doing. (Some of the village's residents are still looking towards her, curiously, between bits of their daily labors.)

...Ohh, that feels ...very nice.  Gods, she doesn't know how she went without for this long.

...She's just going to be curled up in this lady's lap, purring softly - lost in her own little world, until things start to bother her again.

Eventually, the brushing stops.

The sun is high in the sky; An hour or two has passed. Miss Grandma- Who does have a name, it's Xia Ren- Starts gently nudging her and taking about how she needs to go somewhere else.

Of course; she'll just carefully extract herself from - oh, goodness, she can't remember the Chinese honorific for the life of her, even if it's probably going to be accurate to this not-Chinese she's dealing with as the vague memories of that one Monty Python joke are to the not-Latin - well, she can think it in English anyway, it's fine - honored grandmother Xia Ren's lap.  ...She is very thankful for the time she was given.

...Has Books Guy written his letter, yet?

Scroll Guy has written a letter and dispatched it via an energetic teenage girl who's delighted to have an excuse to run instead of weeding. Not that she'll know this without asking.

She's going to find him, at least.  Hopefully once that happens he will tell her.

He's apparently preparing an elaborate diagram in the dirt around a row of five felled logs. Deep in thought double checking the giant circle and the angles of the odd glyphs scattered around it. He doesn't notice her at first.

...She is going to watch him and be very careful to not disturb the process.

He measures things out with weights on strings and what is recognizable as other geometry tricks, making sure the placement is very exact, down to a degree or less. There are over a dozen sigils, and he starts on the next after sufficient scrutinizing and checking (and double-checking the scroll nearly religiously). He looks to be about halfway around the circle, if the same number of glyphs go on each side?

This is very interesting.  ...She wonders how small you could make a circle if you did chipfabbing techniques at it.

When he finishes the current glyph, he notices her and startles and looks worried. Then composes himself and bows again.

"I write and large child go, in past. Two days maybe other village write here."

...!!?!  This was Not The Plan!

"Big small human wander [which way]?', she avoids getting anywhere near his ritual circle.  'Fox wander.  No monsters."

"Big small human wander [south]*."

He points; The direction is further upriver.

*new word

...Then she is going to go that way and catch up to the child travelling alone as soon as reasonably possible!

There's a well-beaten dirt road! She can smell whoever ran down it earlier, it's a pretty fresh scent trail. She does not immediately catch up.

(She does pass a little graveyard with a torii gate at the entrance, which feels... Magical in some way. There's a couple of floaty blue lights in there!)

...She will investigate that... later.  Although, considering the Aesthetic, she has a few guesses and they're all flavors of ghost.

She just hopes they're friendly ghosts and not evil ghosts.  They look a lot like wisps though so she's hopeful they're not going to be banshees.  Even though there's no way that visual association holds.

(...if this is Not-China then how did torii get here?  Cross-pollination from the local not-Japan?  Do they just have appearances in China that she's not aware of?  She's pretty sure torii are more Shinto than anything even if she doesn't know that for sure...  ...Does China have Shinto?  She'll never know, she supposes.)

She can catch up enough to see, on a particularly straight stretch, a teenage girl of maybe fourteen sprinting down the path ahead.

...Whew, that kid's fast.

She has her goal in sight, though!  And she'd never forgive herself if this kid got eaten by a grue!  So she puts on a bit more speed.

She doesn't quite catch up before the kid reaches the next village over; It's quite similar to the first one, if a bit more established, more populated. There are more stone buildings.

Kid goes straight to the big castle-like pavilion structure in the center of town.

...Please tell her she can at least just follow the kid where she's going, without - causing upset, or snarling up traffic, or doing any Parkour(tm) - for attempting to navigate a sufficiently clogged human-scale traffic artery while in the form of a small fox would merit the capital letter.

This place isn't a city; It's a small town at best. There's plenty of room. There's also a trail of people who react to her, foxlike, passing by. Even if there are other animals on the street. A fox in a hurry attracts attention.

Kid is currently: Proudly presenting the letter to one of the two guard types at the castle-pavilion-thing!

There is now a fox with the kid!  Gently poking them with a paw, in fact.

...She is, honestly, inclined to dramatically overact exhaustion once she has their attention, because it would be kind of funny.  But she decides against it; she just waves, instead.

(And pants, tongue lolling out, for real.  Because that really was a workout.  Good grief, what did they feed this girl?  Or is this fox things being fox things and humans being persistence hunters as usual?)

Kid grins down at her and ruffles her ears like a dog!

Guard seems a little concerned after the kid explains that this is the '----- fox' (the compound word pretty clearly by now means 'kitsune' or something like that), but there's a brief discussion...

And then kid is pointing off in a new direction. "The ------- is over there!"

The kitsune cannot help but grin back!  And give a bit of a headbump.  Scritches good.

Now to the translator-mage-person!  Hopefully!

There's a shrine, within the town borders but near the edge of it. There are nine little statues in a garden, and two small closed-off buildings, and an offering bowl.

There's a priestess. She just gives off really priestess vibes, almost glowy, even if her looks don't quite match the locals. The kid presents the letter again, and the priestess reads it. She smiles beatifically. There's a wave of - something - and -

"Of course I can speak to kitsunes! If this little one went through all that effort trying to explain something, it must be important, yes?" (It's still in this language, whatever it is, but somehow she understands it when this woman speaks.)

...She's just going to try intending to say a thing.  While also making noises.  With her face.  ...Kitsune instincts don't fail her now!

"Oh thank goodness you can understand me.  Or at least you can say things and I can understand you.  I don't know if I'm doing this right.  Hi I am apparently a tiny baby kitsune and I am very very lost.  Like 'not even on the same planet maybe' lost.  Like 'does anybody speak English' - er, my native language - 'lost'.  Also I am very confused, because if this isn't my planet, there are too many things that look like they've descended from it.  Tamamo has a precedent from Earth!  The chances of there being two goddesses associated with kitsune that independently arrived at the name...  I mean the one from Japan was called Tamamo-no-Mae, that's something that isn't the same here as far as I have been able to be aware -- But as far as I know Earth didn't have magic!  ...Unless it did and it was just too low-level to be noticed, there have been weird moments of possibly-prophecy in my family line...  Okay so maybe there was magic upon further review but that still doesn't explain how in the heck the cultures line up so easily -

"I'm getting way ahead of myself."

