I sat silently outside of my tent, leaning my back against a felled tree as I watched the clear skies and the large ball of fire in it.

Spring had come at last, even though I could hardly tell the difference. The air felt a bit less cold, and there was certainly a more... 'lively' feel to the camp and the sparse forest surrounding it.

However, it was still freezing, still snowy, and my daily boredom hadn't decreased by much. Well, it would soon, hopefully. After all, mom had promised to bring me out to hunt with her, and although I highly doubted I'd be able to do anything more than watch and maybe eat whatever she killed, it'd at least be something.

Speaking of mothers, my mind wandered back to the day following my first feast. Mother had sat with me for an entire day and narrated to me the stories and legends of our tribe, as well as some other stuff she thought I should know about.

From what I now understood, our tribe, the Northern-Tailed Foxes, was apparently an offshoot of the more 'orthodox' fox-kin tribes that resided in the lands of the east, as mother called them.

Although, judging from how condescendingly she spoke of them, it wasn't hard to understand that there was some very old and very bad blood between our tribes.

Amongst the most important legends that she spoke of was the one about a little fox that eventually grew to become the divine Nine-Tails, the supposed ancestor of our race.

Mother didn't seem the religious type, and I highly doubted she believed in any kind of god or gods, but the Nine-Tails must have been the closest thing to a deity that our tribe believed in, and even then it was more of that we admired it rather than outright worshipped it.

Anyways, it was an enlightening conversation. From what I could gather from the subtext of her story, this world truly was a fantasy one. There were demon kings, heroes, elves, dwarves, giants... You name it, it's probably somewhere in the world.

She also did talk about humans, but apparently, what relatively few times she'd seen them had been when they came up into the north on slaving expeditions, and every time mother had met them, they hadn't lived much longer afterward.

My face scrunched up a bit in distaste at the thought. I'd been a human in my previous life, so it seemed wrong to treat humans like they were food... But then again, they were slavers, and in the first place, the concept that human life was worth more than that of any other living being was starting to appear a bit redundant in my mind.

I let out a long-suffering sigh, brushing my growing hair out of my face. I'd been tempted to ask mother to cut it a bit, but it wasn't long enough to be a problem yet.

... I swear it didn't have anything to do with the fact that everyone in the tribe had long hair, and that I was starting to really like the feeling of it brushing against my back.

A hand came down onto my shoulder out of nowhere, causing me to let out a spooked yelp and launch myself away... Only to land head-first into the cold snow.

I sputtered out some that had gotten into my mouth as a light laugh resounded beside me, causing me to turn around and glare at the offender.

It was one of the men, Liao. He stood there, nonchalantly looking at me with a small grin on his face. "Hello there, little Kira. Did I interrupt something?"

"N-no! I was just thinking... Don't do that again!" I half-yelled, before turning red in embarrassment as I realized just how loud I was being.

Although, loudness really didn't matter. Everyone in the camp could probably hear a fart from a mile away with these large ears of ours, after all.

Liao let out a small snort before gracefully sitting down on the cold snow right next to me, utterly unbothered by the temperature. "Yes, yes. Sorry about that." He said, obviously not sorry despite his words.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I gave him what must have seemed like a puppy-like glare to him, especially compared to mom's hell-freezing glares.

And, as I thought, it didn't bother Liao at all as he began talking on and on about how he was starving, how my mother was a big bully, how the weather was always shit... Those kinds of inane things.

I just kind of sat there, words going into an ear and out the next as I busied myself with my own inner monologue. It was rare for other tribe members to come to talk to me of their own volition, so while I didn't talk back, I didn't push the man away either, as he seemed just as bored as I was.

He'd been left behind as a guard this week. Until recently, it'd been my mother's duty to guard the camp while the others went out hunting, primarily because she'd have stayed behind anyway so as to tend to me. However, ever since I'd grown enough to take minimal care of myself, she'd promptly rejoined the hunting expeditions.

It saddened me a little, but there was little I could do about it. Or... Was there something I could do?

I was still only two years old now, approximately, but compared to human babies, I must have been more similar to a five or six-year-old. Apparently, Northern-Tailed Foxes, along with many beasts residing in the north, relied on absorbing mana from whatever they ate to survive.

Hence, considering how much I ate at each feast, I was absorbing enough more than enough mana to push forward my development. I had some suspicions about the number of tails a Northern-Tailed Fox having somehow correlating to how much magic we managed to absorb, but I couldn't quite be sure yet.

Hence... Although I had no idea what magic was beyond a vague understanding that it was what mages used to do magic, I had read a number of novels that always said that meditation could help someone take in mana.

So, why not try that?

The epiphany of the moment made me shoot up to my feet, alarming the still chatting Liao next to me. I gave him an apologetic look before excusing myself from him and running back over to my tent.

If nothing else, at least this little experiment could help me stave off the ever-present boredom that was this life, outside of eating or playing with mom, of course.

Thus, after catching myself a couple of rats (I'd gotten pretty good at it if I do say so myself) to keep as dinner, I poured all of my mental energy into this little endeavor of mine.

Good news, time seemed to pass quite a bit faster when one was wholly focused on their own self. The bad news, however, was that I had absolutely nothing to show for all my wasted time.

I glared at a wall as though it had suddenly become my arch-nemesis. Why wasn't this working? Did I just need more practice?

My ears twitched, picking up a soft sound some distance away. After waiting a couple of minutes, the doors to the tent opened, and in came mother.

She had some blood on her fur clothes, but none of it smelled like it was her own, thankfully. She had a wide grin on her face as her eyes landed on me.

"Kira, I'm back. Were there problems?" She immediately asked, walking over to me and crouching, her hand automatically going to stroke my ears that had already stopped constantly itching, but the act was pleasant nonetheless.

Leaning into her soft touch, I murmured out a soft "No, mother," All the while closing my eyes and enjoying mother's unclawed fingers as they scratched where my ears met my head.

I let out an unhappy whine when she stopped. "What's wrong, Kira?" She asked, looking a bit concerned as she easily picked me up and held me in her arms.

Apparently, my mother was a psychic. That or I was really easy to read... Probably the former. "It's just... You said that we gather mana by eating, right?" I asked, getting a silent nod from her.

"Well... I was thinking, why can't we gather mana on our own? So I tried, but I can't do it!" I said, waving my arms in frustration. Mother let out a bark of laughter at my actions, looking pleased with herself.

"Kira, I'm proud that you're already thinking of such complicated things, but don't push yourself. Yes, it's possible for us to gather mana manually, but it's honestly pointless. You could spend an entire day gathering it, when you could have gotten just as much, if not more, by hunting a single weak little beast."

I stared at her, baffled. It made sense, in a way, but it still annoyed me that apparently I'd been wrong.

Still, there wasn't much I could do about it. Hence, I just looked away, pouting.

Noticing this, mother's grin only widened. "If you're really so bored, then, would you like to come hunting with me tomorrow, instead of remaining back here at the camp getting bored?"

My head snapped back, staring at mom with eyes as wide as saucers. I nodded as rapidly as I could, eager to finally start learning something that could forever rid me of the boredom.

"Good, good." Mother exclaimed, gently setting me down onto the floor while she remained standing. "I was planning on waiting for another month or two, but you're a bright girl. I'm sure you'll be obedient and do whatever I say, yes?"

"Yes, mother. I won't make a peep, I promise!" I said, filled with excitement. And with that, my boring days would quickly come to an end, even if it wasn't through the method I wished for.