After I doze off, I find myself romping through a gorgeously coloured meadow, loosely resembling the fields of greenery and colour from the movie I was imitating earlier today.

However, my point of view is a little lower than usual.

I realise belatedly that my loping gait is not a human one. Stopping for a moment, I look down on myself. I’m a white fox, four paws, tail – tipped in purple – and muzzle. Panting.

It’s hard to guess size in a landscape so clearly founded on imagination, but I think I’m about… a metre long? Plus another metre or so for my tail. Which is its usual gorgeously fluffy self.

Eh. Problem for tomorrow’s kitsune. It’s a dream. If you can’t have fun in a dream, where can you have fun?

I stand up again and break into a run, jinking left and right, leaping over imaginary obstacles, even leaping and curling into a ball to roll down a hill. I roll in the flowers, turning my formerly pristine fur into a scintillating rainbow of colour.

Camouflage. Yes, that’s definitely why I’m doing this.

After perhaps half an hour of play, I sense a couple more presences off on the edge of the meadow. I pad over to where I feel their presence to find another two kitsune, somewhat larger than myself, looking at me with a glint in their eyes. One had red fur and a white-tipped tail and ears. The other, white fur like my own, with a blue-tipped tail.

One of them gives a yip. Welcome. The other echoes.

I sit on my own haunches and yip in reply.

They each stand gracefully and walk over to me. They each rub their noses with mine. There’s something… faintly familiar about them. Is that… Keiko and Shiro?

I yip to them in query and beneath their answers I sense an affirmative.

… It seems I speak Fox now.

Both of them stand and head towards the meadow, stopping briefly to look back at me in invitation. I stand and follow them. Then, a dozen paces in front of them, I see an electric blue bunny rabbit appear. Astonishingly, I not only see it, I hear its movement rustling in the grass, and smell a scent that is, to my vulpine nose, unmistakably a rabbit.

I thought smells weren’t supposed to work in dreams?

I suppose it’s not actually all that surprising. Firstly, well, magic. It’s clear this isn’t just any dream. Secondly, to believe that a canine would find any pleasure in a dream without a rich olfactory landscape is just weird.

I belatedly realise I’ve been smelling something all along. The sweetness of the flower nectar, the rich earthy scents of the soil, the vibrant green smells of the grass and glowers crushed beneath my paws.

As the rabbit (does it count as an illusion if it’s in a dream?) bounds off into the meadow, my seniors start to lope after it and I follow them.

The rabbit rockets across the meadow, ducking under a log (which we leap over) towards a wooded area on the edge of the meadow.

As we leave the meadow, continuing to chase the rabbit (but not really trying to catch it; there’s too much fin in the chase) it weaves around trees, under bushes, over fallen logs. It loops back around towards the meadow, then ducks into a burrow. I worm myself into the burrow, managing to get my fur thoroughly dirty, and after a claustrophobic chase through the warren, manage to chase it out through an alternate exit.

We spend perhaps another fifteen minutes chasing the rabbit back and forth, loping across the meadow and back again. Finally, tiring of the chase, we hedge it in on three sides and finally succeed in surrounding it.

As we corner it between us, it stiffens in fright then explodes into a puff of blue smoke smelling of, jarringly, strawberries.

Keiko and Shiro both turn back to me and speak again in a string of yips and barks.

That was fun, they’re saying. Mother told us to come visiting and have some fun together. Did you enjoy yourself?

I yip in agreement and appreciation.

They each dance in happiness, briefly chasing their tails and ending with a leap and a roll before landing back on their feet.

There’s a twinkle in their eyes. Why are they staring at me with that unmistakable glint?

I look down on myself to find my fur dyed a raucous shade of neon pink, then my muzzle whips back up to them in betrayal.

Practice your pranks! They yip in parting as each leaps into the air again and disappears from sight in a final tumble.

Well, they’re right I suppose. Same sentiment as Inari it seems. Their message seems to be to take fun and joy where I find it, to have no fear of releasing my inner kit. Child. Whatever.

I spend another hour running through the meadow; my illusions, unbound in my dreams by such minor matters as my level of facility with magic, are almost as good as my seniors’, so I summon my own rabbit to chase.

Finally, panting and glowing with effort well spent, I curl up to sleep.

---

As my dream fades, I find myself waking up on my bed. I circle about briefly then hop back down to the ground.

As my fuzzy mind starts to catch up on reality, I recognise that I’m still on four paws rather than two feet.

At least I’m no longer neon pink. Small mercies.

I patter into the bathroom and, with difficulty, place my front paws on the edge of the sink.

It doesn’t really help very much. Even rearing on my hind legs, I can barely get my muzzle over the edge.

There’s no freaking way I’ll get a shower done this way.

