Mudfish are fish that found ways to breathe when water through their gills was not enough. They adapt as we must all.

Mini Finny
This fish did not take the easy path in life and advises you do the same. It dwells in deep, thick clay that few would be able to move in, let alone breathe. In fact, the only way it is able to do so is by virtue of its miniscule size. The clay it lives in is highly prized in pottery circles but the Finny is so hardy (and small) it can survive being worked into a dish, glazed and fired. It will then happily sip on whatever the dish holds. Feed it well.

Glibfin
Mudfish are not all closely related. They have simply developed similar survival traits. They will breathe what they must. Mudfish will use a gill, a lung, breathe through their skin or invent some other way to keep going. Or perhaps not breathe at all. Such is the claim of the glibfin who says that it lives on a higher purpose. Of course, it won’t say what that is. Regardless of what it breathes in, it exhales smugness.

Pisces
While these two fish are famous as a constellation, they are well known to astrobiologists for being respiratorially self-contained. What one exhales the other breathes in. Then what that one breathes out the first inhales. In a breathy loop forever. This is an effective strategy in the emptiness of space. Were they born as two together? Is it just one single organism tricking us to believe it’s two? In which case, it would still be confusingly miraculous. Tricky thing, life. When you’re made of suns perhaps life just has to be.

Glomhead
It’s not often we think about breathing and when we do it doesn’t always help. This fish thought about it and decided to breathe your air. If you find yourself gasping all of a sudden for seemingly no reason, consider either aggressively fishing the area or leaving immediately. Yeah, that’s what it is. We’re not just out of shape.

Fool’s Goldfish
Inhales gold flakes found in the mud, exhales fool’s gold. High status to have one in your court. Has bankrupted kingdoms.

Grubble Kippers
A rare summer hibernator, it’s also a more common winter hibernator. It really just seems to mostly sleep. Does not appear to breathe at all. Is it dead? It claims to live but has never been observed doing much of anything.

Jellyfish
Jellyfish are not really fish. Are they jelly? Do they breathe? You explain them.

Lava Loach
Born in embers, the lava loach initially gasps down sparks to survive. As it grows it breathes in full flames. Few make it to adulthood but those that do burrow deep to swim magma rivers. The most ancient one sits at the Earth’s center. If there ever was a devil below, the oldest lava loach gulped him down.

The polar bar
Had not got far
From where she had unfroze
Before the sun
Came to claim one
Fast favor he so chose:

“‘Twas not your life
That my bright knife
Saved from the starry ice.
But for a whim
You’d still be dim,
Life for life is my price.

My wish is this –
For freedom’s bliss
I’ll have your cub and done.
Give me my ask
Or go be masked
In ice as one sun shunned.”

Bar bit the sun
And ripped the moon
Out of him as the price
He dearly paid,
Mistake he made,
To learn self-sacrifice.

The polar bar
In her ice jar
Has sunshine in her throat,
And her cub lives
And grows and gives
Sun chills in fire coat.

“I’d rather lose my head
Than my wings,
The life in which I sing
And be dead,
Than let my lovely thread
Snap and spring
Back at my star-filled king,”
The crow said.

If the flowers loved me
There’d be no “loves-me-nots.”
Every petal would be “loves-me,”
Or even “loves-me-lots,”
But there’d be no loving flowers
If we pulled them all apart.
So maybe love the flowers
Who already have your heart.

You gave the rains of Holly Finn
To one who didn’t know
What to put a cloud in,
Where such a thunder goes,

So while that keeper did their best
They soon passed her rains on,
But fear no failing of the test
As storms have rarely gone

Away so far as to be lost
However far they roam,
And Holly Finn knew well the cost
Of bringing tempests home.

She painted mountains with her rains,
She cleaned the skies with seas,
She planted deep and dark domains
With rainbows as she pleased.

You gave the rains of Holly Finn
To one who couldn’t know
What to put a cloud in,
And off her thunder goes.

Harth made a pair of wings
That touched on dusk and dawn
And promised to fly on.

Yet such a blessing brings
In those with the same need
And now they came with speed.

So she made wings in waves,
Gave them till they were through,
Harth watched them fly away,
She, wingless, flew on to.

Many call me “Surly,”
Which, I’ll say, is true.
But if you call me “squirrelly”
I’ll be grumpy early
So “Sir,” for short, will do.

Rish stepped up to the butter box
And found it full of dust.
She ran her fingers like a fox
Tap-tapping as paws must
To find a path if they’re to catch
What slick and slippered mole
Her fox need hunt and haunt and fetch
From down its buttered hole.
And down it went! Down! Down it went!
Down dove the dusty fox!
Rish sent it off with fingers bent
Then melted in the box.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
Let a tiger have your toe,
If he hollers, then you know,
His bite’s smaller than most grow,
He’s no mauler of his foes,
Not a scholar of the low,
Not a dollar would you owe
If you were to let him go,
Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.

I red a book for school
Just like the teacher said,
But she was mad as fools!
Was out to have my head!
Said she had never seen
Such crimes against a book!
How could I be so mean?
How much she shrieked and shook!
She dropped her heavy head
And with a warty snort
Said, “To pay for the red
You’ll white a book report.”