Celestial Crow

[Genkai sea, Kyushu, 31 December 2019]

"Know everything, maintain nothing,

under the celestial skies, be everything,

Yet show nothing,

Only when the celestials made one an example,

Through the gates of the limited,

One can enter the fields of the limitless."

She recited the old mantra with her eyes closed while the strong icy winds whipped her hair mercilessly on the green hill overlooking the coastline. Whitish vapours poured out of her nostrils on an exhalation.

"Smoking is bad for the body," the disembodied voice of Yasomagatsuhi whispered through the veil of the hidden dimension.

In her hand was a pen-like iQos device, flashing a signal that her time with the heated tobacco was over. With a sigh, she pulled the small, yellowish stick out of the pen-like device and dropping it into the small rusty tin can half filled with ashes and tobacco stained waters tied to the fence.

A cough followed by a sequence of hacking coughs brought the phlegm up to her throat. She could taste the saltiness of the mucus from her throat and swallowed it down.

If not for being stuck in a human body, she wouldn't be sucking nicotine for the soothing adrenaline rush to combat the mortal fatigue within the jail cell of her human body.

"Heard that before," she muttered. "You didn't join the anti-smoking lobby, did you? Thought you didn't like humans."

"I like humans. They create more disasters than I do under minimum supervision."

She choked on his cryptic answer. True, the human species is self-destructive. Give them a chemical and they would use it in an explosive.

Her face lifted towards the dark skies as the twinkling lights of the small, sleepy village along the coastline glowed softly on Iki island. A short while to midnight under the waxing moon and the annual Hatsumode pilgrimage to temples and shrines to herald the new year.

Hatsumode, a time for the gathering of families to celebrate another year of togetherness at home, or going to shrines at midnight to pester the myriads of other primeval beings with their mundane wishes, keeping them distracted from her presence on Iki island.

"You seem to like humans too, given what you have done for the creators of this body."

"Parents. That's the word for those human creators. They nourished and cared for this fragile biological machine." She looked at her pale fingers.

The sensation of pins and needles plagued her fingertips from the freezing temperatures with every beat of the heart, sending warm blood coursing through her veins and arteries.

She rubbed her hands together and blew hot breath into her cupped hands.

A crystalline tune wafted in the air as the moonlight softly shone on a spot on the island. If she wasn't human, she wouldn't mind the cold chilling wind which signaled Tsukiyomi's nearby presence.

Tsukiyomi's nature took after any form he took - a beautiful, freezing block of iciness. Most humans referred to him as the Moon Kami, but he was so much more.

"Harbinger," a crystalline smooth voice of Tsukiyomi teased softly beyond the veil.

"Harbinger?" She chuckled, "Takes one to know one."

"Wow, the coast is busy tonight with important guests," another voice interrupted them.

Ryūda, who could ever forget him? His voice brought a smile to her face. Of all places, they picked a location near to the densest dragon-serpent primeval being she had ever met in East Asia.

Harmless with the top notch ability to annoy the most patient, no surprise that Takamagahara's Ise group threw Ryūda out. Then demoted to become a messenger of the higher ranking dragons from Ise to Izumo and finally to Iki.

"What news do you bring us?" Another four gruff voices demanded. It was Ōwatatsumi, the eldest Japanese dragon, and the three formidable warlike dragon brothers of Sumiyoshi.

"Nothing good usually when either Tsukiyomi or Yasomagatsuhi appear around her," Ryūda pipped in. "Last few were smallpox, measles, smallpox, more smallpox and then invasions, and smallpox and then some weird bird flu, then some measles…"

"Enough! We get it!" Ōwatatsumi growled.

"If it's any comfort, on top of smallpox, measles, the bird flu is old news, but the fresh news, you have bat flu heading your way," she replied.

Her ear pricked at the long yawning groans of the dragons as her eyes surveyed the dark coastlines and the beach area for signs of human movement.

If humans were to catch her alone at Shoni Park, talking to herself, people will stare at her in town. Gossip spreads like wildfire among the community on an isolated island. That's their entertainment replacement, since nothing much happens.

A wry grin appeared on her face as she opened her palm to catch a red spider lily petal floating towards her.

"Higanbana sends a message from the hidden dimension."

"About the souls of your body's creators?"

"Parents, but no," she corrected him, but refused to say more. What she did with both souls of the dead human parents was no concern of his.

"From everything to nothing," she spoke as the petal vanished into the sea.

Under the illumination of the moon, a fog started running in from the sea to the coast and revealed the images of a passage way where a fight was taking place against its whitish curtains.

"That human soul again," Yasomagatsuhi said. "Why the contagious fascination with him? First, a human asks you about him, then that old fox…"

"Noticed anything peculiar about the energy waves of his soul?" she asked.

