I had never traveled beyond the part of the Wood immediately around my village and the Academy before. Sure, we ranged into the Woods on a regular basis and the distance expanded as we got older. But that was in groups. Guards keeping a perimeter with those younger harvesting the plants that couldn’t be grown in the village. And outside of Elder Takashi, no one regularly traveled to other villages. I wasn’t sure where the exact limit of my travels was on the southern side of the village, but the prospect of leaving had me nervous enough to start talking to my ratfolk companion.

  “Forgive me,” I awkwardly began, “but I don’t believe I ever caught your name.”

  “Ah, yes, yes,” the ratfolk nodded, ambling along behind me. I wasn’t sure if it was the shorter legs and stature or something new about me, but his pace seemed to be positively glacial compared to mine. Twice now I had found myself well ahead of the ratfolk and his pack animals. It had been a bit awkward waiting for them to catch up. Conversation would also serve to keep us closer together in addition to easing my anxiety.

  “My name,” he declaimed, halting to provide pomp, his ears and tail twitching, “is Thuvvik of Provolt Warren Ratfolks, descendants of Shivvik’s second son and finest merchants of all Shivia.” As he bowed with a flourish, the implied ‘and of the world’ hung heavy in the air. It was so impressive and obviously practiced I almost felt like clapping.

  Instead, I started walking again, using the display as a jumping off point for our conversation, “Well, it is a pleasure to meet you Thuvvik. My name is Kara and thank you for letting me come along with you.”

  “Oh, of course, of course,” Thuvvik agreed, quick-stepping to walk head to hip with me, “You are most welcome. It is, of course, least I could do, given how much I was paid to be your escort.”

  “Oh?” I asked, injecting a healthy degree of invitation.

  “Oh, yes, yes,” he said nodding amicably, “All I was tasked to collect and more, and all for task of ensuring your safety and escorting you to Freeport. You’re lucky I like you and your village, because keeping you safe is going to be far harder than your Elders know.”

  “I don’t understand,” I stated frankly, “Freeport is in the Runnan Empire. The Empire that tried to conquer us. That apparently is going to try again. And I’m expected to just walk into their lands. How is Freeport more dangerous than that?”

  There was a pause while he pursed his lips in thought, “Well, what happens after they find you? Yes?”

  “I…. I don’t know. They kill me?”

  “That is very optimistic. Far more likely put you in chains. You have heard about slaving ships on your coast?”

  I nodded numbly, not liking where this was going.

  “Well,” he continued, “Who do you think is buying slaves?”

  A sinking pit was forming in my stomach and, apparently, showed on my face.

  “Yes, I don’t know about you, but enslavement seems far worse fate to Thuvvik than mere imprisonment. Many of the...” he paused, murmuring to himself under his breath. Looking for a word perhaps? Eventually, he said something in another language that was inflected like a curse and continued on. “Many of those that can change shape like you can, Ms. Kara, are seen as signs of status in some of wealthier houses. What better sign of how much money you have than to have slave of one of only groups to defeat Runnan Empire in living memory? And if you happened to have star-marked one?”

  The way his voice trailed off caused the pit in my stomach to turn into a massive canyon.

  “Oh.”

  “Right, right,” he agreed without really changing the pitch of his voice at all. “So, answer is clear. We must teach you how to blend in, how to not stand out as kitsune. You are in charge of finding way to hide your furred ears and tail. You are magical, yes? Magic up answer,” he commanded with a wave of his hand. Like it was really that easy. I didn’t even know where to start.

  Unconcerned with my thoughts, he continued on. “While you do that, Thuvvik’s job to teach you languages. While this language,” he said, gesturing vaguely and pausing once more, “is very pretty but clearly of those who change shape. And your skill is that of someone very well versed. If you only speak this language, no matter what you look like people assume you Kitsune in disguise.”

  I would have been flattered if it weren’t for the hanging specter of enslavement. Instead, a faint degree of annoyance fluttered to the surface that Imardos was so insular. The only language I knew outside of Tho-myon, the People’s tongue, was Quori the old Kitsune tongue. And that I was better at reading than speaking since my primary exposure to it was when reading some particularly old texts. The only other languages I had even heard were the languages of the Tengu and the Bakeneko, who were kin and lived within a few days of travel. For such a diverse empire, I knew very little of it outside of my village. And instead of learning about my people, I now had to learn a whole new language. The irritation was a bit detached though, so it was easy enough to set aside.

  “This shouldn’t be too hard,” the detached part noted, “Myrna the Deft even was impressed with our People’s gifts of infiltration. We just have to be what we were always meant to be.” As disturbing as it was to have a secondary stream of consciousness, reframing learning into reclaiming was almost comforting.

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  “Right,” I said, eventually agreeing with Thuvvik. “Well, there’s no time like the present to learn. What language am I going to learn?”

  He laughed slightly, “Oh no, no, no, no, no. We don’t have time to learn one language at time. We’re going to learn three.”

  *****************************************************************************************************

  The rest of the day through the woods consisted of us walking with frequent breaks and him pointing to objects at random and not only teaching me how to say it in High Porforo, Runna, and Sylvan, but also some of the etymology of the word in each of those languages. “Context” Thuvvik insisted, “is what makes you truly fluent and thus able to blend in.”

