"My head aches..." I muttered inaudibly underneath my shallow breath, a migraine embedded deep within my skull.

A pang of realization shot through my chest, causing me to twitch my eyebrow and jerk back at the suddenness.

"Wha-" I flared open my eyes as wide as I could, my brows somewhat aching due to that. "Did I just talk?!" I spoke aloud to no one in particular. Noticing my own reply to my own question, I added with an equally aghast reaction, "Yes! I did just talk!"

"Just how? How is it that I can talk-" I stayed my tongue as I noticed the feminine, crisp, yet firm, tone of my voice. "Uh- wow. I'm a female. Who'd have known?" I blinked in perplexion a bit as I rubbed my paws upon my throat, still somewhat fazed.

I brought my frontal legs together, viewing them with a skeptical, yet dumbfounded stare, my jaw agape somewhat. My gawk morphing into a more... malign sort of smile, I chuckled softly.

"Movement..." I flourished my paws at the empty air before my eyes, my paws melding into blurs. "This is so new to me!"

Once more, I perused through my newly-bestowed locomotion. I arched my eyebrow in mild suspicion as I heard something behind me scrape the ground, the harsh, coarse sound of stone dragging across stone piquing my hearing.

I craned my head back, my eyes still kindled with the fervency of life. There, I spotted it--my tail! Er, tails, as there were four of them. Yeah, yeah; peculiar as they were, I was proud of them! Or at least, I'm proud of them now that I've seen them. Yup. Being a statue isn't so pleasant.

Still, I smiled at my tails as they waved and danced around the air, seemingly forming an entrancing sequence of swerves and motions.
"My tails... They look so fluffy..." I casted my glance to the floor, tilting my neck downwards as I sighed out drearily.

"Too bad they're made out of stone." I sighed in defeat as I lightly tapped my paws against them, feeling nothing but cold, unfeeling stone.

'Life? Is this what the living folk experience? All these sensations? This vivace feeling knowing that one breathes and walk around the earth? This is such sanctity...'

As if the incarnation of life itself donned the form of a gale, an alleviating gust of wind bore through the shrine, enveloping me in its embrace.

But if I live, and as all living things adhere to, I too shall perish inevitably... My smile was sundered with a cascade of sorrowful emotions, the menagerie of fear and the concept of death boring into me like weaves.

Suddenly, a rather painful bunch of memories from my recollection embedded themselves into my mind; the memories of the sobbing, distraught ponies who have come to this very temple long ago to mourn and pray that their deceased loved ones would ascend to a good place in the afterlife.

Their faces... After all these decades, I could still remember them vividly, I could see many... I could see the sheer grief in their eyes when they came here. Is this 'death' so awful? Through years of seeing mourning living folk, I am thinking so.

A stray tear was plucked out of my eyes by a wayward wind, the drop splattering into the ground.

My chest began to contract and expand rapidly, heavy gasps of air went through and out my mouth. I cracked an intrigued smile at this. "Intriguing... is this what those living folk call 'hyperventilation'? I don't see anything 'hyper' about it at all! In fact, I'm feeling quite dreadful about this feeling."

I calmed myself--or at least attempted to as I clutched my chest with my front, right paw. I was somewhat jarred as I felt a cold, unfeeling surface of stone from my chest.

"No. I refuse." I sternly composed myself, my eyes exuding a steeled resolve. "Simply, I won't die. After all, I am a statue. I... I can live indefinitely, right? As long as I don't shatter... I should be able to."

I closed my eyes, delving into deep thought.

Inconceivable- is this what the living folk have to deal with everyday? Sheesh. Avoiding dying seems like such a burden; I'm just supposed to be just a mere sculpture of a fox! A cute one at that!

"Ack." I clutched my paws upon my head. "First thing I'm doing is nearly collapsing into a sobbing heap, and then the next thing I do is boast on how cute I am!" I sighed out in frustration--nonetheless I felt an inner, narcissistic urge within me. "Well, I am cute, after all."

I frantically shook my head, trying to dispel the cascade of confusion that has roosted deep within my addled head.

B- but. Right now, I'm nothing alike an inanimate object that I was once was. My lungs extracts in the air through my nostrils, and promptly exudes them out.

