The Autumn Majesty arrives, as he does, without his crown or weapon. With his faraway gaze and flowing hair, the king reminds the fox of a forgotten spirit. Even while the Majesty offers prayers, rice cake, and raw liver as an offering to her shrine, the fox thinks he has an aura like the kind belonging to humans who have died too early and never got to say their goodbyes.
The Majesty prays, and the fox doesn’t understand anything save the deep, unfathomable desire to protect his people and the lands under his reign. She moves closer, tasting the man’s magic, never daring any more than a sip for the gods would know if she had stolen too much. As if she had made a sound, the Majesty glances his way when her paws touch the stone steps on which the Majesty kneels.
The Majesty’s smile grows and the fox presses her head against the outstretched palm. Autumn’s breath tastes like falling leaves and humid air, laced with undertones of magic that makes the king’s bandaged hand pass from the human world to her own. The fox lets herself be scratched, tilts her head to get to spots she can’t really reach. The Majesty holds out his other hand and more of his power glistens in the well of his palm, invisible to all but the two of them. The fox leans forward and laps it up and thinks of the sun hanging low in the sky and warmth that she has felt in another lifetime, and thinks of overripe fruit that spreads sweetness down the back of her throat and is soft between the pads of her toes.
Snow. It fills her head. The fox flicks her ears to focus, but she sees correct. It is snow, falling, like feathers from downy chicks and pigeons shot from the sky, to cover a citadel within which a lone man is huddled. Vast halls and cavernous passageways that hold grand tapestries for none to see save one man. This man is paralyzed by heavy chains that have no physical weight, nor any magical strength. The Majesty frowns and his hand slows to rest on the fox’s haunches.
The fox shifts, back arching as she rubs against the calloused fingers, begging for more.
On his neck, her fur prickles. Not from the Majesty’s touch, or the sense of enemies approaching, no. It is the sudden image of oily silhouettes that reach ugly fingers towards this man. It is similar to the dark shadows that settle in the Majesty’s eyes, and the fox recognises this shade to be one of deep concern. The fox lets out a whimper and licks the hand within reach. That makes the Majesty smile, just a little, the sight one that always sends a burst of warm pleasure right down to her ethereal tail, but it does not really reach his eyes to dispel the worry there.
The Majesty shares images of green leaves and golden sands. This cheers him up a little. The fox thinks about the sun melting away frost for seedlings to grow, and the Majesty points out one little shoot in particular, coiling around a larger vine. The Majesty tells her about the huge dragon spirits that loiter between towering trees, and is quick to change subjects when the fox hisses, fur standing on end. The Majesty soothes her with more scratches and nuggets of power, and makes the fox think about tiny shoots growing from earth that was once frozen over by the unforgiving breath of nature.
The fox nods, only because it makes the Majesty talk more. They are seated now, in friendship that span worlds, and the Majesty tells her about a boy that is quick to learn but not from the page. Like the fragile seedling she had seen, this child grows best in the sun outside the confines of pots and rooms. The fox stares harder at the impression of the young child, his eyes, his smile, the way he reaches out for so much more. She thinks about how this young breath of life is destined for vast greatness, one that can rival even the sun and the moon. It is the kind of vine that snakes up even the tallest, strongest trees, using its trunk for a temporary handhold; and when the old wood scaffold finally is worn away by wind and rain and time, the vine stays firm, its stems conjoining and turning from soft flesh to bark.
She ignores the dragon she sees cradled in its canopy, because they stink and they growl at her when she floats by.
The Majesty laughs, and it makes a happy yelp slips between her jaws, pulled forth by instinct tied to the king’s own presence. She is happy to be shared images of golden dust, rippling under the touch of dry winds and baked to crumbs by an overenthusiastic sun. The Majesty tells her about a man that makes her think of magpies that would pluck the gems from her shrine if they weren’t sealed down by stone. Their cries are loud, their feathers and wings beating noisily in the serene quiet of her forests, whistling and warbling as they pirouette between branches in some mad, avian version of a human dance. She bites back a growl of disappointment as the Majesty lifts his hands away from her flank to demonstrate. He moves this way and that before giving up with an embarrassed laugh and flopping backwards onto the stone floor.
She clambers on his chest as it rises and falls with his sheepish chuckles, and licks his chin to show that he has no need for that here.
Instead, she leaps off him and bounds around the temple, between the cloth plaits that trail down from the porcelain shingles on the roof, through the paper lanterns as her fur catches the flames that have long died but glitter like embers on the ends. She shows him how the foxes play and celebrate, breathing blue orbs that pulse in midair like a bubble, threatening to burst, and she paints streaks of iridescent sapphire across the landscape. Where she touches grasses and rocks where shadows hide, she turns them into jewels. There is the rustle of other fox spirits in the grass and she knows how tempted they are to join in, but they always let her dance for the Majesty. She whistles and calls, jumping and running, as he sits up and watches with an expression she is proud to have set her sights on.
She thinks of a child wandering into the forests and seeing his first fireflies, seeing his first autumn, the way his eyes light up from the inside. She thinks about the boy running after her, his hair billowing out behind him and a smile like the sun, and a laugh that would be the sound of stars falling from the sky and landing in the grasses where she is. She thinks about the boy and his first prayer, his first burst of magic, his first visit with his crown, and how compelled she had been to fall to her knees before him in the face of power beyond her comprehension. She thinks about his alarm and panic, and how he had flailed his arms at her until she had dared to straighten again. At the thought, she comes to a tumbling halt in the spot where it had all taken place, the Majesty following close behind her.
It is a ways away from the shrine; a clearing that is almost a perfect circle lined with pearl-capped mushrooms and speckled moss. It is the spot where he had first demonstrated his power, and she had first watched. She thinks about how he had coaxed her out with soothing words that makes her feel like honey, running down the side of a tree, and also of the clouds moving away to reveal a full, round moon in the middle of the night stars.
She sits, and so does the Majesty. The man still has a smile like the sun and the laugh of falling stars, and he makes her think of a small fire crackling in the middle of a cold night. He is smiling again, and she pushes him down with her front paws, mussing up the wavy locks of his hair as she drapes herself ceremoniously across his chest and touches her nose to his. His hand settles across her back and as his eyes soften, and the last of the strain slips away from his expression, the fox thinks about the last rays of the sun vanishing below the horizon, stifling heat giving way to comfortable twilight coolness.
She does not tell him of her travels through his lands, or how she touches unripened crops and unopened flowers to nudge them into fullness. She does not tell him of her visits to his palace and how she breathes into the candles so they glimmer like the first threads of a new fox spirit, or how she weaves whatever little strength she has into charms only she can feel, for protection and prosperity. She does not tell him how she misses his calm when he vanishes for weeks at a time, and instead partakes in his tales of other kingdoms and kings, the business of which matters little to her.
Instead, she tells him about the prayers of travellers who pass by, and about the new kits that have stumbled into his lands, and thinks about a little boy tumbling in crisp leaves and giggling as they crunch under his sandals. She thinks about the boy who became a king, and doesn’t count the years left till the final cycle rolls around. She thinks about kings come and gone, and how this one Majesty will never leave. She thinks, as she always does, about how she will keep him safe with him in her memories, as she lets time trickle by from the shrine forgotten by the rest of the world.
