Yeah, just give him a moment, he's trying to figure out a way to tell the story without reliving it.

Akiho will wait, and attempt to look appropriately somber. Instead of sitting raptly at attention, tail swishing with curiosity.

(It’s still swishing a little. Look, it has a mind of its own, sometimes.)

...honestly, it helps. It reminds him of the reason he wanted to help. 

"Annika identified where the creature was, and it was—a girl. Young. She was more fox than you are, her hands and feet were paws and her eyes were red and slitted and she had nine tails but she was just a girl. So I tried... talking to her. I wanted to help her."

……. Aw. Aw.

Okay, that gets this fox girl to melt. A little.

“Very kind of you,” she says, gently. “I want to help her, too.”

He grins to himself a little. "She was stuck in the past. Her mother had been the high priestess at the time, and the village had been attacked, and she thought it had been the fox demons, because relationships had been strained."

"We have many stories about the village that came before," the high priestess pipes in. "We never knew which were true, but one of them mentions this, that the fox demons demanded tribute of the village and were angered at some slight by the elders and attacked."

"That's basically what she said. She said her mum was trying to mediate, but it must've gone south, and the demons attacked, and so her mum told her to wait in the temple until she came back. 

"And the girl didn't seem to realise at all that she had already been cursed, and was already dead. She still thought she was just a girl in a temple waiting for her mother to come back."

Akiho nods, somberly.

It was probably the only thing keeping her inner demons from running wild, really. A quest to hold onto. Something she needs more than… (biting, clawing, burning, if the little peasants don’t respect me I’ll make them scream until they have no choice —) … other things she might want to do.

"I wanted to try to convince her to move on, but that wouldn't happen if she thought she should stay where her mother told her to. And while we were talking she said that she wanted to be a princess, and that the fox demons had once taken a girl from the village to be a fox Princess. I told her that being a princess was probably not as good as she thought it would be," and how he knows this is irrelevant, "but she said she still wanted it, and it would be great if a fox demon married her and turned her into a princess. 

"So I... that was maybe the wrong tactic, but I tried to show her that she was already a fox Princess, and she could maybe go look for other foxes. And she remembered... what happened after."

And now he's having trouble not thinking about it, because the thing is, powerful spirits like that aren't... healthy to be around. They create what Annika called "negative spiritual pressure", where they suck in the spiritual energy nearby and it makes your soul not want to stay inside. Coupled with their heightened emotions being projected into other people, Taharqi had a bad time.

Yeah. Yeah he did. She wants to get into the details of all of what the girl’s history was, because the details matter very very much for this, but first:

“….. Would you like a hug?” she offers, gently.

He blinks at her. "Seems a little awkward around the table. And I'm fine now. But thank you."

(...Annika feels a little bit like she should've thought to offer one earlier.)

It is perfectly possible for her to get up and move over for the bestowal of the fabled hug, but yes, fair enough. She’ll take the no gracefully and without argument about semantics.

“Mhm,” she hums. Tail swish, tail swish. … she should draw seals, while she thinks. That is what a clever and competent adventurer would do. Out comes the sealing ink and paper, and she starts carefully painting the characters for a seal. As she does, she speaks.

“So… she’s not afraid of fox demons, and was willing to even become their princess,” cannot relate, but sure, “that implies she’s not directly afraid of them. Do you know what killed her?”

He shakes his head. "She is afraid of them, because... My theory is that the demons cursed her mum, and killed her, and afterwards the village ostracised her. I had—flashbacks—that I think were her memories—"

"You didn't mention that."

That's even worse than she'd thought. Getting actual memories from someone like that suggests a very dangerous suppression of his own mind and self.

He shrugs. "Sorry. It didn't feel that important and I guess it slipped my mind."

Not that impor—okay. Sure. Whatever.

"...anyway. The village survived the attack with heavy casualties but they blamed the girl—or were just afraid of her and her relationship with the foxes. She got extremely depressed, and that made the fox demon within her violent, which didn't help the villagers' impression of her, until eventually she just—wished she could stop existing. 

"The fox took over and sank the whole city and environs into the rock, and I think the foxes themselves also fell victim, and I also think she may have destroyed or absorbed the villagers' souls. I'm not sure who or what sealed her in, probably some later hero, but she's been there for hundreds of years. Until the seal gave out."

She listens raptly, even as she makes her seal, then nods at the end of it. “Ah. I see. So it’s very complicated, and she was… likely repressing her own memories to keep a lid on things? Does that sound accurate?”

"Yeah. Pretty much. I am not sure if she'd be able to do it again, or if she'd want to. Sealing her again would be a possibility but helping her move on would be the ideal."

"We have prayer beads that could help, but they would not suffice on their own."

“I think helping her move on would honestly be easier than sealing her,” says Akiho, thoughtfully. She finishes her current seal and slides it to the head priestess, then starts on another one.

“Especially because I have rather a lot of personal experience at suppressing one’s inner fox demon.”

She says this matter-of-factly, but it does actually make her a bit nervous to directly say, out loud, to three strangers, that yes: she is a walking demon container that could explode at any moment. And apparently maybe sink a city, if her… peer is anything to go by. She was not aware that this was a possible fail state. She’s going to cope by placidly drawing seals, thank you, she’s fine.

Oh if anything that makes Taharqi perk up. "The ears and tail are real?"

Annika stares at him. How could he not tell.

“Yes,” she says, a little amused. She’s aware, intellectually, that adventurers will dress up as all sorts of things, but as someone who grew up stigmatized for what others find cute accessories: cannot relate. What a weird thing to do. “And my tragic backstory matches our wayward ghost girl’s almost completely, except my mother took me and fled into the woods. No dark ending for me.”

There’s a yet that hangs in the air after that, but she will be politely ignoring it, thank you.