Galaxy, winged fox and campfire on stomach

The fox came down again last night, just as Mother Agnes said it would once the stars swung over the cold pasture. I had the sage bundles laid ready on the flat stones by the brazier, as she showed me, and I bound the lavender with the red thread you sent at Michaelmas. When the smoke rose, the fox settled into it like a hen on eggs, its wings folded wide as the cloister roof, and the sky above us was so thick with dust from the Milky Way that I could not find the Plough.

Brother Tobias says the creature is a sin left over from the old tithe barns, a thing the first abbots bargained down into the hills. I do not think it is a sin. It watched me the way a clever dog watches a child with a bone, and when I coughed in the smoke it lowered its muzzle and breathed out, and the whole fire leaned toward it, pale and obedient.

Last night it did not fly off as usual. It set one foot on the top stone, looked up at the ringed planet we call the Dish, and then back at me, and I understood it wanted the thread. I gave it. It took the lavender in its teeth and carried it into the feathers, which opened one by one until the smoke was nothing but sparks.

I have not told Agnes yet. Tonight I will go out with the rest of the sage and see whether it comes back for the bones of this letter.

Your loving sister, Hild