Chapter Text
“Don’t step into the tall grass!”
It’s the first rule. If you’re a kid growing up in a world with pokemon, you’ve probably heard it before. Parents are always recycling that line, feeding it to kids like you and hoping it curbs enough of your explorative enthusiasm to keep you from making stupid mistakes. Mistakes like, say, aggravating a pack of Patrat without the protection of a partner pokemon.
You’re a kid growing up in a world with pokemon, though, so I’m sure you’ve done your share of ignoring that wisdom. Or, you’ve thought about it, at least. Don’t tell me you haven’t dreamt of bonding with a wild pokemon early, being the first of your friends to find a partner. If you’ve had the chance to be a kid, you’ve had the chance to have that dream. We’ve all been there, and you’ll be neither the first nor the last to break the first rule, so I’m not going to tell you that you should listen to your parents. There are plenty of good reasons not to listen to your parents - this I know all too well - and I’m not looking to judge the merits of yours. I’m only asking you to remember.
Remember that there are more wild pokemon in this world than patrats and pidoves. Beyond the cities and the routes, and sometimes even within them, the world is ruled by monsters. A few of those monsters might be your friend. Many would ignore you. Some will make a meal of you.
You’re imagining the scariest thing your mind can muster, but you haven’t seen the world yet; your imagination can’t paint half the picture of the terrors that can lurk in taller grasses.
…
You’re still excited, aren’t you?
I was too, eventually. Didn’t make it any less stupid, but when you’re a kid, being dumb and reckless is half the point. That’s why the government built all those pokemon centers. Wander a ways into the tall grass, and you’ll get familiar with those pretty quick.
I confess to the truth you already suspect: I broke the first rule. Broke it a lot, really. It’s hard to find taller grass than an untamed forest, and for years, that tall grass was my sanctuary.
But like they say: the tall grass is dangerous. And one night, wandering those lonesome woods, I came across a witch.
Or… perhaps it would be more accurate to say: she came across me.
-----
The Unovan wilderness parted easily before the witch as she drifted through the undergrowth, the wilds yielding to her command as her will conjured a direct path to her familiar’s location. The Rookidee had all but demanded her intervention, tugging on the link that bound itself to her with incessant urgency. Come, it seemed to suggest. Important, the connection stressed. She did not know what could have prompted her familiar’s outburst. Her wards and glamours remained strong; she’d sensed no attempt from the nearby human settlement to unravel them, and the local Unovan pokemon had learned long ago not to trouble the Witch from Galar. The woods did not warn her of trouble, and she felt no infringement against the boundaries of her domain. There was no helping the faint thrill that pulsed through her in the moment - the last several decades, for all that tending her woods was rewarding, had been intensely uninteresting. She couldn’t help but feel a faint echo of excitement at the abrupt deviation from routine.
That excitement faded as she warped to her familiar’s side and let her eyes fall upon the pitiful creature balled up before her.
The human child was small and pathetic, trembling in the cold as it clutched around its chest with gangly arms. It fell back on its heels, eyes snapping wide with shock as it gasped a messy, heaving breath. She leaned away, unimpressed with the wretched sight, and cast a disdainful glare in the direction of her fluttering familiar. You waste my time with a human? She impressed the words into the Rookidee’s mind, satisfied by its visceral flinch in reaction to her scorn. Still, it twittered passionately at her: the human was suffering, and the bird wanted her to help.
Her tendril twitched dismissively. Suffering is the way of all humans. This is the order of their nature; there are no - she paused - there are few good humans. This was her truth, as sure to her mind as the sun’s inevitable wake to the horizon. But she couldn’t stop the recollections of a time long past as they bubbled up from the mire of her memory. She still remembered her time before the forest fondly. She frowned, and craned the slender stalk of her body forward, turning the pale fires of her gaze back upon the trembling child. It was a reedy, uncomfortable looking thing, and she examined its face curiously as it tentatively met her eyes. Her first thought was that the child must be fresh from battle; one eye was swollen shut with dark, angry bruising, and a ragged cut oozed blood from a tear across one cheek. Memory corrected her - most human children did not themselves battle, forestalled by their own weakness. It must have earned the ire of larger humans. Her face twisted downwards as she searched deeper.