"Erm.  Um.  Introductions?

"I'm not actually sure this is my name but I prodded the thing that feels like it names people in my procedural memory and it spat out 'Alicia Vaudelle'.  ...Which is a bunch of untranslateable sounds, so if I need a name that has actual meaning in the local language for whatever reason I'd like to know now before I go around introducing myself with it?  Assuming that's even going to happen anytime soon.  I know nothing about how this works in practice." 

"No need to wrack your memory so urgently, little one. There's no hurry for you right now. Would you two like to have tea in the shrine?"

(Running Girl decides this is... Acceptable. Even if she can't understand the kitsune.)

"Ancient history is - well, much is lost. But old Tirra came from old Earth, yes, though none now know how to return, and Tamamo is the eldest kitsune, who long ago transcended the barrier between spirit and divinity. She is a goddess, with all that implies. She fought the empire during its awful fall."

"...this is why you don't try to resurrect ancient Rome, for crying out loud, it does that.

"But also, I am absolutely just like this, even if - well.  Just knowing that you know has taken a lot of the bite out of things.

"...Space travel..."

"...I am not going to turn up anything useful from that.  It was never a special interest.  I might be able to name a couple planets - I had pictures of one on my phone background for years - Voyager golden record -  ...no, I don't know where that went.  Or if we could even find it.  And that's presupposing space travel anyway.  And that this isn't another universe anyway.  It could be.  Not like that's not a common enough trope that humans with magic wouldn't try it.  ...Anyway.  Tea would be lovely.  ...actually, - hold on, that might be the wrong kind of tea I'm thinking of anyway - but do you know if the things that are poisonous to dogs are poisonous to kitsune?  I'm guessing it doesn't work like that, I can see reds, but - I'd rather check."

"Kitsunes are blessed in many ways. They heal quickly and wholly, unless ruined utterly, in which case they perish but will reincarnate as a kitsune again. I am quite certain tea will be fine for you."

Running Girl asks a question.

"Oh, that's not quite true. Monsters and curses are more of an accident than something they did intentionally... Or so the legends go."

There is a low fire going in the brick stove inside the little shrine. She stirs it up and sets water to boil in a very decorated iron kettle.

"Thank you, that's good to know."

"...of course it's war crimes!  ...Well.  Accidental war crimes. But those are still probably war crimes!  ...Whose war crimes were they?"

"Maybe I can tell you more when there aren't young ears around, little kit." She smirks and giggles.

...skdgjvkghpjkl,,l;njp;,gvmkk;;;;

...Well!

"...yes, that seems..."

"Yeah."

"Speaking of curses though, there was something near my spawn point that felt like it was pretty cursed.  I...think it was land, and not a monster, and I was not in a hurry to poke it at the time.  But it was like an hour downriver from their," she waves a paw at the runner girl, "town, if on the other side of the river at least.  And I don't think I got that across to them properly when it came up?"

"That would be cursed ground, most likely. It's usually quiescent unless disturbed... Usually. Nobody should approach it- Priestesses like me can purify it with care, time, and attention. I do believe I can be bestirred to investigate." She affects a fancy accent for the last bit.

"I can show you, then.  Um.  Do you know if there's anything I might be able to do that isn't 'run away' if something attacks?"

"Hmm. How old are you?"

(Running Girl asks another question. "No, that's fine." Is the answer.)

"...About a month?  Er.  Thirty days plus or minus a few."

"Ah. I'm definitely going to have to speak to you in private about growing up, then." She purses her lips. "And in that case... Probably not. You can sense it- The best you can do is warn people. If a fox seems truly alarmed people usually take it as monsters coming, and duly prepare."

She just - nods, at that one.

"I mean my prior life probably had that many years to its credit, if that's what you're worried about.  But I'm assuming that's not what matters as far as the kitsune - life cycle - goes."

"Later. Fan, dear, I think the water's about ready, would you mind getting the matcha out from that cabinet over there?"

"Yes, yes," Running Girl replies lazily.

...Then the priestess makes a 'shh' motion with her finger, grins, and flips her hood back. The tassels on her ears wiggle cutely.

And then the hood comes back on, though the smirk remains, and she stands to collect the teapot and cups.

!!!

"...oh, how does it go...thanking Senior Sister for her guidance?  Ssh heard and understood.  If she asks, I've never had matcha before and I'm wondering what it's like.  Which is true, as it happens."

"There's no need to be so worried! Trying new things is fun, and if you don't like it, you don't like it."

And then she is preparing tea via matcha infusion.

"Oh, I'm not worried.  Just consistently and constantly curious."

"I suppose that's better, but you're certainly an energetic one, hmm? Are you tempted to play any pranks~? Maybe Fan can help if so- She's happy to linger a bit if it's 'necessary', to get out of weeding for a little while."

(Fan lets out a little bashful 'hehe...')

"I'm not inclined to be a prankster, that's just kind of mean to people most of the time - not that there aren't those who need to be brought down a peg - but I think I could be 'convinced' to help Fan get away from the weeding for a bit.  And I do need to do something nice for Xia Ren, from Fan's village...  She was.  Kind.  At her own expense.  And even if the expense was a little bit of food and some time..."

"...I feel like I owe her, you know?  Not...  Transactionally, but...  She did something nice when she didn't have to do anything at all."

"Well, fair enough. Hmm... Can you describe miss Xia? I can always give her a blessing- Kindness begets kindness and the whole world grows a bit warmer, that's the goddess of community's way."

Here is some tea. Matcha is essentially green tea, just prepared differently. She has a special low, wide cup for the fox attendee.

She can describe Xia Ren, yes she can!  ...Hopefully!

"...Your goddess sounds lovely.  How does the...gods, thing, work here, by the way...?  There's...  I have my guesses but I have too many guesses."

...lap lap lap at the tea...

She has a Lecturing Mode!

"There are nine Light Gods, who work together to bring peace, love, warmth, and good into the world. They work in harmony with each other, but they were greatly weakened by their efforts during the Calamity, the fall of Tirra. They expended much of themselves during it to shatter the darkness threatening to swallow the world. Galasa, llumine, Alteri, Otena - she's the one for community, but none of them are simple beings, Tamamo, Isara, Hekosi, Erius, and Ragni."

"...That there is a specific need to call them Light Gods implies that there are those gods who are not Light.  ...How...concerned...Should I be about that?"

She leans close with a frown.

