Vol.6 Ch.8.2 – Little Fox II

“I really don't know what to say,” I admitted. “Your mother seemed...” I couldn't quite come up with a way to describe the woman.

“Intense?” Yume asked. “Polite yet distressingly powerful?”

“Composed,” I said. “Aside from that thing with Syr she seemed unflappable, guarded even.”

She shook her head. “It's a cultural thing. In our kingdom people, women especially, are told to hide our emotions as best we can. A parent in particular shouldn't show their child when they're feeling distressed.”

I pressed my lips together. I had noticed this before with Yume. It wasn't as strong as with her mother but she, too, had a tendency to go still and keep things bottled up. Most of the time her tails and ears gave her true emotions away but evidently Yume's mother was better at hiding those tells. “But you could tell regardless,” I said.

She nodded. “That she would contact me at all was telling. That she would admit her worries to me was terrifying. It wasn't just the mention of the Night Parade, it was this context.”

“I see,” I said, then stayed quiet.

She must have understood my silence because finally she took a deep breath and went back to the topic that had started this conversation. “As for why I had been on my way to leaving the kingdom... After father passed away mother left. It wasn't like she'd left me there. She offered to let me come along but... The suddenness of it all, of just deciding to leave this whole chapter of her life behind... it repulsed me. She didn't seem too torn up about me not coming with her, either. And she left. And suddenly I was all alone, in a place that had been our home for decades. No one there but me, an unmarked grave and a few household items threatening to turn into mokumokuren if I didn't start using them again soon.”

I had no idea what those were but I could take a guess and assumed that they were some kind of spirit born from neglected items.

“And so I had two options: Live in the mountains by myself or leave. But I was too stubborn to leave. Mother had left. I wouldn't. But... the spirit hunters had never left. And neither had all the yokai mother had so carefully bought off or otherwise appeased while she'd been there. I hadn't just lost my parents, I had also lost my protection. Mother's magic is terrifyingly strong. You've only seen the smallest part of it. And now she was gone. And so I set about getting stronger. That search led me to the way of the blade, learning to fight with it and eventually seeking out our divine blacksmith to forge me Hoshizora. It led me to learn Qi techniques. In between trips I always made sure to come back to our home. And nearly every time I had to spend months caring for the place. One time I came back to a group of spirit hunters about to burn the place to the ground. I'm not proud of how I dealt with them but I did what I felt I had to.”

I didn't say anything. Our kingdom, too, had its share of overly ambitious monster hunters, so I understood where she was coming from. I once took a quest to help protect a herd of minotaurs from one such group.

“But that was the beginning of the end,” she went on. “The villagers in the nearby village hadn't sent those hunters after me. They didn't know I was a kitsune. But they still noticed that the hunters never returned. Rumors began circulating. A few days later a tengu showed up. It offered coin for two daughters of a poor family. When the family refused to sell their children, the tengu stole the newborns of the village. I tracked it down, killed it, and brought the babies back but when I returned I forgot my illusions. Everyone saw my ears and tails.”

“And they all turned on you,” I said quietly.

She shook her head. “Not as many as I had expected. But considering that I had just saved their children yes, a lot of them seemed upset that the wrong person had helped them.”

I gave her a rueful little smile.

“It's one of the things I admire about you,” she said. “You keep helping people no matter how many gods tell you you're not wanted.”

“To be fair,” I said, “if the people I'm helping told me I wasn't wanted I would probably tell them to go piss up a rope.”

“As did I,” she said. “When they were done ranting at me I told them that they could take care of their own problems from then on. That I would leave the village, the mountains, the kingdom. And that I would return a generation later and would exact revenge on their children if they destroyed my home.”

“Will you?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” she said. “This is my home now. Everything precious to my father and me I took with me. And the home still exists in my memories and, therefore, in my dreamscapes. But people tend to take threats seriously when they are made by beings that cannot die of old age.”

I nodded. “Was that when you set out to find a boat?”

She shook her head. “No. That was about five years ago. At first I tried to create a new life in the capital. No one knew me there and I thought that since we had been driven out sentiments might have changed. But if anything things had gotten even worse. Though, ironically, not in the way I had expected.”

“What do you mean?”

“People were no longer suspicious of me because I might be a spirit,” she said. “But because I looked too foreign. Many felt themselves drawn to me but many more regarded me with open suspicion. And while I had decades of experience using magic to hide my tails and ears, shifting my facial features to blend in with the people of that realm was beyond me. I was an outcast twice over. But even so I tried my best. For four years I tried. And then I gave up. There was no one big dramatic event. A woman spat in my face after her man had turned to ogle me. It was nothing, really. Still, it was the final straw. I slapped her so hard she went sprawling and then left the capital before the guards could arrest me. I had already taken to carrying all my belongings in my spatial ring long ago and so I had nothing tying me down. Although knowing that my landlord is likely still waiting for his last rent payment gives me no small amount of satisfaction.”

I snorted, causing her to smile.

“It isn't exactly an epic story, is it?” she finally said.

“Life rarely is,” I said. “And you skipped past the most impressive details. Meeting a divine blacksmith, the fight with the dragon...” I waited a beat, then added: “Sleeping with a goddess...” I heard the gasp from outside that I had been hoping for.

“You remember that, do you?” she said, the twitching of her ear telling me that she, too, had heard the gasp.

“It put some interesting images into my head,” I admitted.

“That, too, wasn't that impressive,” she said. “It was a local mountain deity, nothing too impressive.”

“Where on that scale of the kami did she fall?” I asked.

“Strong enough to wipe out an entire village if she got upset,” Yume admitted.

“That's plenty strong enough to qualify as a god,” I said.

“I suppose so,” she said. “But we met far stronger gods, even just today.”

I smiled. “True. But now tell me, what did you do to this mountain goddess?”

She smiled back at me. We both knew her next words wouldn't be the truth. They weren't for my benefit after all, but for the benefit of the one still standing outside and eavesdropping on us. “I took this rope,” she said, walking over to the hemp ropes she kept in her room. “And I used it to tie up this goddess who could crush me with a thought. I tied up her hands and feet and used the rest to mold her body into shape. The rope hugged her breasts, her waist, her hips, her ass. It even cupped her pussy. And when I had her there, all tied up and helpless, I used her thoroughly. I made her lick my feet, fingered both her holes until she came screaming my name and then I rode her face until I was satisfied.”

I could feel my cock straining against my pants at those words. And even more at the thought of how they would relate to what was to come. “And how would you like to do the same to a goddess far, far more powerful?” I asked.

“Would you like me to tie this goddess up for you?” she asked. “To give her to you like a present? Just imagine, having her in front of you, all tied up and helpless, and using her to sate your lust...”

I decided to stop playing coy. “What do you think Athena?” I said, loudly enough that the eavesdropping goddess couldn't pretend she hadn't heard me. “Does that sound like something you'd enjoy?”