II. humans

Despite lacking demonic magic, the Nine-tails had retained her keen eyes and exceptional hearing. She could make out smoke coming from a south-easterly direction, and deduced that there would be the best place to begin her search. Fire almost certainly meant humans. She judged it was a walk-able distance, and wondered vaguely as she walked if Satya had something to do with the conspicuously clear and human-free location she had landed in. She had been expecting a bit more fanfare.

The walk took much longer than she had anticipated. The demon was used to being able to cover forests and mountains in just one stride; the much shorter human legs she had been given covered hardly three paces.

At last, the Nine-tails could hear the bustling sounds of a human market. She had arrived at a small town, no bigger than forty homes at the most. She paused in the outskirts of the forest, eyeing the entrance. How long had it been since she had taken human form? Two centuries at the very least. And this was not her own body; the Nine-tails felt uncomfortable inside Satya’s creation.

Nonetheless, she was a demon, and she was a fox at that. She had not been born with a real sense of fear, nor was she hesitant by nature. The Nine-tails steeled her expression and strode in.

People stared after her as she walked down the worn streets of the little town. She stuck out amidst the generally poor populace in her white silk gown, but perplexed them with her bare feet and wild hair. What exactly was she?

The Nine-tails wandered to the marketplace, and as the scent of freshly cooked curries wafted in the air about her, she noticed for the first time that her human body came with hunger. It growled, and the demon soon found herself placing an order at the closest food stall.

“One meat curry.” She told the man at the stall, who gawked at her in a most obvious manner.

“A-ah… what type of meat? And brown or white rice?” he asked timidly.

“All the meat you’ve got. And skip the rice.” She added as an afterthought, slipping into a seat and looking around her. When she felt his curious gaze still on her after a few more moments, she snapped her amber eyes to look him dead-on, and he paled and quickly left to work on her order. Tch. Humans.

A few minutes later, a steaming bowl of practically all the meat in the shop drowned in sauce was shoved into her hands, and before she could even look up, the man had fled, pretending to be busy with some other customer to avoid her gaze. Chuckling to herself, the Nine-tails turned to the bowl in front of her and poked curiously at a piece of meat with her chopsticks. Humans certainly did the strangest things to their food. It took a minute or two for her fingers to remember how to use the strange sticks some humans ate with, and when she had figured it out, she shoved a large piece of meat into her mouth.

I will never understand humans. Why ruin meat and strip it of all flavor by cooking it in water? This would be so much better raw, she thought with an inward sigh.

While the demon continued stuffing herself with her meal, the people around her exchanged shocked glances. Who was this woman, beautiful and commanding like a noble, yet so scruffy and unrefined? And what worried the elders in the crowd even more was the strange, unearthly aura that surrounded her. Their instincts had started ringing warning bells from the moment they saw her.

The one exception to the wary ‘bubble’ that people had formed around the demon was a young boy, hardly a man, who plopped himself into a seat beside the demon.

The Nine-tails looked up and said through a mouthful of food, “Eh? And who are you, mor- er… kid?”

“The name’s Kaien.” He introduced himself warmly, and the Nine-tails swallowed and leaned back in her seat to look him over.

He was short for a young man, and had shaggy black hair that flopped into his warm gray eyes. Not often that gray eyes were described as warm, but somehow he managed to pull it off with that bright smile of his. A typical do-gooder, the Nine-tails concluded; your average misguided dreamer.

“So what do you want, kid?” she asked, setting her chopsticks down and licking her lips before pursing them. “Just here to chat?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Actually, I was hoping you could help me.” Kaien informed hopefully. The Nine-tails sighed.

“Look… I’m not really in a position to be helping anyone. I’ve got my own business to do. Why don’t you go find some other nice kid to help you?” She stood, and before she had even taken a step he was blocking her way.

“Oh, it’s not much, I assure you. I just wanted some information.” He said cheerily.

The demon was getting pissed.

“I don’t know anything. I’m just a traveler on a mission, so if you would step aside before I cause you any bodily harm-”

“Excuse me miss… that will be 3 gold pieces.” A meek voice spoke up from the food stall. The Nine-tails whipped around to glare at the poor man behind the counter, who had cowered so much that his eyes and outstretched hand was the only thing visible.

The demon scowled in annoyance, muttering curses to the gods as she ran through possible scenarios of escaping paying, since the gods had sort of forgotten that humans used something called money, and that it was something she might possibly need. Well, she could always kill these mortals with her magic- oh, that’s right. Satya had taken that away too. Damn her!

Just as the demon’s eye began twitching, the ever watchful Kaien proposed a solution.

“I’ll pay your meal if you’ll answer my questions.”

“Kid…” the demon frowned and stared at the determined boy, who, to his credit, didn’t falter even as the Nine-tails’ amber eyes bored into his skull. At last, she relented. It was the best option. Hell would freeze over before the King of Demons started scrubbing dishes. “Fine, kid; whatever you want.” She sighed and wondered if this newfound mellowness was a side-effect of the human body.

Kaien quickly fished out three gold coins from his pockets and tossed them to the stall owner. He turned back to the Nine-tails and grinned.

“Follow me.”