And what's this? I felt my chest a bit more finely and intently, noticing a rhythmic thumping. A heartbeat? Aye--I've heard this sort of thing from the living folk. A heartbeat; yes, the heart is the one that gives us the blood that is the lifeblood of our... life.

Suddenly, I noticed three spherical orbs of faint, purple light around me. I jerked back as I stared at them with uncertainty, my eyebrow arched as my mouth was scrunched.

"Um?" I uttered out as I peered into the sphere of light beside me to the right. It was ghastly, seemingly gaseous and it continually expelled faint, lingering embers from its mass. It was strangely translucent; I could see through it somewhat, though, everything behind it appeared as purple thanks to its tint.

I tilted my head at it, a bit confused. Bringing up my paw, I prodded it with a light tap. As my paw entered its strangely warm, haunting emanation, it dispersed into a multitude of sparks and cinder.

Obviously startled by this, as if my widened eyes and open jaw weren't enough of an indication, I frantically staggered back in a dazed stupor. As I halted, I noticed that the same orb simply rematerialized back into reality, seemingly unaffected.

"How... peculiar." I arched my eyebrow at the orb.

I moved around a bit, the trio of orbs following my movement, gliding like phantasm through the air. Worryingly, I accelerated my pace, yet, the orbs did not show a sign of relent as they simply adjusted their speed accordingly to keep themselves close to me.

Panicky, I began sprinting into a circle, in a blind endeavor that I might loosen them up, or perhaps something else. Sweat profusely trickled from my body as I ran, dizziness somewhat getting to me.

Wheezing, I stopped, the orbs circumjacent to me stopping accordingly as well, simply hovering beside me. Softly, I smiled a bit. "Hey... That was a bit... fun."

A smile etching up to my cold, petrified skin of my cheeks, I spun around wildly once more.

The wafts and zephyrs grazing past me as I circled aimlessly in a speeding blur, I exclaimed to myself, "I don't give a damn what just happened! This feels too amazing!" The words echoed throughout the halls of this decrepit shrine, my own voice seemingly resonating like a bell.

I stilled myself, my momentum still rather unwieldy, my legs pushed against the ground as I braked myself, kicking up a few dirt and specks of stone. "Now that I'm alive... what do I do?"

I glanced around, my cautious head turning left to right, my eyes furrowed as my vision was keened and narrowed. The frailty of this shrine was apparent--shattered panes of stone slabs of the flooring; broken over pillars; and layers among layers of moss mingling with ivy plagued much of the structure of this shrine.

Streaks of light peered through the breaches apparent within the canopy, an unusual amount of flora clustering where the rays strike the ground.

It has stricken me with a solemn feeling, actually.

"Pity," I muttered to myself. "I'm all alone."

How queer; me, one who had endured through a whole century of solitude, is just now being troubled by the lack of another's presence. Though, this just might be an effect of being actually alive.

The derelict halls, their paths narrowed even further due to rubble layering in the middle of their stretch, were stricken with a welling darkness. This blanket of shadows seemed to contort and grow gradually more pallid, becoming more abysmal by the second; though, I'm pretty certain that this is just an aspect of my unsteady vision.

The pillars across the empty shrine seemed to be phantasms of my mind as they were too far deep and submerged in a mantle of darkness eclipsed by the canopy above.

I tilted my head upward, noticing the vines and strands of flora suspending form the many breaches dotting through the dusty, withered ceiling. It was quite depressing to look at, really. Perhaps a fresher breath of air is entailed?

I began stepping away onto the staircases, rather jagged and nigh being reduced to rubble this staircase was, making my way onto the outskirt of this shrine.

To put it plainly, it was nice outdoors. The countless trees of the verdure, the frequent intervals of heavy, natural breezes, and of course the hymns of the birds were... dissonant, at best, but nonetheless, were all nice.

I tilted my head upwards one more time, marveling at the orange hue of the evening skies. The sun was stilled amidst the various blotting clouds, its radiance towering over anything else within the sky.

Ah... The sun. I admired it when I was inanimate, and I still do so as a living thing. It's just so... grossly incandescent. Returning my head down, leveling it once more towards the forest before me, with a sigh of slight melancholy, I asked myself, "I'd be lost, dare I go into those woods. Yet, if I remain here, I'll probably get bored fairly soon."

