"Rinley the Shrine Maiden!"
Once upon a time, there was an adorable little cutiepie born into the Yatskaya shrine family, whose parents saw that she was the smartest and prettiest and most cleverest Yatskaya there had ever been since back when Rinley was around, so they named her Rinley, too, and a good thing they did, because—
Hold on. Wait. Why didn't you tell me you were an American? Oh storms and arrows, no wonder you looked like you'd just been handed a crochet hook and a fish! Every little kid around here knows all about Rinley! Here, I'll tell you one of the good stories about him.
"Rinley Stops the Pirates!"
One day, a wicked pirate crew showed up in Big Lake. Their leader was none other than the grandson of James Hook himself, who'd gotten lost on his way to Bermuda. So they see the sleepy little village of Fortitude and they say to themselves, ohohoho, let's go plundering! So they dock their raggedy little boats by the pier and start plundering everything they can get their hands on; only, it takes them a while, because everyone knows anything worth doing can't be done quick, right? And they're used to pieces of eight and bitcoins and the like, not our good old-fashioned coin strings, so they're all confused and befuddled already.
Well, while all that is going on, Rinley's sleeping underneath an apple tree, with his bunnet pulled down over his face and his ears twitching in the breeze. Well, everybody knows that foxes' ears are—
Well, yeah, he was a tenko. I'm getting to that bit.
...you don't know what a tenko is? Well, they're the shop foxes, right? And Rinley's one because—
Okay, pause. We're hitting pause on this one. I've got to tell you another story first.
"Finley the Fox!"
Once upon a time, back when there wasn't even a sun in the sky and there weren't no Horizon either, there was—
Nope. I'm hitting pause on this one, too. Because otherwise you're just going to be staring at me the whole time not understanding any of the proper historical context, which is vital! Vital, I say!
"How the Humans were Saved by the Cleverness of Foxes!"
Once upon a time there was no sun in the sky, and the world was a revel around the ankles of the jotun. It was a youkai world where there was no such thing as a human! But all of us, all of them, rather, they knew that there was something missing. Imagine a world where you just, you knew that there was something that you were supposed to use socks for, but nobody had any feet! That's what it's like, being a youkai in a world without humans. But they prayed to the gods of dream and nightmare, and got very naughtily sloshed, and tried to keep their spooking powers honed without knowing exactly who they were supposed to be spooking, and kept out from underfoot the jotun, which wasn't very hard, because you would have to make a house right underneath one of their feet and live there for years on years before they crushed you, and it'd really be your fault, wouldn't it? It would. So there.
Then humans showed up! They were led by Commodore Matvei Grushavych, who had everyone build a town here and called it Town. That was just the sort of person the Commodore was! His boat was named Boaty and his dog was named Doggy. But Town sprang up, and all the youkai rejoiced when they found out what humans were, because here were the feet for the socks they'd had all this time, only when I say socks I mean spooking, with their long necks and their illusions and their sharp teeth and their coming to life all of a sudden. What a great time we had then! But the jotun didn't like them, seeing as they were allergic to crosses and the name of Christ, and didn't much care for iron and fire, and it's not like the youkai really liked iron or fire either, but there was a right proper back-and-forth all the same! Jotun would come and squish the churches, only, they were so slow, they'd come back a little while later and there'd be the church sprung back up, and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the folks they'd squished, all praying there to Christ! It was like trying to shovel snow during a blizzard!
Still, they might have done it, except there was this fantastic gal by the name of Elizaveta, and I'm about to tell you the truest true story about Elizaveta, so clean out your ears and listen up! The foxes of Town, they really liked having humans around! Humans were the best, so fun to tease and kiss and spook and watch! But they knew that, if there was a real proper war between the jotun and humans, humans would get flattened. Like an empty soda can someone crushes against their forehead! Boom, crush, crash. So they put their heads together and tried to figure out a special way to save all of Town. And it just so happened that there was a wonderful seamstress in Town by the name of Elizaveta, who could sew up a storm, who could stitch the afternoon and the evening together, who even sewed the sun up in the sky! Well, a seamstress like that, she might be worth saving all of humanity for.
So the foxes sent one of their smartest and most clever princesses over to meet with one of the swan people. Back in those days the swan people were, whoooooo! Prettier than pretty. You saw one of them, you'd forget what you were saying or what you'd been meaning to say or what day it was. Once, a tanuki saw a swan person sitting in her bathtub and she forgot which way was up and which way was down and she flew right off into the sky, pa-ching! So the fox princess, she knew she had to have a plan, otherwise she'd catch sight of the swan prince and that'd be it, whoosh, all her cunning plans dribbling out her ears while she went "wow....... swan pretty........."
