The Union of the Mushroom Fox
Revision: 2.0
Authors: (Alynna Menagerie Kelly).Murrimi, KF (Editing and Whi’ka Wrangler)
Date: 2024-01-20
Murrimi looked down into the little pool just outside the door of her keep. There she sprinkled a bit of dust with a crystalline glitter-like appearance into the water. It was scrying time, to see what was going on with the realms she liked to meddle in. Where she was even, a goddess. Gazing into the pool, she swiped a mycelial tendril across it, as if turning pages of a book, until she stopped on one in particular.
As much as different realms could be considered ‘close-by’, this one was, and it was special in that it was a realm effectively next door to where she made her own home. In her glowing tome, which was really more like a paper-like tablet than anything else, she scrolled up and down to display its name and information. A “tomelet”. The pantheon, with whom she spoke a few times, never gave her a proper name for the world, and perhaps they had not named it yet, but the name “Addictive Science” had been thrown around a few times and that is how she listed it.
Along with other information, she read her notes on what had been going on with it, at least where mushrooms and fungus were concerned, as that was what she was the goddess of, at least in that particular realm. And also being part fox herself, she held those in a special favor too. She had made note of two foxes there in particular, Mary and Andorra. They had been turned into foxes in her very forest, while they were doing science in it. “Science, in a magic forest,” she giggled softly to herself as she remembered that whole encounter. The Fox-bees had given them enough stings to turn them into foxes, but not enough to turn them entirely into fox-bees. Because Murrimi had a plan.
She noted that these two acclimated very quickly, into being foxes. They even liked it, loved it, seemed happier than anyone she had ever met before to have become foxes. And they seemed ever grateful to the forest for it to grant this to them. But what surprised Murrimi even more is how they both became of the attitude that everyone in the world should be a fox too.
Murrimi wondered just what kind of science these two were into.
Knowing this, Murrimi suggested that they go back and use mushrooms to spread foxyness to the world, and once they both fully acclimated to being foxes, she sent them back to the world of science. The fact that it would be a great boon to both her and her friend, the fox goddess, And she saw that they did attempt to do just that, and for a bit, her antennae were aglow with the effects, but then they dimmed as she found that it was not spreading mushroom people as she had hoped it would, just more foxes. That hadn’t been what she hoped they would come up with. And since those who had gotten infected by the fungus didn’t pass it onto others, it hadn’t spread the way she expected it should, and eventually, it was finally cured.
That would not do at all. Did she have to get more specific with her favorite scientists? Yes, probably.
“Oh, bother.” Murrimi said to herself, realizing she was going to have to roll up to Olympus if she wanted to rectify this issue, or at the very least, retrieve the Fox Twins. She got up, tucked her tome into her tails, and proceeded back into her tree. She looked over to two of her princesses, Sage and Seraphine. “It looks like today won’t be a work from home day, I’ve got to run an errand on Olympus” she noted. The princesses were surprised, because Murrimi almost never went out, and seeing their confusion, she smiled. “Oh, I’m not exactly going anywhere. Brace for spatial displacement!” Murrimi said, and the princesses immediately ran for their little thrones. They knew exactly what was happening.
Now, if there was any advantage to being the First Mushroom, it was already being everywhere. Olympus itself was a divine realm sitting both in-between and also shared with her home world, Kurinzona, and the realm they called “Addictive Science”, and she’d have to make two jumps through her own mycelial network to get there, and when she chose to go there, she took her entire castle with her. After all, the offices up there were all pretty cramped, and chairs weren’t her style at all. But she did like that buffet…
There were a few moments where all of reality seemed to phase and a feeling of falling through nothingness, until it went from the dim and multicolored skies of Kurinzona to the bright sky of Olympus. Once the presence of her castle stabilized, she had a look about. It would be really nice to be able to avoid any bureaucracy and just submit the paperwork electronically later, so she opened up the tablet. Damn was the wifi good in this dimension. “You know, the moment I swipe them in, we ought to be prepared to leave, or someone is definitely going to come in here and make me do paperwork for an unscheduled retrieval. So let’s go get lunch.” A few of her vulpine tendrils, agreed. “Lunch! Lunch!” they said, before she asked them to be on their best behavior, and she visited the buffet.
