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Despite the dull, lethargic demon sun whose rays rotted saplings before they could sprout from their seeds, life clung onto the earth, adamant to leave. It persisted in the hidden crevices of the bases that the mountains left behind when they took to the skies, stowed away from prying eyes.

The vixen waded through the dead leaves of the grasses covering the former seat of Mount Minamoto, a rare streak of vivacious amber against a sea of rustling, fading yellows and browns. A hot gust from the north sent rippling waves down the fields. The only indications of the mist she had been chasing for the past few hours were the droplets of water perched on her shining black nose. Once in a while, she would get a whiff of the flowing coolness scented with eucalyptus and bamboo amidst the arid air that hung lax over the grass. The fox's muzzle parted the stalks before her with unbreakable focus, threading through them on an almost invisible path, her nose leading her other senses.

The fox spirit blinked the irritating apex of a blade out of her eyes and sniffed the air. Before her eyes stretched the rest of the pale, unassuming grasslands, but her nose insisted upon believing a very different tale.

Her eyes would start seeing once her touch showed them what they had to see.

The next step taken by her precarious front paw landed on a stray patch of wet, soft moss, greener than the finest jade a goldsmith could embed into a courtier's ring. The kitsune licked her left canine and dove into the cool mist seeping out from between the stalks.

Her body slunk underneath the heavy fronds of the wild ferns, feathery and verdant in the mist, her fur caressing and collecting the white dust coating their undersides. The dry dirt of the grasslands grew thicker with layers of dying leaves, humus, wet mud, and rotting wood. Creepers with green tendrils and scarlet berries curled up on the large sleepy parasols of mushrooms. White fungal caps alternated with large tracts of green moss and lichens on the glistening dark barks of the redwoods and eucalypti. The vixen looked to the skies, but her eyes met with a canopy that obstructed the sunlight almost entirely. The trees that grew here grew with an almost desperate yearning for life and as a result, their girthy, gargantuan trunks stood like the celestial pillars holding up the heavens themselves.

The mist draped itself over the secret forest, obscuring it from the eyes venturing further into its depths.

The vixen's ears pricked up at the distant trill of a nightingale calling for his mate. The sacred grove would offer them sanctuary for as long as possible but in a world that stood on shaky, shifting sands, the idea of a tomorrow was more of a question than a promise. It was only a matter of time before a wandering demon horde sniffed out their hidden haven and laid waste to it.

The breeze that wafted into the woods from the north grazed past leaves, fronds, and petals alike, bearing upon it the loud, rhythmic turbulence of the clouds as they streamed through stone feathers. It sent a shiver up the fox spirit's aching limbs, prompting her to scamper up a low-lying horizontal tree. Blood clumped at the bases of her claws as she raked them against the unyielding bark, turning them into ribbons as she scaled the trunks, faster and higher with each leap. The branches creaked and dipped gracefully in quick succession under her weight.

"The mountains have returned," howled the fox spirit till she could barely whisper. "The mountains have returned."

"Akari has finally lost it, it seems," came a stray rustle of leaves from the canopy.

The kitsune looked up, her ears twitching at the sound of her name. Her front paws slipped on the wet surface of a slimy brown mold and sent her jaw slamming into the large bough of cherry below her. Barely clinging onto the bough with her front paws and left hind paw, she licked her bleeding lips and howled at the canopy.

"The mountains are coming," she repeated, twitching her whiskers. "And I have seen them with my eyes. We do not have time, we must make haste."

"We---" a female voice prickled the orange fur at the nape of her neck, "---are in no need of your tricks, games, or false promises here, kitsune."

The vixen's ears went flat against her head. "Yet here you are deceiving yourselves of this place being safe. Ask the wind if I lie."

The trees seemed to giggle as the wind made their branches sway. "The wind is a liar just like you are, Akari— fickle, capricious, unreliable."

The vixen growled back, baring her canines at the vibrant blossoms poised at the tips of the twigs in bountiful bunches. "Similarly if I could describe you, I'd use adamant, delusional, and blockheaded. Are you that eager to perish in hellfire?"

