This story will be told in chapters, slowly.
Content note: mythic violence, sexual threat, bodily harm.

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A fox is born with a single tail.

She screeched as blood sprayed from her fresh stump. Her tail plopped to the ground as she writhed. Two tails remained.

In her face, the glowing eyes of a nine-tailed fox stared deep into her own and reveled in her suffering. Behind her, humans chattered as they decided what price to sell her tails for. Fox tails had become popular in human society as good luck charms.

This is a story foxes still tell each other after the age of humans, to remember how tails were earned, how some were stolen, and how some became illegible.

Tears welled in her eyes as the nine-tailed fox, in half-human form, pressed her muzzle flat to the table, right to the edge. Her body felt numb with fear as the blood dripping between her hind legs began to turn sticky. The table was at just the right height for the nine-tailed fox to press his hardened bulge against her snout as she quivered fearfully, wetting her black nose with precum.

He whispered, in the softest growl inaudible to the humans, “I’m going to use your blood as lubricant when they’re done cutting your body for parts.”

Suddenly, a burly human yanked her backwards by one of her remaining tails.

The air smelled of blood, decay, and rust. Around her, foxes of all kinds were mutilated, forcefully bred, and left to die once stripped of all their value as a commodity. The little fox struggled against the humans but was ultimately too weak to resist. Still, she looked for any chance to escape.

It’s said that when a fox suffers and does not become cruel, it grows a second tail, representative of its endurance and awareness.

As the nine-tailed fox was distracted by his lust, a five-tailed fox melted its cage and was screeching as it rendered limbs from human guards in its desperation for escape. The nine-tails growled in pursuit of the five-tails and the humans scattered. It was finally her chance to run.

Her legs were weak, but she was small. She caught the disembodied third tail between her teeth and snuck through the shadows, between corpses and bars, fighting her body’s pull toward stillness.

Behind her, the five-tails flailed with its power wildly. Nothing that broke free did so intact. The nine-tails eventually conceded and let it slash its way out. Saving humans wasn’t worth dirtying his paws for.

As she stepped up the last stair from the basement, another small three-tailed fox chirped, “Iri!”

It was the last thing she heard before the darkness closed in. Her tail fell from her mouth as her body hit the ground.

Later, after deeper suffering — when bitterness would have been justified — if the fox still chooses restraint, curiosity, and care, a third tail appears.