Work Text:
Jaha yawns.
High up in the mountains, there’s nothing else to do but wait the rain out. It’s dull here, peaceful. He shifts a little, legs dangling over the edge of the cliff. Far below, clouds roll like waves over the forest canopy. Somewhere out there, somewhere down there, swords are being drawn and names are being hunted.
His name, most definitely. He’s got a bounty now. There are wanted dead or alive posters in almost every town with his name and face slapped on top of it.
The Mad Demon, Lee Jaha.
How far he’s come from a simple errand boy, he muses, but none of it really matters, up here in the mountains. His breath clouds in the air, though it’s damn near the middle of summer. He yawns again, standing up.
It’s quiet all around, but he can feel the weight of someone’s gaze lingering on him from a distance. It’s not quite the bloodthirsty gaze of someone hunting him down for money or revenge. Instead, it’s patient.
Curious.
And faintly familiar, in a way that he can’t quite place.
At this stage of his cultivation, it’s rare that he meets someone he couldn’t immediately locate. Rarer yet when he knows some unknown, miracle Heavenly Pearl has rendered almost everyone capable of that halfway across the continent.
Behind him, there is the soft rustle of cloth. Purposefully deliberate. Deliberately purposeful.
When Jaha whirls around, there he is. Sat perfectly still on a stone, watching him with eyes that shimmer like liquid gold. His features are delicate, almost otherworldly. Jaha drags his eyes up further. Hair like spun silver falls over his shoulders, glowing faintly in the dappled sunlight, a pair of flicking ears nestled atop his head.
Not a man, Jaha thinks, stupidly. A kitsune.
Behind him, nine tails twitch and flick lazily, each one graceful and fluid.
Of course, he’s heard stories of them. It's not surprising given that he was an errand boy. In an inn that used to house travellers, storytellers made their livings off of the tales naturally followed. Beautiful. Deadly, too. It never made sense to him; the idea of willingly being entrapped for the sake of a fleeting moment with a beauty.
Sure, he’s had his share of temptations over the years. The demonic cult certainly tried their hand at it; dozens of women were sent to his bed under one guise or another. A wandering martial artist. A healer with soft hands and big eyes and poison behind her teeth. They tried the meek ones, the bold ones, the ones who cried when he pushed them away and the ones who couldn’t cry at all.
None of it ever worked, but he thinks he understands it a little more now. The pull, how tempting the draw. The kitsune sitting across from him hasn't moved an inch, yet the pressure of its gaze on him feels almost tangible.
Ah, Jaha thinks wistfully, a man who manages to enchant a kitsune; that’s him.
For a long moment, neither of them move. The fox tilts his head, golden eyes peering at him curiously, scanning Jaha like he’s something strange, out of place. Jaha stares right back, letting the silence stretch, smug and expectant.
Then, the kitsune finally opens his mouth to speak:
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like shit?”
Jaha blinks once, twice. Maybe he’s just misheard.
“What the hell did you just say to me?”
The kitsune frowns, tipping his head. “Don’t tell me you’re a fool, too,” he continues. “Your life cannot be filled with this many difficulties.”
He rises to his feet in a single, fluid motion, the kind of grace that makes Jaha’s throat go dry. He’s tall, not quite as tall as him, but enough to take notice, and the edges of his heavy ceremonial robes seem to bleed around the edges, blending into the air like mist curling off a lake in the early morning.
“Well, you’d better get going,” the fox says, and Jaha can almost hear the yawn behind his words. Jaha only stares at him.
The kitsune waits for several moments, as if expecting him to do exactly that. When Jaha makes no move to leave, one elegant brow arches upward. It’s a surprisingly expressive look. Not confusion, exactly, but a sort of patient disbelief reserved for particularly troublesome children and people who insist on arguing with obvious facts. “Why are you still here?”
“Why are you?” He echoes.
The kitsune's expression immediately goes flat. “I live here.”
Jaha considers this. It is, admittedly, difficult to argue with. For a long, drawn out moment, the fox stares at Jaha. Then he closes his eyes, breathing out slowly, as though he’s trying to achieve enlightenment through inner peace. It reminds him a little of the Mad Monk’s teachings.
“Go home,” the fox says finally. “What are you lingering here for?”
“…Home?” Jaha repeats, a little wistfully. “I don’t think I’ve been there in a while.”
For the first time, the kitsune appears uncertain. His gaze travels over Jaha properly, taking in the state of his clothes, the stubble on his face. Still, he asks, “...You haven’t?”
“Do I look like I have?”
“I've seen stranger things.” There is enough weary sincerity in the statement that Jaha believes him. The kitsune studies him for another moment before his expression pinches slightly.
“I thought you—” He pauses, reconsidering the conclusion he had reached. “Forget it. Go back from where you came, then.”
Without another word, he turns and continues down the mountain path, robes trailing behind him like drifting mist. Naturally, Jaha instead chooses to follow. It is the first time he’s ever come across a creature from myth, after all.
The fox appears perfectly at home among the towering trees. His robes trail over roots and moss without ever catching, and every movement possesses a sort of effortless grace that Jaha suspects would be infuriating if it belonged to anyone else. Sunlight filters through the canopy overhead, catching in silver hair and the occasional flick of a white tail. The sight draws the eye far more effectively than any display of martial arts ever could.
Not that Jaha is staring. “Do people often come looking for you?”
