Saturday afternoon found Eva pacing across her room, tails swishing quickly enough to hit each other from time to time. Looking out of her window, she could already see the crowd of people excitedly waiting for the ceremony to begin. The only place the crowd gave ample space was the area around the palanquin the volunteers from the fire brigade were just now setting down before the bridge across the shrine's small stream.

‘I wish I could be closer.’ The Kitsune thought as she grumbled to herself. ‘I hope they’ll all have their fun without me -how did Komaki put it?- Causing a huge scene.’

As she spotted Yukiko, flanked by the men that had just carried the palanquin, began to cross the bridge, the German turned into a fox and flopped onto her bed so she couldn’t watch anymore and get even more annoyed.

When the faint sound of drums reached her ears, the snow white fox spirit began to growl at the ceiling. But as the drums began to sound right behind her, she stopped and began flicking her ears around. No matter how she positioned them though, the sound coming from ‘behind’ her never changed, even though the drum beats creeping in through the window changed as expected with the motion of her ears.

Moments later, a faint, incomprehensible voice joined the drums she seemed to be imagining. A few seconds after that there was a tug at the base of her skull. While it felt somewhat similar to someone pulling her hair, none of ehr fur was stuck under her enough to cause this discomfort. For just a moment the tug seemed to fade away again, prompting a relieved sigh from Eva.

Before it returned suddenly in force, ripping me backwards, without actually moving me. As I looked around, there was nothing I could clearly make out, except for three circles filled with different images. Two showed near identical views of the ceiling and walls of my room at the shrine.

The third though seemed to be showing a view from inside my shrine’s Honden, the currently open door in it’s center. Just inside the door stood Komaki, holding a fox mask out towards the image, while behind him I could see Yukiko kneeling on a fine carpet, wearing a Kimono nearly identical to the one Mumei gave me in my dreams as she passed away. I tried to look at more of the contents of that image, but whenever I tried, I quickly found myself returning to admiring the finely crafted mask that was moving closer and closer.

While observing the perfectly shaped facsimile of fox ears sitting atop the oval mask, I became aware of three threads not dissimilar to how I find where to go when delivering things.

One lead back to what was probably the ceiling eyes were seeing at the moment.

The second lead to the base of the Honden scene.

While the last one drew me straight to the white mask, with ebony inlays forming the slanted eyes, smirking mouth and two sets of whisker-like markings on the cheeks. As I looked over the just barely not perfect application of red paint to highlight the ears of the mask, I felt myself start to drift towards it. I could not tell if I was approaching it at the speed of light, or at the pace of a glacier, but I was definitely closing in on it.

In the blink of an eye, which might have taken as long as a tree's entire life, my perception of the world changed once more.

I now could tell the distances to whatever was tied to myself in the Honden, and what was presumably my body. Though now that I existed in the clearing before the shrine, instead of seeing images from various points of view, I now perceived my surroundings in what seemed like extremely unfocused greyscale. Before me was an extremely bright figure, with a similar one standing inside me. Behind me were a dozen more figures, appearing not as bright as the first two, but somehow polished up to shine more.

Although I suspected I was in front of the Honden, seeing as I was closer to that connection than the body still in my room, everything else was a grey blur, and became even more unfocused as I was moved.

Although, the dark patch of ground flanked by outright black probably meant we were now crossing the bridge. The moment I was carried off of it, I became aware of an outright horde of presences. But none of these were as bright as the ones surrounding me. They felt somehow dirtier, as if they had worked in the fields for a day and had yet to take their evening bath.

Of course this was not wholly uniform, as I quickly realized while being carried above them. Some were nearly as bright as the 12 around and slightly below me, and many of these seemed to be closing in around them. Two were stained nearly black, but those were standing rather far away.

As we presumably left the shrine grounds, I noticed the smell of tuna to my left. As I tried to focus on this smell, I saw a splash of red in the same direction. Trying to reach for it, I saw a blindingly white arm reach for it. It took me quite a bit to realise that this was probably my limb, but once the connection was made, I grabbed some of the red. When I pulled the handful of fish away, the color in that spot seemed to dull, though it was still visible, a stark contrast to the grey all around me.

Progress in maneuvering the hand towards whatever passed for my mouth was somewhat slow. Not only was the limb alien to me, I wasn’t sure where my mouth even was. But when I finally managed, the fish tasted outright divine. The fat running through it was just the right amount to reinforce the raw tunas taste instead of diluting it.

Before the sizable piece of Fish to my side was finished, I had gotten the hang of eating in this state. Which was just in time, as next to the fish a sack of surprisingly crunchy, surprisingly flavorful rice appeared. When a barrel of sake was placed to my right, I stretched, growing a right arm as well, and brought a handful to my mouth. As I drank, my vision finally started to clear up. Instead of being surrounded by formless blobs, I could make out the blurry shapes of buildings, streets and people around me. After finishing the rice, I could already clearly make out the palanquin I was on top of, as well as the offered food around me.

