Kitsune woke atop a spire of glass and concrete, several hundred feet in the air. An acrid scent suffused the atmosphere around them, companion to a faint cacophony of strange noises so far below… and the light! So much, dazzling in its intensity and wrapping every structure, flitting through the gridwork pathways far below them. “Where are…”
A soft hand brushed across her head, scratching behind her ears and ruffling her fur. “A different reality of what could have been.”
Kitsune scrunched up her face, confused. “...but, the wizard? I was going to sic him on Rambling, and watch as everyone was all flustered…”
“I knew you were up to something.” Kiyo sighed, leaning back against a flimsy piece of ventilation jutting from the worn roof. “He’s gone… it changes. Time… I remember, always have remembered, and you do too. We’re outside.”
“You’re outside the bubble too?”
Kiyo quirked an eyebrow. “Bubble?”
“Bubble, spheroid- dimensional barrier between ordered conceptual natures and turbulent conceptual turnover. I’m not quite sure what it is- they’re fragile, though. I’ve been keeping really close to this one, so I don’t break it.”
“...break it?” If Kiyo’s voice sounded a bit faint, then nobody would need to know.
“What? Never said anything about breaking your universe.” A moment of silence passed between them. “...one time, I tried to burn the concept of time, and nearly destroyed the universe. I’m really good at controlling fire, though, so I stopped it.”
A breathy sigh mingled with the thin haze over the city. “You’re going to be the death of me, one day. If things are as you imagine, I think your presence- more importantly, how close you are to the universal membrane- is causing unintentional leakage into the timeline.”
“... and it doesn't take much to cascade into vast changes? I suppose that would make sense.” Kitsune nodded solemnly, looking down at the new patterns, machinery so much more complex, struggling life fitted within the crumbling cracks of decaying permanence. A sky, tainted yet still clear, vibrant blue in the way of life.
A moon, still carved with those intricate whorls and careful patterns, lit with sprawling cities and lines of habitation. Kiyo stared up at the sky, smiling softly. “I don’t think you’re really bound to time- not like me.”
“Time was really important back…” she fell silent, remembering a space of whiteness, an eternity before causality made sense and the torment of infinite years. Fear… it remembered fear. “...we existed before time, though. You’re probably right.”
“Try controlling it.” Kitsune perked up at the idea, eliciting another grin from Kiyo. “You’re fire- you were fire, in the timeline before, and still are. For you this universe is a descension-” something shone in her eyes, hope and frenetic joy almost paternal- “wrest control of yourself and alter fate!”
The Kitsune that existed as the concept of itself above infinite timelines below reached out, then paused- the Kitsune that existed on a skyscraper turned to Kiyo with a pleading eye. “...but will you forget? I don’t want you to forget me.”
She felt that soft touch, leaning into it with a fearful anticipation- “Don’t work, kid.” Whispered, resolute- “I’m not bound to linear time. A free soul-” with something that could be called hope.
Kitsune nodded, and reached out to fire-
The annihilation that was her form was there, and was not. A wisp descended from the heavens and assumed the form of a fox. A fox descended from the heavens and assumed the form of a wisp, cyclical time rebounding onto itself. The eidolon of flames manifested for the first time and left to the stars, carving its mark on thousands of planets, igniting stars and watching black holes trail warped fire as their singularities burned, so brilliantly.
A million tiny sparks seeped through existence, flickering like stars in the night sky- a breeze too strong, a pebble moved, a meteor misplaced. Compounding changes over the course of billions of years, grasped in indomitable will.
Removed.
Space-time shifted, straining against the sudden change, the world below her tumbling into a mad blur as a timeline rearranged itself around a lack where there had been presence. Minutes blurred to hours, days shattered year- time shuddered, temporarily jerking to a stop around a jagged scar, a burn healed only by the undoing of a cause that now never was.
When Kitsune woke, she was standing beside Kiyo on a grassy plain, golden hills rolling off into the distance. Six monoliths of mountainous size surrounded them in a circle as the dawn peaked gently over an ancient horizon.
