the woman with the arctic fox

There's a woman who wears an arctic fox around her neck, a live one. She goes out walking in snowstorms, and if you pass her, it's the fox that greets you, not the woman. Sometimes it says innocuous things

Some weather we're having
Stay warm
Careful; there's black ice

Other times it tells unsettling jokes with punchlines you can't understand (Did you hear about the man who lost his mind? He was a bellwether, and thirty feasted. Thirty! Hahahaha)

And other times it just makes stray remarks that may be madness or may be prophecy, and if you run to write them down, you find the words have faded, and if you try to put them from your mind, they're all that you can think, a tune with nonsense words you can't escape.

(continued, briefly)

"Where is my friend?"

Most think the woman rules the fox, but one wise person perceived in her half-closed eyes and parted lips the face of a sleepwalker, a beast of burden, not a master. This person drove the fox from the woman's shoulders with cinnamon and lye, but freed and wakened the woman walked in circles in the snow, confused, asking, "Where is my friend? I'm cold without my friend," and even led indoors and given food, she soon went out again, but the snow was no longer falling, and by the time the next storm rolled in, the fox had found a new mount--or so I'm told.