<--Main <-Fan Art Bao Hadir: A story by Project_Demise Part 3 I was right in thinking the poor girl needed help. We are standing in front of her house. The whole place looks ready to fall apart, and by the look of the front yard, it has already started. There are piles of roof shingles and rotted wood everywhere. A broken bathtub with a cracked toilet within sits in one corner. There is a strong stench of decay over the place and I cringe. I am disgusted and long to cleanse this stain from the earth with my foxfire. But I cannot. She lives here. To her it is home. The girl's name is Melissa. I found that out on the way here. She was talking to me, even though I'm sure she knew dogs cannot understand much of human speech. She called herself Melissa, then asked me what my name was. I barked in response and she giggled. She knew I couldn't talk back. She was just making polite conversation. She seems a genuinely sweet, charming, good-natured, and well-mannered little girl of six. How she came to be thus I don't know. From her description of her home-life, she has no reason to be so. Her mother had left a little over a year ago, running off with some man that Melissa didn't know. Since that day, the older woman hadn't called, written, visited, or sent gifts to Melissa. Instead, she seemed to have cut herself off completely from her old life, which included both Melissa and her ex-husband. When Melissa mentioned her father, she became very quiet. It doesn't take a genius to tell that her father is not a topic she enjoys discussing. She opens the rusty gate and shoos me inside. I enter the yard and she follows behind, swinging the rusty portal closed. She presses a finger to her lips and makes a shushing sound. I pant and she smiles. Slowly she creeps up the worn path as if she were afraid to make noise. Is she afraid to make noise? I don't know, but if she is, then I shall be silent. My magic spills out around me and silences my footsteps. Up the porch stairs and to the front door. She holds out a hand, palm facing me, a sign to stop. I freeze my motions and she silently moves to the window. She peers through the dirty glass and moldy curtains, searching for some sign of something. Or perhaps someone. Apparently she saw nothing, for she turns back to me with a smile. "Come on," she cries happily. She moves over to the door and opens it wide. A wave of scent crashes into me, and it takes all my will to keep from losing my illusion. Scents of blood, saliva, rot, death, wood, mold, plastics, rust, metals, fear, pain, anger, and thousands of other things too horrifying to count. These assault my nose. I may be a spirit fox, but I am still a fox. My sense of smell is very acute, and from just one opening of a door I know this place is a house of horrors. What kind of horrors remains to be seen. Please let me be wrong about a few of them. Several moments pass. Blinks of an eye to this little girl. For me each feels like an eternity roaring through my senses. Finally, I have grown accustom to the stench radiating from the house. How could one building hold so much bad feeling? If I were of the Void, I would have staked out this house as my territory. The humans living here would have provided me with all the energy I would every need. However, I am not of the Void. I am Nogitsune. The reek of this place does not excite me; instead it only sickens me. The little girl shoos me inside again. I do so, but slowly, reluctantly. I do not want to go into this place. All this dark energy could turn even a nine-tailed Heaven into a Void. Imagine what this energy could do to me. I must be on my guard while I am here, lest this evil energy poison my spirit. Melissa follows me inside, shutting the door hard, making sure it wouldn't open. She turns back to me and kneels down. "C'mon, puppy, let's get you something to eat," she whispers happily, scratching me behind my ears. I make false pleasured noises for her. If I had been in my true form, those noises would have been real. However, the illusion blocks out the sensation of touch. I literally cannot feel her hand on my illusory head. It is ok though. My tongue hangs out and I drag it across her face. She cries "EWWW!" and giggles at the same time. Her laughter is the sweetest sound I have ever heard. I would give up a tail to hear that laugh just before I drift into slumber. It would be worth it. She stands up and leads me to the kitchen. On the way, I gaze about, looking for the source of the sickening energy. So far I have not found it, but the energy is everywhere. We pass through the living room, which, to my surprise, is not empty. There is a man here, sitting in a large black armchair. The television is on, showing some sports game or other. The footrest is up, the man�fs legs resting upon it. They are bent slightly, and his breath comes deep and even. He is asleep. Bottles of human intoxicant, commonly referred to as beer or booze, litter the floor in large clusters. Inwardly, I frown in disgust. Alcohol is disgusting. And the scent of the stuff...It�fs everywhere. I am not surprised to also smell urine within this room. I look up at the man and I bare my teeth within my illusion. The illusion itself continues to walk behind Melissa, head facing forwards. I wonder... I implant dog knowledge within my illusory visage, making it follow Melissa and do what she willed. I slip out of my shell, invisible to all but the most powerful of faith-wielders, and move back to the man. I leap up onto the arm of the chair and look down upon him. He is rather short for his sex, looking to be about five feet tall. He has blonde hair and, after using magic to raise his eyelids, brown eyes. I lean down and sniff his hands. I am hit suddenly with a wave of energy. This energy is not unlike Kitsune magic, in that it is spiritual. There is a religion in this world that believes in an energy known as karma. For each good you do, you gain good karma. When you do evil, you are hit with bad karma. If your bad karma outweighs your good when you die, you are reborn, oftentimes as a lower creature. This energy is a wave of bad karma. This man�fs hands pulse with it. These hands had done terrible things. I can smell blood upon his hands, can smell Melissa�fs blood on his hands. I know now where she received her injuries. He hadn�ft broken her spirit, yet. However, Melissa is afraid of him. Any more of the torment this man brings and the little