Lady Kitsune’s Fox Garden

06:

Niwashi looked over the computer, not understanding what she was even looking at. It was all text based, and the screen made her head hurt, so she instead got up, looking around outside to take stock of her garden manually.

Who even knew what cd meant, or what /bin/bash was. Or even what C:/home/niwashi/ represented. It made her want to hurl, and she didn’t even know why.

Something about a chmod+x and a ./camera.sh flashed through her mind, as she groaned, clutching her rebelling stomach.

Soon, she was far away from that abomination of a PC, that took five minutes to load something known as a Local Directory.

Walking through her garden of growing plants, flowers following her footsteps as she purified the lands with her every breath, she checked on the strangely alcoholic purple fruits’ seeds. She had planted them well, and made sure the soil was not too wet, and not too dry for them, and listened to their needs for a while before moving on.

Unfortunately, it rained a lot in this land, which meant she was likely going to have to set up drainage to keep the terraces from collapsing. It also meant she was unlikely to be able to grow anything that would be unwell in such a rainy place.

She knew that she was going to have to go out and get some more plants soon, and help stabilize this realm with them before she could go find more Kami realms, but she was certainly going to have to travel if she wanted to help save the world, she assumed? Hopefully the other Kitsune Lady was correct that Lady Inari would be more than willing to help set her up with the plants needed to—

~~~~

Lady Inari Ōkami was a proper kitsune lady. She’d set the standard, after all.

Her tails were floofy and practically sparkled with how shiny they were, her dress was without wrinkles, and her gait as she walked through Yasaka’s palace in the Yokai realm utterly refined.

No one looking at her would see beyond the peaceful mask she wore as she was guided to a familiar room, nor would they remotely suspect her true thoughts, her devious machinations.

‘Tea tea tea tea tea tea tea tea tea with my descendant tea tea tea tea ooh I should give Kunou and Yasaka headpats tea tea tea tea...’ she thought.

It wasn’t every day she got to visit her descendants. Yasaka, the silly foxxo, had pledged herself to Amaterasu. Amaterasu was her own bundle of…

Okay, she was a NEET and only stopped from being a full blown hikimori by her duties to the Shinto pantheon.

“This way, Lady Inari,” Kuro the yatagarasu said. “I’ll get us some snacks for your visit with Yasaka.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely,” Inari said. Internally? ‘Yay snacks!’ she thought.

Inari stepped in and saw Yasaka sitting at the edge of the tea room. She waited for the door to close before it was time to pounce.

“Yasaka! My beloved grandbaby!” Inari squealed, glomping her descendant and rubbing her cheek against Yasaka as her tails wagged like a hurricane.

“Ugh,” Yasaka grabbed Inari and tucked her into her lap to scritch her ears, making soothing noises to settle her down like she was an unruly kit.

Inari did let up, eventually. “It’s lovely to see you again, Yasaka,” she said, giving the rare nine tailed fox a hug. “I hope Kunou is well. But, tell me, how have you been! Last time, I got distracted with that studly Kuro of yours. I don’t think I’d get anything done with her around,” she said, taking a seat.

As they settled in, Inari leaned forward. “Now, what is it you wanted to speak to me about?”

“So. Lady Inari… Have you potentially had any children about a thousand or so years ago, that may have had the potential to become nine-tailed?” Yasaka asked, a politely curious tone in her voice.

Inari blinked, and blinked again. “I have had a few kits in that time, but none that got that powerful. Most had innocuous lives, and I welcomed their souls when they returned to me. Why? Is there some eight tail or something pretending to be my child?” she asked. It was rare, but sometimes a Kitsune got carried away bragging and said they were a nine tails. Usually it was on the younger side, but once in a while a seven tail or above got it in their heads to claim it.

“I suppose it has been some time since I adopted one of those kids pretending to be mine. Could be fun inducting them into the family,” Inari said, tails swaying as she thought of shenanigans.

She was very open to taking people into her family. But if someone were to claim to be her direct child, they had better be prepared for the consequences.

Tee-hee.

“Oh no, she was properly Nine-Tailed,” Yasaka put such emphasis on it, that Inari could hear the captials, implying that even Yasaka was surprised at how much sheer power this nine-tail had. “In fact, she even had quite the connection with plants. She was even growing a seedling of the Norse World tree over in the old Kusoyari mountain kami realm…”

Inari stared. She opened her mouth, and tried to find words.

‘Wait…’ she thought. “That one time with Odin… I didn’t… Did I?”

She was no stranger to interactions with other pantheons from time to time, and there was a point where she’d had a few drinks too many with the old one-eyed god. She’d thought they’d just pranked a few chiefs who were getting way too arrogant for their capabilities and maybe got touchy feely…

“Although… I was drunk on honey mead for a few months. So was he. I thought… Could… oh sweet floofy tails I might have an unknown Norse demigod child.”

Inari suddenly stood up. “I need to go investigate this kami realm my so called child has taken residence in.”

