Waking up around dusk, the fox headed into the forest again, unwilling to deal with the risk of iing with humans after the mob from earlier. This time he felt like expl the trails he had seen from the forest edge; first the oh the shattered trees, then the barren path.
Heading along the edge of the forest, he saw nothing out of pce, reag the path of shattered trees safely. Following it, he found numerous small burrows, with multiple rabbits and squirrels running away as he approached, as well as some deer who eyed him warily as he passed. Eventually he found a rge clearing with a depression in the ground and a pond in the middle, fed by a small stream.
To one side of the pond, he saw a rge quantity of energy hanging over the clearing, the world seeming to flicker between two images. On one side he saw ay clearing, oher he saw a number of fox kits pying with a rger fox looking over them. Examining it closely, he saw that the energy seemed lio something else, much as his foxfire was, making him think they were ected. Keeping in mind what he saw, he headed back towards his den, eager to experiment with this new idea.
Upon arriving at his den, calmer now where he felt safer, he sat down and tried to spread out his foxfire. It took many tries, but eventually he was able to turn it into a wispy field of energy. With just the fai shimmer in the air, he tried to push an image into it, watg, though nothing happened. After several more attempts, he still had not succeeded in making any ge to what he saw, and decided to give up for now.
Due to it getting to be too te in the night, he headed into his den to get some rest. As he y down, he pos location; he was visiting the humans a lot, so perhaps he should move it closer. But at the same time, he liked it being far enough away it felt safe. densing his foxfire bato a small fme, he had it spread across his tail for the soothing warmth and curled up to sleep.
Upon waking up in the m, he moved his foxfire bato a floating orb and headed out of his den. W if his human was better yet, he headed towards the vilge. He saw plenty of the young humans pying, but his human was absent at the moment, so he circled around them towards the strange fields. Finding mice was harder this time, but he mao eat his fill, and headed back towards the barren trail he was ied in expl yesterday.
As he headed dowrail, he heard a shriek from above; instinctively jumping to the side, he barely avoided being caught by a hawk, though it still mao cw his hind leg before it lifted bato the air. Wishing he could vi he had moved forward, he was surprised to see his foxfire disperse and a copy of himself jump forward.
The hawk dove again, targeting the copy of himself, and he dehe foxfire right before it hit, fog on burning. The hawk screeched as it burst into fmes and tumbled across the ground before ing to a stop, utterly still.
He sidered for a moment as the body burned, before deg he must have been trying too hard before, trying io barely focus on the image of a berry bush, seeing it appear a moment ter. Experiment successful, he dehe energy bato the ball of foxfire and used it to extinguish the fming corpse. It wasn’t like it could burn anything in the middle of the barren patch, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving it on fire for some reason.
He thought about eating the bird, but that feeling of danger fred up again for the first time in a while. Abandoning the thought, he moved his ball of foxfire over the wound he had taken, rexing as the soothing feeling began to fort the wound.
He tiraveling along the barren trail until he started to see mutated pnts starting to grow into the dirt. Fog further dowrail set off the warning sense again, though he could see there was still a long distance of barren ground before him. Listening to the feeling of danger, however, he turned around aurned.
Along the way bae, he had some berries and nuts he ran across, filling up after his earlier snaibsp; As it was getting tht, he headed back to his den to rest some more, though this time he finally made use of his ste rooms, bringing a few mouthfuls of nuts inside before curling up to go to sleep.
Upon waking up in the evening, he simply practiced with his illusions, having noticed they were fairly blurry before. He tried everything from simple shapes to plex figures like himself or his human. After a while he began to feel tired from the repeated effort and snacked on some of the nuts he had stored.
ed about his human, he focused on the liween them, finding the earlier had left, but a feeling of sadness still present, along with ay. tent that there was no pain or fear, he stopped paying attention for now since he couldn’t do anything about it.
This did, however, remind him he had his own link he could create with things nearby. He decided to experiment with that some more during the evening before it was time to sleep, and headed into the nearby forest again. It took him a while but he finally found a rabbit nosing around in the grass, and he hid himself with an illusion to approach more closely.
Fog on the rabbit, he extended a tendril of energy—notig it felt much thinner and weaker than before—eg to it. As the rabbit jumped in shock, he focused on keeping the e, feeling a fsh of fear and ay over the link before it calmed down, looking around warily. Eventually it went back to eating the grass, aried to push fear down the link, thinking back to when he was trapped in the vilge. The rabbit immediately jumped again and fled, the e snapping painfully as it did so.
Feeling exhausted after the feedback of the link breaking, he headed back to his home to rest again before m. As he curled up, he realized the wound on his hind leg wasn’t as bad as before. Since he had held his foxfire on it for a siderable amount of time, he had to assume that it was able to help heal. Putting the foxfire ba the injury, he let himself fall asleep, hoping he would see his human again tomorrow.