Upon visiting the buffet, she went to get her favorite foods from it, consisting of a mongolian barbecue with mostly mushrooms but also zucchini, tofu and bean sprouts, with spicy sauce. But to drink she made her own tea. As she was sitting down, a familiar face sat with her.
“Funny seeing you about, up here,” said the truly divine vixen, Whi’ka.
Murrimi smiled up at her and nodded.
“I like my work from home plan, and my own office. And the .. darkness that comes with it,” she responded. “Being in the sun all day would make me very irritated. My eyes don’t like it.”
“I guess that’s understandable, being a mushroom and all,” Whi’ka said. “But since you’re a mushroom, you could just shift to adjust to it. Then we could hang out more.”
“Yeah, but I should not have to. If I ever have to come in to work, I want an office next to Hades.” Murrimi added. “Besides, I’m just one plane over. And who’s going to do the drinks better than the fae?” she asked.
“I mean, point,” Whi’ka said. “So, what has got you up here? Afraid they’re forgetting about you?”
“Maybe a little bit.” Murrimi nodded slowly, “But I am more kind of put out that my last plan for .. fungal propagation, didn’t go as well as planned.”
“You mean the Twins’ little experiment?” Whi’ka asked.
“Yeah, the problem was it was too little,” Murrimi responded.
“It sounds like you have something evil up your sleeve.” Whi’ka said.
“I wouldn’t call it evil,” Murrimi objected to that way of putting it. “More like, more effective. Besides, evil is a mortal abstraction of what they think is right and wrong.”
“Ahh, you know what I meant.” Whi’ka said, and Murrimi smiled and nodded.
“I still have to poke you on the tail over it,” and one of her fox tendrils did exactly that.
Whi’ka yipped at that, and then asked, “You know, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about why you are part fox. How did that even happen?”
Murrimi chuckled, “You’ve asked for a long story, but I’ll try to keep it short. When I decided I wanted to interact directly with the mortal world, I knew I needed an avatar, but one that was distinctly not me. So I created my own twin sister, Alynna, and sent her into the Cycle. And when she incarnated, it was into … a sylvan Kurinzon, but the sylvan part, which is usually a form from nature, ended up being a fox. Well she’s a mortal and goes through the mortal cycle, and she just kept coming back as a fox, and as I would sync with her between lives, I began to absorb that nature, until fox became half of what I am.”
Whi’ka smiled during the entire explanation. “Well, I always kind of felt … honored that you would be a fox, most of the other gods decide to maximize what they represent.”
Murrimi just giggled. “Well if I didn’t already know mushrooms were the best, I would agree that foxes are the best thing to be. Besides, us mushrooms have nothing to prove.”
“Wow,” Whi’ka said, “That sure is an expression of confidence.”
“It’s not a boast or anything,” Murrimi’s ears laid back for a moment. “ In fact probably the main reason I’m in the pantheon is that I mostly operate quietly, and because mushrooms have always been here. And there, and pretty much everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” Whi’ka asked.
“Yeah.” Murrimi responded. “I’ll just say that I am an intercosmic mushroom entity and leave it at that. I have my mycelia in a lot of pies.”
“Ahh.” Whi’ka nodded then looked at the table. “I just noticed, you always bring your own tea. Why’s that?”
“Because the tea here can’t match what we make at home,” Murrimi said, as she also pushed forward the honey jars. “And especially not our honey. Or milk. Honestly, Olympus should be sourcing food and ingredients from us. My bee avatar, Murribee, made the forest honey, and her crush, Marigold, made the farm honey. Seriously, try it.”
Whi’ka took a butter knife and dipped one in the forest jar, tasted it, then did the same for the next. “Wow! Those taste like the ambrosia of life! They both taste different but absolutely exquisite.”
“The dairy products are just as good,” Murrimi nodded, “I suppose I ought to talk to someone up here about trade. There’s no reason to have less than the best. You can have these two jars, and some tea,” she said as she made Whi’ka some citrus tea from her own stock, and slid it in front of her.
