The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 7: Catfish

Pain.

Echoes of pain.

The memory of pain.

Slowly, I came back to myself. I was floating in darkness, a bouncy, buoyant sort of darkness. I decided to start by opening my eyes. But they were already open. Huh. Did I have eyelids? I experimented, but the muscles of this body, whatever it was, didn't understand the command "blink." So no, then.

Next question. Where was I?

Tentatively, expecting another explosion of pain any second, I wriggled a little and found myself cocooned inside a cozy, translucent...bubble? Through its walls, I could see countless other bubbles everywhere around me, each containing a silvery, elongated teardrop curled around a large pillow.

All right. Most important question now. What was I?

Something long and skinny, inside an egg that swayed gently, sometimes side to side, sometimes up and down. That meant I was in...water? What creatures had Flicker said were Green Tier options? I couldn't close my eyes, but I could almost hear his voice droning, "Various types of sea creatures, reptiles, and amphibians." Unfortunately, so many of those hatched from translucent eggs laid in water that my current state didn't narrow it down at all. Well, I'd find out soon enough anyway. I could afford to be patient.

And so I waited and rested in my egg, watching the water grow lighter and darker and counting the passing days. Bit by bit, my soul forgot the agony of reincarnation until all that remained was the memory of the memory of pain, and the conviction that it had been worth it to keep my mind. At the same time, the pillow under me was shrinking and my body was growing larger and sprouting fins and tendrils near my mouth. Tendrils...tendrils.... Oh, whiskers! What kinds of fish had whiskers? Try as I might, the only one I could remember was the koi in the palace ponds. Providing visual pleasure was one way to benefit humans, I supposed, although nobles got bored so easily that I couldn't see them deriving sufficient enjoyment to win me much karma. If I were a koi, I'd have to learn some acrobatic tricks.

As I mulled over my options, seven dark-light cycles passed. One minute, I was bobbing up and down in my egg, trying to predict what color pattern I'd have when I grew up. The next, the water was seething with sleek, gleaming forms and I was plunging out to join them.

Swim! Swim!

We were in an underwater cave of some sort, waving our tails weakly and bumping into each other as we learned how to swim. Since fish skills seemed crucial to staying alive long enough to gain karma, I ceded control of my body to my fish brain. For another seven days, I stayed in the cave with my siblings, draining my yolk sac and building muscle strength and coordination.

Time to go! Swim!

My fish brain and my siblings were all saying that it was time to leave the cave. As they swarmed into open water, I trailed behind them, examining my surroundings. The water was a little murky, and the bottom was glittering black sand broken by rocks and water plants. None of them resembled seaweed, so we were probably in a river and not the sea. I had no idea whether my type of fish counted as an "ingeniator oecosystematis" like the oyster, which meant that I couldn't rely on living my life passively. I'd have to be proactive about getting caught by a human. Except...what if I weren't a beautiful koi? What if I'd reincarnated as an ugly fish?

Ugh.

Still, the answer was obvious: Get eaten. Offer up my mortal body on a human's dinner plate so that my soul could ascend.

A dinner plate....

Hungry! So hungry!

By now, my siblings and I had depleted our yolk sacs. We needed food – external food – now. A tiny, near-transparent bug floated by. On instinct, my head snapped around and I gulped it down. Mmmmm, tasty. All around me, my siblings were doing the same, snatching as many of the bugs as they could.