#// Who wants to tell any of the gang that Kurama has a river spirit/dragon for a friend?

[adamnedmartyr]

At some point I will type this up more in a story format like with Kurama's about page, but until then, here is a summary of his backstory with my OC, @intheheartofariver :

The first time he met her, he was a very young kitsune who had been caught in a trap. She helped him despite that fact that he had bitten her when first she tried. As soon as he was free, he ran away and was puzzled when she didn't chase him. She only smiled and waved.

The second time, Yoko had found a dragon so terribly tangled up in a fisherman's net that there was no way it would manage to escape without assistance. He debated, but, for some reason he couldn't name, he chose to help free the creature––only after securing its agreement that it would do him no harm. [ A regular 'the lion and the mouse' scenario. ] After all, dragons are powerful beings. Perhaps it might be of some help to him later. "How different you look than last I saw you, little fox," the creature had rumbled once free, yet, before he could ask what it meant, off it flew.

The third time they met, he was wounded following a rather vicious exchange with a displeased relative of someone from whom he had stolen. He was cleaning the wound at the stream when a woman addressed him from… the river itself, asking if his wound was a bad one. He hadn't seen her there when he arrived and he had bared his teeth, ready to fight her too if she gave him cause. She only smiled and propped her arms on the bank. "So distrusting you are, little fox. Do you think still that I mean you harm?" That was the first time he realized that the distant memory of a creature who had once done a small kitsune a kindness was the same as the dragon to whom he had given aid… was the same as the woman who had pulled herself from the river itself to ask about his wound. They were all the same. A river spirit. Still, she smiled and then, slowly, she held out her hand, the water from the river––her river––following from the surface to her hand as she placed it over the wound. When she moved her hand away again, the wound was gone… and when next he looked up, to ask why she had helped him, she, too, was gone. He passed the river several more times, on occasion, over the centuries but he never saw her.

The fourth time, he was small again, though not the same as when first they had met, neither as the two times they met after. Centuries had passed, and he looked different. His name was different. Minamino Shuichi. He was ten and it was winter the next time he walked along that river––or, at least, what remained of it––and green eyes spotted someone sitting along the steep retaining wall containing the river, keeping it to its narrow flow. He knew her immediately. She looked exactly the same and not at all. She looked wilder in her appearance, now sporting modern clothes almost threadbare. How young she still looked and yet how worn, tired, eyes listlessly staring down at the murky and polluted water. The years and progress had not been kind. He cautiously approached, uncertain of her attitude now towards humans or her state of mind… but… he drew near to her and offered her his coat. He could tell Mother he lost it. The moment her eyes focused on him, she smiled. "How different you look than last I saw you, little fox… But then I suppose I look very different, too." She wouldn't take his coat, only shaking her head before she shakily stood and offered her hand to him… He took it and she walked him almost to his home before she stopped. "Be safe." He walked the rest of the way and only once he reached his door did he turn back to see her wave, and then to disappear.

Despite walking along the banks of the river several times over the years, he didn't see her again for over a decade, in fact. Not until he was running a successful and popular flower shop and thus had helped to spearhead a community project to beautify the banks of the Shibuya river with greenery. He had thought she faded away, her strength and health too far deteriorated by the pollution and neglect of her river… He had meant it as no more than a kindness to remember one who had been a strange constant, her and her river, over the years. "I had missed the trees. Thank you, little fox." He looked up from where he had been planting the last in a row of flowers and there she was, still pale and gaunt… but there. He asked if she wished to help, and she smiled and for the rest of the afternoon until the sky began to darken, they and those who had come with him, planted flowers along the retaining wall.