Suddenly, within the corner of my view, I caught a wayward rustle among the bushes, catching my attention right away. I cocked my head towards the disturbance, stanced in a prowling posture, my head craned down with my legs tensed up.

"Of course... I'm in a shrine in the middle of nowhere inhabited by potentially a myriad of predatory hunters." I questioned myself a bit, arching my eyebrow ponderously. "Wait. But I'm a statue. Would animals still hunt me, even?"

Breaking out of my self-imposed trance as another abrupt rustling from the same bush caused me to snap back into attention, I became much more tense as I came to realize something; I have literally no experience in combat.

"Oh. This is just going to end up great for me, huh?" I deadpanned to myself.

Suddenly, emerging out of the bushes, a silhouette obscured by the leafy canopies from the trees emerged.

Instinctively, I yelped out in despair as I scanned my adjacent space for whatever could be useful, "Gah! Retract back to whatever crevice you came from, detestable vermin!" Picking up a stone that was relatively nearby, I lobbed it at the ominous figure.

The stone simply struck the ground several feet off from my intended target, the figure pausing abruptly as it simply gawked at the rock that rebounded off the ground and into a nearby bush.

"Crap," I cursed out in an exasperated voice.

The figure approached me, emerging out of the addling darkness of the forest, the rays of evening sunlight revealing his posture a bit more finely in contrast to the dark. It was a pony, no less, a being that I've seen countless times during my times as inanimate. Recently, and by that I mean centuries, I've not seen a single one of them; this is quite nostalgic

As it confronted me, it simply gawked at me in uncertainty, completely rendered immobile and speechless. What? Haven't he seen a single fox statue in his entire life?

I leaned in over towards him, inspecting him with a much more refined keenness. His coat was partially swathed with some sort of black cowl, the hood of said cowl resting against this pony's neck, not currently in used.

As such, since his head wasn't obstructed, I got to see his mane--a rather unkempt, bistre brown mane.

Yeah; this one is a bit lean about mane-maintenance, or perhaps it's just his flair? His coat was a light, pale blue. Unfortunately, I couldn't make heads or tails out of his cutie mark as it was obscured by the cloak that he donned.

"You don't seem to be a member of my expeditionary team..." he muttered audibly. He prolonged his stare, annoyingly enough. Didn't anypony tell him that it's rude to stare?

"Aye." I nodded. "What? Do I look like a pony to you?" I spoke with a bit of bite--not sure why I chose to be so... pompous. I simply felt like it.

He kept his distance as he tilted back a bit. "You can talk?" he inquired, his eyes conveying confusion.

"Must I prove that I can?" I cocked my head to the side, my brow arched.

"Hm. Intriguing." He glimpsed a smile for perhaps a split-second. "Well, what's your name?"

I froze, paralyzed by a cold feeling. "Um. My name?"

"A simple enough question, don't you think?"

Bleedin' hell. The very thought of a name bordered me near insanity when I was still inanimate! I was always envious of the living folk for having something that was unique to them and to them alone. But... stupid me, am I right? I've never thought of a name for myself over those decades!

"Um..." I have to think hastily! Otherwise, it might get too excessively awkward between me and this off-putting individual. "Yoko. My name is Yoko."

Ha... I impress even myself. Youkai? Yoko? Oh. I'm just an idiot.

He bit his lip a bit, somewhat frustrated. "Right. Well... Yoko, if you must know, I'm part of an expedition, as I've previously vaguely mentioned before, and I'm here to find a shrine of some sort."

"A shrine of some sort?" I furrowed my brows at him--or more particularly, at his oddly vague objective.

"You see, it's a shrine that has long since abandoned, its name becoming undecipherable, and so on and so on." He shrugged lightly.

"I might know a shrine around these parts." I stifled a laugh. The bleedin' fool; the shrine's right behind me! Perhaps he can't discern it from the vast expanses of ivy entangling it. Nonetheless, I shall use his lack of awareness to my advantage. "But I might need an incentive to tell you where-"

Mid-sentence, I caught a glimpse of something blurring at me. Reflexively, I pulled up both my paws in front of me, catching the object with precision. Unsure, I checked what I exactly caught--seemed to be a pendant with a rather large, azure jewel embedded within its base. Its noose was also of gold-like material.

