Bathed in moonlight, the forest glowed with foxfire. 

Bright neon green licked up rattling, rustling leaves, clawed over twisted tree trunks, and burned through the night, searing everything it touched. Setting everything ablaze, sending the woods up in flames.

But the true spark glowed from the thicket; a harsh, barren tangle of briars and thorns and thistles. Jagged branches curled sharply inward, dug into themselves and down into the ground. 

A crackle ran through them. A red-hot coal, a living, breathing ember. 

She slinked out from the thorns without so much as a scrape or scratch. Her black legs moved like shadows, ever changing, ever fleeting and flashing, and her amber tail swept away her tracks as they fell behind her, leaving no trace. With little broom sweeps, she dusted off the trails in the same manner that a tiny mouse would sew with needle and thread. 

While much can be said of the mind of a fox, little can be told of the heart. Perhaps it is too small to find. Perhaps it isn’t even there at all. (With all the fables of foxes and the trick-filled nature of their trade, this is quite a plausible notion, but that will be left up to the discretion of the reader.)

In passing a shallow pool of water, collected in the earthen dent left by an uprooted tree——a great one, an oak——she paused at the edge and stood still. Her flaming eyes glowed back at her, steely gold with flecks of umber, stony expression in the watery reflection. Her fiery spirit was rarely challenged. Her cunning and wit, unmatched. She was clever, this she knew, as all foxes do. 

But she could never know herself.