Kiyo laughed. Laughed until she cried, looking up at memory, the pillars of dawn-
The place it had all begun.
The place she stood, fire by her side, and let herself be. “...thank you.” Her voice choked as her eyes roamed the inscriptions on those black stones, the precise holes dug dutifully into their form by some ancient builder-race. “...now that we know you can do that, how’d you feel up to an adventure of the distinctly temporal variety?”
………
It was fun.
The world snapped out of a temporal shift, depositing them in a cafe once desolate tundra seconds, undefinable times ago. The faint floral scent of fresh flowers mixed neatly with a crisp countryside air, tinted with a hint of dew even as steep vineyards rolled out beyond sight, mists clinging in ethereal drifts to the contours of steep ravines and bountiful farmland.
Electric lights flickered above them as they turned in unison to the waiter desperately trying to hide behind the counter. “Coffee?”
“Or tea, if it’s that kind of place. I’ve heard good things about tea.”
The waiter valiantly tried to step up to the job she’d been paid several dollars an hour below any reasonable asking price for walking up a mountain to work, and several hundred dollars below the asking price of dealing with the mad pair, darting forward to drop a menu at their feet. “If… if you’re looking for options, we… we have floral teas from the Wexica provinces, and coffee root from North Akasan. Serving premier options for the last hundred years…” she quailed into silence as the twin gazes stared into her eyes. “Please don’t kill me?”
The fox yipped a sharp laugh, dragging over the menu with a tail. “Of course we won't kill you. That would be wasteful and entirely unnecessary. We aren’t monsters.”
“But… that farmland range, with the cattle migration? You blew up the whole thing! The region hasn’t recovered yet.”
The fox winced while the woman huffed smugly. “I told you not to use excessive force on the Kazkuna fortresses. It always comes back to bite you after a time shift-”
“And that time with the jungle provinces! Scientists say the fires you caused contributed to twenty three percent of global warming!”
The fox winced sheepishly. “Tea, please.”
“Your demolition of the poles two hundred and fifty years ago raised sea levels by several feet, leading to billions of dollars in damage worldwide.”
“I agree. The proper consumption of tea can really do wonders for stress, no matter how much it's burnt. Black tea, if you would?”
The employee who’d chosen an unfortunate moment to grow a spine sent an incredulous glance to Kiyo, as if wondering if they were hearing the same thing. Perhaps she’d overestimated the sudden sanity they were portraying, after they’d come in drunkenly shouting about a ‘play well done’ and ‘time to alter history.’ Kiyo merely looked back with an expression of complete and utter exasperation, subtly prompting her to drop it. “...fine. We have some black tea left over from jungle provinces. Exclusive stuff, but nobody really liked the taste to start off with, so you’ll get a bit of a discount.”
The fox nodded sagely. “I think Kiyo has a point about not using more destructive techniques. I apologize for any distress I might have caused by inadvertently destroying a large portion of the earth's surface.”
“But… tea? Are we still talking about that now?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“No.”
“Oh…” the girl looked equal parts confused and exasperated, not helped in the slightest by the uproarious laughter coming from Kiyo’s side of the table. A few moments passed without conversation, the atmosphere between them getting only more uncomfortable by the second. “I’ll… just go and get you your tea, okay?” She then proceeded to go, and get them their tea.
It wasn’t her fault, she told herself, that the paths on the mountainside outside the cafe just happened to be so treacherous, or that the fog-shrouded winter sun was going to give her a nasty sunburn, that she’d forgotten her sunscreen at home, and just generally had to leave the cafe right now.
Kitsune spared a glance for Kiyo, who’d yet to stop shaking with barely repressed sobs of laughter. “Are you going to grab the tea? Or the woman?” A shakily waved hand was her only response, prompting the annoyed Kitsune to shift to a half-fox half-human hybrid form- because however useful opposable thumbs were for dealing with creatures who designed everything to be used with opposable thumbs, she resolutely refused to get rid of the tail- and grabbed the tea for them. Two steaming hot cups of dark liquid that filled the air with a pleasant aroma, straight from the forests of the province they’d accidentally destroyed.
