<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/a/aa/Stonefox.jpg)</div><strong>Cor [He/Him/His]</strong>(https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=337368.msg16021367#msg16021367)<br/><strong>Time:</strong><em>Year 2, Time of Storytelling</em><br/><strong>Tags:</strong><em>Spirit of Blossoms, OPEN</em><br/><strong>Actions:</strong><em>Epilogue, the clock ticks</em><br/><hr/><br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">And in the wilds Cor watches, patiently, protectively. A floating island here and there are starting to resemble the island of the Happy Spirits in miniature. The birds notice this. They talk of how Cor is learning to make his own land. They know that someday he will go to just that. His own island, away from here? Will he come back ever? Or will he make something new and move on? They bring him whispers of secrets of the island to coax him to say. They tell of the tunnels beneath, the strange things at the bottom of the wishing well, and the odd things they have seen out in the ocean. Is it enough to keep Cor here? Only the stone fox knows for certain. The animals do not speak of Cor around the mortals, not by name. But they do let their friends know that the being that protects them in certain areas is a friend.</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/><br/>The nine-tailed kitsune consistently offered sanctuary to animals, plants, and happy spirits. Never did it approach mankind. However, from a distance, Cor did protect mortals too. He would stop a falling rock and crush it into sand pouring over a lucky person who wandered his terraced hills. They would hear echoes of his humming and flee for their lives. Cor thought he had a good reason to avoid mortals until some animals and plants used these grounds to advantageously hunt them and eat them. Of course Cor held back the wilds and realized mortals were no different from nature, no more dangerous and unexpected. He realized he had no reason to avoid them at all. They were animals too, in their own way.<br/><br/>On the other hand, he did not want to spend time with mortals and end up responsible for them. The kitsune often evacuated and became instead transfixed on learning what the island really was. He traveled the sky islands and made them his experiments, and came back before sunset. He explored the tunnels, the bottom of the wishing well, and oddities out in the ocean. He delved into the buried past. All of this perhaps to solve the human conundrum. Then after talks of the mortals going to the Moon and him exclaiming to the others about it, he overheard on one night some birds worrying about him leaving them to live on his own island.<br/><br/>Cor blinked and thought on it, searching for the answer. He looked to this very island, his origins, and then to the happy spirits: Agi, Aqua, Rime, Rin, and Wish. Surrounded by many more happy spirits, and the Spirit of Blossoms. His eyes watered with happiness, "I don't think I'm ready to leave anyone yet." Tears dropped past his growing smile.<br/><br/><div class="quoteheader"><div class="topslice_quote">Quote</div></div><blockquote class="bbc_standard_quote">"With all I have seen, all I have done, who could have thought," she muses, "that in the end happy spirits would matter most of all."</blockquote><div class="quotefooter"><div class="botslice_quote"></div></div><br/>Since Bubble left and Rin faded, Cor learned what endings were. Longevity could only delay the inevitable. He felt the ticking sands of time erode his home. Then the Reaper came and offered the chance to design the human afterlife. Cor accepted and offered his assistance in making Paradise. He would have them experience what it would be like to be born a happy spirit. He suggested handing them the power to choose and improve their own afterlife. So that they could know... true joy.<br/><br/>Eventually Cor lived long enough to come to the realization that it was all a wonderful story. He never left the Island. He became part of the Island. His tails swayed with tall grass in a breeze, his shadows leapt the mountains, his strength was felt in the tunnels, his gentleness was felt in the beaches, his presence was in the stone walls outside home. He did what Agi did, and watched the seas and the skies. He watched the stars. And above all, he spent more time with the happy spirits and witnessed how things ended for them too. He was there, and he saw them change to remain happy. He learned from them. He learned that longevity was subjective and too dependent on the unfathomable soul.<br/><br/>And when Rin came back, whenever that would be, Cor was there to see. This made him grin so widely his stone face cracked.<br/><br/>Even the Grumpus changed. Cor marveled at that. So not all changes were tearjerkers, but rather miraculous.<br/><br/>Cor stayed and held on the longest he could but he knew one day for whatever reason or cause, his existence too will change.<br/><br/>Until then maybe for an era or eternity, a stone kitsune with nine tails dashed through the wilds, humming.