They cared for her well in the hospital, ensuring that their child was healthy from birth, despite her mixed blood, checking and rechecking her with scans mundane and magical. 

But most of all, they whispered to each other passing thoughts, passing ideas of what they could make of her, and if they could really do what they had planned, when they had started working to conceive... 

In time, the scans came back clear. She was well - suprisingly well, even, with a shocking strength of magic quiescent inside her already and a certain hybrid vigor in her body. 

And so, they decided they decided to give her a chance to grow as kitsune of old did - from a simple animal into something more, in the pristine forests of this world. They guided the magic of her form, and the shape of her forming mind, into something quieter and more ancient, and let her go, under the care of the gardener's of the OTC. 

For there were protections, that the company kept sacred, even when a practice was tradition, and even when the cost was great. 

Every sapient being would have a chance to learn, and live, and earn, they had said, and that this would garner no exception. 

So they made their arrangements - keeping her income in escrow, and leaving her a sealed understanding, of what the world outside the forest was like, so that she could find her way to the more human world, in time. 

But still. 

They nursed her, and kept her close as she grew, and made their final preparations and explanations. 

They each kissed her brow, one last time, and left her to live out this altered life. 

Amber was confused, at first, as all young things are. 

But her mind was bright and her instincts were sharp, and the forest was cool and verdant and bursting to the brim with bushes of berries and fertile fauna for a young fox to prey on, and so she made her due throughout her days. 

And through her nights... 

She slept, of course, nestling into long-since made burrows of oddly-rain resistant earth, and she dreamt. 

She dreamt the dreams of a child of an ever-turning ever-casting ever-awake world. She dreamt the dreams of a powerful mage-to-be, of a fox-spirit growing in her ancestral sacred land, of a sweet child yearning for more little comforts, and of a kitsune kit reaching out to feel the warp and weft of fate. 

She learned much, saw much, in her spinning dreams, and forgot much, of course, for the dreams were but passing shadows slipping through her developing mind. 

But still, she learned much - at first mostly of the best berries and how to find them, the best bunnies and how to hunt them, the rivers and how to swim and bathe in them. In time, she learned of her own magic, lurking inside her, the foxfire that carried within it her own dreams and her own strength, to lure in her prey and make them taste far finer.

It was bright and beautiful, though lonely, at times. 

The foxes she saw in the forest were all old and vast and had a presence to them, and a firm focus to them and a commitment to their destinations that led them away time and time again. 

Still, she played with them, at times, splashing in the river and rolling in the leaves and dirt and each other. 

She even found she could play with her prey, when her magic touched them quite right, letting her share their dreams with their visions. 

She played with cream-coat and frost-fur a lot, in her early years, learning the sensation of their spirits, their routines, instincts and tastes, even, eventually. 

She provided for them, for they were pleasant and warm and helped her focus past the ever-present dreams, of what the far-away flying metal things were, what shone past the horizon in the dark nights, and what marked the ground beneath her paws.

For months, perhaps years, she lived as a vixen queen, her territory well mapped inside her head and poorly upon the dirt of her den, her needs simple to meet and her pleasures eager to access. 

But she was eager for more, and impatient to grow up, and find out what those old foxes were up to. 

She tried following them first, of course, but there was often little too hear aside the little rushes of magic they left behind and the crackling harsh sounds that came from within their ears, even when she wasn't simply outpaced by her older kin. 

Her instincts told her her fire would be of no use too - she was sure from the start they wielded it too, and they meant her no harm, so she would not hunt them as well. 

But still. 

She was curious, and there was more for her to try besides. 

There was more inside her, it turns out, beyond the magic of fire and dreams and delusions and (in time she would learn) destiny. 

There was a fluidity beneath her skin, and so many little things to stretch into. 

At first, her breed simply shifted - her size and color and proportions bending as she leaned into the differences in the forest throughout the seasons, a pelt of white creeping in come winter, when she looked - to hide, perhaps? Her fire always came out calmer, cleaner and deeper, like barely frosted over ice upon clear water, rather then the radiant dream of dawn that made her shine like a gem that she usually called forth. 

She could grow too, but it was - odd, guiding her to stand tall and shed her fur and warp herself still further, to look like those chattering creating people in her dreams. 