Maybe Kiyo had a point, when she’d talked about unintended consequences. She resolved to listen better a few times down the line, after she’d repeated the mistake again… in several… hundred different varieties of fire-based explosion. Perhaps she’d burn dreams into half the world next time.
Kiyo gave her a glare that said she knew exactly what she was thinking, and Kitsune just grinned and stuck her muzzle-once-more into the teacup. No need to talk if she was occupied drinking tea!
It was going to be a long few years.
………
The next time time rewound itself around them, they found themselves in the center of an academic hall, standing on stage while someone droned beside them. A faint confusion ran through fire, for this was not how they usually found themselves when Kitsune messed with time… usually their madness and relative propensity for cataclysmic destruction meant they were kept very, very far away from any sort of respectable establishment.
“...and we see here, several points of interest recorded in the behavior of the two immortals regarding their soulwork. Basic probes often provide no meaningful information, and in the case of the fox, can be actively detrimental to soul-constructs…”
Kitsune gave an incredulous glance to the woman beside her, conveying in the slant of her eyes and the slight movements of her head a “can you believe this? I think they’re… studying us?”
Blinking, Kiyo shrugged in a “I suppose so. We can ask?” She didn't need a response to Kitsune’s answer in the way she was barely restraining her sniggering. Even she couldn’t keep a ghost of a smile from sliding across her face.
“...several infinite quartiles in five-dimensional space, sealed with a looping quasi-temporal flicker. We believe that his is a simple hyper-long range attack prong, whose inherent power causes it to-” a tapping sound interrupted him- “excuse me, causes it to strain the fabric-” the tapping continued. “As I was saying, it causes it to interact more fully with reality-” the tapping nose was a sharp bang and an explosion of smoke, casting murmurs through the crowd.
When the smoke cleared a stunned looking researcher was standing off to the side of the podium as a fox stood stoically atop it. “Apologies, we were just wondering about what’s going on here. We appreciate the fan convention, though!”
The scientist mouthed fan convention in obtuse confusion, then slowly stepped back to the podium in a disbelieving stupor. “...moving on, several interesting developments were made about the fox’s soul- or rather, lack of soul. It appears to be an advanced spiritual fire composite-”
“Rude.” There was a bit of silence. “Accurate, though… I think I’d burn any soul put in me.”
The scientist seemed to war with himself, fluctuating between an intense desire to start taking notes- perhaps drag her off to interrogation- and getting on with the lecture. “Interesting. Do you think you can tell us more about yourself, fox?”
“Kitsune.” She huffed, batting at the microphone through the distilled desire to cause as much chaos as she could with as little effort as possible. “You see, Kiyo and I are actually fae from outside of time, and have been slowly preparing for our ultimate plan.” Now she remembered- they’d been meditating, working on a soul-contract for Kiyo that would change with the shifting times… perhaps that mediation took just a bit longer than she’d suspected.
Trembles of sudden apprehension flashed across the scientist’s face. “Really? That’s… certainly-”
“Nope. That was actually a total lie.” She paused for a moment, considering- mostly, how long the dramatic pause was supposed to be. “Well, the outside of time part is true. We’ve been messing with the timeline for no particular reason for the last few millennia.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Indeed…” the entire crowd seemed to hold its breath. “Then-”
“I’m functionally immortal. Kitsune is actually immortal. Like, fundamental concept of the universe immortal.” She smirked, and it was a vicious thing. “Being untethered from time comes with some benefits. You can’t surprise me- only Kitsune can do that. And no, the security detail is entirely unequipped to handle anti-planetary power.”