This went on until I could make out the sun slowly nearing the top of the buildings all around us, and the whole procession around me returned to the shrine grounds. Once there, Yukiko, with me still stuck to her face’s movements, stepped down and with small, graceful steps, made her way to an elaborate seat. As she set down, I had a clear view of both the Sumo ring and archery range, both of which were illuminated with what looked like old fashioned torches.

The physical remains of the food I consumed earlier were placed next to Yukiko and me on a table. Once he finished directing their placement, Komaki brought out an old clay made sake cup. As he dipped it into the barrel of Sake, Toya, in his usual Miko disguise, stepped next to him, holding an old fashioned scroll.

But before I could observe it more closely, the old Kodama stepped before me and fed the cup of sake to me. While it’s taste was by now non existent, I still noticed it dripping down my face into a bowl Komaki was holding in his other hand.

When the dripping stopped, he began to talk as he exchanged cup and bowl for the scroll. Though the only reason I noticed that was his mouth moving, hearing had yet to return to me.

He closed his mouth as he carefully observed my mouth and chin, before consulting the scroll. This repeated a couple of times until he handed the scroll to Yukiko and removed my face from hers, dragging the rest of me along. Holding me out towards the people gathered around, he slowly turned me towards each section of the crowd in turn, presumably giving some form of speech.

After he turned me to face the ground, presumably bowing himself at that moment, he carried me back across the bridge. With each of the two Torii we passed through, I felt my perception of what lay outside them slip away, leaving me to observe only the bamboo surrounding the Honden and Komaki. Then he stuck a slip of paper to the front of my face.

The next thing Eva noticed was a sudden feeling of vertigo as she suddenly regained a physical manifestation. While her form was slightly translucent it was now influenced by the physical all around her, and needed to interact with it in turn.

Just as she was about to fall down, a hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her back onto her feet.

“I did warn you that you’d need to stand on your feet again didn’t I?” Komaki said, allowing himself a slight chuckle as Eva turned around to look at him.

“Maybe, though I did not hear a thing this entire time.” Eva replied, realizing her face was still a carved mask when she could not raise an eyebrow.

“Oh, I did not expect that.” He confessed, bowing down slightly towards the Kitsune. “Then again, Muemi had been doing this for a decade before I came to live here. Assuming you are capable of everything she was would be a mistake.”

“So what was all this?” Eva asked, turning to look him straight in the eyes. “What just happened to me?”

“Well just now I used an Ofuda[1] to force you to manifest a physical presence so we could talk here.”

“And before that? When I was ripped from my body by drums?”

“You were drawn into a new vessel. When Mumei bequeathed you here position as this Shrine’s Kami, it formed a connection between you and the mirror, the Goshintai[2], kept in the Honden allowing your spirit to inhabit it if you so wish.” He began to explain. Noticing she was about to interject, he raised a hand and continued. “During today’s ritual, a part of you was imbued into the mask you are now wearing, before we guided you into it to hold watch over the afternoon’s festivities.”

“Wait, what do you mean a part of me? Did you rip a piece of my soul off?”

“No, no. It is not like tearing a piece from a sheet of paper. More like spreading a bonfire by lighting a candle with it.” Komaki tried to calm her. “You are not diminished, and until a large group of people start worshiping this little flame of your’s to turn it into its own bonfire, it will still be connected to you.”

“Okay, and that means what for me exactly?” Eva inquired, still failing to raise her currently wooden eyebrow.

“Well for now, it only means you will know where it is at any given moment. But if you practice enough, say a decade or two, you should be able to manifest like you are forced to right now near any sliver of yourself.”

“Okay.” Eva said with a nod. Keeping her remaining, less urgent questions for later, she continued. “So what did you want to talk about here? After all, we could have had that explanation later, or better yet, you could have told me sometime this week. Ideally when you told me to stay in my room today.”

“Ah yes. I was curious to hear who you think should receive this year's mask.” Komaki explained sheepishly. “Seeing as they will be owning a piece of you it is only fair you get the final decision.”

“Well then how about Mr. Mori. He was kind enough to invite me to go out with the rest of the volunteers after all.” Eva said, remembering how he pleaded with her and Karasuza while drunk. ‘After all ‘In vino veritas’’.[3]

“That sounds like a good choice, Yujiro has been helping us with the festival for years by now and it would be the first time he receives this honor.” Komaki said with a nod as he stretched a hand out to reach for the paper stuck to the mask. “Now, just focus on where your body is, and you’ll be back in it in a moment.” With that he pulled the Ofuda off.

I found myself in this weird limbo once more, but this time, two more windows were present, showing barely different views of Komaki, meaning these were the eyes of the mask. But as he suggested instead I focused on my connection to my physical body. Once again, I drifted towards it at an indescribable speed.

Moments later, Eva shuddered and coughed, her eyes burning in pain and her throat parched. Blinking rapidly in the hopes it would help, she turned into a human, though that did little to help her throat and eyes. Thus she stumbled her way towards the bathroom to gulp down some water and wash out her eyes. ‘‘In aqua sanitas’[4] isn’t it?’ She thought to herself as the water slowly eased her pain.