The wrinkles on the tree barks began to move like ripples on a disturbed pond surface. Creases, furrows, and crests arranged themselves into animated patterns, into a procession of snapping muzzles, crying beaks, flapping wings, and flailing limbs.

A rosette of animal eyes peered from the barks of the trees surrounding the fox spirit. She could see the round ones of the owl, the piercing ones of the hawk, the slit-pupiled eyes of the mountain goat, the oval ones of the cat, and the attentive circular ones of the human amongst many others glaring at her. Their pupils pulsed in unison. The next breeze snuffed out the chatter of the wildlife, blanketing the area in silence. The forest was finally listening to the winds.

"You... it wasn't a trick, they really are headed this way," came a female voice very different from the first one, tinged with incredulity. A storm of distraught whispers erupted from the canopy. The eyes in the barks watched the vixen tiptoe across the bough and spring off it. Her bushy tail went taut, arched, and relaxed as her soft, padded feet touched the ground with nary a sound. 

"A little faith could go a long way," Akari said stopping to lick her bleeding paws. "Time is scarce, we must shift the creatures into the mountains."

All hundred wooden glares of the grove softened. A gentle male voice spoke up, "It is not that easy, moving an entire forest. We might not be able to save everyone."

"Spare me the nonsense, would you? Tree spirits nearing divine status such as you lot could shift them all without leaving behind a single ant in a heartbeat if you desired thus," spat the vixen, bristling at the tree. "What good are your powers other than for bragging?"

Visions of burning stags running through mazes of fire, baying for their dying mates and suffocating fawns, baby monkeys with singed furs and bleeding red flesh clinging onto ashen trees with their mother nowhere in sight, flames eating the feathers of a crying pheasant in midflight turning it into an infernal phoenix flashed through the fox spirit's mind.

"You do not have a second option. It is not a matter of whether you can. You must ascend the mountain and leave this forsaken land."

The reply that came boomed down the treetops, startling the songbirds roosting on them. "It is impossible to move an entire forest onto a mountain in a matter of hours, you insipid fox. Why must we risk exposing ourselves to those creatures while moving? How sure are you that the mountains would land near enough for us to get everyone on it? You have no dominion over us and neither are we obliged to heed your reckless, thoughtless plan."

Akari bowed her head and tsk-tsked. "Shame. Very well then, at the very least, do remember my words when you burn down."

The vixen's limbs took to sprinting one more, stretching and dragging the earth underneath her as she bounded over the forest tracts. The eyes that sprouted on new barks and even on the fallen, bug-eaten logs she leapt over watched her with intent.

"Where are you going, oh wise little fox? We thought you were leaving for the mountains," came a question from a patch of towering oaks.

Akari did not grace them with an answer and instead ducked underneath one of their low-lying branches, her hind legs tucked themselves underneath her body as she slid down the smooth, moss-laden surface of a boulder. A brook with water clearer than polished glass gurgled to a side, bearing the heavy scents of humans in its streams.

Her nose hovered over her reflection in the water, almost colliding with a dragonfly skimming over the water's surface for food. The foliage around her blended into a corridor of green as her feet took flight, dipping into the water of the brook and stippling the blades of the cat-tail reed with splashed water.

All the while, a myriad of scents rising from sweating human skin, flavoured with the fear and anxiety of a lost future drew her forward through the forest. The scent trail terminated at a dense thicket of golden bamboo with their tops angled towards a granite cave currently housing a tribe of seven humans. Dried twigs and blades crunched under the weight of her steps, her tail tip flicked off a stray leaf as she shrunk behind the bamboo stems.

Memories of her illusions did linger on her mind but rarely did they take on the haunting qualities of a premonition. Akari realised that she may have imitated all of their scents a little too well for her to have escaped the after-effects of the events at the village.

Her heart grew heavier within its bony cage each speeding heave of her chest. 

Not yet, she thought as she studied the purplish black clumps of clotted blood as the base of her claws. Deep within the masses persisted small drops of the oni's blood, slowly poisoning the wound and tainting her soul. The fox spirit lifted her head, drew a single deep breath, and padded into the clearing before the cave.