"...Sometimes idiots, just absolute selfish scumbag buffoons, try to, ah, reassemble the darkness. For that, there is the Inquisition."

"...I think I know the type.  And boy do I fucking loathe them.  ...Good to know there's people with eyes on that shit, though, even if things that call themselves Inquisitions scare me a bit on general principle.  Too many things that decidedly weren't forces for goodness and light have taken that name."

"...In less...fraught, questions - what would you say the Light gods have - domains of?  Maybe - their biggest three, if that makes sense.  Besides Otena's community and Tamamo's kitsunes."

"Oh boy do I know the type, too. They think they're so clever for discovering the one genius trick to success- Having no morals or scruples. Ahem. Pardon me. The gods? Do you mean three things for each?"

"...Yeah, those fucks tried ruining Earth too.  Were giving it a damn good try in my lifetime.  And that's not even to mention the people for whom the cruelty was the point."

"...Yes, three for each god, unless something better strikes you."

She nods and hums a bit, thinking.

"...Oh, I'm Megi, by the way, nice to meet you. Let's see, three each..."

Galasa, bravery, journeys, and courage. In the sense that bravery is more for trying hard things or speaking up against peer pressure, and courage is more about fighting.
Illumine, healing, dreams, and - a difficult to explain sort of self-improvement, that things can always get better, at rock bottom or on cloud nine.
Alteri, inspiration, craftsmanship, and hard work done diligently. Very straightforward god.
Otena, community as I said, love in all its forms not just romantic, and sex and pleasure- Especially shared.
Tamamo... Quite the character. Hmm... Mercurial, daring, the corner of the sky where ideas that straddle genius and insanity come from. Luck, good and bad. Jokes and pranks.
Isara, self-reflection and being at peace with things, the seasons and the cycle of life, funerals and spirits and tides and the moon...
Hekosi, festivals, moments of triumph after long effort, turning points in life and fate.
Erius, trade, law, fairness, currency... Sort of self-righteous and stuffy, but someone has to be.
Ragni, oh, he particularly hates undead, and for fighting off diseases, and crops and warm weather.

"...A pleasure to meet you, Megi."

"...Striving," she murmurs, at Illumine's third domain.

And once Megi's actually listed everything - "...Thank you, that's - very informative.  I heard you mention fate?  I...hm...the universe is only so deterministic, I thought, especially considering the quantum bullshit where where you're looking can mean the same actions have different outcomes... but I'd like to know more about how that works in practice?"

"...Also, would I be wrong in assuming that miracles, blessings, and so on result from someone who values the same things a god values, praying really hard in their general direction?"

"...Oh.  And.  Undead?  Undead like how?"

"Hekosi's predictions are - mm, words - heuristic. They are not completely reliable. And usually very caveated. The question of miracles and blessings is a little complicated. Undead, yes, if people are not put to rest properly... They can occur."

"Ah.  Sufficiently advanced statistical modelling."

"As for the zombies, yes, but - what do they do, are they - if I say 'zombies' do you just get the connotation of zombies usually being inherently contagious to the living - are they intelligent threats or instinctual, what do they target, are they limited by being corpses or does whatever animates them augment them in some way, do you get skeletons walking around if they're untended long enough - do they have specific weaknesses or things that won't work - do they cause other dead things to rise - how can you tell if spirits are restless, I think I saw some?  Spirits, that is, not necessarily restless ones!  They were blue.  And in a graveyard, which is probably more important diagnostically..."

Megi laughs.

"You should borrow a copy of the Book of Journeys, that would answer a lot of these... Though I suppose reading it is a problem."

Running Girl is starting to get fidgety again, in the background.

"Yeah, it would be, unless it comes in English, which, uh, I'm going to guess not around here it won't.  If English has even persisted at all given the not-Latin the Empire used.  Like it was a major language of Earth, you know?  In my time at least.  ...I'm working on learning this language though!  Um.  What's its name, actually?  I've been calling it not-Chinese in my head but that's just, vague associations with what little I recall the same way the Empire's tongue is not-Latin."

"...But our courier here is getting a bit restless.  Maybe we should send a message?  If you're coming to remediate the cursed ground, at least."

"Atsosi. We can send her back with the message that a priestess will be visiting to look at the cursed ground, yes. I'll need a couple days' travel supplies, since you say it's further downriver- Well, there's ambient cursed aura and acute cursed aura and this sounds like the latter. This is frontier land, so there's some ambient that likes to rear up and turn into monsters once in a while. Plus, magic beasts. That's why the walls and guards. Probably I will put up a little ward around it and send off a report for more serious assistance... Hmm, what was I saying? Oh, yes, Fan, you can go back and tell everyone I'll be by later today and to please prepare a little place to stay? I have to finish things up here."

"It wasn't that much further downriver I don't...think?  Like it didn't take me that long...  But yes probably better to plan for overnighting just in case it's needed..."

And she will, despite her instincts screaming at her !!no, protect kid!!, argue them down with the knowledge that she didn't smell a damn thing on the way over and wait for Fan to go, because now is the time for Kitsune Talk.

Fan stretches, and bows, and there are a couple rounds of pleasantries and no really it's fine I'll clean up-

And then Megi grins again and decides to scritch her ears. And she knows how ear-scritches should be! Exactly where to go!

"Ohhh, I don't get to play with young kitsunes very much! What a cute little treat you are! I wanna hug and snuggle you and squeeze you and- But, well, you seem a lot less child-like than most little kits. It's really surprising."

She lowers the intensity of the ear-scritches, at this.

Nooooo she wants the scritcheeeesssss...

"I mean I do at least kinda remember being a grown woman?  Enough to be very surprised at being a fox, at least!  ...And to be very surprised it was me and not someone I knew who would have been very happy to be in my - well, I was going to say 'shoes' but I'm not wearing any, so paws, then!"

"...And I was pretty precocious my first go 'round, too, I guess."

"But, you know, do feel free to do all that...I wouldn't mind.  ...I seriously really wouldn't mind.  Please."

...If she had a human face right now, it would be blushing.

"But, um, yeah, I don't know - one minute I was born and the next minute I was just trying to figure out everything because, to steal a quote, I noticed I was confused - and I figure that might've pulled more things to the surface earlier, if I had to wildly speculate about surprising amounts of - maturity?  Intellect?  I dunno, it was a puzzle to occupy myself with while I was foxing around, and I've always liked puzzles.  What does the - typical - developmental period look like?  I wasn't very standard for humans either but now I'm curious."

