Blood of the Fox

Chapter 15

There was a sweet taste in his mouth.

Yuezhen's eyes, gold and briefly reptilian, opened in the darkness. As they slowly faded back into its human appearance, his surroundings came back into focus. He saw the jagged dark stones protruding from the cave roof and heard the drip of water. His body ached terribly and felt paralyzed.

And his middle... Yuezhen sat up suddenly. The movement made him temporarily black out with pain but he pushed through and placed his hand on his stomach. Instead of touching muscle and bone as he half expected instead he touched rough cloth... bandages?

"Try not to move, I'm not sure how well it's working. It's my first time trying this."

He turned around slowly.

Sitting beside him, propped up against a wall in the cave, was the fox girl. Her eyes were half closed. She had one leg drawn up to her chest and the other lay loosely beside him. Her sleeves were torn on one side, a color that matched his bandages. Very slowly his eyes followed the long line of her pale, exposed arm and the long red scar that ran from her inner elbow to her wrist and finally a short sword that she held in her hand, dripping with blood and glowing faintly.

Yuezhen touched his lips and almost unconsciously swallowed.

"It's quite sweet isn't it?" Ruyi's tone was relaxed, almost lazy. But he wasn't fooled. Her body was so loosely arranged because she could hardly move. She didn't have the energy to hold herself together. The drawn up leg was her last effort, she couldn't move the other one. "It's not bitter and metallic like other people's. You know when I was young, I always had a nagging fear that actually I wasn't a fox after all but only human. I didn't have any powers back then you see. But one day someone told me that blood was bitter. But mine wasn't. That's when I really knew for the first time."

"You gave me too much." His voice was dry from disuse. How long has he been asleep? "If you kept going at this rate, you would have killed yourself, fox or no."

She opened her eyes slightly wider as if she wanted to protest at his curt lack of regard for her grand sacrifice. But slowly they closed again. She didn't have the energy to fight. Instead she said, "I didn't have much choice. You were injured and the poison was consuming you from within. Any less and you would have died anyway, fox blood or no."

He looked down at his middle again. He was in pain, yes, but all in all not nearly a fraction of what he should be feeling. The legendary power of the fox blood, it's renown is not exaggerated.

"Will your body heal itself?" He asked.

She nodded with her eyes closed. "I think so. It always has, before. I just need some time..."

Her body was very thin and shrunken, her skin devoid of blood was very white. Her bones stood on her face, giving her somewhat of a skeletal feeling. She drained herself dry to save my life... he looked again at that cruel knife held in her thin fingers and filled with crusted blood.

He took off his cape and laid it over her. Her eyes opened again slowly. "You shouldn't move."

"The one who needs to rest is you at the moment." He said. He sat up in a lotus position and focused his energy. "Sleep. I will watch over you."

A faint smile touched the corner of her lips. "Thank you... your Highness." 

***

Ruyi was having a dream about her mother.

She saw Daiyu standing in what looked like a forest, beside a small lake. Her mother's face was bare and unpainted, her hair loose in the wind. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or the lack of make up, but her mother looked younger than what she remembered.

Slowly a horse appeared through the trees, moving slowly. Daiyu started, her expression changed. Ruyi, watching like a ghost, was startled to see the fervour that appeared in her eyes; a childish excitement she'd never seen before on her mother's serene face.

This is... this must be... Ruyi looked towards the trees with trepidation, and her fast begun to beat as fast as the woman before her who had begun running towards the road.

Slowly as the horse emerged from the cover of trees, a man's outline appeared. Thick shoulders, a strong jaw and rough hands holding the reigns. His face was half hidden in the shadow of the round wide brim of his hat.

"Gaoshan," Daiyu's voice was high pitched, girlish. "You're late! I thought you wouldn't come."

Her father's deep voice sounded somewhat amused as he leaned down into her eager embrace. "Oh? And what would you have done if I didn't?"

"I would die." Daiyu said passionately. "Without you, I would just die!"

***

"But you didn't... you didn't die."

The fox girl's slurred voice echoed through the darkened cave. Yuezhen opened his eyes and observed her carefully. She had a fever and she was delirious, but her aura was stable.

"Liar." She said and a tear slid down her cheek. "You're a liar."

Fox tears, he thought. He felt a faint, and somewhat diverting, urge to catch it with his fingers and place it on her lips.