Welcome to the Wild Foxes drop. Here’s what you need to know.

Plot points

• Enter Wild Foxes. A new species has arrived. These Wild Foxes, and the Wild Thoughts accompanying them, introduce new characters and narrative possibilities to our world. It also reveals that foxes are stranger and more varied than we initially thought.

• We are not alone. We had believed that all other skulks had died out. The presence of Wild Foxes illustrates that life exists beyond Shadowoods. Perhaps there are others? What else may our wider world – and its different realms – hold for us?

• We are being hunted. Or at least, that is what one of our new arrivals believes. A Wild Fox brings a tale of woe – and a warning.

• Solo thoughts remain a mystery. Even our new companions trail solo thoughts. What are these entities? To whom do they relate? The mystery remains unresolved.

The Meeting

At the edge of Shadowoods, a few members of our skulk meet the 10 voyagers. They look different than our kind, with shimmering coats of fur and unusually shaped heads. Around them, new thoughts swarm, not unlike those that hover around our foxes.

PICNIC, LIGHTNING

First, I must say this: welcome. Welcome, friends.

It is true, you do not look nor sound like us. Indeed, even your stench – or pardon me, scent – is distinct, powerful to our nostrils. We are used to our own kind, you see, so forgive those of us who briefly gagged. It was but a momentary reflex.

While we may have our differences, we see that you are, after all, kin. No less a part of Terra Volpa than us; no less a thinking fox, a cogitator on four legs. May I express my admiration for the manner in which your fur glimmers?

It is a ripple of color the likes of which I have not seen. We remember so little – and yet I sense that my mother (or perhaps her mother, let us regress ad infinitum) was one of you. I recall a shadowy maternal figure informing me that they were raised in a land of foxes whose coats flickered like gems. They must have been speaking of you.

Tell us. Who are you? How did you get here? Where have you traveled from?

AS LONG AS THERE’S LIGHT

We thank you for our welcome and

Do not be alarmed by our size or

Smell.

We have come from a far-land to be here

And worried our presence would not be

Well-received.

Have you heard of Stogai?

HANNIBAL

It is a name familiar to us –  but beyond definition. A remnant of a past life. The remembrance of a dream.

AS LONG AS THERE’S LIGHT

It is more than a dream, kin.

It is, or was, our home.

A land beyond the Feral Range, beyond

Even the Great Schism that bisects our world.

We do not know how long we have been awake.

Do you?

Perhaps a year, a little more, though

Time feels like water, not stone. We cannot

Touch it.

We awoke in ruins.

Great constructions, reduced to rubble.

A library full of books, rotting, stinking,

Filled with maggots which

We ate.

Do not judge us,

There was no other food we could find.

Where have all the birds gone? And the

Voles and mice and even frogs who sing

So beautifully and taste as sour as unripe cherries.

We could find none in our land, which is

Why we look as thin as we do now.

Though we cannot be sure, we have divined that

Our ancestors were perhaps twice our size.

LAGUNA, LACUNA

That is a frightening prospect, given how you tower over us already. We bear bad news, I’m afraid. If it was your stomachs that led you here, they are confused. We have found little to eat. A clutch of berries from time to time and one afternoon an egg of uncertain providence which we shared between a thousand.

AS LONG AS THERE’S LIGHT

That is, indeed, bad news,

Though it was not the purpose of

Our visit.

In fact, perhaps you do not

Know, but upon our journey, we found a

River, not too far from here, in which

Fish have begun to swim again. We have

Been careful in our hunting – not too greedy –

So they may continue to flourish.

We journeyed here for a different reason:

We believe we are being hunted.

By what, I am not sure.

But I have felt it –

Sensed its presence around us.

In the entrails of our broken civilization

Something seemed to linger in the shadows,

Waiting for us to draw close.

I can not prove this, but I believe there were

More of our tribe once.

Indeed, I believe there

Were perhaps many more that set out upon

Our journey from Stogai.

I could not give

You names, nor could I describe their

Faces,

But I feel them somewhere. I feel

Them in their absence.

Something is eating at us, and perhaps has

Been for some time. When we walk into the

Shadows, when we stroll alone in the forest

When night falls like a cloak and separates

One of us from another, The Ellipsis hunts.

It is a beast with poison as well as fangs

We think.

Because at the moment it

Steals our kin it places a toxin in

The brains of those left behind,

A toxin that feasts on memory so

When morning comes

We have forgotten that there was

Once another that we called friend.

PICNIC LIGHTING

This is quite a claim, I must tell you.

HANNIBAL

Quite a claim.

AS LONG AS THERE’S LIGHT

I understand your skepticism.

Many of my skulk treated my

Theory with similar unease at

First. 

And so I set to test it. For seven

Days, I did not sleep. As my skulk

Slumbered, I pinned my eyes open

With thorns and daubs

Of spitting-mud.

For six nights, I watched from

My patch of photic-moss and

Saw nothing. Some nights

I could scarcely breathe from

Exhaustion and great worms

Of color crawled

Across the surface of my vision.

But on the seventh night

At the hour at which the moon

Took on a color of

Blood,

I saw a flicker in the bushes.

And then –

A sudden movement across

The heads of the sleeping

Skulk as if someone had shone

A beam of light over them;

A light of no brightness and no

Color, a beam of blinding

Darkness.

Then, nothing.

For a long time

Nothing.

I had begun to believe my eyes

Had conjured it when the beam

Shone again and this time it

Landed on the body of one of our

Kin,

A young kit the name of which has

Been taken from me and,

Who began to melt into the

Earth as if he were a piece of

Rotting fruit sitting beneath

a baking sun.

I sprang from my bed and

Bolted as quickly as I could to

His sleeping, dissolving form.

As I drew closer I saw

That it was not a beam that hovered

Over him but a figure whose shape

Seemed to change and that I would

Describe to you as:

A circle of Terrifying Hunger,

A square of Vital Lifelessness,

A star of Absence.

It was a great UnFox,

Both kindred and alien

And as I approached the kit’s body,

Which was all but gone, it turned

Its no-head and stared its no-eyes

At me and without touching

Crushed a blow that knocked me

To the ground and sent me

At last, to sleep.

When I woke in the morning,

The kit was gone.

If you ask any others

Of my skulk, they will tell you

They remember nothing of the

them, a child of our very own.

And so I come to you,

My friends, my kin,

Who we have crossed

A world to find and ask:

What will we do?