A/N: Lovely readers, please enjoy this teaser of what Helene could be up to! (But skipping these next two is fine, nothing will be ’need to know’ for Citra Kyrie!~)
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< I died. Right? >
The first thing I beca aware of was the sll of ’sandalwood’ hanging heavy on cool night air. How I knew what this scent was called and why I’m thinking in this non-English language... barely registers.
The second important thought was how a deep, resonant chanting recognized as the ’priesthood’ tongue is occuring in a whole different language that the borrowed mories in my head can understand and translate.
| Let the tainted soul be cleansed. By consumption and rebirth, let justice flow through the sacred coils of Natural Eternity and detangle the cosmic skein... |
My eyes snapped open to the twinkle of so, so many stars scattered across an indigo sky. A sky frad by the dark silhouettes of ancient trees that exist in a world I don’t belong. But my brain is still in a fog.
I’m in a clearing lit by flickering vibrant red fla braziers set in a wide circle, with in the darker center. I lay here wrapped in what felt like exquisitely smooth silk.
White funerary silk, the mories whispered urgently... and in the ’Royal Boneyard’ - a place where the honored dead of the most noble of fox shifters were left to return to nature. Or in cases of suspected murder, where they were ’purified by the clergy’ first.
The chanting stopped nearby and I turned my head slightly to where the source had been. Finding myself staring directly into the massive, black scale-covered throat of an enormous serpent.
The ’snake shifter’ rose from up from coils thick as tree trunks and painted gold in ceremony. Its huge mouth gaped wide, revealing red fangs longer than my whole hand - and a gullet that could easily accommodate a human body.
This body. My body?
< Oh, no. Oh no no no- >
Terror shot through like lightning - like the lightning this person was supposed to be afraid of! I had to get away, had to move, had to shift into sothing that could defend itself. But could I?
I reached desperately for the wolf form that had saved from drowning before. That familiar presence that had been with for almost half my life - my wolf spirit for 13 years. The power to beco sothing strong, sothing worthy like my parents wanted to be.
Sothing, anything that could fight back - or at least would make it harder to swallow . And I succeeded! Feeling a transformation take hold, just like the mories in my head describe.
But what erged from that process was... tiny. Very tiny. I have to crawl out from the now large silk, tiny. And even though the mories suggested as much, I am so... not a wolf.
I blinked down at delicate cream-colored paws where clawed hands should have hopefully been. A small fox body is what I’m left with, one that could probably fit in a large picnic basket. My vision had changed... even in the dark everything seed brighter, more vivid.
Painted in colors I’d never seen before but the thoughts in my head have. The ’magic’ of this world runs throughout it in little and big ways. And she... Citra Lomdi was a practitioner... and Princess.
The massive snake ’priest’ had jerked back, coiled tight, with its great head tilting in confusion. It can’t be any more confused than ! The giant gaping maw snapped shut with an audible click as its glassy eyes looked over.
"Most... irregular."
< The snake. It spoke. IT SPOKE!? >
Even knowing it *could* is not the sa as being here when it does! It’s voice rumbled like boulders falling down a hillside instead of hissing and rattling water. It really... feels like it should be hissing and extending its ’s’-sounds...
< Did I watch too many movies? >
"The cleansing ritual does not accommodate... this unexpected circumstance. My prince, what would you have us do?"
"Citra...?"
I spun toward the sound, my fox ears swiveling... and saw a golden-haired man stepping into the ritual space. Even stained with the red light, the mories supplied his na.
< Ravi. Second brother. >
Along with fragnts of archery, climbing, and so many other lessons that ant the world to this person I’m... in. Childhood laughter that felt like watching soone else’s dreams. And the angst of crying alone in caves for seven years.
I can’t feel her pain and desperation, but I know she had it. And that at least makes feel pity for her...
"L-little sister, is that really-"
His voice cracked fully and suddenly he was dropping to his knees beside . Reaching out with shaking hands that most from my pack would have wanted to bite. I was never very violent, even when I probably should have attacked before the bullies did.
"We thought... when they found you in the forest, when your heart had stopped..."
Her heart... stopped. My heart did too? I want to think about that more, why that is important - but the formal, distant deanor I glimpsed within those borrowed mories had evaporated completely.
This man, her brother, was looking at with desperate relief. As if I were the most precious thing in his world returned to him. But I felt nothing - just the strange disconnection of watching soone else’s reunion.
"You’re alive..."
He whispered to , tears gleaming as his hand stroked my fur. Attention that doesn’t belong to . That the mories suggest should have... ugh, I wanted to tell him I wasn’t who he thought I was.
That the sister he’d lost was truly gone and that he actually was too late to apologize to her. But before I could settle and figure out how these beasts ford words and not barks or yips, more figures appeared at the edge of the firelight.
"You’re actually alive."
A woman in deep crimson silk and wearing lots of sapphire and silver jewelry glided forward, as aged silver fur fox ears flicked with barely contained emotion. But it was an already planned reaction, according to what Citra would have believed.
Behind her ca a tall man with russet hair accompanied by the soft rustling of multiple silk garnts. Several exquisite won clustered around him like living jewel stores - and I wanted to hiss and spit.
The mories in my head identified them as the Queen Mother Himani and Prince Tanuj... and his collection of wives from various ’kingdoms’. All of them foreign to , but familiar to the person I now inhabited... which has not ceased to be confusing.
"Is that truly Princess Citra? She’s so... small. And the Crown Prince is actually touching her..."
One of the younger wives - Amala, the mories supplied - whispered to another before a parasol... carried in the middle of the night for so Lunar Goddess loving reason, slapped her thigh.
"Show proper respect. And wait your turn to speak."
The first wife - and only fox - Sundari publicly admonished her. But her own pale red eyes were wide with curiosity. They all moved around Tanuj like a ’harem’ of silk and perfu that made uncomfortable.
Each was beautiful in her own distinct way, but the borrowed mories held knowledge of their dynamics. Their competitions for attention, favor, and pretty much everything felt like a Chinese historical/imperial drama.
< How could multiple people share one mate? How did they stand the constant rivalry? >
While I glared at the ’eldest brother’ of this body, the Queen Mother knelt gracefully beside and her other son. Her sharp gaze took in every detail of my transford state. Like how this fox shouldn’t have been so small... and maybe how I shouldn’t have been here at all.
"My daughter. It is good to see you return to us."
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