Dreams of Imahken

Love may guide thee further toward fates,

 Summer bounded forward as a rushing child when Illus stepped out onto the shining mountaintop where he met Ciun each morning. Their days would often begin with a light touch of the hands to warm her up for some casual human contact. When he had eaten, stretched, and gathered his supplies, she would tap him into the air, sending him down to the lake's edge so he could fish and spend the day away from the fox.

The fox could not venture to the far side of the mountain where the lake calmly rippled and waved, where turkeys lived around the lake's vicinity, and most importantly where the fishing was much better. Illus restored a significant amount of weight over the summer, nearing the size he arrived in. He climbed up the mountain every day despite Ciun's offers to flick him up to the summit.

Between fishing, conversation, and enjoying the tranquil scene together, they practiced holding hands. Illus felt a little silly doing it at first, walking around with Ciun, joined at an extended arm's reach by one finger. Yet gradually that finger became two, and two became three, then three became a loose pancake hold which lasted for weeks until Ciun's jitters calmed enough to interlace her fingers with his- from a healthy full arm's extension.

The narrow shore along the lake provided enough shade and cover that they had little need to venture to the ruin side of the mountain. That did not stop Ciun from taking him all across the ruins to show off her bounty. Thousands of years spent cultivating pears led to only two species surviving after the fox's meddling. The potatoes proved more durable. She pulled up large brown potatoes, little red ones, and sweet potatoes, each having their own different variations that Illus tried and failed to remember as Ciun rambled on about them. She loved the bees especially, harvesting honey by calming them with mirages of roses, pear trees, and honeysuckle. A stewardess of the land she had become, friend of all the creatures who escaped the fox and made home in the ruins. He found himself lost in listening to her gush about her hard work growing a modest paradise in the ruins, one that could easily sustain her and those trapped.

And when she had little to say, Illus told her of the new world she would be stepping into. The cities rising on shorelines and train tracks spreading across the prairies. Smog in the sky and technology she had never imagined. Though it was far from paradise, she became more eager to step into the new age- slowly, of course.

As their hand holds grew closer, so too did the fox. Illus knew Ciun was keeping a close eye on him despite the way she bounded through the ruins swaying their hands. He frequently encountered mirages and oddities in her personality, then instinctively tightened his grip on her hand. That usually indicated to her he was in need of an "I banish thee, fox." And it always worked, their wordless system that naturally grew. Illus realized that as long as they were touching, the fox could only create mirages outside of Illus's mind, never afflicting him with harsh emotions or false memories.

The poems danced through Illus's mind in his alone time by the lake. When Ciun was away with her own business tending to the ruins, he mulled over them tirelessly. Carmonia's records on the origins of the mask, the stone, the fox, and the blue bloods. He had pieced together that there was some love triangle between the moon, the comet, and the stars, in which the moon had trapped the comet and placed a keeper, and the stars sent the mask down, which was stolen and twisted.

The goal seemed obvious at first- to make a wish returning the comet stone to the comet. However, the more Illus pieced together the timeline and the overlapping magics, he hypothesized that even if the comet stone was returned, it wouldn't undo the magic on the mask, so the fox and Ciun would remain imprisoned.

The fox, the lich, the keeper of the stone- or so Illus staked his bet on- had to be factored into the wish. The fox, who would feed on Ciun's spirit if the mask's curse was fulfilled. But the poems urged against freeing anyone.