Simply, it was really alluring. Too alluring to decline.

"Jewelry. Nice." I immediately wore it around my neck--suddenly, a flash of magic seeped out of the jewel within the pendant. Consuming me whole, I blinked as I felt a somewhat hot sting boring through me.

I blinked with uncertainty. "What was that?!" I asked the peculiar pony.

"That was a prototypical device to give 'life' to another one of your kind." He gestured at my body. "Take a look for yourself."

"Wha-" I peered down on my body, noticing actual, soft fur present instead of cold, mossy stone. I widened my eyes a bit as I sketched an almost malign grin on my face as I inspected my body further.

My five tails, the quantity of a fox's tails being an indicator of his-or-her magical strength, were no longer petrified and unfeeling, but were now fluffy and bushy with strands of fur poking out of it. Likewise, every single other part of my body have become fully living as well. My paws no longer stony and awkward, were now soft and warm.

"Oh!" I squealed out. "I can get used to this definitely!"

"Right." The mysterious pony cleared his throat. "About that shrine's location?"

"Ah-ha..." I sheepishly chuckled a bit. A dreading feeling began to brim within my chest--could it be hesitation? Nervousness? I'm not so sure. "About that... could you please tell me what your rationales are for finding this place?"

"Our zealous historians have proven that there is in fact a relic within this shrine that we require for my group's progress. In order to find it, I'm afraid we'll have to demolish it to the ground."

"What?" My pupils shrunk to pinpricks as I heard his ghastly words.

Raze the shrine? Why, if he dares so- agh! let him and his group be condemned to Tartarus! That shrine is like my home! I expected them to do something sketchy, but not something like this!

I stepped forward sternly. "I'm not letting you get to that shrine if you plan on doing that."

He scoffed a condescending chuckle at me. "Well, how unfair of you, even after I've given you that pendant-"

"You can keep your stupid pendant!" I grasped the base of the pendant, undoing it off my neck as I firmly placed it within the vice of my paw. It dangled from my hold, swinging like a pendulum as I displayed it to him.

"The deal's already been sealed." He shook his head in a sober, slow fashion, his visage still stoic and unfeeling as indicated by the lifeless fire within his eyes. "I wouldn't accept it back even. Now then; make this less difficult for each other and simply tell me where the shrine resides."

"Why- why you..." Snarling, I nonetheless placed the pendant back upon my neck. The pendant cradled upon me, it swayed against the wind. Soon enough, the pendent let loose the magical yolk from within its containment, the hot light once again washing over me.

The light fading, my figure emerged from it, now once more looking like an actual fox rather than that of a statue of one. I responded with null to this metamorphose, my attention fully directed towards the pony before me.

"Nevertheless," he began trudging past me, "my peers and I shall find that shrine soon enough." He bowed courtly at me as I turned to face him. "I'm sincerely sorry for any grudges to appear between us once the shrine is found. And no worries about that pendant; I won't keep you on debt for such."

I gnashed my teeth, my eyes becoming somewhat teary, my face radiating off a faint heat. "How- how dare you..." Unbeknownst to me, I began channeling latent magic, the orbs around me turning much more repugnant as they rapidly shook in place.

"What are you-" the pony once more turned to face me, standing in awe as he spotted what I was doing. "What?" he spoke out in uncertainty as he stepped back, his eyes widened, and his mouth opened. I could even see the sweat glazing his face.

"Agh!" I lashed out at him, sending the three orbs at him. The orbs melding into the air, becoming a torrent, whirlwind-like stream of purplish flames.

The lash of flame whipped at him, singeing his face as embers and crackling flames splashed out from him as the thin stream of fire connected at his face.

He staggered one step back, unsteadily composing himself as he wiped his charred face. "You... You made the wrong decision," he stated grimly as he began to channel his horn, magic rippling within it as it was engulfed in an arcane aura.

"Uh- I didn't mean to do that!" I exclaimed back as I retracted back, biting my lip as I did as I felt just a bit more than tense.