The child’s aura was a twisted, cacophonous mess. It fell upon itself in knots, as though at war with its own nature. The pressure of it must have been strangling. Were humans always so jumbled and chaotic inside? She didn’t remember it being so, but the discrepancy would be dangerous if left unaddressed. Human’s struggled with aura, she knew, but the child reeked with the wrongness of it - surely they would be able to tell?
She thought about the child’s swollen eye and stared. She was certain they would be able to tell.
Her familiar twittered again, their song hesitant and mellow, a lament for the human’s pain.
Many humans suffer, she rebuffed. She closed her eyes anyway, peering deeper still into the human’s heart, extending her senses in search of the spark that rang ever so faintly, even through the clamour of the child’s contorted aura. She let her tendrils flutter absently forward, gently caressing the child’s cheek as she infused its scars with warm, mending energy. It stiffened sharply at the sudden touch, but didn’t pull away. She was certain now she could hear it, the faintest of hums, calling out in desperation, chasing the sudden resonance between them. It was the melodious call of the wilds - the thrumming spark of magic.
She hummed a whisper-quiet tune as she repaired the child’s broken skin, the ghost of her voice dancing along the key of magic’s call.
Her familiar chirped again, a ludicrous suggestion about apprenticeship.
I have you, she challenged. Would you see yourself replaced?
Rookidee cocked its head, looking at her as if she was being the ridiculous one. It was a bird. A human could not be a bird.
That a human could be an apprentice, was left unspoken. Her body shivered as, despite her many misgivings, she allowed herself to consider the possibility before her. She, perhaps more than any other, knew that not all masters need be witches. So too then might all apprentices not need be Hattena? In this desolate, dragonridden land… it would not be surprising.
The child was staring up at her now, a cavalcade of conflicting emotion warring across its pale face. Fear fought with gratitude while underscored by deep curiosity and unmistakable wonder. That was right and well - all correct feelings for a chosen student to feel.
Yes. She could make this child remarkable, ensuring her arts not be lost to the desolate and fey-bereft Unovan cityscapes. Maybe, she allowed herself to admit, helping the child would have pleased her old trainer, were Alabaster still alive to witness it. He’d had a penchant for collecting misfits, and there was something pleasing about carrying on his legacy.
She offered the child a smile, the way she thought she once remembered smiling years and years ago, and the child startled, nervous trepidation clouding its expression as it glanced up at her with worry. Rookidee chimed a single peel of song-like amusement, then twittered at the child reassuringly until it finally relaxed. She’d interrogate her familiar about that later. She pulled her tendril away from the child’s cheek to sway easily once more at her back as she twisted forward to more carefully inspect her handiwork. The swelling around the eye would take time to fade - there would be no helping that for now - but the wicked cut had healed over nicely.
She cradled the child’s mind within the boughs of her own and projected a question, attempting gentleness.
“It… hurts less now,” the child admitted, speaking for the first time, before suddenly gasping: “I can understand you!”
The deafness of humans to the vast complexities of the world around them would never cease to astonish her. Fortunately, the walls of the human’s mind were porous and malleable, and it was a trivial thing to impress simple knowledge into the recesses of its memory. She flicked her tendril around her waist dismissively as the child grappled with new understanding
“Your… domain?” If anything, her clarification only seemed to leave the child more confused.
She sighed, narrowly stopping herself from engaging in the fruitless endeavour of trying to explain the complex mechanisms of her domain to a human, Unovan child, and settled for the simplest explanation. She did not waste effort with concepts, projecting a phantasm of her voice in the simplistic, guttural language of the child’s people. Magic.
