The hottest summer days…Midsummer’s Whisper

Midsummer’s Whisper

It was the hottest day of the year…

Even the wind had stopped moving, like it couldn’t bear the weight of the sun. Air shimmered above cracked paths, and shrines held their breath beneath soot-stained trees. The sky had curled into a brass dome, and mortals trudged beneath it like forgotten prayers—slow, quiet, too tender to break.

For ten years, I had slept beneath the stone fox statue nestled in the hillside shrine. Kitsune like me don’t count time the way humans do. Our clocks are made of emotion, of memory, of grief we can almost taste. I stirred only when the stars whispered—a call too soft for ears, but deafening to souls like mine.

Tonight, they whispered again.

Not with urgency, but aching nostalgia. Someone had returned—someone who’d climbed the ridge before, years ago, hand-in-hand with another heartbeat now gone.

I rose, tails flickering into form like illusion unraveling. A breath of foxfire kissed the air, and the heat bent away from me. I padded silently through the shrine’s garden, past withered flowers and melted incense.

She was there.

Young in body, but ancient in spirit. Grief adds decades to a soul. She wore no priest’s robe, no beads or offerings. Just a telescope, a sketchbook, and a determination stitched with longing. Her eyes—sharp and searching—flicked skyward, even though the stars had gone shy behind the haze.

I watched her for a while.

She fiddled with the tripod, flipped through drawings. She whispered to the heat as if it could answer. I stepped from myth into twilight.

“You won’t see much tonight,” I said.

She gasped, clutched her sketchbook tight. “Who…what are you?”

I tilted my head. “I’m the quiet between stories. Or a hallucination. Whichever feels safer.”

“You’re a kitsune.”

Her voice trembled less now. Good. Courage deserves company.

I nodded. “Among other things.”

She hesitated. “I came here with my brother every summer. We’d stargaze. It was our thing. He died last year. I thought… maybe I’d feel him here.”

Grief. A summoning stronger than any chant.

“I can show you the stars he sees now,” I said. “But they don’t sit in telescopes tonight.”

Before she could respond, I danced. Foxfire spiraled around me, and illusion stitched the sky back together. The heat shrank, shadows grew soft, and the air cooled—not physically, but spiritually.

She gasped.

Above us, constellations bloomed. Not from her charts, but older—fox-shaped and flowing like stories told around embers. The myths shimmered: Amaterasu tracing sunfire across Orion’s belt, a silver kitsune curled in the tail of Draco, and a comet that danced like a star reborn.

“This isn’t real,” she whispered.

“Neither is grief,” I replied, “and yet you feel it.”

A bark interrupted us.

A scruffy dog had wandered into the clearing, ribs peeking through patchy fur. No myth. Just a creature forgotten by the world.

She knelt. “Hey, boy…where did you come from?”

“He’s a stargazer too,” I said.

She fed him biscuit crumbs from her bag. He curled at her feet like he’d always belonged.

We stayed in quiet company.

The girl pointed at a constellation I’d conjured—one shaped like a spiral fox leaping between stars. “That’s not in my guidebooks.”

“No,” I smiled. “It’s yours.”

“You made it?”

“No,” I said. “You remembered it.”

Tears ran down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them.

“What’s the point of stars,” she whispered, “if the ones we love can’t see them with us?”

I walked over, softly. Tails wrapping warmth around her shoulders like memory.

“They can,” I said. “Just not through your telescope.”

She pressed the sketchbook to her heart.

“Will I forget this?”

“Not if you tell it.”

She looked down at the sleeping pup, then back up at the sky.

“I want to keep the story alive.”

“You already have.”

As dawn stretched her pastel fingers into the horizon, the constellations faded. She packed her telescope, tucked her sketchbook under her arm, and scooped the pup into her arms. He yawned like he’d never known fear.

“I’ll name him Sirius,” she said.

I laughed. “You mortals misname us often. But this one fits.”

She turned. “Will I see you again?”

“In every story you choose to tell.”

And then, I vanished. Back into myth, into hillside stone, into legend.

But in the sky… a single tail-shaped streak held firm. One last whisper from a fox who dances between grief and memory.

The stars remembered her.

And now, she would remember them back.

The stars had begun to fade, but memory wasn’t finished speaking.

The girl didn’t return home.