So she tied a blindfold round her eyes and brushed her bangs down over the blindfold just in case and then she let her nose lead her until she found the swan prince by the shores of Big Lake, nibbling on watercress sandwiches. He smelled like clean soap and mint and aftershave! And the fox princess said, oh, Mister Swan Prince, I've heard that there's the bestest best seamstress in all the worlds who happens to live down in Town, and if you asked her, she'd like to be able to make you a swan-sized shirt that's just the proper style!
And everything unfolded from there. The swan prince happened to poke his long neck into Elizaveta's drawing-room, and she was so sensible and married besides that she didn't lose her head when he showed up, and he looked at the pair of pants she'd been sewing and said that she, she alone was worthy in all the worlds. Worthy to make him a shirt, that is, ha! And once the jotun heard that one of the swan people had approved of Elizaveta and her pants, well, that was the end of that! They let humans be, and diminished, and became lesser so that humans could be all the more--
All because a clever fox pointed a swan prince at Elizaveta the seamstress!
THE END!
Okay, now that we're done with that, let's talk about...
"Finley the Fox!"
Once upon a time, back when there wasn't even a sun in the sky and there weren't no Horizon either, there was a handsome fox goes by the name of Finley. He was pretty and magic and didn't have the sense of a piece of toast. He was always walking into pits and getting his ears pinched by little kids and going all nuts over fried tofu, but it was okay, because he was super pretty. Like, just so pretty! The prettiest.
One day, it's a super foggy day, and Finley's walking about, and it's so thick that he can't even see where he's putting his feet, but that's okay, he says to himself, because if I step in something I shouldn't, I'll just hop back out and be fine. So he meanders around looking for something nice to eat, only when the sun comes out and the fog melts, he realizes that he's wandered right out of town and he's been standing on the waves of Big Lake this whole time, only without the fog to keep him from realizing that he's standing on it, he falls right in, and he starts to panic, because he can't swim! I mean, what fox would ever need to swim, am I right?
So that would have been the end of Finley, and the water would have swallowed him up and he'd be stuck down on the bottom of the lake with all the witches, only the
Hiryuu happened to be sailing by, and the captain of the
Hiryuu saw Finley flailing and getting his sleeves all wet and she dived right in smooth as a stone and scooped him up, only by that time he'd been half-drowned, and only that stopped him from flailing about so much that he would have drowned them both! So she hauls herself up back onto the
Hiryuu and she realizes Finley's got half the lake in his lungs, so she starts kissing the breath back into him, on account of Finley being breathtakingly pretty. And she manages to replace the lake water in his lungs with air, and wraps her coat around him, and then scolded him for an hour and fifteen minutes for being fool enough to end up in the middle of the lake without knowing how to swim.
And Finley, who'd never had anyone scold him before, seeing as he was too pretty for that sort of thing, asked her out on a tea-date on the spot once she stopped to catch her breath, with his tail wagging and his ears all perky like this! He had it bad, Rinley did. And to be close to Fortitude and its docks, close enough that he'd always know when the
Hiryuu was coming in from all the worlds beyond Big Lake, and so have a tofu stir fry ready and hot and waiting for his captain, he moved into this old Jotun building up on Maple Hill.
And ever since, we Yatskaya, the children of Finley the Fox and Captain Tomiko Yatskaya, we've had something of the fox to us! Nowadays, it's not so much-- I'm the first one in a great big while to get the ears and the tail. Whoops, spoilers! But there's still the stone foxes out front of the shrine reminding us about Finley, and the scenes on the sliding doors, and of course, the statue of Rinley down at the foot of the hill.
THE END!
Which brings us back to...
"Rinley Stops the Pirates, Unpause!"
So Rinley's asleep under the apple tree with his ears all perked up and his tail tucked into his belt. He's been up to no good, Rinley has, and he's got the apple juices smeared all over his chin. And what with the red ears, and the smell of apples, and his red shirt, when a couple of short-sighted pirates came up, they mistook him for an apple! So they tossed him in a bucket with a bunch of other apples and took him back to the ships. So when Rinley wakes up, he's alone on a pirate ship— really, more of a pirate canoe, the young captain being in a bit of an economic downturn at the moment at hand— and there's him with nothing to do and an itch to be that most terrible thing of all: helpful!