The everpresent mist wrapped around her lengthening limbs and condensed into loose hanging folds of soft white silk. As her fur and claws retreated into her paling skin, her newly sprung hair fell onto her arching back in long, black tresses. Her right hand held her dislocating jaw in place as her skull shortened into a human one. The coolness of the stream flowing through her toes distracted her from the pain of her torn paw pads slowly being replaced by bleeding soles.

With the first sway of her body, Akari realized that she had made a terrible choice, that the effort required to shift into a human form had sapped the last of her vital energy.

The Seamstress who had been washing clothes was the first to notice Akari stumbling across the stream, fighting for balance in her bipedal form. She straightened from her pile of clothes and called over her shoulder, a smile crinkling the edges of her warm brown eyes,

"Oy everyone, Akari has returned!"

The middle-aged woman then dried her arms on the dirty rag around her waist, alighted from the stone she had been sitting on, and waded towards the kitsune through the ankle-deep waters.

The pain felt like someone had cast a fish hook down her chest and had yanked it. The Seamstress's strong arms caught Akari by the shoulders as the kitsune's knees buckled and her body collapsed onto the lady's bosom. Her breath came out in huffs from a chest that felt as though it was being constricted by a python. Her eyelids trembled over the blurring silhouettes of the humans running towards her. The clamour of the tribe wondering what had happened to the fox spirit grew cacophonous to her tiring ears.

In the overpowering cyclone of smells that poured out from the dozen or so hands steadying her shaking frame and leading her toward the cave, Akari's nostrils were quick to pick out the Shrine Maiden's scent. Akari felt her arm wound around her waist, her voice shouting at the Samurai's Apprentice to fetch fresh water for her.

Her head lolled onto the girl's shoulder, her neck muscles losing their tone to the oni's blood steadily making its way to her brain. Here the girl's scent sprung from her neck, untainted by the stench of the demon's lechery; the vixen had despaired for a second that she would never remember the darling aroma again.

"I am sorry, Mitsuki," she whispered into the girl's ear. "I have been so cruel to you."

The face Akari had seen in the noble lady's mirror at the mansion in the village stared back at her. The cheeks were rounded and pink instead of sunken in, the eyes shining with vigour instead of the dull languor she had mimicked. The girl she had pretended to be was alive and well, safe from the demon's assault. Sweat beaded down the girl's knitted brows partly hidden behind her bangs.

The kitsune let herself be lowered onto a reed mat with her head propped up on the Streamstress' lap. She could smell that the Samurai's Apprentice had arrived but could barely make out his details from his shadowy figure. Her ears picked up the sloshing of water within the bamboo shoot as it was passed to the Mitsuki, the Shrine Maiden. A cool stream soon trickled down the gap between the fox spirit's teeth.

"If your definition of cruelty involves asking for permission," Mitsuki muttered as the water overflowed and dribbled down the kitsune's pale cheeks, "before using our forms to save us from demons and carelessly getting poisoned as a result, I think I can live with you being a heartless, soulless monster."

"Will she be alright?" asked the Streamstress, her hands placing a cold, wet rag on the fox spirit's burning forehead.

"I do not know much about the ails of spirits," Mitsuki admitted. "But she has survived worse."

"There's...no time," the kitsune said. With a weak shove, she pushed the girl and the Samurai's Apprentice towards the cave mouth. Akari hissed as the poison crept up her throat, closing in on her windpipe, her claws ripping the mat to shreds as she scrambled to sit upright.

"The mountains...they're coming. You must leave," she said. The smell of fear oozing from her humans was making her nauseous and it had her clenching her teeth lest the vomit spilled out. She swallowed and continued, hanging onto the Streamstress for support, "The mountains are coming. They will land nearby. You can make it if you go now. You must leave. Go north, they are headed north."

"She's delirious," said the Seamstress, her words hastening with panic. "Can we summon a forest deity, Mitsuki? Can one of the spirits help?"

Mitsuki's fingers were busy rubbing the creases across her forehead as she walked back and forth. The Seamstress turned to the Samurai's Apprentice but there wasn't a solution he could offer except trying to calm Mitsuki down.