“I bet these taste even better together!” Whi’ka accepted the cup of tea and put a little bit of both types of honey in it.
“Well, I’ve honestly never tried that,” Murrimi responded, “ Now I have to try!”
She added a little bit of the farm honey to her tea, and ‘mmmed’ softly as she tasted it, holding it as she continued; “So… I’d like to retrieve the Twins.”
“What for?” Whi’ka asked, and curled her tail in her lap.
“Well, I don’t think they went far enough last time,” Murrimi continued, “I honestly thought their science oriented minds would make something that was more … propagative, and so far, they really haven’t gotten that far on foxifying the world. I think they could use some help…”
Whi’ka hummed softly, her tail tip flicking in her lap, and Murrimi’s tails went into her lap too, though her tail flicks were a little bit more nervous.
“Why so nervous?” Whi’ka asked, “ If you’ve got a plan, out with it.” She smiled back at Murrimi reassuringly. “I owe you a little bit of one for the Twins, so I’m not going to bite over it unless it’s a particularly bad plan.”
“Well, I want to make fox-shrooms,” Murrimi let out a soft sigh, “And I want their help to do it, and I would like to have your permission.”
“Fox-shrooms?” Whi’ka asked. “You mean kind of like what you are. You want to create something in your own image.”
“Yes, pretty much,” Murrimi nodded, “In fact, that’s what I was hoping would happen last time.”
Whi’ka started to giggle. “I’m surprised it took you this long to bring this up to me. Hmm. More foxes. But also more mushrooms…”
Murrimi slowly nodded at that.
“Well as I said, I have my mycelia in… a lot of pies,” she explained to Whi’ka, “I’ve been working on fox-bees more, and spiderbuns…”
“Rabbits? As a fox? Are you creating your own food supply?” Whi’ka asked, but Murrimi shook her head.
“Nah. I just … don’t feel like I have to do just my own thing. Spiderbuns are good at many things, like protecting fox-bee nests from other insect predators.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Whi’ka responded. “And you know what, more foxes always sounds good, but you’ve got to make sure people want to be foxes, or they’ll just try sending you to Godly Court. Been there, done that.” Murrimi hummed softly.
“Well then I should make sure it’s easily dispellable. Like… well there’s already those disgusting antifungal reagents. If they want to spray themselves down in it, they will be rid of the form.”
“Alright then,” Whi’ka gleefully grinned, “Sounds solid. Go for it, but when you summon them, I’d like to be around for it.”
“Sure,” Murrimi nodded, “It will give you a chance to try an experiment. Honey mead, based on those two honeys.” She then took a sip of her tea again. “But now I have to try mixing honeys.”
“Well even if you don’t get to supply for the whole pantheon, you could at least trade with me, ” Whi’ka smiled, sipping her tea and deciding she was leaving with it.
Once Murrimi was back up on her feet, she reached a paw over to Whi’ka and said; “Alright then, let’s mosey.”
Once she returned to her castle with Whi’ka, she had a seat retrieved for her guest and sat herself in her throne; tails splitting 3 and 3 to each side of her, as she looked through her tomelet.
“How do you keep it so dark in here, even up here at Olympus?” Whi’ka looked around.
“Light absorbing windows,” Murrimi responded, “Converts photons directly to mana and sticks the resulting output into those jars over there.” She pointed to some jars that were glowing green.
“Really,” Murrimi continued, “My eyes are tuned to look at bioelectric light and not Helios or Apollo or whoever’s in the sky trying to blind everyone.”
Whi’ka just laughed out loud at that as Murrimi picked out the Twins names on her tablet-tome and then swiped them right off the tablet, and they both appeared right where her fingers pointed afterwards. The Twins looked utterly bewildered and it was clear they had been in the middle of some kind of experiment when she retrieved them because Mary still had an empty vial in her hand.
“What? Where are we? What happened to our foxy lab?”
“The lab where we make the foxy things?”
It actually took them a few moments to realize that Whi’ka was there and they immediately turned their focus to her.
