Research again. This time coming by just to drop off something I found while reading. From the Wikipedia page on kitsune:
![An excerpt from a Wikipedia entry that reads:
A widely known folk etymology of the word[12] relates to sleeping and returning home: in classical Japanese, kitsu-ne means 'come and sleep', and ki-tsune means 'always comes'.[13] This appears to be tied to a specific story; it is one of the oldest surviving kitsune tales,[12] and unlike most of those in which a kitsune takes the form of a human woman and marries men, this one does not end tragically.[9][13] From Hamel's translation:[12]
Ono, an inhabitant of Mino (says an ancient Japanese legend of A.D. 545), spent the seasons longing for his ideal of female beauty. He met her one evening on a vast moor and married her. Simultaneously with the birth of their son, Ono's dog was delivered of a pup which as it grew up became more and more hostile to the lady of the moors. She begged her husband to kill it, but he refused. At last one day the dog attacked her so furiously that she lost courage, resumed vulpine shape, leaped over a fence and fled.
"You may be a fox," Ono called after her, "but you are the mother of my son and I will always love you. Come back when you please; you will always be welcome."
So every evening she stole back and slept in his arms.](https://hopezane.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/image.png)
“Come back when you please; you will always be welcome,” is so specifically lovely. I hope you’re all well, wherever you are.
A happy story
At first I was like “well, it makes it less nice that he only married her because she was beautiful” but then I reread it and realized it says he spent the seasons longing for his ideal of female beauty… meaning that maybe his ideal of female beauty is literally meeting a fox on the moor and being like “yeah, that’s the one I want”…