girl may break. Lord help him if he does. He will suffer my wrath. I leap off the chair and run into the kitchen. Melissa is inside, trying to reach a large bowl in a cupboard beside the sink. My illusion is beside her, panting stupidly, just like I told it to. I leap into my mystic shell, taking control of my false form again. Just in time, too. Melissa pulls out of the cupboard, holding a pair of large mixing bowls. She sets one of them on the floor, then tells me to stay. I sit obediently and she leaves the room. After a short period, she comes back, carrying the bowl with both hands. She sets it on the floor before me, then grabs the other bowl and sticks it in the sink. She climbs up on a stepstool in front of it and turns on the water. Moments later, she turns the water off and carefully lifts the bowl out of the sink and sets it on the floor beside my food dish. I obligingly eat and drink from both dishes, though it doesn�ft restore nearly as much energy as a human�fs life force. Melissa sits down beside my, stroking my back and telling me about her other puppy. Her mother had brought him home not long before she left, and the mutt, known as Azlan (after the lion from the"Chronicles of Narnia"), had been taken care of ever since. However, it appears her father had hurt the poor animal a week before, when the dog had been whining at the door to be let out. Her father had sat and watched Azlan whine at the door for over an hour, the dog wanting out so he could relieve himself. Finally, he wound up urinating on the floor, and the evil man had picked him up, screamed at him, and threw him into the wall. Melissa had seen it all, but had been too afraid to make a noise, as she had been in hiding. Her father kicked the dog a few times, all the time saying naughty things about his ex-wife. Finally, he had left the bleeding, broken dog and went in search of a beer. Melissa had come out of hiding and taken the dog to her room. There he rests now, apparently. She had bandaged him up good, she says. I want to see him. I look up into her eyes. Her gaze meets mine and I use magic to send a message to her mind. "Do you want to see him?" she asks. I lap at her face, leaving illusory saliva on her cheeks. She giggles then gasps, covering her mouth with both hands, looking fearfully through the doorway at the sleeping man. He doesn�ft stir, but I still feel horrible. If that man had woken up... Melissa stands up and silently leads me out of the kitchen, through the den, and up a set of stairs. Many of the evil scents radiate from a room down the hall from us. However, she leads us in the opposite direction. We arrive at a door and I smile. The door is a solid pink, with the outlines of unicorns upon it. It is very cute, very childish, very innocent. Just like Melissa. She opens the door and ushers me inside. The room is just as I imagined it. It is very pink, very cutesy, and very child-like. There are posters of ponies, unicorns, and other fairytale creatures upon the walls. There is a playhouse with little dolls arranged all over. Her bed is coated in a layer of stuffed animals, little friends to keep the monsters away. And there, at the foot of the bed, lays an occupied basket. Azlan looks like hell. This I have decided from just one glance. I send a pulse of magic at the battered dog, willing my power to show me the extent of his injuries. Melissa must not know how badly her puppy is hurt, otherwise she would be crying this very moment. His flesh is torn up and one of his eyes is obviously missing. His tail is broken in at least three places, and one of his paws is bent at an odd angle. He is heavily bandaged, in the way that children do. He looks like a mummy, and it isn�ft helping his injuries much. Azlan looks up at me and I�fm sure he knows what I am. He doesn�ft growl, doesn�ft make a fuss, just looks at me with sorrow and hope. Melissa looks down on her dog and her eyes tear up. I ruff and she looks down at me. We lock eyes again and I cast a spell of sleep upon her. She falls back upon her bed, unconscious. I break my illusion and look down upon the injured dog. "Can you please tell me what happened?" I ask in dog. He nods solemnly. "That horrible man downstairs messed me up. I needed to go outside, since I knew he would be angry if I peed on the floor, so I made noises to tell him thus. Instead of letting me out, he waited until I couldn�ft hold it in anymore and made water on the floor. Then he assaulted me, shouting at me as if it were my fault his mate left him. When he left, Melissa brought me up here and tried to help me." At this, he sighs softly. "She is doing the best she can, but I fear I am going to die soon, leaving her alone." He whimpers softly. "Please, I beg you. Take care of Melissa. I don�ft know what you are, but surely you can help her. I would give anything to save her from that evil human." The way he stressed the word"anything", coupled with the desperate look that had come into his eyes, shatters my frozen resolve. I had only intended to look upon the battered, broken animal, simply for curiosity�fs sake. However, though his body is broken, his spirit is stronger than I had ever imagined it could be. My icy blue eyes look down upon him with pity and I crack a smile. "I will help you," I say simply. My tails fan out behind me as my power wells up within me. I can feel it spiraling around me, arcing out to caress different objects within the room. It is like lightning to a rod, attracted to certain things while ignoring others. Static-like bolts of bluish-white played across the sleeping girl, the door, the dog, and several other things within the room. I can feel the spell taking shape and... CRACK!!!!!!!!!! A loud noise, like the splintering of wood mixing with the peal of thunder, and my power is reversed, forced back into myself. I cry out in pain as my own energy is used as a weapon against me. It lances through my body, as if it were a blazing knife, slipping swiftly through the warm butter that is my body. Azlan yelps in fear and Melissa sits up with a startled cry. She sees me and, without thought or hesitation, throws herself upon my pain-wracked body and draws me against her in a tight hug. My illusion is gone. How could she have recognized me as the dog that had followed her home? How? How? How? ... To be continued... Next Chapter Previous Chapter Fox Tails is hosted by comicgenesis, a free hosting service for webcomics