The young girl gazes curiously at the scene before her: a torii gate, the tall pillars of it aged and chipped away in places, the kanji carved into the plaque at its top just worn enough to be illegible; cherry blossoms piled up along the path, scattering about as a faint breeze whispers through the clearing; two gently flickering lanterns hung on either side of the ancient torii, their light a soft white not unlike that of the moon she can just barely see through the shifting mosaic of brilliantly flowering sakura tree branches overhead.
A kitsune, or the face of one mostly concealed by the starless night outside the reach of the lanterns, grinning at her from the other side of the torii.
"Hello, little girl," a voice calls, though the visage of the creature before her is still, as if frozen in a mask. "Are you lost?"
The girl nods. The face remains expressionless, but the voice seems like it's smiling.
"Follow me. This forest is cursed, and no place for humans, silly child. I will lead you away from here."
Relieved to have been saved by a stranger's kindness, the girl nods again, and moves to follow the kitsune as it all but disappears into a peculiar fog of which there had been no sign before then. Behind her, as she walks, the grass and bushes grow brown and brittle. The sakura petals decay underfoot, and spider lilies rise from the earth to bloom in her wake; the lanterns' glow dims, sinking from that once gentle white to a deep, foreboding crimson. Alas, so trusting is the girl that all of this goes unseen.
A lone blood-red lily blooms in the child's hair as she crosses the torii gate, swallowed completely by the darkness beyond as the sound of mischievous laughter drifts quietly in the wind.