It’s probably just as well. I mean, I’m supposed to be working today. How I can manage that without opposable thumbs remains to be seen.

Let’s try the obvious first.

I try to picture myself in my kitsune form and push myself into it. Mentally, I first picture my current form – still that of a small, mostly white fox kit – and push the image towards a kitsune.

I feel a mental “click” and open my eyes, so see a kitsune in the mirror.

One problem. My eye-line is still just a little bit too low. And while the image I see in the mirror is a kitsune… I can still feel my paws, still feel that beneath the image is still that of a fox.

I drop back down to the floor. It’s really, really weird to see the kitsune image superimposed over my own. Focusing for a moment again, I dismiss the illusion, and am once again my vulpine self.

Padding into the office area, I nose the chair towards the desk then hop on up. (Reminding me: Need to get a new chair still.) With a great deal of effort, I manage to paw my work laptop towards the edge of the desk and nudge the mouse off to one side.

Getting the laptop lid open is an exercise in frustration. Can’t use my nose – it’s too much of a blunt instrument – and I’m not sure the stubby claws on my front paws are up to the job. Finally, I manage to get it open just a sliver by pushing one claw into the latch, then manage to push it the rest of the way up with the tip of my tail.

Aargh. I look at the fingerprint biometric unlock and at my paw. Not happening.

I manage to nudge the mouse over so its pointer resides above the password box, then delicately poke the mouse button to place the cursor where it belongs.

At which point I realise moving the mouse would have been a heck of a lot easier using the trackpad. Experimentally, I delicately touch the tip of my tail on the trackpad and move the cursor around, then poke it once more for a simulated button press.

Geona will remember this. Too many TellTale adventures back when.

I slowly poke my password in, gently touching the “Shift” key with one claw while tapping at keys with the tip of my tail. The backspace key gets a thorough workout. I’m making a two-finger typist look like the peak of dexterity. I’ll have to check the accessibility menu later; I’m sure there’s some sort of option for holding key modifiers.

If there’s one positive side to this, I’m really learning to use my tail well. I hadn’t realised it was quite this dexterous. Is dexterous the word when you’re not actually using a hand? It’s not even getting tired.

I imagine when I have more than one tail, I can be a two-tail typist. Heh.

Finally I get in and, this time using the trackpad, tap on Slack. I manage to tap onto the group channel, then laboriously ask to be excused: Don’t think I can work today. Something came up. Zoom Bob afterwards.

When handover starts, I manage to join in but remain silent. While I probably can’t work today – Tuesdays are usually my day dedicated to internal tickets anyway – tracking ongoing issues will help me keep up.

When the call is done I drop from the current call, and with some effort select the PM channel for Bob and start a new Zoom call.

A minute later I realise he’s in the call’s waiting room and I admit him.

“So, Reggie… ah sorry, Geona, what’s happened this time?”

I tap the camera and microphone on and look at the camera. Then give a yip and a whine.

Unsurprisingly, Bob’s grasp on the Fox language is unremarkable. Nevertheless, it’s clear I’ve gotten my point across.

He face-palms.

“Right. Got it. Let us know when you have your opposable thumbs back. You’re not taking tickets today anyway, so it’s not a big hit.

“What the hell happened? You were at least more or less human before. Now you’re some sort of dog?”

I growl a little. I am not a dog.

“Fine. Wolf? Fox?” I yip in acknowledgment. “Fine, a fox. I should know better than to ask, but how?”

I cock my head and flick my ears. I start to tap out an answer in Slack, when he realises I can’t exactly answer normally.

“Okay, okay, I’ll get the story from you later. For now, take care, hear? We’re short on engineers as it is, and losing you for a day a week is already hurting us.”

I yip again in agreement, and end the call.

I lay back down on my bed and try to image myself back into regular humanoid kitsune form.

No dice.

I jump up and pad around the apartment for a while to distract myself and give my subconscious time to consider the problem. Finally, I settle down on the lounge and try to focus once more.

Still no dice.

Then I reconsider. There’s something I haven’t done for years that I used to do pretty regularly in my misspent evangelical youth.

So I close my eyes and pray to Inari.

Goddess and Mother Inari Okami, I pray. How the hell do I get out of this?

I feel her gentle gaze upon me and the sensation of a snort. It seems my other children have been playing with you, she says. It is a simple matter, but one for which you do not yet have the knack. I would advise you to try switching back and forth a few times.

Then she pushes a gestalt into my mind; it’s an action beyond words, a twist of the spirit and of the body, reforming my soul into its intended form.

Falteringly, I try the reform, only to be struck with a spike of pain.

Hold yourself firm, she advises. Know in your bones what you are and what you will be, and that they are one and the same. Now try again.

I take a deep breath – well, as deep as a metre-long fox can manage – and try again.

