The Little Beggar and the Fox’s Awakening

It was as if my throat had been scraped raw by sandpaper and set aflame. Each breath seared like I had swallowed smoke and cinders; even my chest throbbed, heavy and tight, as though someone had dropped a mountain on it. When I tried to inhale, it tore at me like broken glass, a cruel reminder that I was still alive. My eyelids felt weighted with iron, each blink a battle. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I pried them open.

The first thing I did was cough — violently, helplessly, like I was trying to hack my lungs out of my body. The world spun, dark spots burst before my eyes, and the taste of ash filled my mouth.

Then, a child’s voice, soft yet bright, broke through the haze.

“Ah! You’re awake!”

A small, round hand slipped behind my back, gently propping me up. The other held out a bowl of water. The bowl trembled slightly in her tiny palm, but the water inside shone clean and cool, glimmering like a shard of sky.

I didn’t bother asking questions. My body moved before my mind did. I grabbed the bowl and gulped it down. The coldness rushed through my burning throat, rolling down like salvation. When I finally set the bowl aside, I could breathe again — barely.

Only then did I look at my little savior.

She couldn’t have been older than eleven or twelve — a small, ragged beggar girl. Her clothes were torn and stained, hanging loosely from her thin shoulders, but her eyes… her eyes were clear and luminous, so bright they seemed to carry their own light. They softened her otherwise plain face and lent her a certain charm that no amount of dirt could hide.

“Feeling better?” she asked, tilting her head.

I nodded weakly.

My stomach, ever ungrateful, chose that moment to roar like thunder.

The girl blinked in surprise, then tilted her head again, as if pondering a great mystery. “Gululu,” she murmured, mimicking the sound. “That happens only when someone’s hungry.” Her lips curved into a smile that was almost too wide for her face. “Sister, are you hungry?”

I gave a small nod.

She sprang to her feet and dashed out like a startled rabbit, her bare feet pattering against the stone floor.

Left alone, I finally took in my surroundings.

The world around me was desolate. A broken roof of planks and reeds sagged above my head, leaking light in crooked stripes. Beneath me was a pile of dry straw, faintly warm, and around me — emptiness. Dust and silence. Behind me stood a massive stone Buddha, cracked and weathered, one arm missing, its face half-erased by time and rain. Yet even in ruin, it held its dignity.

I staggered up, leaning on the wall for balance, and found a small puddle nearby. I bent over it and saw a ghost staring back — my face blackened with soot and grime, eyes hollow, lips cracked. Only my teeth and the whites of my eyes gave me away as living.

I raised a hand to wipe the soot away, then froze.
Better stay dirty.

White Xi. That woman.

Why in all the realms did she have to burn the house down?

The memory came back in flashes — the crimson sky, the roaring fire that reached for the heavens, the screams, the chaos. While the neighbors rushed with buckets to put out the blaze, White Xi had slipped away into the night. I didn’t know how far she’d gone, or how I’d ended up here, collapsing at the gate of this ruined temple. When I woke again, I was back in my own body.

No matter how I called for her, she didn’t answer.

“Big sister, want some porridge?”

I turned around. The little beggar was back, holding a chipped bowl carefully with both hands. Steam rose faintly from it.

I smiled weakly. “Yes, please.”

I took the bowl and drank greedily.

It was… well, “porridge” was generous. Half water, half rice. Every grain floated, lonely and unboiled. She must have just rinsed the rice and called it done.

“Is it good?” she asked, eyes shining with hope.

My throat ached, my pride too fragile to wound her. I nodded firmly.

Her face lit up like dawn. She watched me — rapt, almost reverent — as I forced down every watery mouthful.

Between sips, I tried to make conversation.

Her name was Hai Qing — a local girl, eleven years old. She’d run away from home after fighting with her father.

We exchanged stories, and to my amusement, we got along astonishingly well. She gossiped like an old market lady, and I, a five-hundred-year-old fox spirit, found myself laughing along. By the time the sun slid down the broken temple walls, we were calling each other sisters.

Imagine that — five centuries old, and I’d just made my first eleven-year-old best friend. Fate really does have a sense of humor.

