The next section covers my lifeline.
Magic.
I can’t imagine getting away with going out in public as a kitsune for long. I look like a child, but sometimes, for work or for other purposes, I need to present as an adult. More, my birth certificate and passport are for an aging human male. Turning up at a meeting as a young teen female would make this difficult. With ears and tail? They’ll think I’m taking the mickey.
So. Firstly, it seems all kitsune get a few basic forms of magic: illusion and foxfire.
As a “kit”, these are pretty low level. My illusions must be fairly simple – mostly limited to myself, and I can’t sustain them for more than an hour or so without straining my soul. After that hour, I need to rest, meaning no illusions, for about five minutes.
Furthermore, as a one-tailed kitsune, my illusions are largely premised on fooling the mind. The CCDs used by digital cameras have no mind interpreting them – not anywhere I can touch, at least. Which means any sort of digital camera is going to show my true form, not any illusion I might choose to project.
Apparently this clears up once I get my second tail, but as a kit, that will be a while. The period of time over which I can project my illusions will improve gradually, but that won’t help with things like video conferencing.
I can also imagine it driving security personnel spare. My mouth twitches into a grin at the thought.
In any case, I can probably cope with this, but the one hour limit will be a pain to work around. When I’m shopping I can probably manage by wearing a hoody and a skirt to hide my ears and tail. When I need to go to the office I’ll need to duck into the bathroom every hour or so. For video conferences… I can mostly just leave the camera off.
Video calls to my family will be tricky.
The second form of magic all kitsune get is foxfire. This is more or less what you hear of in fiction; a blue ball of flame, which can either burn cold – light only – or hot, burning as any other fire. Being spiritual in nature, it’s especially effective against evil spirits and the like. It also gives me a slight power over regular fire – I can draw it into my foxfire, and in doing so, extinguish it.
That stops me for a moment. Evil spirits are a real thing? I’ll have to keep an eye out.
Once again, as a kit, my foxfire is pretty weak. I won’t be manifesting any bonfires.
In addition to the baseline illusion and foxfire, kitsune may gain additional magics based on the “shape” of their soul. Apparently lightning is fairly common in newborn kitsune, due to the omnipresence of electricity in the modern world.
There are tests for magic affinities, apparently. These require special tools; I can’t do the test myself.
So, to get my affinities tested, I need access to those tools. Where would that be?
There’s a note at the end of the book to contact the Japanese embassy for an appointment. I need to call and suggest we have some inari sushi together.
It’s now mid-evening and the embassy will be closed, so I’ll need to call for an appointment in the morning. The embassy in Sydney is in the CBD, on O’Connell St, so I can get there in about an hour. I should be able to work around the one hour threshold by ducking into the bathroom at Wynyard station, or I can get off at Town Hall and catch the light rail from there. I’ll figure that out once the appointment is set.
The book ends with a note to be wary of other beings with a thread in the Weave. Apparently, the Weave (or whatever the Japanese term that’s being translated as such) is the… fabric that ties those together with a less… mundane aspect to their existence. Kitsune are one of these, but there are other spiritual beings as well.
In Australia, with its large multinational population, there’s no knowing what might turn up. Most such beings are benign, but, well, evil spirits. And apparently the Japanese actions in World War Two have had a souring effect on long-term relations between Japanese spirits and those of other South-East Asian nations.
Right. These are beings that live for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Eighty years to them must feel like yesterday. And as a young kitsune, I’m vulnerable and my Australian nationality is severely obfuscated. I imagine the illusions will also be less effective on other threads in the Weave as well.
No helping it. I only hope the hoody helps.
I’ll need to make that appointment tomorrow. I’ll also see if I can swing an in-person appointment with our other shift manager to, er, demonstrate why I’ll be reluctant to join video conferences for a while. He lives just one suburb over – we should be able to organise a brief meeting during tomorrow’s lunch hour.
There’s also an intriguing note towards the end of Kitsune 101 that the Weave spans many worlds. It makes it clear that that doesn’t mean just the plane of the Yokai,[1] but entire other planes of existence. Isekai.[2] I suppose it beats making an appointment via Truck-kun.
The hour is getting late, but I don’t need to get to bed just yet. Plus, magic. Magic.
