“This is animal abuse,” the fox stated with a pout. How does a fox pout? Cutely, that's how.
Completely bemused, I stared at her. “Chill. It's not… if you play your cards right, it'll be catch-and-release.”
“So I can lead you straight back to my gang?” She scoffed, then she began to writhe and wriggle in my hands like a demented salmon. “Nah, not happening. You'll never take me alive!”
“So… you want me to kill you, then?” I laughed, rolling my eyes. Okay, so this fox was what my dad would call, ‘a bit of a character’.
The fox froze, staring at me in horror. “What? Why would I want that?”
“That's what the phrase, ‘you’ll never take me alive’, means,” I explained, raising an eyebrow. “‘I will cause you so much trouble that your only option is to kill me.’”
She stared at me, dumbfounded, tilted her head, and looked away. “Damn, that puts so many things into context.”
This fox…
“So, what are you going to do with me, now that you have me?” She asked, eyeing me with her big, expressive eyes full of worry.
Holding her under her forelegs, I twisted her this way and that, looking at her, “I don't know. Maybe slippers?”
Her eyes bulged, and she laughed nervously. “Slippers? I'm at least a scarf… right? Not that I want to be turned into any garment!”
I pretended to hum in thought. This fox was actually so funny, but I didn’t really know why I’d chased her. Now that I had an actual talking fox in my hands, I really wanted to just… know more. Plus, I was kinda enjoying having a concentrated form of my own sass sent back at me.
“Hey, I have a question… you know, before you garmentify me?” She whispered, her tail swishing slightly where it hung down.
Meeting her eyes, I watched her carefully for deception. She was a crafty little thing. That escape attempt with the puppy-eyes had almost worked. “What is it?”
Leaning in close, she dropped her voice into a nervous, conspiratorial whisper, and asked, “How'd you get your fur to look so good? It's like god licked you or something.”
I blinked then glanced down at my tail as I curved it around into view. “Um… shampoo and conditioner. Like, way too much. Dad was complaining the other day that our monthly spending was going to go way up because both my mum and I have these tails and ears now.”
“Shampoo?” The fox asked incredulously. “You… what, stand behind a sham with a bucket?”
I was so confused. “What the fuck are you on about?”
She narrowed her eyes and shot back, “What the fuck are you on about?”
As an apparent afterthought, she muttered, “What even is a sham?”
Before I could answer, her ears perked up and she blurted, “Wait, is this a metaphysical thing? Like, the by-product of an elaborate scheme? Oh, I knew I liked you…”
What was she… wait, oh. A sham, as in, something is a sham, or a lie. Man, this fox was so wild.
“No, it’s a paste or something,” I giggled. “I don't know why it's called that, but you use water and that paste-soap stuff and it washes your fur really well. Then you put a different paste in — conditioner, and wash that out too, and you get really shiny fur.”
“Well… that's disappointing,” she sighed theatrically. “You're not up to any mischief at all? Wait, where does one get shampoo and conditioner?”
“From a store, and yeah, I am kind of up to mischief,” I said. “I'm going to go and see if I can help with whatever craziness the storm is causing.”
“That sounds like the opposite of mischief,” she snorted. “You're not very good at being a fox. Honestly, I know you've caught me and all, but instead of a scarf, I think you need a mentor.”
“It was slippers.”
She narrowed her eyes at me again. “We agreed that I'd be a scarf.”
“No, we really didn't.” This little shit was trying to pull a fast one on me.
“Damn… Okay, so you're smarter than you look.”
I rolled my eyes— Wait, did she just say I looked stupid?
“Look, the authorities don’t like vigilantes even the really chill ones that people generally call superheroes,” I explained. “So, since the authorities don’t want me to do it, I think it counts as mischief.”
She considered me for a moment, then looked up at the howling, twisting clouds. “I can see that. Plus, you humans are going to need all the help you can get. The spirit-realm is reconnecting, and after so long with little to no contact, it’s not going to do it gently.”
Okay, now she had my full attention. Not that she didn’t already, because the sky had literally been falling for like half an hour, and I’d fucked around arguing with my dad and then a talking fox. I needed to get my ass in gear.
“Okay, so you know about this spirit stuff?” I asked, keeping one eye on the sky now.
The fox snorted. “Girl, I am a spirit. Of course I know a thing or two about my kind. Actually, you know what? I think we can come to an arrangement. I’ll help you do your hero thing, and you help me get some stuff that I want.”
That actually sounded like a good idea — no, good was a strong word. It sounded like a helpful idea. Who knew what this cheeky little animal would do to screw me over in the process, but…
“I can get you lots of chicken? Is that something you want?” I asked tentatively.
She scoffed at me and rolled her eyes. “As if. I can get that from at least a dozen trash cans around here. Nah… I want you to get me some shampoo… Oh, and conditioner! They’re both required.”
“I can get you that,” I agreed easily. Even using my allowance, I could get that for her. I’d rather spend a couple dozen bucks a week than fuck up because I didn’t understand something about spirits.
