At the Northern Fort

Unfortunately, it seemed like the tree climbing training would be continuing.

"He isn\'t your father, you know."

"I know. By \'papa\', I mean that he\'s Kugalg\'s papa."

Mother did not seem happy at me saying \'Hilg-papa\'. A deep furrow appeared on her brow.

"So, about Kugalg and them, they live in the south part of this country, right?"

"Indeed."

Kugalg and his father lived in the same country of Aridola as us, but their nest was on a volcano in the southern regions.

In order to meet up with Kugalg, and out of fearful curiosity, I had used the transfer technique to fly down there previously twice before. I remember being relieved that it wasn\'t a burning hell with magma constantly flowing out of it.

That was because, while that volcano was apparently an active one that had erupted over 400 years ago, currently it was calm and didn\'t show any signs of eruption.

If you went down its slope from the top of the crater, there was plentiful vegetation, with the green forest that Kugalg and his father lived in spreading out underneath it.

Actually, it seems that originally Fire Spirit-san lived in a southern country where the sun blazed down brightly all-year round. It was only within the past 150 years that he had moved to this country.

However, the country of Aridola had a rather temperate climate, with an exception for the region surrounding Snowlea Mountain in the north. While it did become fairly hot in the summer, compared to the southern country it was considerably easier to live in.

[Why did you come to this country when it isn\'t that hot?]

When I went to Kugalg and his father\'s nest to play, I asked that of Hilg-papa. That was because I thought that the southern country\'s climate would better suit a fire spirit.

However, he showed me his white teeth as he cheerfully smiled and expressed his reason.

[I came to chase after Snowlea. I figured it\'d be better to live nearby if we were gonna make kids together!]

It seems that the truth was that he intended on living closer to Snowlea Mountain, but that was firmly refused by Mother at the same time she declined to create a child with him.

Then, he took up residence a bit further away to the southern tip of the country, right at the limit of where Mother would permit him to stay.

Considering that he decided to stay in Aridola despite having his request to make a child refused, I felt that Hilg-papa really did have some feelings for Mother.

It\'s just that from what I could see, his feelings were far more straightforward. They weren\'t as sensitive and troublesome compared to a human\'s.

That is why he was able to pair with someone other than Mother, giving birth to Kugalg, while also not holding any complicated feelings to me, who could be seen as the child of his rival in love.

Things like this really made me feel that he acted very much like a spirit who had lived for a long time.

Currently, the spirits that I knew consisted only of Mother, Father, and Hilg-papa. When you arranged them according to age, Mother was 289 years old (approximately, according to her own account), Fire Spirit-san was around 400 years old, and Father was around 1100 years old. As expected, the longer they lived for, the more magnanimous their personality became.

Father had gone beyond merely being broad-minded and hardly had any emotional fluctuations. Even when I was loud and hyper, he never got angry at me.

It\'s just that when I got too boisterous when he was in his serpentine form, he would silently stow me away inside his mouth.

Every time he did that, part of me was worried that he\'d swallow me whole, which made my heart pitter-patter anxiously, so I\'d like him to stop doing that.

"Was the letter just now from Hilg-papa?"

I\'d hate to have to go tree climbing like this, so I have to somehow distract Mother from the special training so that she\'d forget about it.

Let\'s have a girl\'s talk together!

However, Mother continued to make a grave expression, and did not appear as though she was up for some girl\'s talk.

"You do not need to concern yourself over it."

Even though the corners of Mother\'s eyes were always slanted a bit upwards, right now they were raised even further and she looked incredibly displeased.

Does she really hate Hilg-papa that much? While it was true that he didn\'t have an ounce of tact and was pretty overbearing, he was a good person.

And, just as I was thinking that, we arrived at the coniferous forest.

"There, try climbing this one."

Mother placed me down in front of a single tree and said that. Even as I thought to myself that I wanted to go home and sleep, for the time being I made an attempt.