Look, I’m sure that there are people who, in this situation, would make plans for meetings then leave the magic later. I am not one of those people. I do not understand those people. I am, always have been, a bit of a chuunibyou[3] at heart
MAGIC!!
Let’s stick with the basic magics first: illusion and foxfire.
I head into the bathroom, and clamber onto the piled telephone books once again. It takes a while before I figure out how to use magic at all; it’s a sort of twist in the back of my mind, a summoning of intent to impose my will on the world.
I try to project my old face. After a few amusing failures, I succeed. With a bit of experimentation, I manage to also have my illusory face show my actual expressions.
One problem.
I was previously a bit over a hundred and eighty centimetres, a tad under six feet tall.
I’m now four feet nothing. My face is comically low.
With a bit more work, I get my illusory face to project at my old height. Honestly, I find this a bit uncomfortable. That’s not my face any more. It’s a mask. I’ve spent my entire life wearing a mask of sorts; I’d rather show my true face.
To that end, I try something else. My current.. My true form, but with ears and tail concealed. I also try setting my hair colour to a more conventional blonde rather than its actual glorious silver-white. This turns out to be a bit easier than projecting my old self, but I instinctively feel that it won’t hold much longer than an hour.
I think this will probably be my usual everyday form.
That done, I try a few other ideas.
Firstly, a miniature raincloud. Parked, in this case, over my head, but my plans for the future are to have this over the head of somebody looking especially grumpy.
Secondly, an illusory twenty dollar note on the ground. I hop off the phone books and walk about a bit, making sure that the illusory money stays in one place.
My next try is a gloriously naked illusion of a very full-figured woman. The sort of person who used to feature in centrefolds, and about as thoroughly dressed. I can only sustain this for a few seconds, as it’s projected rather than on myself and quite complex, but it has serious potential as distraction material.
I try a few other things. A wall. A hole in the ground (which turns out to be quite tricky, as I need to make it look like something is missing.) A few variations on clothing. And, with a slightly embarrassed blush, some basic make-up; lipstick, rouge, mascara.
One more thing to try. There is absolutely no way my voice will pass without comment if the person listening is expecting a fifty-something year old man. Getting my voice to sound like it once was turns out to be something of a lost cause; I can’t reproduce my old timbre. I do manage to shift registers a bit. That will have to do.
Right, I think I have a handle on my illusions. Foxfire… is best handled in the kitchen, I think.
Heading into the kitchen, I summon a ball of foxfire into my hand. It’s… not large. About the size of the tip of my thumb, and my thumbs are now pretty small. It is, however, quite pretty, a brightly glimmering will-o-the-wisp which draws the eye.
Nevertheless, with a bit of concentration, I succeed in moving the ball around independently. I grab an old receipt and hold it over the sink, then move my foxfire onto the receipt, which promptly catches fire. I try to draw the flame back into my foxfire, but it doesn’t quite work. As the flames approach the part of the receipt I’m holding, I prepare to release it but… it doesn’t actually hurt. As the receipt burns to ash in my hand, I feel only a comfortable warmth.
After a few more tries, I succeed in drawing the mundane flame back into my foxfire. In so doing, the blue flicker brightens briefly, then dims back down. There’s a slight surge of energy when this happens.
Huh. Looks like I can draw some energy from flame. Could be handy one day.
I then try to manipulate my foxfire so that it doesn’t burn. My first few attempts end with various degrees of failure, varying from a bright blaze quickly consuming my receipt-tinder, down to something of a browning of the paper without actively bursting into flame. After a few tries, I get it to the point where the receipt survives entirely intact.
There’s one more trick I’d like to try.
I summon the foxfire into my hands then will it to warmth. I try to make the ball larger, but less hot; not a ball of fire, but just of warm air. Much to my surprise, I succeed. We’re on the wrong side of the Autumn equinox and the weather is getting cooler; having a ready source of warmth will be really nice.
I suppose kitsune are native to Japan, where the weather gets significantly cooler than it does in Sydney. I remember our brief foray to the Fifth Station on Mount Fuji. I’m not sure what the temperature was, but It was too cold for my Aussie bones.
I am worried a bit about what I’ll do come summer. This fur may be good for keeping me cool, but I’m not looking forward to how I’ll cope when the temperature hits the high thirties.
In any case… we’re getting towards time for bed. Other magics can wait until I have a better idea on what they might be.