[The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox] - Chapter 234 - Under the Willow Tree
Blurb: After Piri the nine-tailed fox follows an order from Heaven to destroy a dynasty, she finds herself on trial in Heaven for that very act. Executed by the gods for the “crime,” she is cast into the cycle of reincarnation, starting at the very bottom – as a worm. While she slowly accumulates positive karma and earns reincarnation as higher life forms, she also has to navigate inflexible clerks, bureaucratic corruption, and the whims of the gods themselves. Will Piri ever reincarnate as a fox again? And once she does, will she be content to stay one?
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Chapter 234: Under the Willow Tree
Clean-up took a while, as Flicker had known it would, although it still seemed to catch Piri off guard. Jade Empress or not, she was always a bit hazy on everyday logistical details. Or, as she would put it, she was better at big-picture-scroll thinking. Flicker was just glad that aforementioned high-level thought processes had led her to the conclusion that she needed a Co-Jade Empress to compensate for her shortcomings.
Once the dragon kings had doused the flaming clouds and washed the ash from the air with a good shower, and the imps had started rebuilding the Bureau of Human Lives, Flicker went in search of Star – no, Co-Jade Empress Aurelia’s – favorite star-child runner. He had a guess at where he’d find Sparkle, and he was correct.
Outside the side gate where they’d watched the sky lanterns, she perched on the edge of a cloud, kicking her feet and dimpling at the minor gods who clamored to be let back into Heaven. “Sorry, Heavenly Lord- and Ladyships! The gates are shut until further notice! By order of Their Heavenly Majesties!”
“Stop playing pranks and let us in at once!” fumed a god whose arms were full of pepper pork buns and incense sticks.
“It’s not a prank! They posted a notice on the South Gate an’ everything!”
With a battered roast suckling pig slung over one shoulder, a goddess pushed her way forward and tried a different tactic. “Look, child, I understand that the gates are locked, but this isn’t a real gate, is it? It’s more of a back door. The notice didn’t say anything about back doors.”
Sparkle put a finger to her cheek and tipped her head to a side, pretending to consider that logic. Flicker was about to step in when she flashed the goddess a grin. “Nope! No can do! It’s the spirit of the notice that counts. Like how it’s the spiritual essence of the pig that matters, and not the physical pig itself!”
It was true: No one in Heaven actually needed to consume physical food. Gods didn’t need to collect the offerings made to them. The dedication of spiritual essence was sustenance enough. But many in Heaven enjoyed, say, the crunch of crackly, golden-brown skin between their teeth, or the succulent pork juices that coated their tongues and flowed down their throats. This goddess was apparently one of them – as was Sparkle.
Taking the star child’s hint, the goddess used her long, sharp nails to carve off a generous piece of pork. She held it out to Sparkle, who seized it in both hands and ripped off chunks with her teeth. By the Jade Emperor – no, Jade Empresses – what sort of table manners was she learning in the dormitory?!
With pork juices running down her chin, Sparkle wiped her hands on the cloud, swung her legs, and grinned at the gods with no sign of letting them pass. To their credit, even though they rumbled ominously, none of them seemed to want to blast a star child, or at least to be the first one to blast a star child, out of their way.
Best to intervene before she provoked them to that stage. Stepping forward, Flicker told Sparkle, “I have a message for you to deliver.”
Her “Awww! But he hasn’t even offered me a pepper pork bun yet!” rose high and clear above the gods’ complaints.
“Sorry, no one is allowed into or out of Heaven until further notice,” he told them. “Sparkle, it’s not nice to take bribes when you don’t plan to honor the request.” Then he stopped and considered it. “Actually, it’s not nice to take bribes at all. Don’t do it again.”
“Awwwww….”
She bounced to her feet and trailed him through the gate, casting yearning backward glances at the pepper pork buns. Right before the gate slammed shut, the goddess snatched one from the god’s arms and tossed it to Sparkle. Flicker shook his head as the star child shoved half of it into her mouth.
“I need you to deliver a message for me…but can you even walk after gorging like that?”
“I ‘an ‘oo ‘alk!”
“I certainly hope so.”
From his sleeve, he drew out a slip of paper. She stuffed the rest of the bun into her mouth, grabbed the note with her greasy fingers, and darted off. Shaking his head, Flicker headed for a certain willow tree on the edge of a certain lake to wait.
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Star didn’t keep him waiting long, at least not by goddess standards. The sky was just shifting from hazy blue to the silvery grey that presaged sunrise when he heard footsteps approach the willow tree. The curtain of branches parted, and first her headdress and then her face peeked in.
“Hello,” he began, and then he wasn’t sure whether he should bow or perform a full prostration, so he tried to do both at the same time and tripped over his own hem. By the time he caught his balance, she’d come all the way in and let the branches sweep shut behind her.
