Zanshi looked around at his former homeland. The Island of the Phoenix had once been a lovely, peaceful settling. Magic had hidden them from detection for centuries, but some very clever hunters finally found magic of their own to counteract the defensive spells in place. His people had to choose between fleeing, fighting and dying, or being taken captive. He’d seen both of his parents die that day, and their ashes swept up before they could form new eggs. It still saddened him to know they were gone for good.

He had finally found his freedom, and found Kurou, and now he returned to the island every few months to check for new eggs and Fire Wolf pups. Many returned to their homeland to be reborn, and he tried to look after the eggs until they could look after themselves. It made him sad to know this place was no longer safe.

He stood on the beach having just landed with Kuro. Looking out over the calm ocean waves, the sun glinting off the water as it began to set, he smiled. ”We’ve still got the best view in all the Four Kingdoms…” He ran a hand through his long red hair, and then looked at the large black Fire Wolf. “Come on, my friend. It’ll be quicker to spot them once the sunsets. Why don’t I fix us some dinner first?”

The wolf gave a deep bark and wagged his massive fluffy tail, and Zanshi laughed. It was quick work to start a fire, and then he retrieved some supplies from a nearby, abandoned home. Soon, he was casting a net to catch fish while Kuro circled nearby trees, slamming his large side against them, and catching the fruit that fell in a basket he carried in his mouth. Before long, Zanshi was snacking on an apple while the fish cooked over the fire. It was always soothing to watch the sun set on the beach like this…

Poised to write, a delicate-fingered hand hovered over a blank page, as the author mentally scripted several options in her mind. Dear Diary - I don’t usually do this, but…. No. No, maybe… Today, I got up and decided that it was a good day to- No. that sounded even worse. She’d never written in a journal before, and her hand wavered before she finally laid the pen down, shut the book, and sighed heavily. How exactly did one… journal? The therapist had made it sound so simple. A record of her thoughts and feelings throughout each normal day, as long or as short an entry as she felt was necessary to adequately describe her experiences. There had been no other qualifiers, and perhaps that was the problem: there were so few constraints that her mind flitted from one idea to another, completely lost as to where to begin. Perhaps the therapist had meant the lack of specific instructions to be less threatening or difficult… but for one so used to careful control and definition, the sheer openness of the assignment was crippling.



Her fingers travel the front of the journal blindly, feeling rather than seeing the intricate gold characters inscribed over the body of a sinuous, blue dragon, inscribed in flight over a collection of jagged peaks. Her favorite uncle had selected this book for her, on one of his many travels, thinking that having the image of a wise, confident dragon would help inspire his niece to feel the same about herself, as she recorded her thoughts within. Well… perhaps that was a place to begin? My Uncle Daisuke purchased this book while on his journey to Matsumoto. He intended it to be a journal, as my therapist recommended that it would be good for me to record my thoughts. Yes. Now that sounded better. She lifts the pen once more, prepared now to put it to paper and begin… but before it can touch the blank page, characters begin to form of their own accord. Hardly realizing it, she begins to speak the words aloud, more than half convinced she has finally lost it altogether, and is either hallucinating or dreaming. “Seriyuu… the great blue drago-”



The words have not even fully left her lips before blue light envelops her, causing her to let out a stunned, half shriek of surprise and fear. The blue light seems to swallow her up, somehow folded her in a light so bright that darkness veils her eyes… and then, somehow, she is falling, the solidness of her bed dropping away beneath her, and she instinctively braces for the thump of her wooden floor, assuming she’s somehow fallen out of bed. It never comes though, and after a second or two, crystalline blue eyes come open, and she gasps. Straight down - gods, it looked like kilometers down - is water. Vast and wild, stretching as far as the eye can see, with thrashing waves that skitter over the surface, and a tiny dot of an island, which confirm her horrified realization. The ocean. A muffled yelp escapes her, and the eyes flash momentarily golden, and then a piercing, bright blue as she instinctively calls out to her elusive, terrifying power. Huge, ebony-feathered wings snap open from her back, with a crackle of lightning and a boom of thunder that split the air, making her flinch and whimper. A frantic flap tries to stall her downward plunge, but too late - she drops into the water with a huge splash, and immediately gasps, lungs beginning to fill with water even as the weight of her wings drags her down.

Zanshi was just checking on the fish - they needed a couple more minutes - when he sensed rather than saw something change out over the ocean. He turned to look, fearing some sort of supernatural threat was poised to strike his beloved little island. It took him a moment to focus on the being he was detecting - it looked like a person, mabe a woman, from the size of the body, but he wasn’t close enough to make out the details. There was a bright flash of deep blue light that the girl seemed to just appear from. A split-second later, he saw a smaller yellow flash, and then a light blue, there was a bolt of lightning, a boom of thunder, and then the woman had ebony black wings. They did little to prevent her from plunging into the chilly ocean below her.

