fox and hound

Lucy gripped the strap of her bag in one hand, tight, and gripped the fox mask in the other. Jogging, looking down at the mask, she pressed fingers into painted wood and found it just a bit soft. Still dusted in glamour from her nighttime expedition with Avery, Toadswallow and Gashwad.

A rubbing movement of her thumb changed color for a second, before it returned to its older one.

She changed course, going east instead of northeast. Around to the back of the school, where the chain-link fence had openings to let crowds in to observe the sports field.

Off the roads and into gloom. A rabbit ran along the grass.

She pulled the mask on, pulled the compact out of her pocket, and took a pinch of glamour. She wasn't as scarily good at this as Verona was. She didn't have fox hair on hand. But the fact she had a fox mask gave her a starting point. She drew out fur, color, narrowed parts of her body…

She got about two-thirds of the way done before the glamour seemed to realize her desired end result. The form snapped around her, she dropped to all fours, and the weight of her bag at her back slipped away into hackles and dense fur.

The rabbit saw her and freaked, bolting. She ignored it, veering slightly away so it could relax. She was just happy to be covering twice as much ground as she had before.

Burrs and nettles stood out at her left forelimb, along with colorful petals, she noted. Nothing to be done about that for now. Better to ignore it.

She'd used Maricica's glamour for this and she wondered if she'd be a slightly different sort of fox if she'd used Guilherme's, or if one was exclusively better, like using Guilherme's for transforming into sunlight and sunbeams.

She twisted inside the glamour, a ninety-five pound human moving inside the skin of a twenty pound animal, and stretched that skin.

It snapped, she tripped on the two legs she had instead of the four, and she fell, bumping into the fence she was running alongside.

Panting for breath, she climbed to her feet, fixed her mask, and got more glamour.

Back to fox form, mid-run. Just a bit faster this time. Still with nettles and petals impaled on those nettles in a kind of aesthetic design at one limb, matted and woven into fur.

Stretching, testing limits, compact still in hand…

A bit more glamour, a hand movement alongside her body, within this skin…

Mixing two things together. Wearing a fox form and then tracing lines and patterns that mimicked the dappled light and shadow of the trees and fence nearby.

The movement tore the glamour, but the effect carried through, knitting to the damaged part.

That rabbit in the sports field had seen a shadow darting through short grass. Were it to look now it would see something similar. Two shadows, one large and one small, vaguely fox-shaped, flashes of red amid shadow. Red sweatshirt and dark clothing.

She let another tear happen. Then another.

When she was shadow or rain or smoke she wasn't one body, but a collective body. This was the same.

Five foxes that moved in darkness. Through the fence, past the school, across the road, into woodland. Moving faster than a fox ran, splitting apart to take better paths, uniting again.

She'd considered the hedgehog while they'd been brainstorming. Hedgehogs were cute. She was prickly, she knew. It sort of worked, and there hadn't been anything that clicked for her as much as the cat had for Verona. Avery had mulled over a few options but she'd known the direction she'd wanted to go. Something that ran. The rabbit had come up briefly.

Lucy hadn't known, and it had been a process of elimination. No for the hedgehog, because it was… too defensive. Too reactive. It was prey. She didn't want that, always being in a lesser position compared to the people with power. Like Mr. Bader constantly shouting at her. Or Booker telling mom how annoying it was that one of his classmates could get into University and it was 'good for her, she must have worked so hard' but when it came to him… how many of the other students and people thought he only got it because of the color of his skin? To fill a slot? Even though he was smart and serious.

Then she'd, while browsing hedgehog videos, stumbled onto a video about foxes dealing with hedgehogs. She'd thought it was funny, kind of, that a fox would get a hedgehog to unravel by rolling it into water, or by peeing on it. Expose the soft, prickle-free underbelly, eat.

Sad for the hedgehog, but darkly funny. She liked it.

The fox was a trickster in folklore and fable. Lis had drawn comparisons between the fox and the rabbit, on that front. She'd wanted to capture that, somehow, had even brought it up during awakening, except then Verona had been the one who ended up with the massive bag of tricks, and Avery was nimble and on the lookout for opportunity and they'd settled into roles.

She found them. One fox's eyes glowing red in the forests.

It was hard not to… not flinch, but to feel that hint of defensiveness, seeing Avery and Verona together, especially in proximity to a Fae. Guilherme and John were with them. Her trust had been broken and as much as she didn't want to be the type to dwell on this stuff, Avery had gotten up to something with Pam, and it had been Lucy who'd had to deliver the reality check, and she still resented that. Even if they had been better since.

Stuff like that and the fact they'd beaten her to the punch on some things meant Lucy had settled in as a bit of a hedgehog. Prickly, reacting, grouchy, sitting back a bit more. She'd settled into watching over her friends. Not engaging.

And then, in almost the same breaths and same moments, feeling like they were getting out of her reach.

She approached, and John drew his gun, pointing it at her. She froze.

"It's Lucy," Verona said, noticing. "Heyyyy! That's cool."

- Shaking Hands 9.4