He sees that the sails of the pirate ships are all raggedy and unraveley, and Rinley says to himself: well, that just won't do! So he takes out his needle and thread and starts sewing them back together. The only thing is, though, Rinley got too excited about being helpful, and he stopped noticing where one sail ended and another began.
So when the pirates come back with their ill-gotten booty, they find Rinley there rocking on his heels with his hands on his hips, grinning at what a fine job he'd done, sewing those sails all back up. The young captain runs up, tearing at his hair, and asks Rinley: what have you done to my rusted sails? Rinley rolls his eyes and says, no need for language like that, it's a patch job at best, don't even need to thank me, I'm embarrassed about it really, just happened to have my needle and thread at hand and a bit of time to burn, you know how it goes. And the captain jumps up and down and swears by the Headmaster and the kaiju of the lake and all sorts of things, because Rinley's sewed all the ships' sails together, such that one crosswind's going to flip them all over like ninepins!
So the pirates start trying to pull all the stitches out while the captain shakes Rinley like a scarecrow, only, the thing is, they're Rinley's stitches, so you couldn't pull them out unless you knew just the right way to pull them! So eventually the captain has to admit defeat, and he has his pirates all give the booty back to the people of Fortitude, because he thinks Rinley's done this on purpose. Then he gets down on his knees and begs Rinley to pull those stitches back out!
And Rinley, he taps his nose and says, I know how it goes! You gotta do it yourself and all, don't want my measly old patch job holding up doing a proper fix-up job of it. Well, don't let it ever be said that Rinley Yatskaya stood between someone and doing something the right way, he says to the captain, and takes an old shoe-horn he had to hand and uses it to yank all the stitches back out at once. Only, the great whoosh of all those stitches coming out at once made the sails all fly away across the lake! Now, they happened to settle down on Little Island, and to this day, if you watch the clouds carefully, you can see the wild sails still blowing by, the great-grandchildren of all those sails Rinley set free that day!
Then the captain, he admitted defeat, and settled down in Fortitude with all his crew, leaving Rinley to scratch his head and wonder at the nonsense of the new neighbors.
THE END!
Okay. One more. Right back to the beginning!
"Rinley the Shrine Maiden!"
Where was I? Perfect little girl, parents named her Rinley, and of course that meant trouble, right? Because she wasn't more than eight years old than one day she wakes up and yawns and shuffles outside to the pump to splash water in her face, only she happens to shamble right past her big standing mirror as she's going by and she sees her ears twitch like this! Twitch, twitch!
Only, you know, she's a Yatskaya, this Rinley is, so of course I say to myself— spoilers, it's me! Surprise! I say to myself, oh, I guess I was dreaming about being a fox, because I'm imagining I've got those oh-so-fluffy fox ears! That's the sort of thing you can do at my house, you know. It's hard to tell, sometimes, when you're asleep and when you're awake and when you're just kinda... zoned out, y'know, and you've forgotten you're daydreaming about something and you just say to yourself, huh, guess I've always been Sailor Moon now. Except you're not, not really, because you were just dreaming about it!
I guess it took me three days to realize that, no, I actually did have the ears? Maybe longer. I think once the cats started licking them, and I curled up in a ball all giggles because it tickled, stop it, that's when I figured that I really did have them, I guess? The tail came later!
Anyway, that's when I knew my Destiny!
That's right! You're lucky enough to know someone with a capital D Destiny! Lucky you!
My Destiny...
Is to be the Rinleyest Rinley ever!
Think about it! It's been too quiet around here these days! If there isn't someone around who can sew pirate ships together without even thinking about it, who can catch the moon when the jotun accidentally knock it down, who can invent new condiments without even trying, we'll all fall asleep out of sheer boredom! It's gotta be, right? Why else would I get the name and the ears and the tail? It's Destiny! It's gotta be!
Only I want to go see the fireworks tonight down by the lake, which is hardly enough time at all to figure out how to set sail in this acorn. I may have to spend all week on this one! But it'll work, trust me, once I figure out where to attach the rudder.
It'll work, or my name isn't Rinley Yatskaya!
Hey, wanna be an official sidekick? I need someone to get kidnapped by pirates for me so I can rustle up a ransom out of autumn leaves, and none of the cats back home will cooperate with me on this one. C'moooooon! It comes with a weekly Adventure Allowance and everything! I promise, it'll be great!
And if you don't want to be my sidekick, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell...
I'll tell your crush you like her!
That's right!
Blackmail, the Rinley Yatskaya way~!
What do you mean, how do I know about that? A girl has her means! So anyway, you in, or what?
Oh, right! I almost forgot!
THE END!
(Or......... THE BEGINNING??)
