Yawn…
A pair of fox ears twitched, and then became still.
The birds continued to chirp outside.
Gwargghhhh…
An unidentifiable lump moved like an angry snake under the bedsheets.
The birds continued to chirp, oblivious.
“RAGGGGGH,” the girl suddenly shot up straight, her orange hair mussed from oversleep, her angry cat like eyes taking in the happy little brown birds on the tree outside her bedroom window.
Take this! And that! And this!
Like the apex predator she was, she flung the window open and with a single graceful jump, pounced onto the branch where the lover birds sang. Silently she broke each of their necks with her jaw. Even more savored than the fresh meat was the silence, blessed silence…
Yukio returned from her daydreams. The idiot birds continued.
A pair of fox ears tilted downwards in a dejected manner.
Yukio: 14, fox girl. Occupation: Occupant of The Tower.
Yukio looked at the window with unease. Her hands wavered over the window, paused, and then floated back to her sides.
Grumbling and moping, she headed downstairs, her tail not even bothering to swish with irritation.
Living in an old fashioned stone tower, you’d think that she would need to cook and clean by hand, with gas lamps, running water from a well…
But no, she simply popped a frozen pizza into the microwave.
What should I do today?
Yukio scampered over to the library.
A reader! You might think. Indeed, like the other rooms of the tower, the library was far too big for any one occupant to “use.” The stacks of books would have lasted Yukio a lifetime.
But Yukio, being Yukio, instead climbed up the nearest bookcase like a tree.
She had found a gentleman’s top hat in one of her neverending searches of the tower, and after cocking it jauntily on her head, had decided on its ultimate use.
“Yarr, I’m a pirate,” she sneered from the top of her library stack. Imagining a nice saber to go along with her silky black top hat, she overextended and toppled onto some books.
Ironically, some of the titles that fell out would have been extremely useful for Yukio in her next misadventure. A white book with beautiful mauve lettering read, “How to Exorcise A Ghost,” in spidery font. Below the white book lay a black book with smoky grey lettering. It glinted, “Malpractice by Maladroit Wizards.” And buried at the bottom lay a thick red hardcover, whose only visible word was “Curse” but would have saved Yukio the entire bother of the next several months to come. But Yukio was not a reader.
Falling over, Yukio nevertheless returned to all fours immediately, and then to her feet with as much dignity as she could spare.
That was embarrassing, but, there’s no one to see me anyway. She heaved a sigh. As always.
Was it too much to ask that somehow, her birthday be different?
Her heart tightened as she thought of the long days and months to come. They seemed to stretch out before her, an unbroachable gray impasse.
I could try to open the gate.
By reflex her entire body shuddered. The fur on her tail shivered like it was being electrocuted.
No. No gates today.
In the setting sun, the tower had never looked so beautiful. Green tendrils of life wove around weathered grey bricks. The arched windows vaulted like a church. Shafts of light pierced the library and set aglow shimmering dust motes.
And yet, for Yukio, there was no other place she would rather be than outside, on the brick path that wound its way through the hills and disappeared into the distance.
She had never set foot on that path.
In fact, she had never even set foot outside.
Yukio was locked inside the tower.