Another few days passed. Thorax's wings had managed to regrow to about half their original size, and if he shunted a lot more magic into them than usual, he could hover or even ascend. It likely also helped that there weren't any holes in them, which was a bit odd, and that they stopped hurting when moving the day before.

Speaking of magic, his had fully recovered. While transforming into something with similar size or mass was easy, the same could not be said of more general shapeshifting. To ensure he wasn't completely out of practice (though hunting did help, Vix wasn't that much smaller than him), he decided to take on the form of one of the burrowing animals he once caught and test himself to see how long he could hold it.

Turned out, looking like prey in the den of a fox family was not a good idea. Spot, who had a noticeable star pattern in her coat around one of her eyes, noticed him rather quickly with a hungry look in her eyes, and crouched down to pounce.

Thankfully for him, he noticed her before she committed to it, and squeaked out, "Uh, Spot, what are you doing?"

Having heard his voice often enough to easily recognize it, she relaxed from her crouch and looks around for him. She was a bit confused when she couldn't find him, but then noticed the prey animal looking straight at her, so she quickly leapt for it while it was presumably still in shock.

Thorax had a bit of a reputation in his hive. While he was, at heart, a pacifist, his whole conflict avoidance quickly branded him as a coward in the rough-and-tumble culture of changeling nymphhood, and when his default response to bullying or straight up getting attacked was to run or hide, he started thinking of himself that way, too.

Any progress that might have been made in growing away from that was tossed aside by bolting from the much larger fox. Undeterred and craving some fun, she gave chase.

Naturally, any young creature scampering about and apparently enjoying it would attract the interest of bored siblings, and once they realized what their sister was chasing, they joined in as well. The pack quickly herded him to a part of the snow caverns he found unfamiliar, which just added to his panic.

After what felt like an hour of fleeing, he finally took a wrong turn and hit a dead end. He turned around and pressed up as close to the wall as possible, as if it would help. Naturally, Hops went for a pounce, but Ears did too at the same time, resulting in them colliding with each other and falling onto Spot, leaving the three in a dazed heap.

That left the last of the siblings, Nosy, who carefully stalked up to him and then grabbed him before he could react. His claws kept Thorax in place, but weren't digging into the skin, and he went for a sniff, as he always did with something new. Apparently, the smell wasn't what he was expecting, and he let go and backed off a bit.

Now that he finally had enough room to think things through, the changeling finally realized what would've been the most sensible thing to do from the start: change back to his undisguised form. Once that was done, he held a hoof to his chest and tried to breathe slowly in the hopes of calming down his rapidly beating heart. It was quite successful, helped along by very obviously being the biggest thing in the tunnels again.

It also didn't hurt that Nosey walked up to him again and gave him a nuzzle. The pile of siblings also started shaking their heads to get rid of some cloudiness and looked at Thorax in confusion. After a few seconds, it dawned on them that the mouse they were chasing was just Thorax in disguise, and they bounced over to him again, doing their best to express that they wanted to do it all again.

"You-you want to do all that again?"

Spot gave him a nod of affirmation.

He tried to look more calm and collected. It didn't go very well. "Well, you have promise me that you'll let me go after you catch me. I don't want to be badly hurt while playing."

She nodded again, and let out a playful mewling sound to her siblings. It was almost odd how well she understood him, possibly better than Vix.

Still entirely convinced, but willing to give it a try, he walked past them to the crossroads and took on the rodent form once again. "Just give me head start to hide, and then we can get started."

The response was one shake of the head and four foxes crouching low to ground.

"Uh oh."

The (far more playful) hunt was on again.

Author's Note

Now that all the foxes have appeared as actual named characters, here's a short character sheet.

Vix: the mother of the family, stoic and protective. She doesn't know where her mate went, but he was presumably lost to unusually harsh cold of the spring.

Ears: has bigger ears than the rest of the little foxes. He's usually the first one to notice when Vix or Thorax return from outside, but not always.

Nosy: likes to sniff everything new. He's bolder in approaching things compared to his siblings, but only to get a good whiff of it. Otherwise, he's more cautious and patient.

Spot: has a star-shaped mark over one eye, as a reference to an experiment where Russian scientists tried domesticating wild foxes through selective breeding and that pattern emerged among the most docile of foxes. True to that, she was the fastest to warm up to Thorax, and is the best at understanding him.

Hops: loves to jump after things. She does it even when pouncing isn't the best way to catch something. Prefers the taste of bird over rodent.