The Girl and The Fox

Death.

That is the thing, or should I say person, almost all people fear greatly. No one is willing to go with him, but eventually, everyone has to. It is their destiny.

Almost all pictures you try and get of Death, from old Greek myth books to ludicrous, inaccurate TV shows, are an ugly, battered being. Not even a being. Nobody actually knows what he looks like, apart from Death himself, the feared, hooded figure. And, of course, the other gods around him.

Death flicked one of his long, boney fingers, and not even within a millisecond a humble, hazy hologram of a young girl with a knee length, blue dress in the woods appeared. A girl with long, dark, inky hair flowing around her tight shoulders, and a small, round face.

Can you guess who it is? I'm sure you can, and if you insist you can't, think again.

Death peeled back his thick, shadowy hood, revealing a clump of inky, black hair matching the girl's like her long, lost twin. His sharp eyes fiercely shot around the screen like a tiger pouncing on it's prey, taking in every movement of the autumn trees swaying along to the wind's music.

He jolted his angular face towards the floor, stained from the amount of time he had spent pacing around.

"No. NO! Why is she going into those infested woods?" The secretive, attractive boy yelled at the top of his deep voice.

"Why yell, when there's nothing you can do about it, brother?" Another boy questioned the dark silhouette after materialising. "She is, after all, only 12. She'll do the damage she has been sent to do, one way or another."

Death stared at the boy in fury, drinking up all his features as if he was a parched dog at an oasis. Most were the same to his, apart from his blonde, almost golden hair and blue dazzling eyes, that clashed with Death's grey, not even silver, pupils. On the inside, Hypnos was the complete opposite of Death, just like a cat and dog, or a fish and a bird. His personality was jollier and more mischievous. Death's was moody, serious and secretive, but they had one thing at most in common. They could both make people fall into a deep sleep, but in drastically different ways. Hypnos makes people dream, making them go into a short nap or a night long sleep, but Death would make them fall to sleep into an eternal slumber. He would take them, and never return them back to their rightful place, even when all the dead souls call and cry to be reunited with their long mouldy bodies.

Apart from one.

He had returned Isabella more than once. More than twice. The question is why? He evidently didn't feel sorry for her, the way he was raging out. He just loves his miserable life, tuning out the dead. After all, that was his specialty.

"If she doesn't succeed this time, Hyp, I am not sending her down again. If she can't settle the disturbance between those two idiotic types of shapeshifters, then I, myself, will personally go down and teach them a lesson. I'll wipe them clean off the planet!" Death cast a glance at his kind brother, who's face was pulled like he had eaten a sour sweet.

"H..how many times has it been? Three?" The fair haired boy unsurely responded. "Surely you should give her a few more chances. It is only the third try."

"Yes. Two times unsuccessful. She must achieve her goal, or I will have to crumble my own creations," The million year old child blurted out. More sombre this time. "Maybe if she's close, she can have her memories back," the dark god added.

Isabella had been lucky to be reincarnated three times now. Many suffering souls would wish for an opportunity like that to come to them, but try changing the mind of Death. He always gets what he wants.

"First time a fox, then she turned against wolves, second a wolf and she turned against foxes. Both of your tries had backfired. What have you made the poor young lady now?" The pure haired teen curiously asked, now with a mischievous gleam in his eyes.

"Why don't you watch, and you'll see, Hyp, you will see. And I think, you will be rather surprised what family I have put her into this time," and that was the last word the scary giant pronounced, his dull, grey eyes rested upon the small but vivid hologram of the tall, pale faced girl, now surrounded by her own the animals that lay deep, down inside of her. Slowly awakening to the time she will need it most. To the time she must succeed!