Foxfire

You’d only been working at your desk an hour before you saw it. At first, you mistook the flicker of light for your candles—but no; their flames hunched demurely without motion, and the light they cast was a mere dim rose in the gloom. It wasn’t the candles.

With creeping trepidation, you resume your scribbling, pausing only to smooth out the corners of your parchment with the nearest heavy objects: a deck of cards, a tacky glass statuette, and a dish of multi-sided dice. Then you see it again—the tiniest wink of orchid light.

You whirl to the source, heart caught in your throat, but again your eyes’ search comes up fruitless. Surely the hour wasn’t so late that your senses would play such tricks on you. Surely there was a reason these flashes sent chills down your neck and unsettled every primal instinct in your sleepless mind.

Which was why a mixture of fascination and terror gripped you, as your gaze finally found the source of the light. In the shadows that lined the tops of the study’s bookcases, a pair of luminescent, orchid eyes could be seen. They were animal, but not feral. Curious and unafraid. Frozen and breathless, you watched them as they tilted and blinked, staring first at you, then at the contents of your desk. You glance away for a half a second in search of its item of interest. But apparently, even a motion of the eyes was too much for this visitor. You glance back in time to see—to hear, with the faintest and most indescribable sound—this visitor wink away into nothing.

The light was gone, and the study was still.


It wasn’t a dream. Of that much, you were certain. So the next night, you left the contents of your desk the way they’d been when your visitor arrived. You contemplated adding something—food or enrichment of some manner—but decided against it. You had the flicker’s interest without such things.

No light could exist without darkness, so you wheeled your chair away from its desk and sat with only a handful of your candles to squint by. The items on your desk were just barely visible in the dim glow of rose-colored fire. And with wicks running short and wax losing height, you waited in the dark.

An hour made you feel restless, and two instilled foolishness deep in your bones. Determined, you fidgeted and spun your chair until nearly 3am, when an unmistakable sound appeared.

Wink.

Your eyes latched onto a flash of orchid atop your bookcase—same place as the night before, same eyes. Those luminescent orbs latched onto your desk, the moment they appeared. They looked to you once—didn’t seem to understand why you were over there in the corner—then returned to more important matters. Whatever creature those eyes belonged to began to move.

It slunk along the top of the bookcases, almost cat-like in its silence. If you squinted hard enough, you could pretend you saw limbs sliding smoothly under a coat as impenetrable as the night sky. At the end of the closest bookcase to the desk, it stopped, staring, blinking. You thought it might jump, or reach, or something to land on its goal.

It winked into light instead.

For the briefest of moments, when orchid light bloomed from the creature’s eyes, its body was fully illuminated; galaxies sprawled along its torso, stars and nebulas etched in each limb. Leathery wings—currently folded and crinkled close—abridged the span of Andromeda. The length of a star-spun tail faded out into darkness before the wink could reach any farther, and then the creature was gone.

And then it returned, perched on the desk, its outline and eyes—always its eyes—the only things visible in the candlelight. With bated breath, you watched for its next move. What on the desk had interested it the night before? What made this specter haunt your study so?

Those huge eyes blinked, turning first to the statuette. With interest, it slid its soft-nosed head behind the trinket, peering through the glass with fascination. But it quickly moved on. The statuette was tacky anyways, how could you blame it? Skipping the cards entirely, the creature moved to your dice.

Dice? Baffled, you watched it scoop a clawful of the shiny objects up—watched a soft wonder strike its eyes and fill its face. Breathless, you watched it cast the dice over your parchment. Three, then five, then ten dice tumbled down the length of the paper, deafeningly loud in the gloom. At the first sound, the creature winked out of existence, reappearing in a frightened bundle atop your bookcase. But no sooner had the dice come to a rest than it flashed back down to your desk and scrunched its face as close to the dice as possible, as if divining the universe from the results of its roll.

But no…no, there was no math or philosophy behind those eyes. None that you could discern. Only childlike wonder ruled those orchid orbs as the creature examined each die in turn. Some were solid and dusted with metallic flecks that reflected the faintest warmth in the desk’s rose-fire glow. Others were clear—a resin cast with glittering particles inside that swam like the creature’s own nebulas. Lost in kindred fascination, dreaming awake of handheld galaxies, the creature pressed its cheek to the table and squished its face to see closer—closer—into the surface of those dice.

You had no idea how long the creature stared, picked, played, and rolled with those dice, but at some point, it winked out of existence and didn’t come back.

Somehow, you felt assured that it would the next night.


The plan was set, and your sanity was a small price to pay for it. All else had been cleared away from your desk, and the entire surface had instead been liberally scattered with dice. Not an inch was free of the shiny click-clack rocks, except a small clearing in the center where you’d spelled out a crude message in dice that displayed sides of 1’s and 0’s.

Could the creature understand binary? No idea. Could you think of any other way to communicate using its interests? Not a one. Had it used up your entire collection of d10s? Yes. Yes it had.

You piddled away at your work throughout the day, eager for nightfall. You shut the blinds early to urge on darkness, lit every candle you owned, and dared to bring enough light into your study to see this creature by. For the finishing touch, you placed a large silken pouch of dice—somewhat transparent for proof—on the corner of the desk. And you waited.

But you didn’t have to wait long.

The moment the room was dark, your visitor winked onto the desk. No shy act on the bookcase this time, you noted. Its eyes fell on you first, then onto the gajillion dice on your desk. You held your breath as it studied your message, twisting its head sideways to read it properly.

“Hello. What is your name? Where did you come from? These are for you.”

Two eternities passed while waiting for the creature to finish reading. Its eyes were unreadable today, clearly interested but giving no other reaction. Did it understand? Could it reply? Hope ignited in your chest as the creature turned its head to the dice bag. One raptor claw reached out in the dark and picked up the bag an inch. Its eyes widened at the weight of the gift, then flushed wide-open as it dropped the bag with a chorus of clicks and clacks. Without hesitation, it snatched the dice bag up in its maw and winked out. Its tail swept the table on the way out, scattering dice everywhere. When the light faded, the bag was gone, and shiny rocks tumbled down every inch of floor.

You waited for its return, but—heart sinking—you realized it had taken its treat and left. Back to the drawing board. Dejected, you grabbed your nearest and brightest candle, and moved to your desk to start tidying things up. A hundred dice obviously hadn’t worked, but maybe if you…

All thoughts faded as you saw the line of message dice. They were the only ones that hadn’t been too badly disturbed, only tipped over. Twice this week, you’d sworn your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you. Once, you’d been proven right, so maybe…?

The dice on the table spelled out one neat number.

“4064153”

“Four-oh-six…” you whispered. Your mind tried to wrap around the significance of the digits like wrapping paper with a poorly-shaped gift. “Four-oh-six…”

It wasn’t binary. In simple numerals, it wasn’t an answer, either. Dialing down your thoughts, you tried to approach the line with simpler terms.

“Four…oh…X? OX?” You blink, rereading the dice again and again. “Fox? Fox…f…ire…?”

A wink sounds by your ear. A wink and a clack of dice. Without moving your body, you flash your eyes to the top of the bookcase and see a vague shape clutching a silken bag, its eyes creased in obvious delight. Its eyes flash and its lithe, starspun body revealed itself one last time. Wings elongated, tail whipped out in the open air…the creature was equal parts majestic and mischievous. Then it flashed like a will-o-wisp and was gone.

A visitor like foxfire.