The Fox - Part IV

Perhaps if he had not tried to hide his intentions from her she would have just given it to him. Just like that, straight, easy and simple. He had always been one to underestimate the generosity of the human heart, but after the horror of his past, he thought he deserved the right to doubt its existence. 

He watched her as she turned the pendant this way and that, the garnet eyes of the fox sparkling in the harsh white lights of the small, neatly arranged room. She had very obviously just landed in Japan recently, judging from the luggage bags piled into a mini mountain in one corner of the room. Only one was opened and its contents rummaged through, clothes, from what he could see. His head throbbed slightly from where he had banged it on the edge of the low table that sat undamaged in the middle of the room and almost instinctively he twisted and tried to lick it, almost forgetting that he was still in human form. A soft growl of frustration rumbled in his throat as he rubbed his hand to the sore spot. 

Her inspection done, she placed it on the table. “Here.” She smiled at him. After he had just told her a story that would have sent most humans running for help or a psychiatric hospital, here she was, sitting ever so calmly and talking to him as if he was a normal human being.  He wondered what she was. 

A smile still played on the corners of her lips as he felt the pull of his shape, the twisting of the air around him began, he felt his form shucking away like a snake discarding its skin. A slight feeling of panic settled in the pit of his stomach even in the midst of the change. What if she started screaming? What if she raised hell here in the room? She was now larger than him and could just as easily kill him if she chose…and he wasn’t so sure that he had any power left to defend himself. He would never be able to get the pendant then. 

~Rei Shiori