Shadow and Mist

Writing the letters to his parents and his sister - the one that would understand - was difficult enough. Packing his backpack with his favorite books and laptop - ready to be destroyed - made the fur under his college uniform prickle and sprout like a horrified feline’s.

Szal Veilwinter, though, was a fox... and he had to make the scene look perfect: Like he expected to return to his dorm room and his college life. Like he was merely going home for the weekend. Like there was nothing wrong.

He had to let go, he told himself. It shall be all right, he said. His voice was sounding deeper and more authoritative, very closely resembling his father’s. His parents, when first presented with the plan, were concerned. Orphea, of course, was bemused. He had presented all the facts, laid out all of the plans and forethought associated with it, and eventually got his beloved mother and father to... if not consent, then merely relent.

His dorm room was perfectly staged: textbook open on his desk, cold tea next to where his laptop had previously sat, bed made... He inspected the area while his roommate was out for the evening to see if there was anything amiss: signs that things had been moved, scuffs in the carpet where he had turned to reexamine his room...

And yet, Szal Veilwinter froze on the threshold of his doorway. His blue eyes scanned the room... No, everything is in place... But when he examined his pawhands, that’s when he noticed it.

Why tremble now, Veilwinter? He asked himself. Everything is in place. The treasure is waiting. Your old life is obsolete... why do you hesitate? Out of some misplaced sense of loss? What, truly, would you be losing? Your puphood? Your innocence? This is the apotheosis of your development as a fox, he continued thinking, his pawhands still trembling in the orange light of the overhead bulbs. Instinctively, he grabbed his own long, luxuriant tail and hugged it. It was long and soft and twitched in his grasp.

He found himself unable to catch his breath, then looked to his bed. There, on his pillow, was his tiny blue blanket - the one his father wrapped him in when he was born, the same bright shade as his eyes. Unable to stop himself he carefully took it and held it and his tail up to his fluffy cheeks.

A gentle tear escaped his eye as he soothed himself.

It’s alright, he told himself in a softer tone - this time very much like his father. You are embarking on a great adventure! It’s alright to mourn the past, but the future is bright and warm as well! 

“It won’t be bright and warm for a very long time,” he whispered to the room, and to the gentle voice inside himself. Szal walked around the dorm room, memorizing the placement of everything in it. 

The voices weren’t external to him or unbidden in the way that psychotic ruminations are - no: these voices were aspects of his personality that he would gather for special meetings. One voice, however, he referred to as ‘Shadow,’ in the Jungian fashion. It was partly aside from the core of his personality.

Hello, it said in its sly, cool voice as Szal examined the bookshelf above his computer. I hear you are in quite the quandary...

What’s your take, Shadow? Szal asked, leaving pawmarks on the black, glass monitor. Szal had known this voice ever since sixth grade, when he adopted the ‘Corkscrew’ monicker and began causing chaos in school.

I think this is quite exciting, the voice continued, barely above a whisper. A chance for you to strike out on your own. To make your own fortune. To become invisible.

Szal chuckled inwardly, a slight smirk appearing on his muzzle.

Shadow was the true voice of ‘Corkscrew’: the name Szal had used in middle and high school, and now college, to ‘test his mettle,’ as Shadow liked to say. Szal remembered when his adult voice began to come in around puberty. He went from a happy, squeaking pup, to a calm, cool fox within a month. Part of that was Shadow’s doing: Home life was so warm and soft that Szal couldn’t keep still. 

The young fox would spend time in between reading and homework plotting... and leaning in to Shadow’s seductive voice.

Szal ran his padded fingers over his well-worn copy of the third volume of the Book of Compromise, wondering if some extravagantly-minded detective would think to read the book. Szal pulled out the sacred tome - a holy book of the Reynardian religion - and turned to his favorite chapter and verse.

...And Szal the Blue, chosen by his God for his cunning, etheralized into mist - forever to be a reminder to the Tyrians.

“Homichlophobia,” he said to himself, placing the book down on the bed with the page facing up, but haphazard - as though he had placed the book on the bed absentmindedly. It was the moment when Szal the Blue, Szal’s ancient namesake, had ascended - transmogrified - into one of the phobias - devils - of the Tyrian religion:

The fear of mist.

A little brazen don’t you think, Szal? Shadow asked.

“If they catch me because of that line, then I deserve to be caught.”

Touché. ...And are you ready to turn into mist, yourself? To let go of your comfortable life for one of secrets and adventure?

“As ready as I shall ever be.”

A week after Szal’s casket had been interred in the Veilwinter Mausoleum on the grounds of the vast estate  - about a month after the accident - Velope, his normally cheerful sister, had become very quiet. She wanted hugs and words of love more often from her parents and her sister... who all seemed to have accepted his death a little more readily than she had.

She gathered up courage to go up to her brother’s room on the third floor. He had just been there in the summer before returning to Varunkirk university thirty minutes away. It was like she could almost hear him.

She reached out to the brass door handle and turned. There was his austere bedroom, lined with books, candles, projects, sketchbooks. Her vulpine eyes could see well in the gloom.

Did she dare?

She sat, her tail on her lap, upon her older brother’s bed to see what the last book he was reading in his ancestral home was. There it was, haphazard on the blankets, a page open for anyone to read:

...And Szal the Blue, chosen by his God for his cunning, etheralized into mist - forever to be a reminder to the Tyrians.

Somewhere deep in the manor, she heard a door opening just as her heart began to beat a little faster.