A woman rides on the back of a horse, clinging to a nobleman in front. The moon is clouded and the woods are dark as they ride into the deep of the night. The man slows and lights a branch of dry pine in order to illuminate the path ahead. As he holds out the branch, the woman behind him screams in pain and falls away. The startled nobleman looks back, but the woman is nowhere to be seen. Instead, in her place, a bright red fox cowers on the path, staring up at him, before scampering off into the undergrowth.
The following morning, the nobleman searches far and wide for the bright red fox until he happens upon a badly burnt woman, shivering under a maple tree, trembling in fright. As she had the day before, the woman asks the nobleman for water and safety. But this time the nobleman does not fall for her tricks. He is no fool. He knows this woman to be a treacherous, cunning soul. A deceitful fox in disguise. And so he rips at a branch and uses his flint to set it on fire. This time, instead of lighting the woman’s way to safety, the nobleman uses the branch to beat her. And once more the woman turns into a bright red fox. The fox tries and tries to escape the nobleman, but he beats her, hard and furious, and the burns become too many. As the nobleman raises the branch to deliver the final deadly blow, he suddenly drops it—the fiery branch having grown too hot for him to hold, the flames now threatening to burn his own flesh. And so, with reluctance, the nobleman lets the fox limp off to a slow and painful death. As the fox crosses the nobleman’s path, its eyes set on a lake in the far distance; the nobleman licks his thumb and pointing finger, then wets both of his eyebrows.
Never again will he be tricked by the deceitful, treacherous fox-woman.
The fox limps all the way to the lake where the herons fly and the lotus flower blooms out of the muck. The fox cools its burnt and bleeding body in the waters and drinks. The fox rests here a while. On its back, it looks up at the stars and through this looking many truths unloop as old fishing knots met with knowing hands may be. In this place the fox does not turn back into a woman, but stays furry and red and bright. The stars shine down upon the creature, flowing wisdom across light years and space, until the fox holds a knowing in her belly. That knowing is this: love is not something to be won. It cannot be begged or bargained off others. It cannot be found on your knees. Love is found in the looking. In the still waters that reflect your very being, held among the stars above. Bright and wise and wild.