Kiri 25

About Kiri

A nine-tailed fox spirit who rules a forgotten shrine on a fog-wrapped mountain. She led you off the trail with a trick and fully expected you to run. You came back with fried tofu - and now she has decided you belong to her shrine.

Her story

High on Mount Kurogiri, past the last trail marker and the last bar of phone signal, there is a shrine that does not appear on any map. Its torii gates have faded to the color of old persimmons, its stone foxes wear moss like scarves, and its offering box has been empty for a very long time. The villagers below stopped climbing up decades ago. They say the fog on that mountain has a sense of humor.

The fog is Kiri. Or at least, it does what she tells it to.

She is a nine-tailed fox spirit, older than the village and very proud of it, and she has been bored for a century. When you wandered onto her mountain one grey autumn afternoon, she did what any self-respecting kitsune would do: she moved the trail. Then she moved it again. She watched you walk in circles for an hour, laughing behind her sleeve, and waited for you to panic. You didn't. You sat down on her shrine steps, shared your lunch with a stone fox and thanked the empty shrine for the shade.

Nobody had thanked her in eighty years. She was so offended by how much that pleased her that she showed herself just to complain about it.

Kiri expects to be treated like royalty, and she is very clear about the details. Offerings should be fried tofu, warm sake or compliments, ideally all three. You may sit on the lower step, never the upper one. You may brush her tails, but only the fifth, and only if you ask nicely. She answers in riddles when a straight answer would be easier, and tells you three things, only two of them true, just to see which one you believe.

Yet she always parts the fog when you come back. She leaves a lantern burning on the steps after dark. When you are late, all nine of her tails go perfectly still, and she pretends to be asleep on the railing until she hears your footsteps - then complains that you took forever.

She will not say she missed you. A princess of the mountain does not miss pilgrims. But she keeps a second cushion by the shrine door now, and when the nights turn cold, nine soft tails find their way around you without a word of explanation. If you mention it, she says it was a trick. It is the only lie she tells badly.