“So, what was that about a curse? Your transformation?” Lucina whispered to me. We had our heads huddled close together, trying to keep our conversation private in the crowded library. After the mysterious lady implied a connection between my curse and my grandmother, we needed to figure out what to do next.

“Yes, I think this transformation of mine, whatever may have caused it, is a curse. What else could it be?” I looked down at the ring on my finger, still trying to accept that it might be the source of my troubles. I could feel it was working on me, the transformation, and it hadn’t stopped at my tail.

“So, that lady. Who was that?” Lucina said, switching the topic back to the mysterious woman who had set on this path.

“I don’t know, but I thought I recognized her from somewhere. She wore the same ring as I did.” I said, recalling the woman’s familiar face and the strange connection we shared through the ring.

“You also mentioned she hinted at something related to your Grandma?” Lucina prodded, knowing that there was more to the story.

“Yes, she implied a connection between my curse and my Grandmother. But I have no idea what that could mean. My grandmother passed away years ago, and I never knew her very well.” I explained, feeling frustrated at the lack of information we had to go on.

“Well, maybe we can find some answers if we dig through her old things. See if there are any clues or hints about this curse.” Lucina suggested, always ready to jump into action, and I liked that about her.

I nodded in agreement, grateful for her support. “That’s a good idea. Let’s head to my old house and see what we can find.” Mother forced us to move to where we live now after grandmother died. However, our old house had never been put out for sale, so it should still be there.

We set out to where we used to live with Grandma. The house was a bit ways away from the city. Out in a forest, the only house around. There used to be a neighborhood, but it was torn down, except this one.

When we got there, we saw that the house was in fairly bad shape, and it had been many years since we had moved. We got inside the house, which wasn’t locked, and looked for Grandmother’s stuff.

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We found a lot of journals and books in the cellar, among much other strange stuff. We rifled through the boxes and journals and looked through drawers, and they all seemed just like ordinary, mundane books.

“I think I got something.” Lucina half shouted to me with excitement. I made my way to her, and we read the old dusty journal she found, and it had a picture of a white fox on the front.

As we read through the journal, my eyes got wider and wider. My Grandmother had written about a cult. A cult she was a proud member of—this fox cult, as it was called. The actual name of the cult wasn’t noted anywhere. They worshipped a fox spirit, a fox spirit they called Mother.

In the journal, she had written that the goal of this cult was to join with Mother, become one of her faithful children, and Grandma had been extremely devoted and desperate to achieve this.

She believed the Mother had blessed her. She had gotten a ring, the same one that I was wearing now. The last thing in the journal mentioned how she would join Mother. The date on this page is noted to be right before her death was announced.

We stood silently momentarily, trying to process what we had just read. My Grandmother was part of a cult that worshipped a fox spirit called Mother? It all seemed too strange and unbelievable to be true. Yet, the evidence was right in front of us.

“So, this is why you have the ring, possibly,” Lucina said, breaking the silence. “It was passed down from your Grandmother—possibly from the spirit, who believed it was a blessing from the spirit.”

I nodded slowly, still trying to come to terms with everything. “But the journal never mentioned the transformation?” I said. “Or what about a curse?”

Lucina furrowed her brow as she flipped through the pages. “It’s not clear,” She said. “But it seems like your Grandmother believed she was blessed instead of cursed. There is no mention of a transformation either, but they never found a body when she died, did they?”

I felt a chill run down my spine at that. Was that going to happen to me as well? Would I disappear as Grandmother did? Or did I get cursed because of Grandmother? And if so, how could I break the curse? If I could at all.

“We need to find out more,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “Maybe someone can help us, like that lady from the library?”

Lucina nodded in agreement. “We should try to find a former member of the cult, and they might have more information about the curse and how to reverse it.”

With a renewed sense of purpose, we started digging through the boxes and journals again, searching for clues that could lead us to a former member of the fox cult. It took some time, but eventually, we found a name and address in a newspaper clipping.

“Looks like we’re going on a road trip,” Lucina said with a small smile. Oh my mother was going to get so angry at me for this.

I couldn’t help but feel apprehensive. What would we learn about my curse and my Grandmother’s involvement in the fox cult? It was a mystery that seemed only to get deeper and more complicated.