| \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNekoStar\r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t | \r\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
Statistical summaries are nice, but why not gather first hand intelligence instead? The weather was warm, summer sunset in the distance illuminated your surroundings in a nostalgic hue. Windbells were chiming in the distance and they brought you back to your senses. This was a long wooden house at the edge of a gigantic courtyard. You found yourself at the front door of it without any recollection how you got here. The house looked pretty ordinary, even if architecturally unfamiliar to you. You couldn't place the style exactly anywhere in the world.
Apparently you had passed across the courtyard to get here, although you couldn’t remember that you did, no matter how hard you tried. The middle of the courtyard was dominated by an equally gigantic building that could pass for a castle of sorts, also built of wood. Blue, red and yellow banners fluttered in the wind on its high walls. As you looked around, you noticed there were no walls surrounding the courtyard and there were no people to be seen. Except for the sound of the windbells everything was eerily quiet. You could see dense, dark green forest outside the courtyard perimeter acting as a natural wall. It gave off a foreboding sensation but it wasn’t the forest that captured your interest. Something was insisting you to open the door, pulling your curiosity towards whatever it was that was inside. You knocked on the door and let yourself in.
You entered a well lit room. The sunlight passed brightly through large windows unhindered by the tall curtains that had been pulled all the way aside. The illumination seemed off, like it was midday inside instead of late evening. The interior decoration of the room gave you an impression from centuries past. It was luxurious, pretty to look at and antique even. Then there was a corner of the room that didn’t seem to fit its surroundings at all. The corner had a small table, a painting on the wall and a leather couch in it. Compared to its surroundings, the corner was modern. Too modern to fit the rest of the decoration at all. The result was like the room had been torn apart and put together again with a corner taken from a different room in an altogether different era.
On the couch you noticed a young blue eyed fox kit, a vixen apparently, skillfully playing with a balisong knife while having an indifferent, empty look on her face. The vixen couldn’t have been more than 12 years old, but the expression she had, the way she handled the knife, and the looks of the room made you doubt if any of what you saw was real at all. It was almost like the kit had an attitude about her unbecoming for someone that young, and that attitude told you it would be better to leave her alone.
The cub's fur was red, but appeared to be more to the orange than red. The tip of her tail was white like the bottom half of her face. Her ears were the same red or orange as the rest of her fur, except for their tips, which were white also. On her right ear she wore a golden earring shaped like a teardrop. The ears protruded from amidst the long fur of her head that she had dyed purple, with a stripe of magenta in the front. The vixen was wearing a pair of blue shorts cut from a pair of worn jeans and a gray t-shirt of some metal band. She seemed the type who’d have a pair of equally worn jeans somewhere in her dresser, if she even had a dresser. A black leather jacket adorned by a multitude of pin badges was laying in a heap by the couch, carelessly cast aside. The kit had probably noticed you right away as you entered.
"Welcome. So you got curious and wanted to come see me, huh? The name's Ai. It could mean 'love' but I choose to write it as 'beauty' instead. For where there's no love you can't bring any with you on your person, you need to make it," the kit grinned and looked in your direction.
"That's because oneself is never enough no matter what people say. Love takes work, it isn't something that you automatically have and dispense around. However, love is for all. When you’re asked for your love, in reality it's your work and effort that is asked for. You aren't in a position to decline, you’re called to serve and you do so with the best of your abilities. Unless, of course, the other is found wanting. The innocent may cast the first stone, and after that, let the guilty cast a hailstorm of stones. Love being for all doesn’t mean putting oneself in a place of a rug to be trodden over, oh no. It means giving a chance and being worthy of been given a chance."
The kit flicked the knife closed with a sharp movement of her wrist. You had sensed it as soon as you entered the room, her demeanor was unsettling but at least she put the knife away.
"Sorry. It's not my intention to sound intimidating. It's just been a while since I’ve had company. We have all the time in the world here and it gets really, really boring. Huh, this? This is something I picked up somewhere. I don't remember where exactly, because I can't remember much at all about the places I've been to. Sometimes it feels like I'm missing the memories of a lifetime. Although from the looks of the knife I guess it's from Indonesia... I think?
You might try asking my brother about its origins. He's got a bad memory as well, but his is better than mine when history is concerned. I've always traveled with him so maybe he remembers where we've been to. Anyway, it's more like a toy really, a pastime. You don't need to worry about that. I usually keep it in the pocket of my jacket."
The kit sat up quickly, seemingly excited to have company all the sudden.
"Hey, hey! Want to see something really nice? In case I ever need something that's truly sharp, I'd just use my fangs. Or these."
Ai smiled and presented you her small, tender paws. She twiddled her fingers and as you watched, her nails blackened and grew in length until they had turned approximately twice as long as her fingers and apparently very, very sharp. She looked at her talons closely as if inspecting them for specks of dust, then they retracted and disappeared as subtly as they had appeared.
"My brother doesn't have anything like these, but I do. They come in handy sometimes and it's actually fun to use them, although he doesn't see it that way. It's all kind of strange actually now that I think of it, but so are we. You didn't know? We are old spirits, shape shifters, born into this world over and over again. But a part of me is something more. It was nightmare, or some similar word that people used to call someone like me. A word meaning a vicious killer that lurks in the night, hunting its prey. Ah yes, it was 'yecha'. I'm not good with languages, although I should probably be familiar with the one the word's from. However, I’m not. And yet it used to be my native language once, like many others. It's just so strange, you know?
Actually, we’re triplets in a sense. He, our elder brother and I. Well, he isn't an actual brother of ours, but he's so close to us that he could be… he's here with us even now, watching you. We call him Santiago, according to the old city. My brother loves puns you see, so he came up with it, mixed it from our names while we were traveling and it stuck. Huh? No, I don’t think you have any reason to worry. He seems amused by your visit here and knows you’ll be departing again soon.”
The little vixen flashed you a most adorable smile like you were just having a regular light talk at a dinner table. You could have sworn her eyes became pitch black in the brief moment she blinked her eyes, and then they were the ordinary blue again.
“Is there something deeper going on between my brother and I since I talk about him a lot, you ask? Yes, we’re lovers. He’s really shy about it, but he's also very good at it. The sex stuff I mean, and of course the other things as well. He knows me and the things I like, and he also knows that I like variety… he doesn't mind. There isn’t really any jealousy involved or anything like that between us, ever. We know that in the end we’ll find ourselves in each other's arms.
Ah, I’m sorry. Did you mean Santiago after all? He speaks more to me than he does to my other brother. I wouldn’t say it makes us in any way closer though. His speech is strange and incomprehensible for the most part for me to understand. He then tends to show me what he wants.
You should really ask the historical things from my brother, he's the more literary, scholarly type. Have you met him yet? He's to be found around here somewhere. His name's Chi and I love him very much. We're so close we can actually finish each other's sentences at times. He's very considerate and kind, even to the point that he allows me to make new friends and follow my own paths, but he can be really long winded and difficult to understand when he's telling his tales. Try not to get bored in his company, okay? You’d need to have a library in your head to be able to talk with him properly. Oh, and please forget that I mentioned about that... sex thing, will you? He's not as open with it as I am. I'd come along with you, but I can't leave here. But you'll be sure to remember to return in time for the feast, okay? I hear the soup's good and maybe they'll even have strawberries. I'd like that."
Ai sends you off with a friendly smile and a wave of her paw. You can’t see the talons, but you’re pretty sure they’re still there somewhere.
(Rating set to M due to content matter, just in case).