"Where are the Samurai and the old couple?" asked the kitsune between gasps. She turned to glare at the Seamstress. "And your baby, where is he?"

A calloused hand petted her hair with slow, deliberate gentle strokes.

"They went downstream looking for herbs to brew you tea with. The Old Lady knows her craft well, Akari, it has worked with humans and perhaps it can heal—"

"This is no time to go foraging," her voice rose to a roar that shook the cave roof, dislodging stray rocks and forcing the Samurai's Apprentice to dive to shield them. "You have to flee, please!"

The echo of her roar persisted in the cave and as they listened the roar only grew in amplitude into an unceasing dull rumbling. The Samurai's Apprentice turned his head to the sky obstructed by the trees outside. The kitsune caught his pupils widening as he registered the sight.

"Those are not storm clouds, are they, Akari?" he asked.

All traces of her feverishness seemed to evaporate off her body in a flash. Powered by a short spurt of energy, she remembered grabbing both the Apprentice and the Streamstress and bursting out of the cave, only to be held back by Mitsuki's hands and her terrified eyes. Akari noticed her veins throbbing against her neck muscles with the strain she was using, but the turbulence from the skies drowned out her voice.

The mist that had been seeping out unnoticed now gushed out from the imposing grey cumulonimbuses towering over the treetops. Gravel rained from their bases pelting the onlookers and forcing them back into the cover of the cave. The mountain's snowy peaks shimmered like fair marble, veined with the glittering gold of its rivers and the waterfalls in the sun. It would have been a spectacular sight to behold had it not been for the absolute desperation threatening to choke the kitsune from within.

Over the raging tempest, they heard the Samurai, the Boy, and the Old Couple struggling towards them against the draughts. Huge stone wings eclipsed the sun and shrouded the forest in darkness, churning up the clouds as if they were sea waves. The qualls from them threatened to dash the mortals clinging onto the fox spirit against the cave.

A breath hitched in Akari's chest and it felt as if her ribs had caved in from the gusts.

"We have to leave," she breathed, clutching at the Old Man's kimono. His wrinkled hands enveloped hers as his wife's fingers threaded through her hair. The Boy buried his face in the Samurai's chest and parroted his mother's concerns for the fox spirit. The Samurai's face had by then hardened into a mask of stoicness, his hand stroking the Boy's back.

It was with shock that Akari noticed her tears overflowing and spilling down her trembling cheeks.

"There's not enough time, there's not enough time," she chanted; a fervent prayer to gods who no longer existed or cared for life.

The images of the human heads mounted on spikes, their intestines wound around the bamboos flashed through her mind. The demon world awaiting them beyond the edges of their fleeting sanctuary had stripped those humans of every last shred of dignity that death offered. The forest spirits' folly would be their downfall. The fox spirit did try to help— there was only so much one could do to convince a sentient tree to transplant itself.

The humans watched as the mountain sailed over their heads, drifting lower and lower towards the north till its base scraped across the earth in a series of thunderclaps. Before Mistuki's question could leave her mind and be uttered, Akari had lifted her, the Seamstress, and the Old Man up. Her back stooped under their combined weights but she remained upright by the sheer power of her will.

The fox spirit barked to the Samurai and his Apprentice, baring her now gleaming white canines at them, "You will follow me or I will drag you there by your bleeding necks, is that clear?"

The Samurai's Apprentice gulped and helped the Old Lady onto his master's back, letting the Boy climb onto his shoulders in exchange. He saw his master nodding and leaning forward, steadying himself for the sprint. The Old Lady sighed and held onto the Samurai. Her grey-rimmed eyes seemed to stare into the darkness between the tree trunks, ruminating on something.

"Master?" The Apprentice whispered.

"She is yet to tear our throats out, lad," said the Samurai with a knowing smile. He tapped the youth on his back, urging him to obey.

When the Apprentice looked ahead, the kitsune had disappeared into the woods leaving nothing but footprints on the wet clay of the stream's banks.

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Chapter Word Count: 3330

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