"Too late for apologies now, fox." He flicked his head at me, unleashing the torrent of magic he has stored within his horn. Like a fell tremor, the blast of magic whirled at me like a deluge.

The magical wall inched closer to me by the split-seconds. Instinctively, I darted to the side, my mouth still widened and my teeth visibly gnashed against each other.

I craned my neck back, my perception of time seemingly slowed down as I jumped. The ground where I stood previously compressed, depressing downwards as the magical bolt sent from this bastard of a pony crashed into it. As the magical blast dispersed into several crackling embers, a stray cinder of magic caught onto my tail, causing me to widen in shock.

"My tail!" I exclaimed as I lowered my tail down to my face, caressing it with my paws as I blew soothing winds from my mouth frantically. Underneath the cooling embrace of my breath, the ember died out--but the damage was already done, the tip of my tail was charred somewhat to an ashen black.

"You..." I growled as I withdrew from my stance, staring at him threateningly. I cursed at him, "You think it's quite alright to do that to a fox?"

He scoffed a laugh, preparing another spell as he positioned himself upright, light beginning to cascade over his horn once more. "Yes; yes. How unfortunate for you."

Seeing this, I reacted swiftly as I darted forwards, sending one of my magical spheres towards him. The orb of unnatural magic hurling towards him, he glinted a distraught, worried on his face as he cringed a bit, but any glint, it dissipated in a split-second as the orb promptly detonated as it reached his vicinity, engulfing most of the terrain in a purplish radiance as the orb began to evanesce.

Unsteady due to the upheaval of dirt from the explosion, I struggled to keep my composure up. Stray dirt discharged from the explosion managing to find themselves into my mouth, I coughed a bit.

Shrugging, I spat out the rubble from my mouth, glancing towards where my adversary once stood. He... was relatively alright; within a crater, he laid recumbent, laid out flat upon the charred ground. I pouted somewhat as I saw that his mouth still frequented a rhythmic breathing.

"Excluding the fact that he's barely clinging onto life, and while also being fainted, he's alright." I trudged towards the entrance of the forest, smirking in a maligned fashion as a brazened pride roosted within my mind. "Heh. For a first fight, I performed quite well, don't you think?" I asked at the unconscious body of my foe as I turned my head back to face the crater where he rested in.

Obviously, he replied with nothing more than faint breathing and a single, unintelligible moan of pain. I nodded in glee as I cheered at myself. "Good, good. Thank you for agreeing with me."

Hoofsteps began to pervade around the area, accompanied by inaudible, undecipherable mumbles in the distance. My chest constricted as my heart began to beat even more rapidly. "Uh... I'm hearing a lot of hoofsteps."

The rhythm of my heart seemingly thumping against my throat as sweat profusely began to drip out of my head. Indeed, judging by the frequency and nuances of hoofsteps, it's safe to estimate that there's a bit more than over twenty ponies approaching from somewhere.

Nervously, I descended into the forest, sprinting as fast as I could, panting as the momentum of my running hastened gradually by the second--in fact, everything within my peripheral vision began to blur just because of the pace I'm going at. "Huh. Impressive!" I shouted out in-between panicky breaths. "Foxes run really fast!"

I didn't know where to go, but I sprinted as fast as I could. The hushed hoofsteps became faint gradually--and ultimately, I distanced myself far enough that I couldn't even hear them anymore. By the second, I became more obscured by the darkness of the forest as I went deeper into its foreboding glades.

Each imprint of my hoof was accompanied by a small trickle of sweat lingering by the ground.

With a sigh, I talked to myself as I darted my head left to right, noticing that the trees and foliage are seemingly indiscernible despite of how much ground I've covered by now, "How in Equestria do I get out of this forest?"

Author's Notes:

The Dark Souls reference is very perceptible in this one.

And yes; Yoko. No. Not the one from Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Okay, I might've stolen that name from that anime.

By the way, this is actually a story for the P.I.E (Possessed Items of Equesria) Group. More or less, it's a group exclusively for stories that entail the main character being a possessed item, and for the case of my story, the main character is a type of youkai, the one where an item lives on for a century and is granted life.

I'd love to see other possessed item stories. Why? Because, virtually, a possessed item story could feature almost anything (that is inanimate) as its main character!