The kitsune huffs out a sound that falls somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “Far more often than I'd like.”
There is a distinct note of resignation in his voice, as if he is already anticipating the next inconvenience. Jaha is about to ask what exactly that means when something catches the light further down the path ahead—an offering.
A lacquered box rests neatly against a stone lantern, wrapped in red cord. Fresh fruit, folded silk, and gold ornaments spill slightly from its lid, as if left in haste but with reverence. This, too, feels familiar, but the reason eludes him yet again
Jaha glances between the box and him. “Gifts?”
“When they want something from me,” the fox says mildly. “I’m the Lord of this forest, and every other. Supposedly.”
“Are you?”
The kitsune snorts, waving it off. “Not a chance. I just don’t have a habit of turning away gifts intended for me. ”
Ah, the pursuit of material wealth. Jaha has never gotten the appeal of it, and he’d always assumed creatures like these would be above such worldly desires. Evidently not, he thinks, half in awe, when he watches the kitsune cheerfully dig through the gifts offered, piling whatever jewellery suits his fancy onto himself.
…It really is a testament to his good looks that the sheer amount of gold and jewels he dons does nothing to make him look gaudy. If anything, it only draws the eye toward him more effectively, each piece serving as another excuse to look.
Jaha catches himself following the line of a chain disappearing beneath his heavy robes before forcibly dragging his attention elsewhere. The sky above remains impossibly clear, a continuous wash of pale light filtered through the leaves. “Except for brides?”
The kitsune gives him a mildly approving glance, walking deeper into the forest. “Now you’re getting it.”
“What do you do when they’re sent, then?” He wonders aloud, hopping from a winding branch to another to keep up with him. “Eat them?”
“Why would I do that?” The fox says, face immediately pinching with disgust. How rude; what else is Jaha supposed to think? Then, almost tentatively, he asks: “Do you people usually eat your brides?”
“No,” Jaha replies. “Obviously not.”
“So why would I?”
Jaha considers answering, but finds the idea of an answer drifting just out of reach, like something seen through moving water. He lets it go. The kitsune makes a face like he doesn’t exactly know how to respond to that, and that he doesn’t really want to, in the first place. Jaha can’t imagine why, but the fox doesn’t continue to speak to him as they wander deeper.
Eventually, though, the forest begins to open.
What lies beyond is an open space wide enough that Jaha’s first instinct is to measure it, though he quickly realizes there is nothing to measure against. The ground is covered in pale wildflowers that bend gently beneath the falling rain, their petals catching both water and sunlight so that they appear lit from within. It really is beautiful.
Jaha doesn’t notice it at first when he steps into the clearing; the drops of rain have stopped mid-fall, surrounding them with a million beads of water as if time has frozen. Sunlight pours through the suspended rain, breaking apart into a thousand shades of gold, dappled sunlight through the leaves. The clearing glows beneath it. The flowers glow, too.
Even the kitsune seems bathed in gold.
A droplet hangs inches from Jaha’s face, suspended so perfectly that he can see his reflection in it, warped and shimmering in miniature. Beyond it, thousands more remain, frozen and clinging to pinpricks of this sunlit clearing—and multiplied yet another thousandfold, they hang in the air like shards of glass, illuminating the world like something dreamlike.
“Lee Jaha.” The fox reaches over, suddenly far closer than he was before, and flicks him lightly on the forehead. “Aren’t you going to wake up?”
…It’s odd, being on the other end of the bewildering and being bewildered. A new experience for Jaha. He frowns faintly, though even that feels slow here, as if his thoughts are moving syrupy slow. He opens his mouth to respond, but finds he is not entirely certain what he would be responding to.
The kitsune reaches out.
His fingers brush lightly against Jaha’s robes, and for a moment the contact feels unreal in its softness, as though even touch has been slowed to match the suspended rain. When his hand withdraws, something rests in Jaha’s pouch, though the fleeting touch never strayed anywhere near the drawstring.
"A gift," he says before Jaha can ask. “Hold onto it, okay?”
And still, everything around them is all so golden.
***
Jaha wakes, feeling as though he’s been in a long dream.
The afternoon sun is warm against his face, filtered through the branches overhead. A blue sky. Perfectly serene. Somewhere nearby, water trickles over stone. Somewhere in the distance, a bird croons a familiar song.
It feels like he’s slept for days, though there’s no real evidence of that beyond a lingering heaviness in his chest. His body isn’t stiff, nor is he particularly tired in any meaningful way—but a strange weight has settled somewhere within his ribs, the sensation of having traveled far without moving, and returning without remembering the path back. It’s not truly unpleasant, but this unfamiliarity is enough to make him pause, and it garners more consideration than he’d normally spare.
A dream, probably.
He yawns, stretching in the grass before pushing himself upright, something shifting in his pouch. When he reaches in, his fingers close around something cool, smaller than he expects. He brings it up to his face, studying it with an intensity that’s strange even to him. It’s a bell, no larger than the end of his thumb, and it gleams silver in the few sunrays that remain. His gaze tracks over the fine, intricate patterns etched across its surface.
After another moment of inspection, he finds himself oddly reminded of gleaming hair caught in the fading light of an indistinct sky—a half-assembled trick of his mind, perhaps one of his usual bouts of madness. He slips it back into his pouch; free things are free things. Whatever that strange dream was could wait. The owner of the bell might be a different story, but, well.
If they wanted it back, they could always come find him.