“You realize, the probability of this happening is astronomically small.”

Kyu turned to face his daughter, squinting against the bright summer sun.  They had come to this isolated beach for solitude and, in Jessamine’s case, safety - when one had just come back from the dead, one did not want to draw attention to one’s self.  Waves crashed against a steep, rocky shore, driven by a brisk wind; soon enough the water would be up above the dark pebbles that marked the tide line. 

“Only once in every -  I don’t know, 500 years maybe.  Only once in 500 years does one of my line breed true.  And then, only if the mother is a Fox, herself.”

He turned away again to face the ocean and dropped a pair of sunglasses down over his blue eyes, missing Jessamine’s careless shrug.  Kyu was soliloquizing, and his daughter knew nothing would stop him from it.

“Tan got lucky.  I’m not sure he’d have been able to find his way back,” Kyu continued with a faint frown.  “That was an artificial resurrection.  You’re the only other Fox I know - hell, that I’ve even heard of - to come back the way I always do.  That’s quite a trick.”

“It could be your mother’s bloodline,” he added after a moment’s thought.

It was flattering to the Fox to know that he had a true heir, of sorts, and that her kind was a precious jewel among otherwise ordinary siblings.  He did not love the other two children he knew of any less than her, but there was something that now bonded him to his most wayward daughter, though they had never been close.  All at once he wanted a larger part of her life, and felt he could let her go at last - she could care for herself, after all, even in death.

menandtheirdogs:sesmu:timey-wimey-stuff:xmrsdavidtennant:swimmingpoolinthelibrary:am-i-ginger:fuckyeahjohnbarrowman:vermichelle:

This has nothing to do with my blog or what I’m going for, but it’s too perfect not to reblog.

“That’s right.  Any mirror - as long as you can hold it in your mind, you’re there.”

Kyu laid the leather-bound book out on the shoddy plastic tabletop and tapped its cracked cover knowingly.  Culain looked less than impressed.

“Think about that.  -Any- mirror.  You find yourself thinking about that gorgeous babe you went home with last night.  You think about the mirror on the vanity in her bedroom.  Open this book up, hold that vanity in your mind - and you’re there.”

Culain scowled and pushed his fork through the weepy fried eggs on his plate.  Lunch with the Fox could never be an easy thing.  It always had to be about his newest toy, his newest conquest.  Kyu loved telling stories, and more often than not they’d be about how perfectly excellent -he- was.

“I guess this is where I say you ought to respect other peoples’ privacy,” he grunted.  “Then you laugh, and I grumble about it for a while.”

“Have I become predictable?” Kyu asked with feigned disappointment.  “Maybe this time I’ll say - you’re right, old chum.  I shall never touch this delicious Book again.  Fox’s honor.”

Culain merely scowled down on his mediocre brunch and fished a soggy fried potato out of the yellow soup of his egg yolk.

fuckyeahcrows:oneporktaco:

(via fuckyeahclassyanimals)

allcreatures:

Meet the real-life Fox & Hound: A fox cub that was rescued from certain death after he fell into a quarry has been nurtured back to health - by a dog. The male cub, named Copper, was rescued three weeks ago by a family who discovered him cold and malnourished at the bottom of a quarry in Portreath, Cornwall. He was handed in to a local fox rescue centre and was put into the care of wildlife expert Gary Zammit. But Gary’s dog Jack, a one-year-old lurcher, took over the nursing duties at the Feadon Farm Wildlife Centre

Picture: SWNS (via Pictures of the day: 18 May 2010 - Telegraph)

Tan was so little like his irasciblefather that few people believed his parentage.  The half-tanuki, half-fox leaned towards his mother’s side of the family and preferred staying home to roaming and avoided conflict whenever possible.  Perhaps he’d gotten the wanderlust out of his system as a child - he’d spent his first decade travelling with his father and getting into trouble that no young tanuki ought to have been exposed to.

Perhaps, instead, he took his deep-buried adventurousness out on food.

Tan took after his father’s people in looks, but beneath his svelt frame hid a stomach without end.  Tan could eat anything, in any quantity, and never suffer for it.  He could tell bad flavor from good and what, precisely, made it so; he could taste an item and tell you exactly what it lacked and what to do to improve the dish.  Where his father had a knack for theft and manipulation, Tan had a genius for all things culinary.  When he finally struck out on his own he took this gift with him and used it to establish his own restaurant.

If you’re ever down in Tokyo late at night and you have a craving for something strange, follow your feet and your stomach and you may find yourself at Tan’s intimate little bistro.  On the menu are things you’ve never heard of: kirin flesh braised in Kirin; soy-marinated benu eggs; sashimi cut from fish never seen by man.  If you’re exceptionally lucky you may catch sight of the owner, a broad-shouldered young man with shaggy mahagony hair and a lackidasical attitude circulating between tables like they’re family.  Let him choose your dishes for you - his palate is never wrong.

(via fuckyeahclassyanimals)

Here our story deviates from Things Past.  Early in the twenty-first century, the Fox met another bird who stole his heart, though it took nearly a century for him to admit it. 

It began with a hotel bar and a wounded boy.

If the Fox could tell the story now, he would embellish it and make it out to be a heroic rescue.  It was, instead, a set of random chances both taken and lost - if not for the specific way the evening had unfolded, no doubt the Fox would have taken what he wanted and left his prey behind. 

The boy, his nightingale, was heartsick, and the Fox picked him out of the thin bar crowd like a wolf cutting a wounded calf from the herd.  The emotionally wounded made easy prey, and he meant to simply lure the boy back to his den and take what pleasure could be had from him.  Instead, he found a bird with broken wings, fluttering helplessly and defiantly in the face of the world.  There was something in him that went beyond what the Fox thought he coveted, and though he did bring him back to his den, it was not for the carnal pleasures he thought he was after.

Instead, the very next morning, after giving the boy a couch to sleep on and ample personal space, the Fox cooked him a breakfast of eggs and left it at that.

Their story is a long one and complex, but it is founded upon that simple, uncharacteristic breakfast: a plate of eggs and a friendly smile from a Fox devoid, for once, of ulterior motives.