The little critter will not let the hour I spent burning the blood and seeing fragments of memory be only grief.
Yes, I think it could discern when I call it ’little critter,’ even inside my head, and it would look at me with suspicion.
Not long after surviving my tribulation, it had fallen asleep, its stomach was fat and faintly glowing from the tribulation lightning it had eaten. Looking at the sleeping fox from time to time, I did not know whether to laugh or cry.
It woke up after a few minutes and looked around, and when its soft paws touched my face, only then did I realize that I had been crying.
And from that moment, the little fox seemed to have taken it upon itself to make me feel better, and it was doing all this just by being itself.
It seemed to have digested the lightning; its fur was glowing, and it ran around me, filled with energy. When it noticed what I was doing, it pounced on the loose feathers of blood-light at the edge of my fire, batting at the sparks of Soul Flame that drift past, chirring in triumph when it catches one and is mildly electrocuted for its trouble, entirely undeterred.
’Hmm... was this fox invincible?’
It runs down my arm and up my back and perches on my head and pats at the rising blood with one paw like a cat at an aquarium, and when a particularly large gout climbs past, it scolds it with a sharp bell-chirr of disapproval, in Mel’s voice, "oi," as though the blood is being rude.
’How was the fox learning so many new words? Hmm, the link?’
I should tell it to stop, after all, I am burning the souls of murdered children and their families, and it is not a moment for play.
But the fox knows something I am slow to learn, which is that even though the task I was carrying out was grim, I should not be letting it define everything. I had the choice to choose how I carried this burden.
And every time it bats a spark or scolds the blood or sticks its tongue out at me upside-down from the top of my head, it pulls a thread of me back from the place the memories are dragging me toward.
I free a thousand souls and see a thousand lives end, and between each one, the fox does something ridiculous, and it was the only reason I am still a boy and not a thing made of other people’s last moments.
And there were times when the memories came hard, especially when I see children that resembles my sister, then I see their end... the fear inside their eyes and small faces... by all the lights in heaven, I nearly broke down, but at those moments, the fox stops playing and presses its small warm head against my jaw and stays there, quiet, until I can keep going.
Then it goes back to batting sparks... little betrayer.
I go back to burning, and the hour passes that way, grief and play threaded together, the only honest way to do a thing like this.
∞
It was the fox that sensed her before I even knew I was not alone, and it made a soft chirping sound before running up my arm and sitting on my shoulder.
I slowly turned my head, and I blinked. The Jade Oracle was behind me, well, a phantom, because I could see through her.
However, what was interesting was that she was lying flat, and the smooth stump of her neck was behind me, and if she had a head, it would be a few inches from my body.
The problem here was that she was a freaking giant, and the stump of her neck was the size of my body, and her curious voice reached my soul,
"What kind of miracle are you?"
I paused for a moment to consider her question, and I shook my head, "I am not a miracle, I am just... I am just trying to do the right thing."
The phantom tilted, her entire body, since she had no head, as if she was considering my words from a different angle.
"Yes. That is exactly what a miracle would say."
I did not know how to respond to that, so I returned to burning. The blood waterfall was thinner now, the screams quieter, and the memories were becoming less frequent. The souls were fading faster, and I knew that soon there would be nothing left to burn.
"Why are you here?" I asked. "Shouldn’t you be conserving your strength?"
"I am dying," she said. "Conserving my strength will not change that. But I wanted to see the face of my miracle. I did not know the high heavens still made that happen for someone like me again."
I frowned. There were too many sneaky little mysteries in her words that I could not focus on at the moment because they would distract me from what was more important right now.
"What do you mean you are dying? I am stopping this... poison from entering your body."
"And I thank you for giving my final moments freedom from the pain, but I have been slowly poisoned for three centuries. The buildup of all the earthly desires and decay can no longer be purged from my body."
I shook my head in denial, "No, this is not right. What more can I do?"
A faint chuckle came from the Jade Oracle, and it grew to a loud laughter that went on for a few seconds. It would have gone longer, but the fox decided to join her in laughing... using the Jade Oracle’s voice, but there was something wrong in the laughter from the fox, and even I could hear the faint note of derision inside it, as if the little critter was mocking the gigantic celestial phantom.
"That is a fascinating creature you have there. Should your kind not be extinct by now?"
The fox looked away in disdain and faintly muttered, "Big cur." My rapidly beating heart settled, because I knew how sharp its words could be.
"What can I do to stop this?" I said, and the Jade Oracle sighed.
"You have done more than enough. If you can stop the last of this blood from reaching me, this will buy me a year, and after that, the fate of this world would no longer be mine to bear."
I froze, a few seconds passed, then I asked, "Can I take your place?"