<span style="color: #BFBFFF"><span style="font-size: 87%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">Colm doesn’t catch nearly half of the kitsune’s enraged screams. He has rarely had difficulty understanding Japanese these past few months, but the ferocity of the verbal bombardment and the insidious fear that claws at his throat with every passing second means he misses the words, hears only the terrifying sound of scathing fury and derision. The dappled sunlight that previously flooded the courtyard is swallowed suddenly and  despite himself Colm tears his eyes away from the fox spirit to glance wildly over his shoulder where the sun had only just begun to dip over the horizon. The light couldn’t possibly have disappeared so quickly, but the sun is nowhere to be seen. In fact, he can’t see anything. Where previously there had been a beautiful forest and inn there was now swirling black fog rolling in from all sides. The black mist consumed Colm’s surroundings, carpeting the ground and closing out the last glimpse of sky as it roiled and thickened. <br/><br/>The trepidation building with alarming speed in Colm’s gut became a veritable tsunami with the bizarre feeling that he was somehow no longer standing on solid ground at all but merely suspended precariously above a chasm. The yawning maw of some giant beast waiting to swallow him whole. The feeling of utter helplessness became unbearable, the instinct to run gripped him fiercely. Colm did not. He stood his ground and tried to think rationally. Then an eye blinked open directly in front of him. <br/><br/>If the eye weren’t disembodied it wouldn’t have been nearly so disturbing. It just looked like an eye, with a brown iris. The second eyeball that materialized a moment later to his right however was entirely green with a black slitted pupil. Another opened almost immediately, yellow and giant this time. Five more followed. Then ten. A hundred. Thousands. Reptilian, insect-like, eyes that could have belonged on some deep sea monster or something on not of this world at all. From somewhere the fox begins to yip, human laughter and voices layering atop each other in a vast cacophony.The eyes, laughter, taunts and black fog Colm sort of has a handle on. When a hand reaches out of the gloom to wrap fingers like a vise around his wrist though, Colm’s resolve breaks. Wrenching his forearm free he runs, crashing carelessly forward without thought as to where he is going, only that he escapes the reaching, grabbing, clutching talons and fingers that pursue him. <br/><br/>The sound escalates past what Colm is sure human eardrums can bear. A limb covered in scales snags an ankle and he goes down, knees slamming into the ground painfully. Claws tangle in his hair and tug at his clothing, but somewhere in the horror of his situation there is the stirrings of recognition. The same feeling that hit him when the kitsune tore off her human visage; ‘I know this’. <br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">"JŪBUN'NA!!!"</span><br/><br/>As abruptly as the freakishness began, it ends. The mist dissipates, taking its horrifying inhabitants with it and Colm catches the tails of the Kitsune disappear behind the ryokan. Colm is on his knees in the courtyard on the inn once again though now the sun has been replaced by night and a resplendent full moon. The light of the moon washes the forest into black and silver, but the inn is lit by hundreds of lanterns, despite still being seemingly empty. It is then that Colm’s disoriented mind notes the figure standing on a second story balcony. <br/>A bird. <br/>He was saved by a bird. <br/><br/>Well, a bird <span style="font-style: italic">man</span>. A hysterical laugh threatens to bubble its way out of his chest. Colm clamps down on it and the man and the creature stare at one another for a time. <span style="font-weight: bold">"You. Human. What are you doing here?” </span> The yokai asks. <br/>He could explain that this was just a detour gone wrong, but it seems like a lame excuse. He’s met a fox woman and a bird man today, regardless of the completely insane situation - absolutely none of the things that have happened to him in the past few minutes should be possible outside of a movie - it’s...intriguing. The travel brochure he’d picked up before travelling to Japan had promised ‘A truly magical experience!’ but this is ridiculous. <br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold">“Looking for a place to work.”</span> His voice is surprisingly steady considering Colm is one big ball of nerves at the moment - his mother always said he kept his emotions close to his chest. <span style="font-weight: bold">“And to sleep."</span></div></span></span></span>