“Please do,” Yasaka waved her off. “Be aware, the shit pile at her front door smells horrendous, and she doesn’t have much to eat. You may want to bring plants and flowers as gifts for her to grow for food and to mask the scent.”

Inari was silent for a long moment. “Are you saying my long lost supposed Norse daughter is brain damaged? Because that really sounds like what you are implying.”

“You’ll understand when you meet with her,” Yasaka sighed, loafing across her desk. “Please do hurry. I worry about her, and I hardly know her.”

“I’m on my way,” Inari said, before transforming then and there and taking up goddess fox speed out the door and past a surprised Kuro who barely held onto her snacks and tea.

…

Inari may have snagged some of the rice balls because while she was incredibly concerned about recent developments, she was still a fox who liked snacks.

She made her way to Kusoyari mountain, taking the fox paths as she did so although at her speed it only marginally shortened her travel time.

On arriving at the base of the mountain, she sniffed the air.

No Kitsune could hide from her nose, and a daughter of hers would be impossible to miss even if she’d somehow forgotten her.

Sniffing gave the familiar smells of human civilization behind her, of oils and food and chemicals and a thousand other scents of Kyoto. The mountain had its own scent, of rain and old, old stone, and had the faintest trace of an old god that’d been gone when she was young.

There was also beef, wagyu beef at a ranch that caught her attention and beneath that…

Her daughter.

Half her, half tinged with other things, like the frosted north.

Part of her had been wondering if this was an elaborate and poorly thought out prank on Yasaka’s part, but oh no, this was very real.

She sped up the mountain, jumping over the ranch, startling the entire herd into panic as she raced to the source and…

A shit pile with roots that screamed to her senses of divine power digging into it. They formed a natural staircase that led to a natural gateway leading to a rain swept realm.

Studying it, Inari could only conclude one thing:

“Oh thank you Aiko that my long lost daughter isn’t brain damaged. It’s just fertilizer. Questionable taste but it has an actual purpose,” she thought, before leaping through the gate into a kami realm.

She’d known of the realm before, but it had been minor and beneath her notice. Maybe some yokai or human would have eventually claimed it, or it could have just disappeared on its own. Such things occasionally did, after all.

Now, however, she found a mountain that, while not ablaze with life, was certainly growing. Terraces with strange grapes grew, while a forest of miniature world trees growing in a small forest of their own.

There was also the very nice looking shrine Inari would be proud to call her own home if she lived there.

But most of all…

‘Daughter. 60 meters. Northeast,’ Inari thought, sniffing.

She rushed through not through but around the shrine, up the terraces, spotting her quarry as she jumped up the mountain.

Her poor, innocent, long lost daughter, that smelled right and of family, of her, was totally unsuspecting as Inari pounced her from behind.

“Daughter! You’re real! So good to see you!” Inari squealed in human form, rubbing her cheek against her unknown daughter’s cheek happily while her tails waved rapidly.

She even had nine tails! Real, not a single fake or prosthesis on her! What an accomplished daughter she was!

“Awawawawa!” her daughter panicked. “Ah! How did you get in here?!”

“Your front door was open,” Inari said, picking up her daughter and getting a good look at her as she fussed over her.

She looked astonishingly like an older Kunou, but with a more conventional reddish fox fur.

“Introductions! Right!” Inari bopped her own forehead. “I am Lady Inari, goddess of foxes, rice, agriculture, sake, tea, and most importantly, your mama!”

Inari barely restrained herself from glomping her new but not so new daughter then and there. Again.

“Ar nar! My tea!” Niwashi said, panicked as she clearly remembered that she had left tea somewhere.

“Oh!” Inari said, looking over to see the saddest thing ever: a spilled cup of tea.

Her ears folded.

It was at this point Niwashi’s stomach rumbled.

Inari brightened. A child of hers was hungry. That was a problem she could solve! “It is time for inarizushi!” she declared.

“Everyone keeps telling me about that, but I don’t even know what it is,” Niwashi sighed.

Every single one of Inari’s tails stopped wagging, her ears folded, and a pit of absolute horror rose in her chest.

“You… you don’t know what inarizushi is?” she asked, trembling.

“No?” Niwashi tilted her head.

Inari exploded. “Unacceptable!” she yelled, before grabbing Niwashi above her head and taking off sprinting, leaving the kami realm and Kusoyari and rushing for the nearest restaraunt.

No daughter of hers would go without inarizushi!

~~~~

AN:

HiddenMaster: Boom, chapter.

Poor Niwashi, people criticizing her residence when…

Yeah as authors we did her dirty.

Kitsu: Poor foxxo. Her home is pretty shitty. Hopefully it gets better, huh.

HiddenMaster: You know exactly what you just did and you cannot take it back.

But we will be getting into the nitty and gritty details soon where Niwashi has to start properly managing her realm, trading, and working on purifying corruption to strengthen herself, the world, and avoid World War III.

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