However, it was a hard struggle, as I couldn\'t get a good hold onto the bark with my claws. Standing up with my front paws placed against the trunk, I tried jumping upwards with my hind legs, but I couldn\'t figure out how to get any higher.

After making a number of attempts, I pitifully looked up at Mother.

"Mother, it\'s impossible. I\'m not a cat……"

"What are you saying. Wild foxes climb trees to rest on too. Alright, watch your mother do it."

Saying that, Mother returned to her vixen form and selected a considerably thick tree. She then ran up to the tree and used her momentum to jump up onto it. After climbing onto a branch that was at a considerably high position, she glanced down at me, and then came back to the ground lightly before the branch broke.

"Wow! Mother\'s amazing!"

Even though she was larger than a normal fox, she easily managed to climb straight up a tree. Impressed, I excitedly raised my voice.

Mother made a slightly proud expression.

"Now then, next is your turn."

"Ah……"

My excitement instantly cooled. After that, I worked diligently at tree-climbing as Mother used her nose to push my butt.

"You must properly put some strength into your hind legs!"

"Yesssh!"

After growing completely exhausted from my tree climbing training in the morning, I headed to the fort like usual.

After telling Mother, "I\'m off!" I used the transfer technique to move from our mountain nest to the One-Eyed Knight.

Lately, I\'ve been able to succeed one out of every five times when I used Branch Captain-san or Tina-san as my landmark, but I haven\'t managed to succeed with Kix, not even once.

It was probably because having the strong feeling of \'I want to go to where that person is!\' was important to use the technique.

I brought the appearance of the One-Eyed Knight up in my mind, and then imagined myself flying to him. When I did that, my body transformed into a small blizzard vortex, and disappeared.

I was a bit scared of the feeling of my body disappearing when I used this technique, and no matter how many times I used it, I still couldn\'t quite get used to it.

But that feeling would only last for a blink of an eye, and the next time I opened my eyes, I would have arrived where the One-Eyed Knight was……is what I thought, but for some reason I arrived in a dark and narrow space.

Immediately before my eyes was a wooden wall, and the ceiling was also incredibly low.

Where is this place!? What\'s with this place!? -I panicked and began to violently scratch at the wall before me with my forepaws.

In my heart, I called for the One-Eyed Knight, and when I cried out, "Kyan kyan!"——

"Mil?"

I suddenly heard the voice of my saviour from behind me, and promptly whirled around. The One-Eyed Knight was bending his upper body, peeking into the place where I was while sitting in his chair.

Huh? Could it be that this was the inside of the One-Eyed Knight\'s desk in his office?

I was embarrassed at having fallen into a panic without checking what was behind me. I quietly withdrew my paws that had been scratching at the inside of the desk.

"What are you doing in a place like that? If you came, then you should\'ve just come out, you know."

Grabbing me by the nape of my neck, the One-Eyed Knight placed me on his lap. It looks like he didn\'t realise that I frightened myself into a frenzy. Thank goodness.

My transfer technique wasn\'t very precise, so I flew in an arbitrary manner, setting it so that I would \'arrive in an area within a 10-metre radius of the One-Eyed Knight\'. Thus, sometimes I would arrive in an unexpected place like this.

Previously, when I transferred over as the One-Eyed Knight was on his way back from patrolling by horse, I appeared not on top of the horse, nor on the ground in front of it, but on the ground behind him. Because of that, the One-Eyed Knight didn\'t notice me and I was left behind.

It was a memory of me crying loudly while desperately chasing after him.

"I\'ll be done in a bit."

The One-Eyed Knight plopped one hand on my head, and then set about continuing his work. He was filling out some documents on the desk, but I didn\'t at all understand the contents.

One day I wanted to be capable of reading and writing, so I probably should start studying ahead of time. Thinking that, I used my eyes to follow the letters that the One-Eyed Knight was writing.

But it was awfully boring.

While I was in the middle of watching, I noticed that it was easier to rest my chin on the desk, and I lazily observed the movements of the pen. I wonder what\'s for lunch today……