“Deal!” The fox said quickly reaching up to place a paw on my chest. “Shake on it?”
Wait, I was still holding her. Gently, I crouched and set her back on the ground. This time, she didn’t run away, although her eyes did dart into the brush for a moment, considering it. Then, tentatively, she offered me a paw. I reached down and grasped it with my thumb and three fingers, then shook three times.
“What’s your name, by the way? I can’t keep calling you ‘fox’ in my head,” I said, crouching down to rest on my haunches.
“Saoirse,” she stated calmly. “At least, that’s the name I go by. I ain’t giving you shit on my government name. What’s yours?”
“My name is Tia, and you don’t have a government name, you’re a fox,” I snorted, trying to stifle a giggle.
She growled and sat down, tail wrapping around her feet. “Yeah, it’s bullshit. But nah, I mean like, my spirit name. The one where other spirits can get you if they know it.”
A scream echoed in from the distance, and I shot straight back up. “Crap, I’ve been wasting time, I need to…”
I slowed to a stop and looked down at my purple furred tail. “But if I go out like this, everyone will know it’s me. How many purple fox girls are there in the city? Can’t be many.”
“I haven’t seen a purple fox in like, a long time,” Saoirse noted thoughtfully then glanced at my big, fluffy purple tail. “You could just change it.”
I frowned. “Change it?”
“Yeah, I mean, unless something really drastic happened since one of your people fucked one of mine, you should have similar magic to me,” she nodded, padding up to put a paw on my boot. Before I could figure out what she was doing, she shoved her nose up under my pants leg and licked my ankle.
“Arghug!” I squeaked, jumping backwards. “What the hell?”
“Yup, pretty powerful too,” Saoirse nodded to herself thoughtfully, ignoring my indignation. “A lot more of you is spirit than I expected, but that just makes it easier.”
“Saoirse, did you really have to lick me?” I squeaked, my face going red.
She tilted her head and looked up at me. “Well, yeah?”
“Generally… licking feet is considered a highly sexual thing, and I’m underage, which means that it’s like, also gross,” I said, hating how heated my face felt. Like, she was a fox, so there wasn’t any what if going on here, but she could still talk. If she was a normal fox, I’d be like, ew fox slobber.
Her eyes widened slowly, until they looked like they might pop out of her head. “O-oh! I’m so sorry! I didn’t… I was just trying to get a read on you, I swear! Oh, I’m like sixteen, so unless you’re way younger than you look, which is actually pretty likely considering that us spirits tend to look young all the time… You’re not like, three or four years old, are you? No, you’re too grown up for that. Fourteen, fifteen… sixteen? Not that it matters! I’m just trying to make it less weird, because I’m thinking back and remembering some of the shows I watched and there was this one episode of… maybe it was Law & Order? This guy is all gross and…”
She was breathing really rapidly now, and her mischief had been replaced by an unexpectedly flustered energy that I had no idea how to handle. “Whoa, whoa, Saoirse, chill! If it was just for some sort of fox-based magic reading thing, that’s fine. I’m fifteen soon, if that helps. Let’s get back on topic. How do I change how I look so people don’t recognise me?”
When she didn’t reply, I knelt beside her and slowly reached out towards her head, giving her time to back away from my hand if she didn’t want it. She didn’t move, but her eyes darted up to watch my hand as it approached. Finally, it landed between her ears, and I began to gently stroke her head.
“Sorry, Tia,” she mumbled, staring pointedly at the ground. “The adrenaline ran out, you know? I was being chased by this girl with big scary gauntlets, and she caught me, and my snark or flight reflex kicked in and now it’s gone, and I’m having a little bit of a scarf moment right now.”
“What’s a scarf moment?” I asked, trying to keep an amused smile from showing.
“A moment where it feels like I’m going to get turned into a scarf.”
I shifted to give her ear-scritches. “I was always joking, you know? Also, it was slippers, not a scarf.”
“Damn it, I was hoping I could pull that one over on you now,” she said sheepishly, flicking her eyes up to give me a little foxy grin.
“Not a chance,” I laughed softly.
She let out a big sigh, then arched her back into a stretch and shook herself. “Okay. Sorry about that. So, here’s the thing, Tia. We can create sorta… well, they’re called glamours, and they’re illusions but they’re not, if that makes sense? It’s real, but it’s not our true selves — oh, and it can’t be too much of a change from whatever our ‘real’ body looks like at that moment.”
“Um… I think I’m following.” I was totally lost.
Saoirse gave me a long, hard look. “Alright. Well… think about what you want your glamour to look like, then hold that and sort of… think really hard at it. If you feel your whole body sort of start zinging like you got turned into a string instrument, it means it’s working.”
“Okay… think really hard. Sure.”
Her little foxy face scrunched up into a grin, and she reached out to pat me lightly on the foot with her paw. “You don’t sound very confident, but this magic is literally part of your soul. You’ll get it.”
This was going to be so embarrassing. All I was going to do was look constipated. Still, I began to hold a mental image in my head of who and what I thought Gauntlette would be. Then, I thought about it harder…