“Hello.” She echoed his uncertain greeting. “You sent word that you wished to see me?”
“Ummm, yes. I thought we needed to – that is, I wanted to – to talk. About – you know.”
She regarded him with a wariness that hurt. “So much has happened. About which part of it in particular would you like to talk?”
The part where I avoided you for months because I felt too guilty over reincarnating Piri as a fox. The part where you got so desperate that you came to my office through the service passageway. The part where I broke up with you while you were hunched over a tiny grate. The part where I then got arrested and you overthrew the Jade Emperor to save my miserable life.
“I wanted to thank you” was what came out instead. “Thank you for saving me from the Goddess of Life and the Star of Heavenly Joy. I never dreamed you would go so far….”
“Ah.” She nodded as if she understood what he was trying to say, but her next words showed that she didn’t. “You’ve thanked me for that already, remember? Right after you woke up? There’s no need for further thanks.”
She was going to leave. He could sense her withdrawing, even though she hadn’t taken a step yet. Any moment now, she would turn around and walk out through that curtain of willow branches, and it would be too late.
“Wait! That’s not it! That’s not what I meant to say. What I meant to say is that I’m sorry. About disappearing on you like that. I should have…I should have….”
“No, no, we agreed not to blame each other or ourselves, remember? We tried, and it didn’t work out. It is what it is.”
“But it isn’t!” he burst out, desperate to stop her words from turning into a Jade Empress’ decree. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I reincarnated Piri as a fox, and I felt so guilty, but I didn’t know how to tell you, so I started avoiding you so I wouldn’t have to think about how I wasn’t telling you, and….”
“That’s why you shut me out? Because you felt guilty over breaking a law?” She sounded genuinely astonished. “Flicker, you literally watched me steal a Peach of Immortality from the Queen Mother of the West who, by the way, has sent a message of congratulations to Piri but not to me! I should have been expelled from Heaven for that crime! Why would you be afraid to tell me that you reincarnated Piri as a different animal from what she was supposed to be?”
Now he was the astonished one. “Because it wasn’t just any animal. It was a fox. I thought….”
“You thought I’d be angry? Because I still hated her and blamed all foxes for what she did?”
“Not hated, precisely…but I thought it might hurt. Like – like breaking open a wound. I thought…I thought it might feel a little like…I was siding with her. Against you.”
“Ah.” At least she didn’t pretend not to understand, and she mulled it over long enough that he knew she was giving it serious thought. “I admit, I wasn’t…happy when I first saw her in fox form. But that was old reflexes. I’m not proud of them.”
She was silent for another moment, perhaps bringing up a memory of Piri as she had been five centuries ago and comparing it to Piri as she was now. The two looked nearly identical, but the mind behind the dark eyes and pouting lips and ostentatious tails was completely different.
“She’s changed,” said Star, echoing his thoughts. “I can give her credit for that. I do give her credit for that. I trusted her to help me when no one else in Heaven or on Earth would, and I trust her to be a good co-ruler now. If I can do that, then how can I blame you for reincarnating her in her truest form?” She smiled all of a sudden. “Let’s look at it this way: It wasn’t you siding with her against me. It was you siding with her even before I realized that hers was the side I belonged on.”
A long sigh of relief gushed out of Flicker. “Thank you.”
“I do wish you’d talked to me instead of assuming how I’d react, but, well. Maybe you were right. Maybe I wouldn’t have reacted well. I probably wouldn’t have.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you first next time,” he vowed.
One eyebrow arched. “Next time? How many laws are you planning to break, O Director of Reincarnation?”
“It depends.”
“It depends? On what, dare I ask?”
He took a deep breath. Here it was. Either he spoke now, or he forever held his peace and watched silently from his seat on the Committee of Directors and Assistant Directors as Co-Jade Empress Aurelia moved on.
“It depends…on what the policy is on the Director of Reincarnation seeing…the Jade Empress? If you want to, of course. Um. I’m still just a star sprite, and you’re not just a star goddess now, but one of the Co-Jade Empresses, so….”
She was shining now, overflowing with light that limned each willow leaf in gold, and he felt his own skin glow brighter.
“Flicker. If I didn’t care when you were a clerk and I was an Assistant Director, why in the name of Heaven would I care now when you’re a Director and I’m a Co-Jade Empress?”
She stepped forward at the same time he did, and he wrapped his arms around her and felt hers wind about his neck.
“Besides,” she mumbled into his robes, “I never told Piri that we broke up. Can you imagine how awkward it would be to tell her now?”
He pictured Piri’s reaction. It would be…loud. And excessive. She might even try to play matchmaker. He did not want to imagine the lengths to which she might go in order to get him and Aurelia back together.
He said, with complete honesty, “It’s a very good thing we don’t have to.”
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Posted Jan 30, 2026, 2:40 PM UTC