The country of Chup-tuk was almost permanently under snowfall. Stands of pine and fir trees stood in silent clusters across the landscape. There were very few roads; small trails appeared and led to nowhere, glowing lights provided apparent guidance before vanishing.

With Tsubaki's hand curled around her elbow, Eitsu walked through the snow without the slightest hesitation, following ancient paths in her head. Occasionally, their feet would meet rock, and looking down, Tsubaki could see carved paving stones, the square patterns resembling the designs on Eitsu's robes.

They came to a frozen lake, the ice so clear that when they walked out onto it, they could see, far down into the depths, the frozen shapes of fish, and below them, the carved stones of buildings.

“What is this?” Tsubaki asked, her breath frosting in the thin air.

“Nu-kando,” Eitsu said. “That was the place where I was born.” She scored shapes on the surface of the lake with her nail. “... Luck really doesn't last forever.”

“It's only a start,” Tsubaki said.

“Hm.”

They wandered away from Nu-kando, no destination in mind. Tsubaki lost track of time, as she followed Eitsu, hand in hand, across the snow, scrambling and jumping over the gigantic remains of stone faces and animal statues, down amongst the dark fir trees. She felt tiny in a vast place, even Eitsu seeming somehow huge and distant. They pause between some enormous stone fingers, the only visible signs of a stone hand buried in the earth and snow.

“Let's keep going this way,” Eitsu said. “The ocean isn't far.”

She was right. They arrived quickly, the grey water oddly calm aside from a few fleecy caps of sea foam. It was soothing, somehow. Unlike the blue waters to the south, the ocean beside Soraki and Kinhama, Tsubaki felt a wave of peace come over her. At the same time, her limbs felt heavy.

She was tired. Even now, her fingers finally entwined with Eitsu's after so many years (so many deaths), the past was not something that would simply vanish. How heavenly it would be, to simply walk out into the water, the two of them, as if they were actors in a play about forbidden love, and as they disappeared, the audience would clap and cheer, and then go home. It was only a play. It was only fiction.

Could we dissolve into the water and cease to exist?

Tsubaki took a deep breath, her lungs filling with frigid air.

Or could we, finally, be happy?

She realised Eitsu was staring into the water with a distracted frown. “Eitsu-sama, is something wrong?”

“This place...” She let go of Tsubaki's hand and crouched down to scan the water. “I have a memory of something happening here... Argh, why can't I remember? It was... a hundred years ago? Someone was here...”

Thank you. Thank you.

Leaving Eitsu to rack her brains, Tsubaki wandered down the stony beach, dreamily watching the water under her feet, over her feet, caressing her ankles, her shins...

“Tsu-bo!”

Eitsu lifted her bodily from the water, panicked. “What are you doing? That's dangerous!”

“Ah. Sorry, I wasn't thinking.” She patted Eitsu's face reassuringly. “I wasn't trying anything. I'm sorry for scaring you.”

Eitsu's jaw clenched.

“Tsu-bo... You know... I really don't know what I'm doing. I told Aya-chan that I would keep you safe, but how? I'm a kami and I don't know how to keep you safe.” The arms that held Tsubaki aloft trembled, and perhaps Eitsu might have admitted, if asked, that it wasn't because of the cold, or because her arms were tired. “I'm so used to people chasing after me, I don't know what... Tsu-bo...” Her usually cheeky voice had thinned to the whine of a frightened cat. “Tsu-bo, how do I keep you safe? No... How I do I keep you next to me? Should I drive you mad again, until I'm all you think about? Is that the only way? Tell me it's not!”

“I'm here, aren't I?”

Eitsu stared. She broken the stunned silence with a rueful chuckle. “Yes... I said that to you before, didn't I? You're here, I'm here... so why does it feel that I'll lose you if I look away for a second? Like you're already gone and I just have to realise it? Why did I let go of your hand just now...?”

“I don't know why. I'm here... And I feel like I'm more here than I have been in a long time.” Tsubaki leaned her head against Eitsu's, creating a bubble of warm air between them, and turned her face towards the sea. “As I was following you earlier today, I looked at the sky and realised it wasn't just grey and white. There were little flashes of blue. And there was the frozen green of the lakes. And the red of the rosefinches that flew past us.

“You know, it feels like it's been so long since I've seen colour, Eitsu-sama. It's like a veil was taken from my eyes and suddenly a blaze of life was in front of me. The markings on your face are bright red. Your skin's a lovely brown. Your eyes are so bright and golden.” Tsubaki smiled, a smile so painfully honest that it brought tears to the eyes of both of them. “I really like your eyes.”

“I like everything about you. I love everything about you.”

“Even when I'm depressed?”

“That's when you need the most love.”

Tsubaki placed a kiss, gentle as a snowflake, on Eitsu's lips.

“And here I was thinking that you came here because you were thinking of me,” said a familiar, lazy voice.

