The gods have fallen, shattered in the throes of their divine war just as the earth was torn asunder into naught but tattered islands floating upon the nothing-waters of the ether; their heavenly carcasses are scavenged by their children so that man like the lowly koi might become seiryū, dragon in the old tongue, and ascend into divinity. Kuroikaze no Sato—Blackwind Village—is a whaling or hogei settlement in the outskirts of the Sevenfold Sea of Reeds, sworn to the shogunate of Akanetarō; the Waterfall-That-Runs-Deep-Red, an empire among a thousand-thousand others in the vast expanse of the Skysea where archipelagos dance like leaves amidst the wind. Kuroikaze subsists upon the influx of spirit-koi and the leviathan kujira or sky-whales, harvesting their prized kami-shards; spiritual organs that a person may ingest to bolster their tamashi and climb the proverbial waterfall of existence. These beads are arranged in the manner of magatama, orbiting around a person’s soul-embryo—their kokoro—in ever expanding fractal-like patterns like eddies of divine wind. Two children are born to the samurai family of Sakai, a noble lineage of warriors and scholars that suffers no fools. Yet only one survives birth, the face of the other forever melded to their left shoulder as if an oni mask. They are known as the one that is both accursed and blessed; Megumi-Noroi, touched by the spirits. Their caretaker Yuriko calls them young master Futago—Gemini—because no child died that day but instead two souls were put within a single body. Follow Gemini’s journey—from lowly koi to mighty dragon—as they travel the Skysea, delving into the ancient crypts of fallen gods and unearthing bygone civilizations to slaying foul oni and other yokai; in search of power, purpose, and the ever elusive feeling of belonging Spirit-Koi Swim Across the Skysea is a coming-of-age progression fantasy set in a high fantasy world with elements of xianxia//wuxia//cultivation filtered through Japanese folklore—yokai, yūrei, kami, oni and the like coalesce into spirit-shards or magatama when subjugated that grant wielders supernatural abilities. There’s a bit of gamelit//litrpg too as I have a bit of a System going on in the background called the guiding wind—a vestige of the dead divinity Fūjin that encompasses all things like the air itself, guiding all souls through the Rinnegan, the Eye-of-Samsara. Best I can compare this to is Avatar the Last Airbender and Naruto had a really weird and compelling (in my humble opinion) lovechild out of wedlock. I wanted to see some non-binary representation in the genre so this is my take on it. Third-person semi-limited perspective since I’ve been writing first-person in my other two fics and wanted a break from that pronoun—so along with waxing poetic and purple, this will be a rather interpretive type of read. Coincidentally this aligns with Japanese’s penchant for multiple interpretations of the same ideograph like how Kanji can be read in different ways. I’ll mostly be writing this one on the side as a pallet cleanser as it’s lighter in tone than my other fictions.