The Fox Spirit

There was once a little girl, who lived in unknown parts of Japan, quite some time ago. She liked black ants and origami. When she grew up, she encountered a fox spirit, who found her crawling on her elbows and knees on the forest floor, looking for black ants to show her origami to. The fox spirit looked just like an ordinary fox that you would see on the wayside of a mountain road in Hokkaido if you were lucky enough to meet one; however, the fox spirit, having been in existence for one thousand and nine hundred years, and understanding the ways in which the world works well enough to manipulate perceptions, had magic powers.

Amused by the strange girl who grew up to be a woman, the fox spirit picked her up magically and made her float a little in the air much like she was flying, before reorienting her and dropping her such that she landed on her feet.

"Woman," the fox spirit called to the woman who was once a girl, "you are not a fox, nor are you a lizard. Why are you crawling on the forest floor? Your elbows and knees are not made for weathering like this."

To which, the woman replied by taking out a piece of paper from her sleeve, and folding it into a fox-shaped origami.

At this, the fox spirit understood and sympathised with the woman for being too dim to even feel fearful of what had been made happen. So, the fox decided to grant her a single wish, optimistically hoping that the woman would wish to become a brighter person. This is despite knowing that if the woman were to do so, she would then scream at the top of her voice and run hysterically away from the fox spirit.

After several moments of deliberation, the woman took out a piece of paper, and replied by folding an origami effigy of herself. After showing to the fox spirit, she tore away the origami legs and attached two extra pairs of arms and hands. Carefully, she bent the six arms of the effigy and placed it palms-down on the ground, and mimicked the scuttling of an ant. The smile on her face was satisfied but unsettling to watch.

The fox spirit understood that this wish was made so that the woman could have six limbs and would resemble a giant human ant; and, such that she could manage the folding of three sets of origami at one time. Her smile sprung from how she imagined herself crawling across the forest floors with ants, and how she would be taking delight in everything she had to do.

Disappointed, but mostly sympathetic, the fox refused the woman of her wish. The fox spirit explained carefully, that the woman had requested for two wishes, technically - one, to remove the limbs; and, two, to bestow additional limbs. The fox spirit reminded her that she was only promised one wish.

Cunning was the fox who then suggested that she could be granted just one additional pair of arms, so that she could both look like an ant, and fold an extra set of origami at the same time. The fox spirit designed that with the additional pair of arms extended from the hips, the woman could still hide them under a large skirt when she had to go to the market to buy origami paper, and needed to look somewhat presentable.