This time, rather than feeling pain, I feel an electrifying tingle around my whole being, and with an with a jolt, snap into my kitsune form.

Entirely naked, of course. I blush.

Well done, Inari sends. Now try swapping backwards and forwards a few more times. Please call later if you need me again. Or if you don’t; I always enjoy talking to my children.

Taking her at her word, I try swapping backwards and forwards again. Soon enough, I can do it, not quite effortlessly, but certainly easily.

Now knowing that changing my form is possible, I try to push myself into my old form; being able to “be” my old self occasionally would be handy.

I can’t do it. It feels deeply, deeply wrong. Gargling bleach wrong. Jumping in front of a train wrong.

Despite the inconvenience, I’m not entirely unhappy about the lack. Returning to that body, even in semblance, feels like a reversion, a sacrifice of everything I have gained.

I do find I can make tweaks – very minor ones. A tint to my hair (although my tail is, evidently, out of bounds). I can change my ears a little, changing their usual size (reminiscent of a fennec fox; that is, quite long) down to perhaps half of that length, although the more severe the change, the harder it is. In my fox form, I can tint my fur a little – but no darker than a pale pastel. I cannot approach Keiko’s rich burgundy red.

I consider trying to set a thin band of fur around my neck into black as a facsimile collar to avoid being carted off to the pound, but doing so is quite difficult, if (barely) possible. On reflection, I decide conjuring an illusory collar will do the job just as well.

If somebody tries to read my nonexistent microchip – pets in New South Wales are required to be chipped – they will find the scanner mysteriously short-circuiting. Lightning magic has its advantages.

In any case, my standard shape (and colour) are easiest, and somehow most comfortable. Although my fox shape is about the same.

All that said, I’m no longer in the dog house. (Ugh.)

After grabbing a quick brunch (no tofu left, unfortunately – I gutsed it all down lasted night) I head back to my desk, fir up the VPN, then let everybody know I’m back in the picture.

I also send Bob a brief PM. Describing the circumstances of last night is irritatingly difficult. My kitsune sisters were introducing me to a new magic, I advise him, and cunningly failed to fill in all the blanks. Back to normal now, for my usual definition of normal.

He replies: So, completely weird then. Back to have you back in the bipedal portion of the populace.

Yip, whine I type in reply.

---

As I’m looking to break for lunch, my phone rings. It’s the embassy. Specifically, once I hear the voice on the other end of the line, Hikari.

She’s calling to check whether I would prefer to “work” – she does a remarkable job of vocalising those quotation marks – tomorrow or Sunday. The “work” will involve coming into the embassy and doing… various stuff. Mostly learning, magic and culture and whatever else is needed.

I’d probably prefer to do that tomorrow. It gives me a two day weekend, and keeps things simple when I get a weekend on call; not to mention it’s probably easier for the embassy staff.

She agrees and asks me to come in at nine tomorrow.

Ugh. Nine AM. Working from home has spoiled me. I’ll need to commute. During rush hour. As an (apparent) little girl, trying desperately hard to avoid having my tail stepped on or my ears brushed.

The embassy car will be by my place at quarter past eight.

Hikari starts to giggle upon hearing my relieved sigh, then coughs and asks me to confirm.

I agree, she thanks me, then hangs up.

During lunch, I remember that I need a new chair. Something with serious gas-lift functionality and a gap at the base of the back (none of this “lower back support” rubbish!)

On reflection, I decide to ask at the consulate tomorrow. I can’t be the first kitsune to run into these issues. Maybe there’s already a model others can recommend?

So I grab a quick lunch, do a bit of reading, then get back to working my tickets.

After work, I have another go at my revised Lord of the Rings pastiche. Then head into the bathroom and mess with water magic a bit, tossing a ball of water back and forth, splitting it into a stream or (with a touch of air magic) a spray.

I also try a bit of lightning magic, forming an arc between my fingers and (with a bit more concentration) between my ears, then push some into my tail and see if fluff up gloriously.

Then there’s a snap and the lights go out.

Dammit. Looks like something I did grounded in the electric circuits and shorted the lights. At least I hope it’s just the lights; accidentally frying my work laptop would not make me popular.

I slip on a one-piece dress (having rather embarrassingly forgotten to dress after today’s shape-shifting shenanigans), unlatch the door, then head out to the electrical cupboard just outside of my front door. Fortunately only one circuit breaker tripped; I fix it and head back inside, re-latching the door.

Note for future self: Only play with lightning when safely away from important electricals.

I throw together a quick curry for dinner, snarf it down while catching up on my reading, then put the leftovers in the fridge.

Washing up is annoying when my armpits are not much higher than the sink, but I get that done, then head to bed to read myself to sleep. For once, it is uninterrupted by dreams.