Third Person POV
Both of them went completely still.
The words settled into the room the way old words settled, slowly, finding their weight and pressing down with it. Not quickly and not gently.
The kind of thing that lived in the stories people told to warn their children, in the myths that everyone had heard repeated since childhood and no one actually believed were out there walking around in white gowns in a Zanzia pack estate on a Thursday evening.
Ellisa's mouth opened.
She closed it. And opened it again.
"A nine-tailed fox," she said.
Helen nodded.
"Like. The nine-tailed fox." She stepped forward one step, like proximity would help her believe it. "The one from the old stories. The one that everyone said was supposed to be…"
"Not extinct," Helen said.
Alisa made a sound that was not quite any word.