Hai Qing twirled a small clay figurine in her hands. “Sister, where are you from?”

I chuckled dryly. “I’m not human.”

She frowned, misunderstanding. “Sister, don’t say that. You shouldn’t scold yourself like that.” Her lips wobbled. “You’re a good person. My father’s the one who’s not human.”

“…Ah?”

Just minutes ago she’d told me not to speak ill of myself, and now she was insulting her own bloodline. If her father wasn’t human, she couldn’t be either — though I decided that was a truth best left unspoken.

“Why do you say that about your father?”

At this, her little face crumpled. “Because…” She burst into tears so hard that her words tangled into sobs. I waited patiently, piecing together fragments between hiccups and sniffles.

It turned out her father had recently taken a concubine.

A normal occurrence in Xihan — men took wives as easily as they took meals. Her mother had passed away nearly ten years ago. By mortal standards, remarrying wasn’t wrong.

But when I said as much, Hai Qing sniffled indignantly. “He didn’t take one — he took twelve!”

My jaw dropped.

Twelve wives.
Twelve!

That wasn’t a household; it was a small nation.

Her father, overwhelmed with beauties, had neglected his daughter. After quarreling with one favored concubine, Hai Qing had been scolded and humiliated before the household. Furious, she’d packed up and run away.

Now, she looked at me through tear-swollen eyes. “Sister Qiao Qiao, isn’t my father horrible?”

I hesitated, then said the only thing that came to mind. “He must be… quite strong, huh? Taking care of twelve wives… that’s… exhausting work.”

Hai Qing froze mid-sob, blinked, and let out a loud hiccup that sounded suspiciously like a burp.

I couldn’t help laughing. The tension melted, and soon exhaustion claimed me.

When I slept again, dreams tangled with waking thoughts.

In my dream, I was back on Mount Xuhe, sprinting barefoot across fields of blue grass. Then — pain. My body split in two, and from within me stepped White Xi, radiant and terrible. She stood at the mountain’s crest, her white robes fluttering like mist, and below her knelt a thousand foxes — my kin, my family.

Among them was my aunt. I lay scattered on the grass, fragmented, my consciousness clinging to a single rolling eyeball. It rolled until it bumped against her paw.

“Auntie,” I whispered. “It’s me. Qiao Qiao. I’m right here.”

She looked down kindly. “Qiao Qiao, you did well.”

Then she smiled — and crushed my eye beneath her heel.

I woke with a gasp, drenched in cold sweat.

But at least the dream had burned away the last of my fog. My head felt painfully clear.

Then I heard it — squeak, squeak.

Familiar.

I turned my head. In the dim light, Hai Qing crouched on the floor, her small form haloed by the morning glow. In one hand she held something squirming; in the other, a pair of chopsticks. She was feeding it. Each time she brought the chopsticks down, the thing squealed pitifully.

“I made this for you,” she murmured to it. “Why won’t you eat?”

The air was thick with a rancid stench.

I sniffed once and gagged. It was horrific — a stew of rotting fish, sour meat, and something far worse. It smelled like someone had boiled a dead shoe with rotten eggs and left it to ferment for three days straight.

Hai Qing noticed me stirring and beamed. “You’re awake! Good morning!”

My eyes darted to the squirming object. “What are you doing?”

“Feeding my pet,” she said, waving her chopsticks proudly.

“What kind of pet? Let me see.”

She hesitated, clutching it to her chest. “Promise you won’t hurt Tangyuan.”

“I promise.”

She finally opened her palms and set a small, furry lump into my hands.

It was filthy — a tangle of fur, dust, and despair. But as I lifted it toward the light, a familiar outline emerged.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I breathed. “A-Bao! Long time no see.”

The lump trembled violently, then let out a long, wailing squeak, like the cry of someone betrayed by the universe itself.

Poor A-Bao. My old companion.
Saved once by me — now rescued by an eleven-year-old child who fed him… whatever that was.

I couldn’t help laughing through the tears welling in my eyes.

Maybe fate wasn’t done playing its jokes yet.