Kitsune: Or, the daughter of the Winter Queen and her fox.

Last night I ran away from the house and sat in my van by the sea and sketched, leaving children watching Harry Potter. Peace. I think I must take after my grandfather who would retreat to the chicken shed with cake and talk to the chickens. My van is like a mobile shed. The sunset beautiful, pale moon gold with big waves.

Today working away and sometimes it goes well and for moments I enjoy what I am doing but most the time it just won't look like the image that lives inside my mind. So I take a photo, to look at the piece in another way. And I think.

 

Dragons and Horses

A long list of things to do was interrupted by visitors today. Tea in the garden with hot crossed buns and apples for the four footed, then off they went, although they found the dragon van to be a curious creature.

 

Wild and windy, washing on the line and walking. Blue bells and the silver sea. And in between everything, painting and thinking.

A Short Winter Love Story revisited.

Playing with paint and sketching and film. To see the film of making the painting have a look at my youtube channel.

The Wishing Stone, white foxes and red.

This morning I woke to the sound of rain on the roof and windsong. It seemed as if the magic had been taken out of the world. Downstairs I wrapped myself in a rich red cardigan, long and warm, deep red, the colour of rosehips in mid winter. I thought about the fox and his winter queen. I thought about the Kitsune, Japanese shape shifting foxes. I found my book of Japanese folk tales and went fox hunting.

Japanese Tales

Edited and translated by Royall Tyler

The White Fox: Four Dreams

Four nights ago someone bought me a picture of the Kasuga God, though I couldn't see what the god looked like.

The night before last I watched the evening star and a bright moon rise over Flower Mountain. Star and moon were the same size.

Last night in the fields I came to a big stone that looked like a Wishing Jewel, and I touched it. It was warm. North of the stone lay three foxes. I picked the white tuft off one's tail and saw that it was a big white fox. "Wear red, " the fox said, " when you bring me offerings."

At dawn I got twenty gold relics of the Buddha.

As I write down this marvelous sequence of dreams, I shiver again with joy and awe.

A note to the story says:" Shaped like a fat, falling drop, the Wishing Jewel is an emblem of good fortune. The tails of magical foxes sometimes end in a Wishing Jewel shape." 

I smiled, wrapped in my woollen cloak of warmth. Perhaps the magic is still here, if you look for it.

Thaw

Someone has stolen the stars from the sky. The wind is rising and the spell of cold has broken. The earth is no longer white.

Boxing Day

A short winter love story, chapter 3

Again she gave him the feast of a warm bird to slake his appetite grown fierce by dancing. 
And he gave her a crown of tangled feather and winter's thorns to replace her lost crown of ice. For now the love they both carried for each other had begun to thaw their dancing place. So they curled, tired to dreaming from three nights of passionate revelry, around each other, wrapped in love and russet fur.

 

A short winter love story, chapter 2

They danced again on the pond last night beneath a sky clear of all but stars and then she gave her rust red lover the gift of a lapwing. He left the wrapping in the lane, still soft, beaded with frozen tears.

A short winter love story.

On closer inspection it became obvious. The fox had not been dancing alone. The Queen of Winter, who loves him so, had frozen the pond especially to dance with her russet darling. In a moment of careless abandon she discarded her crown in the garden. It has begun to melt.