Chapter 21: Chapter 21 – Her Name

The whole room was silent. I was still sitting on the floor, trying to coop with their vivid reactions, but I couldn’t find the courage to ask them what all the fuss was about. Instead, I stared at their ever-changing expressions until dozens of voices inside my head began screaming at me, urging me to use the chance to escape. And I did.

Sahria was a lost case. She was muttering nonsense while she stared at the info screen her magic had produced, accompanied by Risa who wasn’t much better. It was Ofris alone who hadn’t lost his composure, enabling him to at least react to me raising up and making my way to the door.

“Wait,” Ofris' voice reached out for me, “please wait!”

This was neither an order nor was there any form of threatening undertone to be found in Ofris’ voice, instead he seemed almost as helpless as a small child that had lost its mother in a crowded mall. For a second he could only watch me open the door and escape into the hallway but he soon followed after me.

“Rika,” he called ‘my’ name, “please wait!”
I turned on my heels, facing the man that had dragged me to this place. “What for? So they can insult me again? So they can turn me into a slave?! I’d rather die!”
“Nobody will do anything like that! You are a foxkin!”
“So what?! There is nothing wrong with being a fox!”

Ofris’ expression changed within a heartbeat. He no longer seemed confused or flustered, neither panicked nor angry. Instead he seemed to pity me? He was pitying me again!

“You really lost your memory ...”

I stared at him in disbelief. Sure, I had tried to sell him a story like that before, but he had never really believed it. Instead, he had believed I was lying right into his face – which was only half the truth.

How could I know about the foxkin that lived here when they had only been characters of made up stories in my original world? I knew nothing aside from them being beauties more times than not!

Ofris somehow managed to coop with my silence and confused expression for a few moments, but his patience ran out fast. Before I realized it, he had already grasped for my hand. He pulled me in, embraced me with both of his arms and gently pressed me against his muscular chest. Soon the sounds of his heart beating and his lungs gasping for air reached my ears, this and a solemn voice. I was too dazzled to even react to his attack.

“They are gone, Rika,” he explained as he gently stroked my back, “nobody has seen a foxkin in more than eighty years.”
“Eighty years ...”
“The fox tribe met its demise in the War of the Morian Forests. You already saw what is left of them...”

An image appeared before my inner eye, one that showed many foxkin. Some of which had black hair, others shades of red or brown, and there even was one that had long white hair reaching halfway down her back. All of them were women nine out of ten men would call beautiful, with the remainder being strange in the head, but that didn’t change a fact about all of them being dead objects, just pictures on the crumbling walls of a forgotten civilisation.

“A war?!” I heard myself ask. “Who would do that to all those people…”
Ofris' answer came as fast as it came unexpected: “The beastkin," he revealed.
“But- but the foxes are beastkin? Why would they attack each other?”
“The fox tribe always had close relationships to the elves,” Risa explained, “that was already enough for them to be seen as a threat when the war between the beastkin and elves broke out. Even though they were seen as traitors, the fox tribe had never joined a side until their final days.”

Cold shivers ran down my back and my stomach turned. I felt like I was about to puke, yet I stood frozen upon hearing these words. The foxes were gone. The goddess had made me their sole survivor. She had called me, no, she had made me her daughter and at the same time the sole thing still connecting her to this world.

I sank to my knees. “She has called me her child…”

Ofris immediately followed me down to the floor. He hugged me close once again and, alone with his silence, seemed to urge me to continue on. And so I did. I confessed everything to him.

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“There- there is a goddess ...”
“A goddess?”
“She talks to me!”

Ofris said nothing. He simply remained like he was, hoping for me to continue, but I couldn’t help but defend myself.

“Don’t worry,” I answered disillusioned, “you don’t have to believe me ...”
“I don’t know about them talking to you, Rika,” he answered after a moment. “But I know they are watching over you. You are blessed, after all.”
“Blessed?”
“I saw the titles they gave you. I believe they were ‘Loved Child’ and ‘Good Girl’...”
“She gave them to me.”
“They are quite… unique titles. What did you get them for?”

A fox girl sitting in the dirt like a dog appeared in front of my inner eye, her tail waving from one side to the other as she begged for forgiveness. Ofris had seen this shameful display himself, yet I couldn’t bring myself to explain to him that this action alone was worth a blessing.

“I don’t know,” I lied.
“I see…”
“I’m sorry…”
Ofris slowly released me from his hug. “What is her name?” He asked.
“She never told me …”

「I forgot …」An almost whispering voice in my head revealed.
“You forgot your own name?”
「I was so weak, I could barely think…」

A run-down temple appeared in my mind. Tiles were falling from its roof, wood was rotting away and not a single wall was left without holes and cracks. A bright smiling goddess was standing in the midst of all that ramble, bare-footed on the weed-infested cobbles. She smiled at me as she played me tricks.

Shivers ran down my back. “But why-”
“If it is the goddess of the Foxkin,” Ofris revealed after a moment of thinking, “I believe her name is Cilia.”
“Cilia…”
“One of the benefits of traveling with scholars,” he explained. “I got to learn a lot about the ruins.”
“Why would she choose me?” I heard myself ask.
“The gods give us titles and strength because they need us to believe in them.”
“What happens when we don't pray to them?”
“They cease to exist.”
“I see…”

Once again I fell silent. There was too much to think about, too much to ask myself, yet whenever I tried to form a coherent thought the goddess and her shabby shrine popped back into my mind. How could I be mad about her when all she did was struggle to survive. When all she wanted was to have a place to call home and somebody to call family? She had given me a second chance in life at a cost unknown to me.

For the second time in my life I prayed. I clapped my hands twice and placed them against each other before closing my eyes and talking to her like I always had. And Cilia? She just listened to my honest words, silently, without pranking or taunting me once. It was only when I opened my eyes that I knew she had listened.

 

『Titles Updated: A Good Girl; Loved Child』