A Thousand Years

When I fell for Saki, they were…

Well, they were a hot mess express steaming towards Wreckedville.

Granted, they didn’t exactly have a manual for “Coping Well With Your Mother Dying and Being Forced to Take On Her Job You Didn’t Want In the First Place” but that’s how it works here. I remember when my father died, but luckily for me, I’d embraced taking over with gusto and--

[LAUGHTER]

Okay, okay, yeah. I couldn’t stick with that one either. It’s almost always a [CENSOR]show when there’s a new one of us who has to take over some spot or other. Partly because there’s almost no way to train someone for this job and partly because it’s not like we get to pick the job we want to do. Mix that in with all the weird feelings that happen when one of the beings who brought you into the world dies and you’ve got a recipe for some really good angsty poetry.

Seriously, the best you get with this job is positive acceptance. Never excitement, because get ready to outlive anyone who isn’t born into this bizarre group of magically endowed, brightly colored foxes, and then get ready to outlive them too. For example, my friend Chame? The tanuki? She’s two right now, with another six to eight years of life left ahead of her, assuming she doesn’t do anything too stupid.

Me on the other hand? I had to stop counting birthdays and graves, and I’m not even a quarter of the way into this mess. I had enough siblings to fill the Mountain Shrine completely at one point and while they stuck around for decades longer than most, in the end, I had to bury them all too.

[SILENCE]

Anyways...

[THROAT CLEARING]

Sorry-- back to the mushy fluff.