She will bodily pick up the cute fox and snugglehug, turning side to side, then! And deliver a kiss to the eartip.

"Mwah! Oh, let's see, last time I reincarnated it took a year or two to start really wondering about the flashes of everything before? Some remember themselves more clearly than others. Well, our puberty comes in all at once. Kitsunes spend a while as foxes, maybe slowly coming in to some of the lesser powers, building up internal energy for... Their first transformation. Ah... We call that the Red Dream. Everyone goes through it. It's nothing to be embarrassed about."

Mmmmm, snug fox.  This is really nice...

"Ah.  If there's anything reincarnation probably couldn't get rid of, it's definitely my curiosity."

"...Oh no, now that you've said it that way I'm definitely gonna be embarrassed!  Preemptively!  I am haunted by the specter of the embarrassing sex talk trope from beyond the grave!"

"...I'm guessing it's probably not the sort of human-puberty thing that immediately came to mind, though."

"...so with that sort of thing no longer in consideration, and furthermore the thing about coming into power..."

Considering headtilt.

"...well, if it's also called a Dream, then, hmm..."

"...and if it's a phase transition..."

"...doing stupid dream shit with your newly-overflowing powers because you aren't aware it's kind of not?  How close am I?"

"Hmm... Almost exactly on the dot, except for... Tone. Yes, the Red Dream feels like a dream, except not quite- It's also a period of hyperactivity and disinhibition, like being drunk. It can be a lot. Kitsunes are, to a considerable extent, sexual creatures! We often have stronger sex drives than most humanoids. We do, as a fact, have different instincts. We get internal energy in a variety of ways, sort of a grab-bag of traits and powers that some will have and some won't- And the two that everyone gets is relaxing in the wild in fox-shape... And semen. During my Red Dream I had a lot of sex. Like, a lot."

"...Yeah, the whole - overflowing power thing was definitely getting associated thataways even if I couldn't really work it into the sentence."

"...As for...  Everything else you just said...

"Well, that's gonna be...interesting, because I pretty exclusively like girls that way, as far as I know.  Though it's not like girls don't have dicks sometimes!"  She giggles.  "I should know!"

"Some kitsunes can fill up with sex with women... Er. People who have vaginas. I think most of us wind up somewhat androphilic because dicks are great, but you know what you want~ I know some foxes who prefer other foxes, even though there's no energy in it. Oh, we're all feminine, by the way."

"I am absolutely going to run into a guy kitsune at some point just to disprove that statement," she deadpans.  "But yeah.  It's not like I wouldn't fuck an especially cute twink, anyway.  ...Ah, I should ask, pregnancy, is that a thing?"

"Nope. We're all handmade by Tamamo. Or something like that. Diseases, either. Or impregnating people if you shape-shift a penis, that doesn't happen. Kitsunes are more magic than flesh and blood. That's how regeneration and reincarnation works too."

"Mmmm.  Very good.  I approve."

"...Oh, what was I going to ask..."

"...Right!  Re-reincarnation, does that, uh, also involve coming to in the middle of the woods and reassembling yourself from scratch?"

"Mhm. Usually a lot less effectively than you are."

The snuggles are continuing. She squeezes slightly at this.

"Want me to brush your tail? It's not like you could do mine."

...right, so she had better prepare herself to be able to pull a Leareth.  Just in case.  ...She has very little idea of how to actually do that.

"I..."

...Does she?

"...Maybe?"

"Someone did brush my tail a little while ago, I'm not sure I need more brushing now, you know?  But you do seem...nice."

"I think I'll wait for a bit more of an affirmative on that... I should get ready to leave this place. I am a wandering priestess but I have a few errands to finish first."

"Yeah.  Tomorrow, perhaps."

Then she will hop down from Megi's arms.  "If there's anything I could help with, I'd be glad to do so."

She arranges her good again.

"I am not thinking of anything right now. All's well."

She nods.  "Then I'll stick with you for the moment, I suppose.  It's nice to be able to talk to someone without - all but resorting to interpretive dance."

"I'm sympathetic even if I'm not totally sure I can relate..."

Megi is cleaning up the place now. The teapot goes in a little backpack, which she dons.

"It's really going to be a couple hours though. There are people I need to see, some in private."

"...Ah, in that case...  I'll stick around here, then?  ...Goodness, I don't rightly know what to do with myself for that long.  Might try praying."

"It can't hurt! And you're plenty welcome to stay at the shrine. People might leave you offerings!"

She giggles.

She'll just!  Curl up behind something then!

And...try praying.

...She doesn't direct it to anyone in particular.  She just...  Hopes.  And feels.

It could be Illumine to whom she prays, asking for a blessing upon her striving as she tries to be good for the world she now lives in.  It could be Galasa, for bravery as she takes on a responsibility she couldn't afford to bear in her first life, for she has been given power and with great power comes great responsibility.  It could be Alteri, for guidance and inspiration as she tries to turn what yet remains of Earth's knowledge in her to this world's benefit - for all that her own seems lacking in many of the important practical bits.  It could be Otena, in thanks for the blessings she has been given and in hope that she will be able to return the kindness she's been shown.  It could be Tamamo, patron of absolutely mad ideas, for she has many of those starting to rattle around in her head.  Indeed, this almost is one.  It could be Isara, for insight into the person she has been, and insight into how to become a better one.  It could be Hekosi - for if there is anything that will shift ill fates hidden in what yet remains of her past life, she would share that knowledge freely with a goddess she trusts will shepherd it wisely.  Even Erius - for she is making an offer of time, energy, investment into the gods, and if that be the coin of divinity then she would spend it wisely - or Ragni, for while she remembers precious little of medicine she knows she knew some of it, if it could but be recovered from her tattered soul.

But mostly, she just...prays.  For what, she does not know.  For hope, she supposes, that living this second life as she hopes she will is no mistake of hers.

If there is a sign, or any kind of response, she can't really tell. Still, the shrine feels... Peaceful. Clean, compared to outside. Like a thin but undeniably present barrier fending off trouble and worry.

Then...  She'll just be here, for a while.

Maybe a nap? It feels like a nappish place and time.

Regardless, Megi returns eventually. "Ready to head out?"

Yeah.

...She's as ready as she'll ever be.

"I think so.  Your errands go well?"