“The Fox Goddess! Praise her! Praise!” Mary exclaimed, while Andorra went with, “Fluff her tail, fluff, eeee fluff!”
Murrimi then snapped her fingers to get their attention while they were doting all over Whi’ka, and Andorra already had a brush out.
“Remember me?” she asked.
“Umm.. maybe? Vaguely… Wait. You are a fox too!” Andorra now faced Murrimi with brush raised. “Can I brush your tail too?”
“They don’t remember?” Murrimi asked Whi’ka, glancing over at her.
“I may have had to tweak with their memory a little,” Whi’ka responded, “To keep them doing, you know… Science.”
Murrimi’s ears laid back for a moment, and she nodded.
“I suppose that’s understandable, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to remind them now.”
Whi’ka nodded in agreement. Murrimi then faced the twins, and opened her mouth with a soft popping sound. A poof of spores came out, and they both yipped loudly and tried to hold their breath, but it was a little too late to stop the remembering from happening…
[Flashback scene lol]
The previous encounter played back in their minds; that of the Twins, still human at this time, setting up a small lab on the edge of the fairy forest, where it shared a border with the moo farm. They had heard things about the fairy forest, most of which was true, that people got lost in their forever and no one could find them because the forest had changed them. But they had believed science would be better than that, and that if they had their cell phones, they could be tracked and found, and as for them, they could investigate all of the properties of the forest and see what in it would be useful for their own scientific purposes.
What they did not know was that this region of the forest was the domain of the fox-bees. And the queen of the hive, Murribee, was absolutely intrigued by the pure guts that Mary and Andorra had to set up any kind of scientific laboratory in her forest. Without even asking, no less. Besides, Murrimi would have let them set up a laboratory at her castle and even helped mix a little bit of magic into their spells. So she approached the two, sitting in a tree nearby. As a queen fox-bee she was a full 10 inches worth of bee and she decided to make her presence known by beating her wings quickly and it created a loud buzzing sound. Mary and Andorra started to panic, thinking they had disturbed a bees nest and went absolutely still when they saw Murribee.
“Its… a bee that is also a fox…” Andorra whispered to Mary, “We must try to get a sample of that. I think we’re going to have to stun that one.”
“Yeah. Definitely.” Mary nodded slowly, and she pulled out a gun that looked more like a ray gun, or a transformation gun.”
But Murribee was already ready for such a thing, a tendril emerging from the nest above her to tug on the gun and by surprise, claim it as its own.
“Now that is no way to greet anyone, let alone a member of the Court right above your heads.” The twins had to look up, way up, carefully, to notice that 46 feet above their heads, was a nest, fox-bee nest as far as the eye could see in the direction of the forest.
“So… what are you all doing?” Murribee continued.
“Science!” The two answered, both at once.
“Well, I mean, what kind of science?” Murribee asked.
“Well, the kind we want to do here,” Mary answered, “We want to know what makes this place tick, and go.”
“Even better if we can use it for transformation purposes,” Andorra spoke up,
Murribee giggled softly at this.
“People who come into this forest get lost forever,” she explained, “And most of the people who do, wanted to. Some of them come in here not knowing they wanted to get lost in here, but they all find out soon enough. How about you two, did you both come here, and set up a laboratory, expecting to leave?”
“Of course!” Andorra chimed in, “Eventually we want to go home and bring the science we discover here, back! We can use it in our thesis and then use it for all sorts of other things.”
“You two don’t seem to know what you want to do,” Murribee responded, “But you sure do want to do it! You could do it at Murrimi’s castle if you want, and we will teach both of you about magick, and most of all, how magick is just another science, waiting to be explored and used, and combined, into something called magitech. You see, we’re a bit of a technomancer ourselves.”
Mary and Andorra both agreed, and Andorra said, “That sounds like fun, we will bring back so much new science to the world! Imagine what we’ll be able to make, who we’ll be able to change, and into what…”
But Murribee shook her head.
“Well that’s the one thing there,” she explained, “Once you two make that call, then you can’t just leave, you’ll live here in the forest, become part of it.”