She wandered further into the forest, her hands wrapped around Sirius’s sleepy weight. The sketchbook thumped softly against her hip with each step. She didn’t know where she was headed—only that her heart hadn’t finished unraveling.

There was a clearing she remembered vaguely from childhood. Wildflowers used to grow there, bursting through moss like laughter. Now the ground was parched, petals ghosted, and silence ruled. She set Sirius down, opened her sketchbook, and began to draw. Constellations. Foxfire spirals. Her brother’s silhouette framed in comet light.

The page blurred as tears dropped into the ink.

“I need to tell this story,” she whispered. “I need someone to understand.”

From the shade of a cedar tree, I watched.

Kitsune don’t interfere for long. Our stories are brief blessings, flickering between mortal choices. But she felt… unfinished. Like a lantern half lit. Sirius curled beside her again, his ribs softer, his trust deeper.

That’s when she began to speak.

Not to me. Not to the dog. Just aloud—to the memory lodged in the air.

“We used to climb to this clearing and name our constellations,” she said. “Jasper thought Orion was overrated. He made up his own. There was the ‘Umbrella Fox,’ and the ‘Cosmic Koi.’ I pretended to hate them, but really… I loved how he made stars feel human.”

She paused.

“I kept thinking he’d show up. That one night, I’d see his stupid flashlight flicker through the trees. But all I get is heat. And haze. And silence.”

A breeze rolled through—a rare thing in the heatwave.

I stepped closer, tails low.

“You did see him,” I murmured.

She looked up sharply. “No. You were the illusion.”

“But I was conjured by grief,” I said, “and grief is stitched from love.”

She didn’t argue.

We sat in stillness.

Then Sirius yawned and padded to the edge of the clearing, sniffing a patch of earth. He pawed gently at the dirt—once, twice—and began to dig.

The girl joined him, curious. After a few moments, her hand brushed something smooth—wood, worn by weather. Together, they unearthed a small box. The hinges were rusted, but it creaked open.

Inside were folded papers.

Her brother’s handwriting bloomed across them—maps of made-up constellations, star poems, jokes about aliens and shrimp tacos. Scribbles only siblings could decipher.

She inhaled sharply.

“He buried these,” she whispered. “For me.”

I nodded. “The stars aren’t the only legacy he left.”

As the sun tipped toward its descent, she gathered twigs, wildflowers, and the box. She tore a page from her sketchbook and began to write: her own constellation. The one the kitsune had gifted her. A leaping fox that bridged grief and memory.

She built a small altar—nothing ceremonial, just pure intention. She placed the box on top, folded her drawing beneath it, and whispered thanks to no one and everyone.

Then she lit a single match.

The fire was soft. Gentle. More light than heat.

She watched it flicker and felt something inside uncoil.

“Grief always felt like a scream stuck inside me,” she said. “But now it’s more like a whisper I want to remember.”

I smiled.

She sat with the flame until dusk blurred the sky again. No foxfire needed this time. Just clouds parting on their own—as if the heavens had eavesdropped and decided to listen.

Sirius barked once. The first star appeared.

Before I left for good, I approached her one final time. Sirius wagged his tail but stayed quiet, sensing something sacred.

“You’ve carved your own myth,” I said.

She nodded. “Can I keep adding to it?”

“As long as your heart keeps telling stories.”

She reached out and placed her sketchbook into my paw.

“I want you to keep this,” she said.

I blinked. Mortals rarely gift me memory.

“It belongs with the stars,” she said. “The kind that only appear when you’re brave enough to look up.”

I pressed my paw to the cover gently, and something pulsed in the air—acceptance, transformation, eternity.

Then I turned and walked into fog.

Not to disappear, but to echo. Myth doesn’t vanish. It ripples.

And somewhere, deep in the cosmos, a fox-shaped constellation twitched—brighter now. Drawn not from illusion, but love rediscovered.

Back home, the girl started drawing every night. She added to the sketchbook again—digitally now, pages turned into carousel panels and captions. She named constellations after people she’d lost. She taught others to make grief into stardust.

Sirius became a social media mascot—scruffy, soulful, always napping under stargazed captions.

And the kitsune?

She left stardust trails for those who whispered at the shrine.

Not everyone saw her.

But everyone felt her.