"Mhm! I have supplies and I dealt with a couple promises I made- You asked about miracles earlier and those do happen but priestesses can also do rituals, to call down blessings without costing the gods as much attention. Oh- I'm very much not a fighter, by the way. If there are monsters I'm going to be running away, as should you. To the village, where I can bless the militia to deal with it. This is also why we are going to be careful when approaching the place."

She nods, silently, suddenly reeling as the nature of the gods from The Gods are Bastards hipchecks her worldview from around a blind corner.  (To wit, she followed a rabbit hole from "godly answering service" to "deus literally ex machina".)

"...Do we know why, how, anything about what makes a god?  Incidentally?  Because now that I'm thinking about it I have.  So many questions.  And half a wild-ass guess about some matters of ancient history that I've stolen from a work of fiction, come to think.  ...I mean, I should hope that it's not going to be exactly the same, if nothing else the magic's surely different - but..."

"I mean, how would you disprove the idea that someone invented - well, probably not magic itself for my soul to be floating around, but gods for all I know - at some point in my far future but your far past, anyway?  ...Not very scientific of me.  But if there's any random ancient spaceage artifacts around here...  Well, I want to poke them, now.  See what data I can shake out."

"...I probably already wanted to do that, to be honest."

"...In more present matters.  We should be careful even in the universe where you're secretly some combat monster, anyway.  For one, I'm squishy, for two, who knows how deep the corruption goes, and for three, proper procedure prevents piss-poor performance, as someone once said."

And without further ado, she sets off down the road, intending to both lead Megi to the Stinky Danger Place and also show her the warrens she dug out in case they need to lose something bigger than them in a hurry.  (...She may have overdone things a bit, there.)

Megi lets her ears come out again once they're past the original little village. She also has a censer, and a stole with some kind of wave symbol embroidered, straight out of Catholic visual language. For some reason.

She doesn't complain about the swim across the river... Though she does kiss Alicia's forehead, and in that moment turn into a majestic white-furred fox. ("That's the quickest way for me to change, I could also visit the graveyard or wait for a full moon, but... Hihihi.")

She speaks in yips and growls that are somehow entirely understandable, much like Alicia is doing. As far as the warren goes, Megi just gives a knowing smirk. And then... A very cautious walk and exploration towards the cursed area. ("Ohhhh yes, I can definitely smell it, ugh...")

Is it possible for a fox to blush, because she's really stress-testing that today!

"Quite.  It smells...  Quiescent, still..."

"...We pace out the bounds, then?  Figure out the shape and volume of the zone from outside its aggro radius, by walking along the smell.  At least that's what I'd figure is the tactically sound thing to do here, but you have more experience than me with this stuff.  ...Actually, hang on, is this smell physical or metaphysical?"

"It's metaphysical. We're sensing high concentrations of cursed energy. There's no clear boundary, usually, just increasing concentration as you approach the site of something horrible... As long as we are very quiet and still, we shouldn't wake anything up. So what we should do is go right to the middle and have a look around. Carefully."

"...I can't fault that but if it's purely metaphysical --

"...We don't have aerial surveillance tools, Alicia, why the heck did I assume their existence?"

"Anywho.  Gradient descent it is, I guess.  I don't...  Hmm...  Part of me still thinks that it would be better to feel out the edges in case there are multiple trouble spots...wait, no, we don't even have the tools for that.  But yeah.  Investigating very carefully seems like the only valid play.  ...Um.  Actually.  What are we looking for?  Other than 'things that smell bad'?"

"It's usually pretty obvious. There's probably old ruins or a tomb or a battlefield. But being thorough doesn't hurt."

"...Gotta wonder how old.  ...But we shouldn't stick around here talking.  ...Hm.  Can we communicate like this without making noises?"

"Not without more magic. It will probably be fine. Over nineteen in twenty. You can stay here if you want. Now shh, we're getting close..."

...She doesn't like those odds.

She doesn't like the idea of a noncombatant going into a hostile situation alone even less.

She doesn't like that she suddenly started classifying herself as a combatant given that as of yet she has unearthed precisely no relevant skills.  Besides basic fox instincts.

Unless she has skills for some reason, which would be...

Magic can do some absurd things.  And while it doesn't seem right to her, who knows what lurks in what she hasn't yet unearthed?

...Still, that's surely not something to stake her life on.

She...

"...If anyone should go in there alone it's me.  I've got less power to take notice of, and you're the one that can empower the backup if I - don't come out."

...Megi pauses and sits on the forest floor, facing her.

"I respectfully disagree. I heard two points- You're less likely to cause problems, and I'm more valuable. On the first, you are wrong. I have lived experience as to what kind of things cause trouble, and how to soothe it back if I cause a few ripples, beyond 'don't touch literally any things at all even the ground'. The second I give partial credit- However, I am more valuable both in and out. I know what I'm looking at and it will better help me plan containment measures. If it's something really very serious as opposed to merely quite bad, I have a better chance of recognizing it."

"...yeah.  Yeah, okay.  ...Right.  Honestly I'm not entirely sure what came over me."

...Is there anywhere she can at least get a better view of the area?

"I'm sure you'll be great at fighting back the darkness when you're ready~"

The center of the nasty energy appears to be... A cliffy, rocky hill just beyond the wetlands area. There's only one narrow way up. The structures at the top look like they once were a moderately sized complex- Two and three story stone buildings, built more like a hotel or a school or a base or something than a house. It's hard to tell who built them given the advanced state of decay, but it doesn't quite look like crumbling concrete. No rebar. 

Megi hops up rubble and rocks adroitly, sniffing around carefully. She peers into one long-glassless window... Then shakes her head and makes her way around the side.

She's gone for a good twenty minutes.

And then she's hopping back down the rocks and making her way over to Alicia.

"So... Bad news, the evil in there is threatening to wake up. That's why it's so noticeable now. I bet signs of human activity nearby are waking them up- Woodsmoke, or stuff in the water? It's hard to tell. Good news, it's actually a pretty weak signature. Just some curses, a dozen or two lesser, maybe one mid-tier. And those basic curses are really dumb. There's no complex schemes, not even real animal cunning- Just hatred, nice and straightforward. They're going to wake up sooner or later, probably within the year, and then there's a moderate monster problem. I'm thinking I lay some very basic seals, some tripwires, and... Go see if the local baron wants to do a purge. After the purge, someone will have to set up a proper shrine and purify the place properly for a while, probably not me."