Now Mary shook her head.
“Uh uh, no deal on that, there really isn’t much point to doing it if we can’t share it with our world, to change ourselves, and others!”
“Ahh, I see the misunderstanding here,” Murribee sighed softly, “You two thought you could just enter our forest, set up a lab, and then just leave, even though the sign at the entrance says ‘Abandon thyself all those who enter here’ and the entrance is lined with mushrooms. You two don’t pick up on clues easily.”
Andorra smirked somewhat smugly.
“That’s because we’re going to use science to get out!” she exclaimed triumphantly, holding up her cell phone, “See? GPS!”
“You’re going to find that GPS is going to read differently here,” Murribee started to chuckle.
Andorra looked at it, turning around in a circle. The phone never changed the heading on the compass, instead reading at exactly 4.669201609 degrees north.
“Aww crap…” Mary observed that too, “Umm, we need to try to get out of here.” Andorra nodded and they abandoned the forest lab they were making in favor of their lab coats.
“Good luck, you two,” Murribee said with a little giggle, before adding ominously, “See you soon.” She closed her eyes to speak to her hive.
[Get them. But don’t sting them too much. I want to see what they turn into. I want to see their very Nature].
The hive buzzed above the two and soon, smaller foxbee drones were giving chase. The Twins got stung several times as they tried to swat the fox-bees away, but noticed that the stings were not hurting, instead they were making the two feel euphoric. They slowed down to a stop, looking around at the forest. They started to notice that honey ran down the trunks of the trees around here, and maybe they should have taken that as a clue as to what was above them. They stopped receiving stings as all of the drones that had stung them gathered around Murribee, and she gathered her drones into a circle to give them cuddles.
“You all did great, my dear ones,” she praised them, then went over to the Twins and opened her mouth, and much like Murrimi could, released spores onto Mary and Andorra who were just laying on the ground, wriggling in their own pleasure. And to that, she whispered a spell.
“Reveal unto me, your innermost selves.”
Mary and Andorra’s first sensations were the tingling. If there was pain in what was to take place, the euphoria from the fox-bee stings were masking it entirely. The first thing that they noticed was soft, fluffy fox fur forming on their body and in particular their faces, taking on the color and pattern of red foxes. Their nose and mouth started to extend and reform as their heads started to slope a bit, and their ears disappeared even as new fox ears formed on their heads. Other vulpine changes took place, they could see their hands becoming more paw-like but still retaining full dexterity, but their feet became full fox feet, the fur growing around it even as the shift to paws took place.
“What… what’s happening to us?” Andorra asked, but Murribee gave no answer, just smiled and watched with her smaller drones. Finally, came the tail, both of them growing to become unusually large and fluffy, enough so that the tips could reach their noses.
Mary squealed.
“What are we becoming?” she asked as she pawed all over herself, “Wait… I am soft… and fluffy…” she said as she swung her own tail around to feel it. They were too euphoric to stand up yet, but they could now explore their new bodies. Andorra immediately fell in love with her tail.
“This is a fox tail. Did we become foxes?” she asked, cuddling it.
Murribee finished observing and flew over to them, landing on a mushroom.
“So this is your innermost selves. Foxes, both of you,” she then looked at her drones, “There’s going to be a mass differential to deal with. Bring them honey, and ask Marigold to have Cassie bring …” she paused and then continued, “She’ll know what to bring to compensate for a mass differential.”
[End flashback]
Upon remembering this, Mary and Andorra were enlightened.
“Now I remember!” Andorra piped up, before looking deeply saddened, “ You mean we weren’t always foxies?”
Murrimi shook her head.
“No,” she explained, “It means you were always foxes, just stuck in human bodies. Sometimes the Cycle makes mistakes, has errors, and sometimes those mistakes need to be fixed. As a goddess of Order, I correct them, and put things back right.”
She then looked over at Whi’ka who was smiling brightly enough to light the room, then back to Mary and Andorra.
“Which brings me right back to why I brought you here.”
Now the two looked worried. They briefly remembered their experiments with mushrooms and trying to make more foxes with them.
