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Katarina Claes had, for as long as she could remember, been considered a master of illusions. It wasn’t those cheap magic tricks from her old world, but actual illusions that used magic.
Sometimes, her illusions were so good that she even tricked herself. So many times had she not realized she had made an illusion of cake, only to fall off her bed or chair when she went to grab it.
She was supposed to keep her Kitsune heritage secret. That was one of the reasons she usually covered her ears and tails in a strong illusion.
Katarina was not entirely sure why she had been born a Kitsune, especially after the Claes’s hadn’t had one in the family for hundreds of years. She liked the fox form she had (Mary always gave the best ear scratches), but it sometimes was too tiring to hide her true self from everyone.
(Granted, she still believed that that true self was a villainess, but the Kitsune was a layer over that.)
She was glad when Maria discovered that she was a Kitsune, even if Maria didn’t understand everything at the time.
(Keith had pulled her away to yell at her for being careless. It wasn’t like she knew that light magic could see through Kitsune illusions!)
The illusions Katarina was trying to master at the moment were that of hiding herself from view. If she could do that, she could avoid any doom flag!
(She could also avoid Mother when she wanted to lecture her, but that was simply a secondary benefit.)
She had brought Mary with her, simply because she was the most readily available.
Practice was going better than expected.
Most Kitsune had to have a good reason to learn certain illusion types. The reason Katarina could create food illusions, with smell and all, was because she wanted sweets almost all the time. This time, she wanted to protect herself from doom flags, so her Kitsune magic was allowing her to learn an upgraded form of concealing magic.
It was useful for other things too, but Katarina wasn’t thinking of those possibilities at the moment.
She had managed to mostly disappear from view. It seemed like only her smile and eyes were showing. Wait, was she turning into the Cheshire Cat?
“How is it now, Mary?” Katarina asked, adjusting how she fitted the illusion around herself slightly.
“Well, you’ve disappeared, Lady Katarina,” Mary said slowly. “However...”
“What?” Katarina asked, tilting her head.
“Your tails,” Mary whispered.
Katarina blinked. “What do you me-“ Katarina stopped. “Oh.”
The illusion on her tails had come off. While the rest of her was hidden, her tails were in full view.
“Whoops,” Katarina laughed nervously before covering her tails in the usual concealment illusion. “How’s that?”
“Excellent, Lady Katarina!” Mary exclaimed.
“Haha! I’d like to see you come at me now, Doom Flags!” Katarina yelled at the sky.
“Doom Flags?” Mary asked. Katarina shut up and slunk away.
“Lady Katarina? Where did you go?”