"...Well, I'm glad it's not particularly serious.  ...How were those buildings made, do you know?  They look - familiar, but not quite."

"I'm afraid I don't know. They're recognizably Tirran. I think this place was military... But there's no stench of death. Just abandonment and resentment."

"Huh.  ...So actually, I should ask, because it distinguishes things - did the Tirran Empire still have spaceflight or other high technology?  As much as the idea of 'high technology' is kind of fake and really it should be 'highly industrialized production' because that's what gets you the fancy things...  But I digress."

"There are relics. I'll project a little illusion..."

And there is a suit of power armor, shiny and chrome.

"This weird thing, property of the City of Silk and trotted out for the big threats, like Cryptids. It's Tirran. Say, mind giving me a quick nuzzle to change back and start on those wards?"

She can do that!

"Oh that's definitely space-age technology alright.  Damn.  I wonder what I could learn from something like that."

Megi blooms back into humanoid form after the nuzzle, clothes and backpack and all, and scritches Alicia affectionately.

"There are only a few dozen relics in circulation, maybe a hundred or two total worldwide? We don't really understand them and people think they're partially divine fiat, not however they worked originally. Very mysterious. In terms of technology, things are getting better- The Book Otherworlder gave people back the printing press, and the Steel Otherworlder gave us, well, steel making. A couple hundred years ago, each. There were more otherworlders but those two are the ones I remember. I think... The Doctor, the Stargazer, the Sailor?"

Then she starts unpacking things from her bag, humming.

'The Doctor' gets a startled laugh from her.  "Sorry, sorry, that just associated incredibly wildly.  ...Hm.  I do wonder if there's anything...

"...I'm probably not going to have much to contribute, I never did know that much about manufacturing, but, like...  Where are some big - bottlenecks?  I guess?  Things that the world needs but doesn't have much of?  I have approximate knowledge of many things, as the saying goes."

"Mmm... I don't really know, I'm not a big scholar or economist... All I know is that the Steelmaking Otherworlder's ideas about production lines didn't work. There just wasn't enough- Anything, everything, to support it."

"...Well of fucking course it didn't, you need industrial-scale metallurgy before you can get there and that goes through industrial-scale mining operations and I'm guessing y'all still mine and forge relatively 'by hand'?  But, no, I'm not -

"I couldn't tell you how industrial steelmaking works with any confidence even if I tried, I'm pretty sure I had family who were involved somehow but that was way before my time.  What I'm thinking about is -

"There's bound to be low-hanging fruit at the intersection of 'things this world already needs for what it does' and 'things Earth knows'.  ...My brain is insistently reminding me that if this was Dungeons and Dragons I would be able to do a lot for their diamond requirements, even if I can't do anywhere near as much for other costly material components.  ...I must really have spent a lot of time thinking about that situation to so specifically remember it now, because the only other bit of gemology that comes to mind is rubies being a subtype of the general crystal-with-inclusions called corundum, and like hell if I know what that's made of at all - but 'diamonds are just fancy carbon' is etched into my brain."

"Diamonds are magically useful. Who knows, if we keep pushing back the cursed lands maybe someone will find a proper big diamond mine."

She is unpacking papers and packets of incense-y powder from her backpack. 

"...You don't need a diamond mine, you just need to make the conditions under which diamonds happen naturally - and I think magic has an edge on technology for this one, because I bet it does forces pretty easily so it's just a matter of power and spell design, not figuring out how the hell you make pressure vessels of sufficient resilience...  ...You just need - carbon - coal, charcoal, I forget if coke's the same stuff - it's the building block of life in full generality besides water - and a fuckton of heat and pressure, precisely how much I couldn't possibly establish because I don't have the tools to build the tools to figure out the invariants from which the measurements were defined, let alone know what the heck those tools are - but... probably the weight of a mile of rock or more, and the temperature of magma.  ...Well.  Motion is heat is force when it's small enough, I kept pulling that out for wizards...  So just.  Enough pressure.  ...Anyway.  There's fancier ways, probably, but gemstones don't just spontaneously manifest under nonmagical conditions.  So if you replicate the right conditions, you will perforce replicate the resulting gemstones.  And thusly, boom, we've synthesized diamonds."

"I'll take your word for it, Ms. Wizard-to-be... Hmm... There, that should be everything. I need to go stand near the entrance to perform this ritual. Some seals, a little incense and holy water, and red string- And a connection to the gods. If you approach with me, let's be quiet?"

She nods.  "I'll stay over here.  Even with this being a tiny baby cursed land, I don't want to poke it without much more ability to defend myself."

"You did good to warn people, and show me. I'll be back soon. Everything will turn out fine."

And with one more ear-scritch, Megi walks up the hill towards the sour place, tail a-swish. She lingers up there for twenty minutes- Doing a little dance, burning something, chanting prayers in what seems like a structured way (calling for sleep, peace, and boundaries), and then putting paper seals all over the outer wall (which has just enough of a ledge around it to make it possible if somewhat hair-raising to skirt along the outside).

And then she heads back, looking a bit morose and thoughtful.

"Well. That's that. I sort of want to go nap in your warren now... Blessings make me sleepy."

"...We could absolutely do that, if you wanted to.  Are you...  Are you alright?  You seem..."

...She's just gonna do her best to be therapy-cat-shaped to Megi, in lieu of finishing that sentence.  You know, applying 'human' contact, purring...

"...I'm sure there's time enough for you to take a moment for yourself."

"You've done what you needed to do, you know?"

Pet, pet, pet.

"...I try to remain willfully ignorant of the worst things out there, when I'm not dealing with them. Let's go nap."

Good girl That would be entirely inappropriate.

"Yes, let's."

She can lead the way to the warren, if that's what's happening now.  (She thinks it is?  Probably?)

And a lovely, snuggly nap is had.

When they wake up the faint aura of ickbad is definitely waning. It feels more like a lingering stain than a spreading stench, now.

"Thank you for putting up with my moodiness..."

...Yeah, no, she's going to get licked, because she is being silly by saying something like that.

"You just had your face rubbed in the echoes of an apocalypse; you get to be sad about that, and if someone tries to tell you otherwise I'll bite them."

"Oh, but being sad and sulking is one of my personal indulgences! It's like chocolate or fancy accessories. Hihihi."

She doesn't know what amused fox noises sound like, but she sure is producing a good sample thereof.

