[b]Rose![/b]

Daily Affirmations of the Way <3: [i]"All things are connected, so don't read too much into it."[/i]

The harmony of hills and mountains is undermined with the sense of discord. The path is overgrown with weeds and a fence has fallen, causing sheep to spill out all over the road to eat those weeds. Two wagons and a little car have had to come to a halt with the path ahead blocked by the fluffy tide and the most experienced of the three is already pitching her tent because she knows better than to reason with the sheep. A bolder one has advanced on the sheep with shouting but she is a fool - already a sheep-aligned goat has snuck around to her abandoned wagon to chew through the horse's restraints.

This is disharmony in its simplest form. Bad luck and rebellion, sheeps made kings and humans made fools. Back in ancient times it would cost a monthly subscription fee to ensure that your vehicle was shielded by the Metropolitan Prayer Wheel, with fines for those who engage in disharmonious conduct. Nowadays it is dealt with in a more artisanal sense by you and your order.

This isn't the wreckage of demon passage - if the Pyre had come this way then she'd have taught the sheep the secret of gunpowder. This kind of subtle entropy has been going on for a while - some sort of wicked spirit at work. Not urgent, perhaps... but not unimportant. You [i]are[/i] a monk, are you not? And while the mysterious girl desired by Princess Qiu might be important, and while Princess Chen might be important, and while both questions are [i]fun[/i] for you personally... can you truly look the Buddha in the eye and say they are more important than these people here before you now?

[b]Yue![/b]

The faintest smell of incense touches the wind. It's distant and sweet and brings only one connotation: the smell of a shrine. You pause to breathe it in, the flavour of deserts with sands of blue, as luxurious for the distance it has come as for the taste of foreign moonlights it offers. For a moment you close your eyes to appreciate the smell. In the rustling breeze you can hear the sound of wind-chimes.

And then when you open your eyes again the world is bound in red thread.

It wraps around you from a knot tied around your smallest finger, tracing up and around your arm and across your chest and tangling through your hair. It spreads up and loosely weaves through the branches of the trees. Its fragility makes it bind tighter than the heaviest chain - this thread is so delicate it demands you move with utmost caution to avoid snapping it, and who would risk snapping a red ribbon if it might lead you to true love? Here, as ever, the secret to bindings is to ensure that there is no will to escape them.

"Heya!" comes a cheerful voice from beneath two fox ears and two fox tails. "Cute fox!"

Immediately you know what kind of place this is.

"If you ever see an abandoned shrine, don't make wishes!" Everyone in the village got that lecture. Every set of grandparents hauled their grandchildren [i]and[/i] their children to their sickbeds so they could give them the warning. "Under no circumstances!" For three days afterwards elderly guards patrolled the town with walking sticks and threats to have you by the ear to ensure that nobody snuck out to the abandoned shrine while old Mr. Barayama went down to fetch a monk to exorcise the place. 

The security was necessary not because the spirit who lived at the abandoned shrine didn't grant wishes but because it [i]did[/i]. 

It is an iron law of the spirits that whenever a shrine is abandoned and falls into disrepair, a fox spirit moves in. Kitsune are absolutely terrible spirits to have occupying a shrine because, as is well known, foxes have no sense of right and wrong. If a girl comes to one and says that her beloved is married to another the fox will have no compunctions about ruining that relationship and ensuring that you are there to pick up the pieces - and then the next day she'll introduce herself to the betrayed party and offer a bargain special on vengeance. It'll keep going until the town tears itself apart while the fox rakes up the offerings.

That red string, in the end, leads back to a glittering red and onyx box that the fox is toying with. She's lying flat on the fallen stone pillar, having quite impressively contorted her body so that flows like liquid into all the spaces around the lizard king. The lizard is giving her a look that is letting her know that she has walked [i]exactly[/i] up to the line of getting bitten, and she's waving her tails in a way that says she knows [i]exactly[/i] where that line is.

"I am so glad to meet a girl who understands how to treat a fox," said the kitsune, and oh wow she's pretty. Fox magic pretty is the kind of thing to risk a little disaster for, isn't it? Bright teal eyes and white hair that fades to black over the last quarter of its length, a pattern mirrored on her tails. But despite the embarrassment from being seen in this state she doesn't bat an eye at you - and perhaps you're lucky she doesn't. There are plenty of stories of absent minded foxes forgetting humans wear clothes and attempting to infiltrate towns while naked, and your state is perhaps contributing to a future faux pas. "I think that you'd be able to treat a girlfriend really well too. I can help with that! Ooh, maybe you want that fox to [i]be[/i] your girlfriend? Is that your wish?" 

Those twin tails wag with the hypnotic eagerness of someone who has done absolutely zero contemplation of the ramifications of wishes.