Aetheria on Earth

*** Aisla had never seen a fox run so fast. Instead of being puzzled by its limbs as if by a new set of toys, it seemed to know just where to place each white paw so that it ran fast even uphill, even through the woods, even up over the stream! It was good she’d brought the salt candy. For, if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have been able to keep the fox from running away, while she, still on the bank opposite, found a relatively dry rock to leap to before lunging from it over to the far side of the water. Where, once she had landed, she saw the fox still huddled over his pointy, purple shard. So every time Aisla fell into a deep snowy ditch or got her green quilt-like coat stuck on prickers, she threw out a piece of her Aunt’s candy onto the snow up ahead. So that when, as always did happen, the fox crept back to it, she could glimpse him simply by the bright contrast and glass-like glare of it on the snow. But, as the thick forest shadows grew ever longer, were it not now for his tiny teeth still munching on it, the nimble little jumper might’ve been, for all she knew, as good as sprinted off. Whenever Aisla happened to find herself in range of the fox, she tried out a few words of reassurance to try to get him to see that she only wanted what was best for him, and that what was best for him was to give up his chase and go straight back home with her to Aunt Junie’s. Where she had much more of that candy he liked, quite a lot more, if he wanted to stay—not just for the high season, but for the whole rest of the winter too. “You don’t understand!” called out Aisla from where she stood on a rock within the stream. A fox born in late summer would’ve never seen snow, nor known winter’s biting hunger. “Winter’s simply awful here!” There it stood on the far bank, looking back at her with blue shards in its mouth. “You’ll be eaten, but not by me.”