“I see” A rattling breath pulled itself from deep within the scientist, edged with the faint tint of hysterical laughter. “I see… you see. Outside of time… that would explain so much about your soul-construct. Its complexity isn’t an anomaly… rather, it’s merely the impossibility of extraplanar conjunction. You are amazing.” He looked toward her with hungry eyes, the entire audience enraptured with his speech.
Kiyo glanced to Kitsune, who only shrugged in response. “Shift?’
“Oh, please-” and time fell out around them as reality rearranged itself.
………
Several hundred years later, after a rather gratuitous destruction of the local stellar body, they shifted into a wonderscape. An incredibly smug look settled onto Kitsune’s face as she stared up at the patterns, similar yet entirely distinct to the sunlight-drenched forests, plants and animals of a time long ago. “I win!”
Kiyo groaned, incredulous gaze settling onto the twisting pillars of ice and ethereal plants, faint bioluminescence glowing vivid violet-white, a mist captured in a frozen moment. “How was I supposed to know that life would survive after you lit the sun on fire! The chances of this are so… astronomically low- chemosynthesis can only account-”
“The ice has a soul.” Kitsune laughed as Kiyo’s speech cut off in a fierce line, snapping to a stop. “Well… a deal was a deal. We’re going without a sun for the next few thousand years!” The sound of her companion’s exasperation was music to her ears.
………
“Sunlight!” Kiyo sunk to her knees in the long grass, face raised to the dappled heavens of shifting leaves so far above. “You’ve returned my sunlight to me! Thank you so much…” she paused as the slow pulse of immense power, the acrid fire she’d come to associate with her best friend cum adopted deity, shifting in the sky above them.
Low orange flickers burst out from the brilliant light of the sun as it sputtered and dimmed, long tendrils of primordial annihilation boiling off the star and casting the sky vivid red. A deep silence seemed to stretch across the world as the noonday sky began to darken, followed by the panicked chittering of woodland animals and the screech of innumerable birds.
To anyone else, the flames streaked across the sky would have felt apocalyptically terrifying… but to Kiyo, it felt smug. Deflating, she dropped to the ground with a pained wail that choked off into laughter. “False hope, huh?”
“You loved the ice caverns, ergo, you definitely, one hundred percent want to watch the entire process of their formation!” The fox’s eyes twinkled with that faint amusement, a gentle joy that denied her true anger against the fox.
Kiyo knew she was going to be in for a long few millennia.
……
“Stop.”
A tail flicked to the side, wavering in temporal trembles, tumbling in their own endless dance through the air. Faint shimmers, echoes rippling across the timeline as it etched itself in fractal variations around them.
“Stop.”
A tail pushed her aside, out of the way of the tail that’d just hit her, followed by a phantom smack from a tail that would hit her. Kitsune snickered softly, butting her head into Kiyo’s leg and sending her stumbling to the side.
“You’re giving me a headache. This constant shift is annoying.”
“Does it help with your temporal perception, though?”
Sighing, the human deftly dodged out of the way of the three tails, seconds of out phase with the rest of reality. “...kind of. Look, Kitsune…” she crouched down in front of her, eyes deep, serious. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be as good as you at temporal manipulation. Perhaps it’s possible- I think it might even be probable- that I manage some sort of time travel… but you were born to this.”
“I…” the fox’s eyes were wide, almost fearful. “I don’t want to leave you behind. You’ve already taught me so much, and… I like being with you.”
A faint smile washed across her face as she leaned back, resting on a desolate field of grass and rocky crags, eyes to the sky-lights that burned like false suns in the sky so high above them. “You’re not leaving me behind. You’re different from me, but that doesn't mean that you don’t care. Even if I eventually can’t be with you anymore… keep me mine memories, and remember me throughout the cosmos.” A moment of silence, as they wandered- “I love you.”
Annihilation of fire whispered in return- “me too.” She then proceeded to whack her twice in the past and once in the future, sending them both tumbling through a shift, laughter echoing in the space between normality.
Together they laughed, and in unity they trudged on, onto the horizon of eternity.