“You're the last thing on my mind,” Eitsu replied harshly, without looking away from Tsubaki. “Go away, Rei.”

“I just wanted to come by and reminisce,” Rei said idly. His hair was no longer the blue-grey of indigo dye, but white as the snow around them.

“Stopped hiding your old man hair, did you?”

“You could smell the dye, I suppose? Yes, under certain circumstances, it fades away, or my damaged hair simply breaks and is replaced. Thankfully, some anonymous well-wisher continues to send me indigo and henna, so I can remain a little less conspicuous.”

“Who would wish you well? And don't you like being conspicuous?”

“You know me so well.”

“Stop trying to flirt with me. It's gross.”

“Don't you remember, Eitsu?” Rei asked, very gently. “Isn't that why you came back here?”

“... It really was you.” A complicated expression crossed her face. Her hand tightened around Tsubaki. “It seems, Tsu-bo, that Mr Kitsune has helped me remember what happened here.”

“Wonderful. Then won't you-”

“He's always been a pain in the neck. I saved him once, and he won't leave me alone.”

Rei's pale-brown eye narrowed dangerously. “How is that any different from the parasite that you're holding?”

“Your hypocrisy is astonishing.”

“What happened, Eitsu-sama?” Tsubaki interrupted quietly.

“I met this pervert a long time ago, I remember now. Here, by the ocean.”

---

She had stopped counting her age around the two hundred year-mark. It didn't seem important to keep going. At some point, she realised that her tail had split, and a subtle aura now surrounded her like a divine cloud, and she could take on a human form when she pleased.

The world began to feel small. She wandered around Chup-tuk, moving further and further from her hometown. The ocean was a novelty at first, but it grew less and less interesting as the years went by.

One day, bored, Kesshinichabe-kamuy wandered down to the seaside without expectation, and saw an odd shape, washed up on the pebbles, that she had not seen before.

It was white like snow or foam, but it was not snow or foam. Crouching beside it, she found herself peering at a small fox, fur pure white, but marred by raw red patches of skin, as if it had been overheated or burnt. Nine bedraggled tails trailed through the water. The ribs barely lifted.

In human form, she picked the fox out of the water, and returned with him to her cave, warming him with a fire, and in her cat-form, carefully grooming and cleaning his wounds. She had long ago learnt that her saliva had healing properties, but there was only so much it could do. The wounds closed, but the fur wouldn't grow back.

Several days later, the fox finally opened the one undamaged eye he had left. The first thing he saw was the golden cat, tucked up beside him, warm in a purring sleep.

“Thank you for saving my life,” he said, when she woke.

“Hm... sure. Who are you?”

“... I don't know. I don't remember anything.”

“Nothing, huh? I thought you were a ghost at first. Glad you're alive.”

“How can I repay you?”

“You don't need to.”

“Please, I must-”

“No, you don't. See this place? I've got plenty of things. And if there's something I don't have, then I can just go and find it. Just get healthy and get going.”

The fox fell silent. When he could move again, he began to follow her around. Initially it was somewhat amusing, but as time passed, his single-minded way of following began to be annoying.

“Can't you sleep on your own?” she asked, as she curled up with dawn breaking, the fox practically lying down on top of her in his desire to be near.

“Of course I can, but why would I when you're here?”

“Go over there.”

“I don't want to.”

“Suit yourself.”

Usually she had no qualms about sexual interactions with others. If she was invited, she was unlikely to refuse. But something about this fox made her uncomfortable. He seemed so damaged, as if he were not a real fox, but a hole in the shape of a fox, moving through the world. As if his skull could be cracked open, and all that would be revealed would be a bottomless pit.

So when he would brush up against her, in fox form or human, she would push him firmly away and stalk off in another direction. He tried all kinds of forms, young, old, male, female, and everything in between.

“Ugh, let's just do it once,” the cat god grumbled one day, with the fox in the form of a handsome man, broad-shouldered and tall, kneeling before her, his hands curled possessively around her legs. She had to admit, he was good; a wild hunger seemed to possess him that shook her to the bones as he pressed her to the cave floor, his hands and tongue roaming every inch of her. And at the same time, she felt fear, as she had not felt in a long time. Her heart beat rapidly as he pinned her hands behind her with one of his own, his free hand digging its nails into her thigh so deep as to draw blood, she riding him, shivering with every fierce thrust deep within her. She couldn't see his face. She felt as if he would devour her alive. Perhaps that would fill his emptiness.

Or perhaps the third time. Or the sixth.

Wrung out, she lay unresisting in his arms, the bare skin of their human bodies rapidly cooling. Even after literal hours of sex, his pale brown eye was fixed on her hungrily. “I wonder...” he mused dreamily, “... what would our children be like? Will you let me fill you up, my goddess?”

She smacked him over the head and turned away, dropping into an uneasy sleep with that empty, grasping eye watching her. They slept side by side.

And when he woke with the sun at its highest point in the sky, Kesshinichabe-kamuy was gone.