Early this morning, while the field still held the night’s dew and the river moved with quiet determination, I saw a fox.
It stepped from the dense hedge onto our lawn, deliberate and unapologetic, its coat a deep, rusted ochre against the muted green.
It didn’t startle.
It didn’t hide.
It stood.
Then it looked at me.
It held my gaze, unwavering. Two amber eyes, fixed and fierce. Ancient, almost. The moment did not ask for silence, yet all sound, the river, the scattered birdcall, my own heartbeat, seemed to fold into it.
Nothing interrupted us.
Everything belonged.
The fox didn’t move quickly. It didn’t need to. There was power in its stillness. It knew itself, and in that knowing, I felt both humbled and blessed. As if standing before something sacred and feral at once.
Lately, I’ve been listening to The Secret Commonwealth. In Pullman’s world, every soul is mirrored by a dæmon, animal-bodied and deeply intimate. As I stood in the garden, I felt the fox could have been mine. Not a symbol, but something elemental. A presence stitched quietly into my life, always there, just out of sight.
She was a talisman.
Urging me to be still.
Reminding me that my work doesn’t come through force.
It arrives through quiet. Through attention. Through trust.
There is discipline in that.
A kind of resilience.