  Sylvan, the language of the long dead fey and forest creatures was actually the easiest to pick up. Quori, the ancient language of the Kitsune, had enough commonalities and loanwords between the two that I could guess some words. Though, there was the occasional linguistic difference that made Thuvvik nearly fall over laughing. Apparently, the Quori word for ‘brook’ was a modern Sylvan euphemism for sex.

  Most of the euphemisms Thuvvik told me about were for sex. It seemed odd, but once he explained that most cultures didn’t talk about sex directly, it made a sort of sense. Why he thought I might need those I didn’t know and made a point to not think about the reasoning too hard.

  Sylvan was also probably, he confessed, the most international language he knew. It was something of the arts language abroad, used by authors, poets, and playwrights. It was also the most common language for bored nobles and socialites to pick up in most of the nations Thuvvik visited so they could seem to be well-read and worldly. I’d be able to find someone who spoke it, though if they’d speak to me remained up in the air.

  Runna, the language of the Runnan Empire, was a nightmare. There were so many syllables and sounds that I never had to make before. Whichever of the Elves, and it was inevitably Elves with the Runnan Empire, decided that it was necessary to roll your tongue and undulate to describe sunlight deserved to be hung. And where Sylvan and Quori had loanwords that were nearly identical, Runna had some words that should be similar, but were either spoken with either half the letters silent, random trilling added, or both. Even attempting some of the words strained my tongue to the point of soreness.

  Worse, Runna didn’t have any signifiers for gender attached to the word or manner of speech. Runna had only one set of words to refer to the self. I, me, my. In Tho-myon that changed based on the gender and status of the person speaking so that there was no need for confusion, especially in written text. It took several corrections, increasing from polite to mocking, from Thuvvik before I stopped saying, ‘I, she, believe’, or ‘I, female, want” but it still felt wrong.

  High Porforo was somewhere in the middle linguistically. Lots of hard sounds I was unused to, but without any loanwords to confuse me, it was easier to just focus on the new motions as opposed to change and adapt the pronunciation. The real struggle was that Porforo was meant to be spoken by a race of furred and tailed creatures who had trained since birth to incorporate those as deliberate motions of their language. The reason Thuvvik’s ears and tail twitched so much was because he was accenting and peppering his speech in a way I hadn’t even considered.

  I mean, sure, Kitsune’s ears would perk up or furl as appropriate for an emotion, but since no one else of the People, or Morphkin - as both Runna and Poforo referred to us - had ears like that it wasn’t part of our everyday speech. At best, we were taught how to control our ear motions like one might keep a blank face to mask emotions. Pointedly using them was tiring, and I went to bed the first night with an ear cramp of all things.

  The first night was also very illuminating in how Thuvvik had managed to get through the woods on his lonesome. After dinner - a stew with some of my spices, his vegetables and dried meat - he brought out a ceramic jar that was tightly sealed. Pointedly pinching his nose, he pulled the lid off. Immediately, a rancid smell came forth causing me to gag hard enough that I almost lost my dinner. He took a measured spoonful of the repugnant oil and dropped it on the fire, causing a minor swell in the fire and a rush of smoke. That caused a second round of gagging and the pack rodents to bury their noses in the ground.

  When the smoke had cleared enough that I could breathe without my eyes watering, I looked at Thuvvik and asked as politely as I could, “Mr. Thuvvik, what in the endless abyss was that and why didn’t you warn me?”

  “Thousand apologies Ms. Kara,” he said with a slight bow, “Most Kitsune I have encountered are not as sensitive to itajahya oil. Had I known you had more refined sense of smell, I would’ve warned you.

  I coughed, unable to believe that the scent of burning rotten corpses would go unnoticed by anyone. In fact, it was far more likely that they were simply too polite to comment on the smothering smell. However, I was also unable to prove that my nose hadn’t been changed by the Gods. Instead, I focused on the new, presumably porforkin, word I didn’t know.

  “Itajahaya,” I tried making sure to tuck my ears like he had.

  “Good attempt, but ‘je’ sound is more drawn out,” he offered, waiting for me to try again before continuing.

  “Itajahaya,” I tried again, still making sure to tuck my ears.

  “Good, good!” he said with a smile and nod. “Quick learner.”

  I smiled at the praise and then immediately gagged as a waft of smoke blew towards me.

  “Oh, yes. I haven’t answered your question. It’s alchemical creation made from various foul smelling mushrooms,” he continued, ignoring my struggles, “horrible smell. Most animals won’t come near it, except for flies. But by mixing it with smoke, they stay away too, meaning that we will be able to sleep through night free of worry about predators in dark.”

  I coughed and nodded, keeping the thoughts about the sudden need for a bath to myself.

  “Part of why I came to your village. Alchemists need many different resources to make alchemical mixtures. List I needed was for alchemists who sponsored journey. Many useful items to make. But,” he declared with an abrupt sharpness that jolted me, “after dinner is not time for conversation and learning. It is time for personal betterment.” There was a ruffle as he dug through his pack and pulled out a rather large tome, leaned up against one of the pack animals, and started to read. I was almost offended at the abruptness, but was also grateful for the reprieve. Quietly, so as to not disturb his reading, I unrolled my bedroll and covered myself with a blanket before setting myself up to start figuring out how to change my body into an elf’s, or at the very least, not a kitsune.