Kitsune's Crescent Comb
The crescent-shaped comb of Japanese legend is the small hair ornament that a shapeshifting kitsune is said to drop when its disguise is betrayed, and finding it is supposed to bring a strange fortune or a lasting bond with the fox. The comb appears again and again in tales of fox wives, in which a man marries a beautiful woman who turns out to be a fox in human form; at the crucial moment the tail is seen, or the comb is left behind when the wife vanishes, and the discovery ends the marriage. In some variants the man who keeps the comb may command the fox's service or its gratitude, while in