She could remember them now, and she knew they talked, like her, but the chorus of their languages hurt her ears, and she wasn't quite able to understand even after all the little snippets she'd heard of the most common tongue. 

She rarely touched that form - it was weak and small and uncoordinated, and swift to get cold against the rain, but touching it brought forth... more. 

Her dreams shifted, a new 'track' of the audio slipping into place alongside her old ears to hear things so much more mutely but so much more - specifically, and a new sense of her sounds, her barks and coos. Her vision changed too - a new meaning to the shapes and colors and things that she saw, a third lense that ran alongside her burgeoning sense of the magic of her woods. 

And so she learned from her dreams anew, as her arts were refined, drowning in language and meaning and hopes and dreams. 

She could guide them, sometimes, now, when she was washed into the rivers of dreams. She could feel the underlying current beneath them, and shift it with her presence, sometimes. They spoke in words and meanings she couldn't comprehend so often, but she could grasp the tide like the drifting embers of her flames, and help them shine.

It did something to her as well, she thought, but the extra ease in her step and lustre in her fur felt so nice that she didn't mind. 

The second tail coming in was - odd, the length just slipping into place one day with little more then a wiggle in her step. Those steps felt even simpler now - every one seemingly counting double for letting her earn her grace, and her magics resonated so well with the two of them connected behind her. 

The other form was closer at hand, now, more insistently available and present. She could feel it leaking, sometimes, in ways that were hard to banish. 

Her claws grew more dextrous and deft and sensitive, the paws always a little fluid beneath her. Her tongue gained a new taste for sweeter, spiced things, and her legs changed into something a little less quadrupedal, when she tried. 

She tried out her human form, in time. It was more matured now, with steadier legs, and a steadier form. The extra paleness of a babe had gone, replaced with a faint peach pink glow in her more filled out limbs, framed by scatterings of deep brown hair along the skin and a draping length down her back.

She shook her head at the images in the water, and changed the color of this odd fur to her own familiar hue. 

Learning to climb, to etch, to craft with her hands was quick, once she put her mind to it. The images in her dreams guided her, and there were a few too many campsites and too many traces for there to not be a chance to see them be created and manipulated, at least enough to guide her hands. 

In the coming spring, a campfire would be her hearth.

It grew on her, a little, especially given the little dug-outs for the larger shapes sprinkled throughout the forest with more of those odd wards. Still staying foxen and small and swift and ready to run helped, and helped her rest. Her magic had a way of bottling up when she stayed small too - ready to transform her again, reshape her mind and body and soul together to get more out of her life. 

The wards were - odd. They were like crystal-glass against the noonday sun - nigh invisible unless she could make the light catch just right upon them, and marvelously fine and solid, still, unlike the little drifting eddies of the world she normally felt. They were tied to the markings and tracings deep in the dirt, she knew, but tracing them out again gave her little but a tingle of direction. Still, it was something, and it was like some of what she'd seen in the camps of elder ones, so she made an effort to track them down and watch, that season. 

She watched a few camps, of course, and learned much, but that was secondary to what happened on one final trip, where her curiousity got the better of her... 

She came to that camp, in a grassy clearing a little outside her own camp, in her more human form, tails lashing out behind her and ears erect and listening to the breeze as she walked and prowled towards them, her skin as bare as ever.

“Mom, why is that girl naked?” 

“Mom.” 

“Mom!”

He jumped and pointed. 

“What are you talking about? We’re in a nice park, not a - “ 

“Oh.” 

The little wave and throaty growl of hello in the tongue of the foxes she gave didn’t exactly help, as they ran towards her. 

The bigger one took out a thin box of glowing lights and started waving it around and pressing her fingers against it, loud sharp harsh stressed hushed words spoken into the box as she turned away and turned the smaller human away. 

She watched, curious and still, ‘til the marble-faced lady came, tall and oddly stiff and still in her senses aside the tightly bound power of her flesh. 

She let out something, a wave of magic that made her skin tingle and her haunches tight, and spoke to her in clipped tongue her greeting back, and more words, more meaningful sounds that she hadn’t learned yet. 

She tilted her head, and spoke what little she could, and offered her tail and a light orb of dancing dreaming flame. 

She did something with it, thatwave of her hand and tremble in-the-world upon her lips -

- And then it was all so dark.