You find him on the curb because you can't pretend you didn't see him.

Rain has been running for hours; the streetlights smear the puddles into long, trembling ribbons of gold. People hurry by under umbrellas like tiny islands of purpose. They skirt the limp shape at the gutter without looking. Someone kicks a newspaper; it flutters over the fox’s tail and keeps going. No one slows.

You do.

You wrap him in your jacket without thinking about how ridiculous it looks: a trembling fox under a human hood, the rain pattering on the fabric. He presses his face into your chest and his heartbeat is a frantic little drum under your hand. Cars whoosh. People keep walking.

At home you check the wounds, press and swab, talk to him the way you talk to someone you want to believe is listening. His pulse steadies after you clean and bandage him; his breathing becomes lighter. He is still shaking, though, not from pain so much as from cold and whatever else comes from being small and abandoned on a night like this.

When you lift him to the bed he curls up instinctively against the warmth, small paws tucked under. You find yourself moving in slow motion, lifting the blanket over him, smoothing hair back from his face. He looks so helpless you hate the world for letting it happen. You tell yourself you'll check on him in an hour, two — you'll make sure he eats, that he doesn't wander off. Sleep sits heavy on your shoulders; the day has been too long.

You wake because something is warm and heavier than a fox presses against your side. Morning light slants across the room, thin and clean. For a split second your mind constructs the small, familiar shape you left behind — red fur, ears, little chest rising and falling. Then it collapses.

A person is there.

He lies half-turned toward you, limbs curled like a sleeping animal. Red hair, glossy and wet in strange, unnatural waves. Two triangular ears poke from the top of his head, twitching once as if catching a dream. When he shifts, nine tails unfurl behind him across the sheets — thick, luxuriant, each a plume of the same vivid red. He is young, athletic, everything you did not expect: cosplayer. His tracksuit — soaked and odd against his skin — sticks to him; breath fogs faintly at the corners of his mouth.

For a moment you register nothing but details: the way his lashes rest against high cheekbones, how his hands curl like a fox's paws, the faint bruising on his jaw. You realize you are holding your own breath.

He opens his eyes.

They are amber, deep as carved honey. He blinks, looks at you, and his pupils slit like a predator's for a breath. He says something.

You don't know this language. You have no idea what he said.

You glance down at the pillow where the fox had slept and find it empty except for a smear of red fur and a few damp prints you cannot quite place. The questions come too fast to catch: Who is he? Where did he come from? Why don't you understand him — and where, horribly, is the little fox you rescued?

He opens his mouth once more, and this time the word he makes is softer, smaller — maybe the only thing he remembers.

You do not know the language. But even without translation, there is one word in his tone you cannot mistake: he is lost.