Waking up around dusk, the fox headed into the forest again, unwilling to deal with the risk of interacting with humans after the mob from earlier. This time he felt like exploring the trails he had seen from the forest edge; first the one with the shattered trees, then the barren path.
Heading along the edge of the forest, he saw nothing out of place, reaching the path of shattered trees safely. Following it, he found numerous small burrows, with multiple rabbits and squirrels running away as he approached, as well as some deer who eyed him warily as he passed. Eventually he found a large clearing with a depression in the ground and a pond in the middle, fed by a small stream.
To one side of the pond, he saw a large quantity of energy hanging over the clearing, the world seeming to flicker between two images. On one side he saw an empty clearing, on the other he saw a number of fox kits playing with a larger fox looking over them. Examining it closely, he saw that the energy seemed linked to something else, much as his foxfire was, making him think they were connected. Keeping in mind what he saw, he headed back towards his den, eager to experiment with this new idea.
Upon arriving at his den, calmer now where he felt safer, he sat down and tried to spread out his foxfire. It took many tries, but eventually he was able to turn it into a wispy field of energy. With just the faintest shimmer in the air, he tried to push an image into it, watching, though nothing happened. After several more attempts, he still had not succeeded in making any change to what he saw, and decided to give up for now.
Due to it getting to be too late in the night, he headed into his den to get some rest. As he lay down, he pondered its location; he was visiting the humans a lot, so perhaps he should move it closer. But at the same time, he liked it being far enough away it felt safe. Condensing his foxfire back into a small flame, he had it spread across his tail for the soothing warmth and curled up to sleep.
Upon waking up in the morning, he moved his foxfire back into a floating orb and headed out of his den. Wondering if his human was better yet, he headed towards the village. He saw plenty of the young humans playing, but his human was absent at the moment, so he circled around them towards the strange fields. Finding mice was harder this time, but he managed to eat his fill, and headed back towards the barren trail he was interested in exploring yesterday.
As he headed down the trail, he heard a shriek from above; instinctively jumping to the side, he barely avoided being caught by a hawk, though it still managed to claw his hind leg before it lifted back into the air. Wishing he could convince it he had moved forward, he was surprised to see his foxfire disperse and a copy of himself jump forward.
The hawk dove again, targeting the copy of himself, and he condensed the foxfire right before it hit, focusing on burning. The hawk screeched as it burst into flames and tumbled across the ground before coming to a stop, utterly still.
He considered for a moment as the body burned, before deciding he must have been trying too hard before, trying instead to barely focus on the image of a berry bush, seeing it appear a moment later. Experiment successful, he condensed the energy back into the ball of foxfire and used it to extinguish the flaming corpse. It wasn’t like it could burn anything in the middle of the barren patch, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving it on fire for some reason.
He thought about eating the bird, but that feeling of danger flared up again for the first time in a while. Abandoning the thought, he moved his ball of foxfire over the wound he had taken, relaxing as the soothing feeling began to comfort the wound.
He continued traveling along the barren trail until he started to see mutated plants starting to grow into the dirt. Focusing further down the trail set off the warning sense again, though he could see there was still a long distance of barren ground before him. Listening to the feeling of danger, however, he turned around and returned.
Along the way back home, he had some berries and nuts he ran across, filling up after his earlier snack of mice. As it was getting too bright, he headed back to his den to rest some more, though this time he finally made use of his storage rooms, bringing a few mouthfuls of nuts inside before curling up to go to sleep.
Upon waking up in the evening, he simply practiced with his illusions, having noticed they were fairly blurry before. He tried everything from simple shapes to complex figures like himself or his human. After a while he began to feel tired from the repeated effort and snacked on some of the nuts he had stored.
Concerned about his human, he focused on the link between them, finding the earlier concern had left, but a feeling of sadness still present, along with anxiety. Content that there was no pain or fear, he stopped paying attention for now since he couldn’t do anything about it.
This did, however, remind him he had his own link he could create with things nearby. He decided to experiment with that some more during the evening before it was time to sleep, and headed into the nearby forest again. It took him a while but he finally found a rabbit nosing around in the grass, and he hid himself with an illusion to approach more closely.
Focusing on the rabbit, he extended a tendril of energy—noticing it felt much thinner and weaker than before—connecting to it. As the rabbit jumped in shock, he focused on keeping the connection, feeling a flash of fear and anxiety over the link before it calmed down, looking around warily. Eventually it went back to eating the grass, and he tried to push fear down the link, thinking back to when he was trapped in the village. The rabbit immediately jumped again and fled, the connection snapping painfully as it did so.
Feeling exhausted after the feedback of the link breaking, he headed back to his home to rest again before morning. As he curled up, he realized the wound on his hind leg wasn’t as bad as before. Since he had held his foxfire on it for a considerable amount of time, he had to assume that it was able to help heal. Putting the foxfire back on the injury, he let himself fall asleep, hoping he would see his human again tomorrow.