Jackdaw sunk against the door, chest heaving with the mad effort to pack more breath into her bursting blood. Every heartbeat throbbed in her head, her neck, her paws, never stopping, never waning. Was it skipping? Was that arrhythmia? Was it? Was it? She couldn’t tell, not even checking her pulse. She couldn’t keep the count. She couldn’t tell the beats. Anything could happen, but nothing would happen. Nothing to make any of it stop.

Then, light! Sound! She wordlessly cringed and cowered, pulling the cloak up tighter around her. Only when the last light flickered on did she dare look at the near-empty tunnel, and the completely inert bit of machinery. If it’d happened to anyone else, she might’ve laughed. But of course, it happened to her. The only one foolish enough to think a ratty old cloak would make a shred of difference against anything in this horrible place. A stupid, lost child, hiding under a blanket so the monsters wouldn’t get her. Even as - even as the monsters gobbled up her friends.

The terrible fox hugged herself tight, squeezing until her knuckles turned white. Then she reached yet deeper. Past cloak and past skin, past page and past memory.

Forward? Backward? Elseward? There was one more option.

There was always one more option for a fox with no name.

[Spending 1 use of Strange Curios to produce a name she might become.]