A Fox With Two Tails

A child's mind has a great deal of trouble remembering an adult's life, yet Rey's old-world visited him by dreams and flashbacks. Pastor Gregory had been frank with him, he wasn't his legitimate son. When he was five years old he was told the story of how on a silent winter's night there had been a knock on the door of the cozy church. When he had roused to open it, still in his bedclothes, he had found a child in ragged and muddied cloth left not two inches from the threshold. Not fitting with the condition of the cloth was an immaculate silver pendant with the name Rey spelled in onyx.The church, or rather the pastor, had adopted him, not knowing what else to do. Given his age, he was more of a grandfather to Rey than anything.The back rooms of the church also served as their parsonage, and not to them alone, a woman who Rey was pretty sure wasn't family of Gregory by blood or marriage, lived with them. She went by Ms. Tanaka and was clearly even older than the pas

Rey awoke in the night to a bang followed by the chilling tingling of shattered glass. There was a thick and unpleasant smell hanging in the air. He realized to his awakening surprise it was smoke and worse it must be close. The roaring crackle of a large fire reached his ears, under the door he could see a faint orange light and was beginning to feel a heat unbecoming of the dead of night. It whispered to him, just as the wind had before but this was different, it wasn't a far off voice rather the call of something in the church itself. "Come my little fox," it beckoned. "So I may remind you."With trembling legs Rey got up, a sweat already soaking his nightclothes. He pushed out the door and into the hall, letting out a cough as he got a breath full of bitter smoke. The hall was on fire, but it was a strange fire, it neither spread nor devoured and as he looked at it, it seemed to part as if welcoming him to its center most flame. Below the flickering orange were slashes al