The rain fell soft and unhurried, a silver mist wrapping the forest in a veil of gentle melancholy. Water beaded on fern leaves, soaked into moss, and danced down the dark shoulders of pine. Somewhere between the hush of the trees and the patter of droplets, Mina wandered, a woven basket in one hand, her shawl held tightly over her head with the other.
"I told myself I wasn't going to collect herbs in the rain again," she muttered, more to the wind than to herself. But the roots she needed for her drying bundles were best when damp, and the market waitlisted her again for fresh valerian.
The forest around her had always been a friend—quiet, watchful, respectful of her solitude. It was that same quiet that made the sudden presence of something out of place so obvious.
She nearly stepped on the figure.
At first, all she saw was white—soaked fabric, pale skin, a shock of long silver hair that clung like frost-threaded silk to a bare shoulder. A woman lay crumpled in the undergrowth, her limbs tangled and motionless. Water streamed over her, but she didn't shiver.
"Oh gods—" Mina dropped her basket. "Are you—?"
The woman didn't respond.
Mina knelt, lifting the woman's head gently. Her skin was cold, yet smooth as porcelain. She was far too beautiful to be real—striking, like a sculpture brought to life and then forgotten by the world. Her face was narrow, features elegant, marred only by a thin red scratch at her temple.
Mina touched her wrist. A pulse. Weak, but steady.
"Okay," she breathed. "Okay, I've got you."
She hesitated only a moment before hoisting the woman over her shoulders, straining under the unexpected weight. She'd carried flower crates heavier than this, but never a full-grown woman in silk robes.
Step by step, through the slippery trail, she brought the stranger home.
The bell above her shop door jingled as she nudged it open with her hip. Rain dripped from her hair, her shawl, the stranger's body.
Inside, warm light glowed from paper lanterns strung along the ceiling. The shop was silent except for the creak of floorboards and the thrum of rain on the windows. Petals of hydrangea and lavender peeked from baskets. The air smelled of cedarwood and lemon balm.
Mina set the woman down on her old futon in the back room.
Close up, the stranger looked no older than thirty, though her presence felt… heavier. Ancient, almost. There was something wild about her—an untamed edge beneath the delicate features, as if her beauty belonged more to moonlit cliffs than to candlelit rooms.
Mina wrung out her shawl and grabbed a dry towel.
"You better not be cursed," she mumbled, gently patting the woman's face and hair. "I'm too tired to deal with curses tonight."
She undressed her with careful hands, cheeks burning even though she tried not to think too hard about what she was doing. Her robes—layers of ruined silks—slid off like mist. Beneath them, the woman wore nothing but a thin wrap at her chest. Her skin was flawless save for faint bruises around her ribs.
Mina winced. "You've been in a fight. Spirits, what happened to you?"
After dressing her in a clean sleeping robe and tucking the covers tight, Mina lit the brazier in the corner and placed a steaming cup of ginger tea nearby. The stranger hadn't stirred once.
She sat beside her, watching her chest rise and fall, slow and steady.
"You're lucky I found you before the foxes did," Mina whispered. "…Then again, maybe you're one of them."
A joke. A whisper. But the moment she said it, something in the air shifted.
Mina couldn't sleep that night. She tossed on her thin mattress behind the flower shop counter, listening to the rain fade into silence. The stranger still hadn't woken. It bothered her more than she expected.
She told herself she wasn't the type to pick up mysterious women from the forest. But she'd looked so lost. So strangely… familiar.
At dawn, the scent of wet petals drifted through the open windows. Birds began to sing. Mina rose quietly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and made her way to the back room.
She stopped cold.
The futon was empty.
She blinked—and then saw her.
The silver-haired woman was standing by the window in nothing but the sleeping robe, her back to Mina. Light pooled around her feet. Her hair shimmered like spun moonlight.
And from beneath the hem of the robe—
A long, white fox tail swayed lazily.
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