“Are we in trouble?” Andorra blurted out, “For… messing with the mushrooms?”
Mary got wide eyes and a look of panic on her face, but Murrimi shook her head.
“Nope,” she reassured the Twins, “Not one bit, in fact that’s exactly what I wanted you two to do when I let you two go back as foxes. But you didn’t go far enough!”
Now Whi’ka popped up.
“So far you two have only been doing a decent job at putting more foxes into the world,” Whi’ka explained, “But we want to go ‘next level’ with it.”
“So,” Murrimi nodded and continued, “The last time you made fox transformation fungus, the vector pretty much stopped at one transformation. There wasn’t a sufficient spreading mechanism. Don’t you two think that was a major oversight?”
The Twins hung their heads at that.
“Yeah,” Mary responded, “But we just wanted to create more foxes.”
“Well,” Murrimi shook her head then, “What I wanted was more foxes too, but I wanted them to spread, by being part mushroom and spreading spores. And I thought, assumed really, that you two had the instinct to make sure it spread.”
“So.. are we in trouble for that?” Andorra asked, “We didn’t make enough foxes, or enough mushrooms?”
Murrimi sighed again, and shook her head again.
“Nope, not in trouble at all,” she poured more reassurance into her tone. “But we’re going to do it right this time! I want you two to make mushroom foxes. One that produces spores that turn others into mushroom foxes. Both me and Whi’ka benefit from this arrangement, greatly. You want to fill the world with foxes, well here’s your chance. Will you accept this mission?”
Mary nodded in agreement, but Andorra raised a paw.
“I agree on one condition, that we can make mushroom-fox*taurs*!” She placed emphasis on the “taurs” part of her sentence.
“Sure,” Murrimi nodded at this request, “I’ve been a mushroom foxtaur before, and I mean, we’re kind of cute.”
Whi’ka giggled at that.
“I am so surprised how much a mushroom goddess is into foxes,” she teased, and Murrimi turned to her and showed her the other side of the cup she was drinking from, which had a picture of a fox in a colony of mushrooms, surrounded by butterflies, and had the text on it “I just freaking love foxes, ok”.
“Yeah. Mushrooms and foxes have been pretty closely associated, if you think about it. I am relatively certain that has something to do with me… anyways.”
Mary and Andorra then nodded together.
“Ok. We’re in!” They agreed, and then they started to dance with each other in a circle, and started singing “We’re going to do it this time! We’re going to foxify the world!”
Murrimi smiled as she looked into Whi’ka’s eyes.
“I really like where this is going!” She said, before looking at the Twins, “Are you ready to go and get our fox on?”
“Yes, your… your highnesses, your.. Holinesses? All of that!” they both said in unison,
Murrimi paused for a moment, then looked at the pair.
“Just.. don’t make it be so permanent right away, make it take,” she paused, “A week or so, so that people have a way back if it’s not what they really want.”
The Twins nodded, but Andorra registered the slightest objection.
“Alright, if you’re sure that’s what you want.”
“Yes,” Murrimi nodded again, adding, “The principle of consent must be preserved in all of this, even when it might be… inconvenient.”
She then pointed to the both of them, and then back on the tomelet, clicking on their names and returning them right where they were before that.
“Welp, I better prep the paperwork for this, you want to come along for the ride? I’ve got good stuff to drink.”
Whi’ka nodded.
“Sure, and at your place I can still technically say I’m working on stuff! I sure hope they get it right this time,” Whi’ka looked at where the Twins had been.
Murrimi just giggled at that.
“Don’t worry about that, they’ve already succeeded.”
“But, how?” Whi’ka blurted out, “They haven’t even started yet!”
“Well, you see,” Murrimi smirked, “The spores they have been breathing…”
Whi’ka then interrupted.
“Did you really?” she asked, already kind of knowing what Murrimi was going to say next.
“I did,” Murrimi confirmed, “They’ll be mushroom foxtaurs within the hour. Can’t wait to see the looks on their faces!”
As Murrimi’s castle started to phase back to the Fairy Forest, Whi’ka just giggled.
“You tricksy mushroom you.”