"...damn, now I want chocolate, except I should set a good example for other foxes and not have any while I'm shaped like this.  How dare you do this to me," she deadpans.

"...If there's anything left in those ruins, incidentally, is it, like, finders keepers?  Or, like..."

"...okay, actually, I know next to nothing about the government here at all, and I probably should know things about the government around here if I'm going to keep living here, which...  I don't even know where anywhere else is, you know?  Where am I?"

"Oh~? Yeah, it is pretty much finders-keepers. Unless it's cursed shit. That's Inquisitions-Purifiers. This is the Northern Federation. So named because it is a federation, and in the north, and 'Let's not fight wars against each other when there's monsters eating the peasants' is about all the Walled Cities and great academies and sorcerous sects and other high muckety-mucks can agree on."

"...Somehow I am still pleassntly surprised they can agree on even that much."

"...Is it still dangerous to enter the exclusion zone until it stops being smelly, or...?  'cause it smells like it's letting up."

"Risk is a matter of degrees. I'm not sure what you're saying? Going in to that compound? Bad idea. The local head honcho is a self-styled noble baron answering to the Walled City of Silkweave, he'll be eager to do a purge and pay to support a shrine on the site to purify it over a generation or two, that's the whole reason he got his shiny badge."

"...Ahh.  Okay.  ...Goodness, that's...

"That's going to take a long time."

"I guess it would take a while to remediate, if it's lasted this long to begin with."

She looks a bit - not precisely lost in thought, but rather like thoughts are randomly slamming into her brain like birds running into windows.

"...I have no idea why my brain is deciding to throw at least half a dozen separate ideas about how to fuck up this curse at me, depending on the available metaphysics.  ...There's no way it's going to be anywhere near that simple, because if it was, state-of-the-art wouldn't be 'slap talismans on it and have faith the gods will sort it out over a few generations', surely.  But damn if I don't want to try anyway, assuming I have the slightest hope of accomplishing anything.  Which I don't because I am a baby fox, but - hope springs eternal, I guess.  And I want to fix it."

"...Do we know what doesn't work?  For disrupting the self-sustenance of these curses?  Because there's gotta be something that holds them together..."

"Just killing the monsters does not work. It sort of - smears them? Disrupts things, forces a phase change, but they come back. Maybe in a year, maybe in twenty. All the powers of wizardry to negate and counter and abjure avail little- Lots of things have been tried, I don't know what exactly, but I'd have heard about it if any worked. They can contain it, but not get rid of it. Similarly the little tricks one can learn that make what is called a 'witch', those never solve the problem forever, merely forestall it. What is known to work is purification rituals by a priestess, worked day after day and year after year, exerting your soul as a conduit between the Light Gods and this reality until it is as fatigued as a farmer's muscles, until the darkness is truly scoured from the air and water and soil. Some of the most worthy and difficult tasks are done one long, long day at a time. I have done this, too, at times. There is comfort in routine, even unpleasant ones. What also works is just... Living there. Souls accumulate the darkness, and when they pass on it vanishes from this world."

"...well of course killing the monsters itself doesn't work, generating the monsters is part of the bounded field, you'd need to introduce a disruptive cascade --"

"..."

"...Hm."

"But yeah I'm not surprised that a direct counterspell just doesn't actually work, notwithstanding that I don't even know what that is in practice.  That's the first thing you'd harden your Fuck You magic against, because it's the obvious counterplay."

"I suppose the categories of idea I'm thinking of, then, generally come in two flavors.  One is 'figure out how to replicate the "souls passing on eats the darkness" thing in something that can ethically be grown or deployed en masse', and the other is 'turn the field's destructive potential against itself'.  ...I imagine that that's not your field of expertise, though.  And speaking of wizards and suchlike, uh, what is magic like?  I saw this guy with ritual circles, a couple of enchanted items, a waterbender, your cleric stuff...?"

"Curiosity is a good, foxish trait."

She licks an ear.

"I don't think you're going to get anywhere the gods haven't with the second thing, but the first doesn't sound impossible? I wouldn't say it's an urgent problem. Hmm, well, in terms of magic people can do- It's not just humans, you know, the local Big Guy is a bit of a racist is all- Hmm..."

She uncurls and stretches slightly.

"Unf! So. You've got wizardry, witchery, sorcery, and priestesshood. Wizardry is heavy on detail work and involves drawing things either in the air or on the ground and injecting willpower into them very precisely, the big draw is that a spell will work the same way for two people if they do it the exact same way. Witchery is - well, hard to teach, you just sort of keep trying things and eventually something works, or it doesn't. Once you have it, it's just a knack you have, like cleaning anything you swat with a broom, or making potions of bacteria-killing from ordinary mint tea. Water bender? What a curious appellation. He's a sorcerer. Someone with innate influence over an element- Not a chemical element, but a conceptual one. It sometimes runs in families and is fairly rare, sometimes it can be awakened with a tribulation. There are these training cults around that will nearly drown you, bury you alive, and so on, to try and make it happen. Earth, water, air, fire, lightning, sometimes weirder stuff. Priestesses, as I've said, mostly do wards against curses, purifying, and giving out little blessings or miracles, and they require being chosen by one of the Light Gods. This is all in addition to various niche, innate, or special magics of course- Like kitsune powers!"

"...Yeah, 'waterbender' is an Earth reference.  Work of fiction where the magic was, roughly, - oh you wouldn't know the guy - anyway, earth, fire, water, air, elementally, with martial arts as the medium.  ...Not surprised that the way y'all call it translates to 'sorcerer', though.  Sorc/wiz distinction has been a thing for longer than magic was definitively real.  ...And speaking of translation, I'm glad I just heard you say 'bacteria', because if your outworlders and-or gods hadn't gotten to germ theory, that would really cut in to my diamond manufacture ambitions."

"...Are there proper enchanted items?  Since I'm pretty sure the only one I've seen was actually witchery, given all that."

"Mhm, me too, I'm aware of her distinguished broominess~ Well~ There's a few kinds, mostly wizardry-made. You've got scrolls and wands and artifacts, in increasing levels of expensiveness. I'm not a wizard. There are old old relics around here and there too- Stuff from Tirra, or divine artifacts, or things that just had enough mythos around them for long enough to become their own thing. Like the Moon Tears which legend says can turn people into kitsunes, or the great orrery which teaches everyone who looks at it about orbits."

