White fox

The Masked Fox, the One Who Listens to Walls

Temperament

He has the dark mask and ringed tail seen on no other fox, and an ear sharper still than his cousins'. A field fox hears the vole beneath the snow; this one hears what moves behind stone. He spends hours sitting before a wall, head tilting one way and then the other, and no one around him understands what he is listening to.

Handling Him

Do not hurry him while he listens. He does not obey orders; he answers silences. Be quiet, let him tilt his head, and wait. The day you have interrupted him too often, he will stop showing you what he hears.

Rewards

A raw egg, a mouse, a scrap of stolen cheese he will go bury somewhere else. He buries everything he is given and finds every cache weeks later. He forgets nothing that is his.

At the Table

Like his cousins who dive headfirst into the snow onto a vole they never saw, he gathers himself, leaps, and strikes the wall with his muzzle, right where the stone rings hollow. Behind it lies a cache, a passage, or something breathing. He never says which.