Even before he realized what was happening - or that he had begun to act - he summoned his own wings - large and mostly red, the feathers looked like flame as he took to the skies. He skimmed the top of the waves, looking for the spot where the girl had fallen, and let out a relieved breath when he saw her black wings in the water.Taking a deep breath, he dove in at an angle, skilled at diving in short swoops so that his wings aided rather than hindered him. Reaching out, he grabbed her by the wrist - the first part he could get ahold of - and made for the surface. Once he was out of the water, he pulled her up into his arms and held her more securely as he made for the shore. He’d seen many young phoenixes drown when they overestimated their abilities to pull the sort of trick he just had, but thankfully he had also seen many who were saved, and so - though he wasn’t sure who or what this young woman was - he was sure he could keep her from dying.

He landed on the beach and carried her to the fire, laying her near enough for the warmth to reach her without putting her lovely wings at risk of getting burned. That done, he turned her onto her side and began to pat her back firmly enough to - hopefully - help her star to cough up the water. Taking another deep breath, he focused his own powers and began to carefully use his ability to summon fire to dry the water off the girl’s clothing, hair, skin and feathers.

He knew some elders that could use flame to dry the water from a person’s lungs - which was all well and good for a phoenix who was as comfortable within flames as on dry land or in the air - but he didn’t know if this girl would stay still and calm if he did such a thing, so he opted instead to take the small vial of tears from his belt and drop a couple into the girl’s mouth. Phoenix tears could heal any injury short of death, and he knew they could aid a drowned person if applied quickly enough. He looked up at Kuro at last as he waited for the girl to recover. “Go get her a blanket. Perhaps a change of clothes from one of the houses. Whatever this material is, the saltwater has made it dry stiff…”

As the large black Fire Wolf paced off to do as requested, Zanshi sat back on his heels and folded his wings, putting them away once more as he waited and hoped that he’d acted quickly enough.

* * * * *

As Karasuko was upstairs, agonizing over how to begin her journal, the front door to her home opened, and a girl about her age, only with long, curly brown hair and gentle hazel eyes, entered. She dropped her shoes at the door, and ran first into the living room to greet the adults there.

“Unca Ken!” Marami said cheerfully as she flung herself at the tengu, giving him a tight squeeze. “I missed you!” She turned next to the demon next to him. “An Meg! Papa said I can stay the night with RaRa. And I brought her peanut butter cookies! Do you think I can surprise her with them?”

“I said you could ask if you could stay the night, Mara…” Her father, Shinya, corrected as he came in behind her. “And I thought half of the cookies were for Uncle Ken?”

Marami gave a squeak of surprise, and blushed. “Oh, right.” She dug in the backpack slung over one shoulder, and pulled out a plastic container of cookies, which she offered to Ken with a kiss on the cheek.

Daisuke was the last one to enter, and he chuckled. “I bet Ra will love the cookies. Why don’t you take them up to her?” He watched her bolt up the stairs and then turned with his biological brother to greet the tengu and demon they had adopted as their own. He lowered his voice as he hugged Megumi. “How is she doing?”

Though her father Shinya was completely human, Marami was a half demon, and though no one had ever been able to quite explain why, she had always been just a bit off from her peers. Loving, gentle and kind, she had always been more innocent and childish than her peers, but she loved Karasuko and her other cousin, Polly. Though the three were as different as it was possible to be, they were still quite close, and Marami had made them friendship bracelets - leather cord braided together with green, purple and yellow beads - the three girls’ favorite colors - to remind them of each other when they were apart. It was a childish gesture, but they others often wore them anyway, to make the simple teen happy.

She darted upstairs and burst into Karasuko’s room without knocking - forgetting in her excitement. She saw her cousin on the bed with an open book and a pen in her lap, and she took a single step forward before there was a bright flash of blue light, and Karasuko was gone. “RaRa?” She allowed the bedroom door to close behind her, as she moved forward, looking around - including under the bed, in the closet and under the desk- for the other teen. No sign of her anywhere. “Did you learn a new trick? It’s cool, can you teach me?” Still finding no sign of her, she picked up the book to see what it was. It looked like the journal Unca Dai had gotten for RaRa, but there was writing inside - and it wasn’t RaRa’s handwriting. She began to read the words, wondering what kind of story it was, and she was surprised see that - according to this book - Karasuko was something called the Seriyuu no Miko - apparently replacing someone named Akkahana - and that she had landed in this other world and crashed into the ocean. She knew of her cousin’s fear of water, and she was quite worried for a moment, but then a strange man with red feathered wings dove into the ocean and saved her. He was apparently a Phoenix, and he had saved the young Tengu-Demon from the water, and was helping her recover.

Mara bit her lip as she continued to read silently, waiting for confirmation that her cousin was okay. She absently rubbed a hand over her own friendship bracelet as she read, hoping with all her heart that her friend was safe…