...The description of the great orrery simply poleaxes her.  "I know about orbits, but how the fuck does it communicate the proofs of that?  Does it just jam a lesson on orbital mechanics directly into someone's brain?  And, like, if so, how?  That's...

"That's like making a magical equivalent of the fucking Rosetta Stone that actually teaches you its languages on its own - without you having to actually translate anything - when you try to read it, what the fuck?"

"I guess that's why it's an artifact, good grief.  ...I wonder if you could - no, I shouldn't say...  Oh, but it would be such a grand trick to play..."

"...Anyway, that's a project for later."

"...Also, life goal acquired, visit that grand orrery and figure out what it's even doing.  ...Probably not seriously doing that, I don't even know where it is, but dear gods that's.  Something.  I want to poke it with a stick.  It smells like jumping several steps on the tech tree, if there's even the faintest hope someone could reverse-engineer it - and I probably won't be capable of it on my own, not without more sustained effort than I know how to do - but I do kind of think it is.  ...Possible, I mean."

"...But...you were saying about Moon Tears?  Because by all rights I am pretty sure I shouldn't be ranked even in the top three most kitsune-coded people I - knew -"  She winces; those memories she has of them are often very personal, "- so, well, I wouldn't have figured I'd be the one to reincarnate thusly.  ...And seeing as, as far as I can prove, this may as well be the same universe, I do kind of have to wonder if I ran into one.  Before magic was evident.  Somehow.  ...To be honest I'm still just trying to figure out why now, why here, and why this.  Other than some absurd noöspheric conjunction that I can't really rule out, but you'd think I'd land somewhere that spoke English - or whatever its modern descendants are, because frankly there's no way the language calling itself English of my time could be time-capsuled so thoroughly, it had a tendency to mug other languages for spare verbiage - anyway, if it was affinity that controlled, I shouldn't be a fox in the middle of the forest in not-China.  So other than 'Tamamo pranked me', which, you know, is also pretty impossible to rule out because I'm pretty sure she'd find outright lying about this sort of thing funny if we asked her..."

She trails off.

"I'm just...  Trying to put things together and make the world make sense again.  Even though I already know that there's no way it will, because real life doesn't have to make sense.  Shit just fucking happens sometimes, and this shit sure did happen, and, well, I'm going to have to deal with it, aren't I?"

She sighs.

"At least this might have maybe disenfuckened my neurochemistry a bit.  I hope.  I can but hope.  ...and, well, if the depression does make a resurgence and try to eat me, I can probably stave it off with magic.  Because magic's cool."

"It is! I love being a kitsune. Hmm... I'm about ready to head back to civilization if you are? Or you could stay here. You don't have to stick with me. It'll probably be a year or two before your Red Dream."

"I would like to stick around people who can understand me, generally speaking.  I'm sure I'm going to pick up the local language out of sheer immersion, whether I like it or not, and despite the historically-attested difficulties, but...  There's something to speaking and knowing you will be understood, and listening and knowing that you will understand, so far as one's ability to understand the concepts in play permits."

"Hmm... Well, I'm not really a motherly sort, you know? Then again, you're not much of a usual kit. So precocious it's a little unnerving. It clashes, you know? Like a toddler going 'mother, I require sustenance'. I can stick around for another few days, maybe a week, but I don't intend to remain for long. I bet you can hang out around that village, or maybe near the town, especially if I explain you. And there are more kitsunes you could run into. We wander, pretty often."

"I don't think I get it, but I get it," she says, pushing the translation effect to its limits in conveying the particular tone with which she tried to convey that she doesn't have enough grounding in kitsune-ness to grok the too-precocious-childness, but nonetheless thinks that the example sufficed to understand it.  "The uncanny valley is a thing, for sure.  ...I'm not asking for you to adopt me, anyway.  Just...

"Well, as was frequently bandied about in my last life, humans are social creatures.  I don't want to be alone, or, even worse, alone in a crowd.  I've had more than enough of that for two lifetimes.  So, I don't know, I was thinking I might go with you, at least for a little while, if you were willing to have me along?  Depending on where you're going, I guess.  And I'd try to pull my weight.

"...I'm not exactly hugely invested in here-in-particular, you know?  It was just...  The village along the river, the forest where I respawned.

"...Unrelatedly, it just occurred to me - does the speaking-to-foxes thing work with writing?  Or is it spoken words only?  If I could get a reference for the fucking logograms -"

"...Annnd there goes my brain again, running off on a tangent about constructing translations of everything into everything else the long way by fox magic if we can just get enough kitsune, with the right native languages, in the right place, for long enough.  That's probably... ...logistically infeasible, to say nothing of the other questions of translation that I can't imagine you want to hear me go on about for five minutes."

"...At least this isn't the first time I've had to learn another language?  Although frankly I know only a few dozen words of French, and most of them badly.  To say nothing of -"

"...I said I wasn't going to go on that rant."

"But seriously, the - linguistic distance - between my tongue, and what's likely the ancestor of yours, is immense.  There was this study that said they were the hardest to crosstrain amongst the pairings studied, and it would probably be easier for both sides to learn Spanish."

"...Well, it didn't say that in so many words, but it was very notable to me that both native English speakers and native speakers of Mandarin Chinese found Spanish - which is a lot like French - easiest to learn.  Haven't the slightest idea why, unfortunately.  Never actually read the darn thing, and propably wouldn't remember the details even if I had, given how everything else has been.  But it's - funny, nonetheless."

"I'm not sure what you mean by the speaking with foxes thing? It's Tamamo's fault. That's my answer when something doesn't make sense and is too hard to think about, hihihi~"

She sniffs towards the exit of the burrows... The nearest one, at least... But then settles down for slightly more snugging.

"...Yeah, but like, are the things that are Tamamo's fault going to include 'mysteriously Knowing all the bajillion individual characters the local language uses if a fellow kitsune writes them down for me'?  English orthography is bad enough; I'm going to hate having to learn every word twice."

"Oh, no, fox language is spoken only. Ordinary foxes speak it too but they have really distinctive accents. And grammar."

"...Damn.  There goes that plan.  I guess now I have to hope that your not-Chinese at least has some way of writing down a character's phonemes built in, even if that's probably its own whole mess."

"You might do better with Notal? It's phonetic."

"Oh, probably.  But I'm here, so I'd better learn the language people actually speak, ne?  Even if Notal does sound interesting."