Silence. That's the trouble with Yasomagatsuhi. He didn't pay attention to details.

"Homusubi's energy wave," came his nonchalant remark.

"The first Homusubi. The second one, Kagatsuchi, is happily spending time in his shrine watching his worshippers," she retorted with a grimace at the moving images on the whitish fog. The way the ghost flung Alex into the wall almost solicited pity from her. Almost.

"That makes him one in a billion," Tsukiyomi mentioned. "Energy waves of human souls rarely mix with primeval energy waves. But from what I can see from the projection, he can't fight very well."

"He is awful at fighting. Period," she mused. "Maybe I should help him… muddy the waters more since they already detected my tracker."

"How do you know they have detected you?" Yasomagatsuhi asked. "They didn't catch me planting the tracker."

"Why would Higanbana send me a petal? If she knows, it's detected," she replied. "I didn't tell her about the tracker, unless one of you did."

"So this year's bet is on where?" Tsukiyomi interrupted.

"Watch the screen," she pointed to the calm sea and started writing an invisible script with her pointing finger.

"You used me to plant a tracker for gambling!?" Yasomagatsuhi blurted.

"Why not? You needed to protect your investment, too. Might as well kill two birds with a stone," she shrugged.

"The very nature of the Celestial Crows makes them deranged psychos, brother," Tsukiyomi spoke up as Yasomagatsuhi fell silent.

Glowing golden words formed in a vertical line like a talisman and a flick of her finger. The words flew towards the whitish blankets of fogs. With one sharp burst of light, the symbol of a golden crow manifested itself before disappearing into the moving images.

"HAPPY NEW YEAR!" She jumped with a yell as fireworks shot up from some houses behind, illuminating the skies above.

"It's just another year," grumbled the Sumiyoshi brothers. "Nothing special. Come on, start the bets before the fight ends because the human soul looks like it is shearing soon."

"LET THE BETTING BEGIN!" she announced to the cheers of the others gathering behind the veil of the hidden dimension.

"I BET FIVE MINUTES!"

"SIX."

"IN FOR FIVE!"

"I BET THREE!"

"Ryūda, you have nothing to bet for three. Your Torii is fading in colour and the humans haven't maintained you for a while. The rest have plenty of yen donated." She rubbed her fingers.

"Will the cans and bottles of sake do?" Ryūda offered.

***

[Passage way to the Courts of Hell, Hidden Dimension]

Alex trembled as he tried to pick himself up. His arm gave way as he crashed to the ground.

They said that he didn't possess a human body, yet his soul could feel the agony of bruising pain and shattered bones. He coughed out what he thought was blood, but before his eyes, it was greenish vapours from his body.

"You sure you don't want me to help him? He looks…" The husky voice of Arahabaki urged Kanghui.

"No."

"Your fella looks like he will not make it," Ox-face's voice grunted.

Alex played possum earlier, but it had no effect on the angry ghost except to get himself thrown violently against the hard walls of the passageways.

A shrill alarm rang loudly through the passage ways.

"PARAMETER BREACH!" A few shouts chorused out.

A strange golden glow formed around Alex as he blinked his eyes as he felt his soul slowly tearing up. Was this his end?

The tumbling greenish blur was heading for him at full steam ahead. Alex closed his eyes tightly and curled up.

He heard a loud crash and opened his eyes immediately. Greyish stone-like toes greeted him in a circle. One look upwards, he counted the seated hooded figures, which resembled stone statues. Thirteen of them, thirteen being an unlucky number, made Alex grit his teeth.

He could not make out their full expressions because of their stone-like hoods shading their faces. Yet, each appeared different.

"Thirteen guardians of the Celestial Order," Da Siming's voice said, and then exclaimed, "HOLY, how many friends have your Alex been making? First Arahabaki, then Chongli, and now a celestial crow."

"Are you sure that it isn't an attack on him?"

"It's a type of defensive mechanism used by the celestial crows only. Look at the ghost… another hit and those figurines will vaporise the ghost," Kanghui replied.

"The ghost made the first hit though… and it flew." Arahabaki whistled.

"That's the first and only warning. There is no second warning with these. This is only one of so many defensive tech that makes a celestial crow so difficult to fight with," Da Siming explained.

Behind them was the furious ghost charging towards them. Alex scrambled to his feet unsteadily. The figures rotated around him. To his horror, the greenish miasma of the ghost lunged only to burst upon contact, dissipating the ghost.

Alex fell to his knees. A blinding burst of light and glowing golden wisps flowed down from the mouths of the figures, bathing him in warmth and soothing his pain away.

Alex gazed upwards, only to be stunned by a circular golden symbol of a crow above him, similar to the ancient Han dynasty mural drawn in Henan, China, when he visited as an archaeological student in his former life.

He blinked, and they vanished, leaving him strangely invigorated.