The child’s eyes lit up with interest. “You’re magic?” it exclaimed.
She nodded, the long stalk of her body swaying forward as her tendril unfurled from her hip to swing freely behind her.
“That’s amazing, the child whispered. It smiled, but the expression wasn’t warm. “I wish I could be magic.”
Her eyes locked with the child’s at the admission, and her tendril wriggled with delight as she floated the barest distance forward with restrained anticipation. The child had no concept of the power laying dormant within its soul; it would be delightful fun to untether it from the shackles of its humanity and see what changes it wrought upon the world.
So she asked:
Would you like to be?
-----
Would you like to be?
How was I supposed to begin to answer a question like that? Whatever the pokemon in the forest was - and it was definitely a pokemon - it was the most powerful pokemon I’ve ever seen. Not that that was a particularly high bar, my mind unhelpfully added. It healed the gash on my face almost instantly, it spoke to me, and I could understand its words as if we were speaking the same language, which I’m almost certain we weren’t. It even seemed to know the little bird pokemon that followed me into the forest.
Honestly though, what the hell did it think it was doing, asking random kids in forests if they wanted to be magic, like some kind of crazy person. Especially me. I was… well… me.
Seriously, the idea of a human, let alone me, being magic was something straight out of a fairy tale, so the weird offer was almost certainly some kind of trick or trap. You didn’t grow up on a farm without knowing that even weak wild pokemon could be incredibly dangerous when you’re not protected, so there was no telling how dangerous the creature from the forest might be if stirred to anger.
The little bird pokemon was a real sweetheart though. I sighed softly, then grimaced at the sound of it. Hopefully dad was through the worst of his rage, and my collection of hardcover books hadn’t suffered too much for its brief stint as a fleet of high velocity projectiles.
It was weird though. The wild pokemon didn’t grab me, or attack me, or do anything to stop me leaving when I stammered excuses and fled from the clearing, so it must not have cared that much about my unceremonious rejection. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it hadn’t stopped watching me though. I could almost swear I felt the weight of its pale gaze on my shoulders, even after its silhouette had long faded into the shadowy depths of the forest. I tried - and failed - to avoid thinking about the way the trees seemed to be stepping away from me, the forest opening into the familiar green fields of home as if I was being spat out of its mouth.
Home.
I blinked with surprise as I glanced skyward. “I didn’t think I was out that long,” I muttered to myself, taking in the dark void of space as it sparkled with a thousand thousand stars twinkling resplendent light. It was easy, sometimes, to forget how beautiful the world really was. I let my gaze fall back to earth and settle upon the picturesque cabin nestled atop the rolling grassy hills, and felt that dark void take up residence in my stomach.
Bathed in moonlight, the modest two floor house I called home should have been everything rustic and charming, and to outsiders it probably was. Nobody else ever seemed to notice the insipid tendrils of misery strangling it from the inside out. The dread those welcoming walls inspired in me though was equal parts familiar and sickening, and regret roiled harder in my belly with every familiar step I took along the well-trod trail. I ignored the rebellion of my heart with practiced dismissal, scouting for hazards as I unlatched the front door and gently eased it forwards. I muttered an airy prayer that the hinges would keep their silence as I carefully swung the door open.
Dad’s shoes were gone, I gratefully noted, and I let my shoulders slump down as the smallest bundle of stress slipped away. He was probably out getting drunk off his ass with his tavern buddies, which meant that the morning might be worse, but at least I’d get a decent night’s sleep.
I flinched as a light from deeper inside the house flicked on, bathing the halls in dim orange light. “Hello?” Mom’s voice trembled meekly. “Is that you, A-” The old grandfather clock in the foyer seized the moment to toll its anguish as the hour hand ticked over to midnight, the noise drowning out her voice as the clock’s sorrow echoed through the wooden halls.
“Yeah, it’s me mom.” I called back once the clock was done chiming, stepping on the heel of my left sneaker and tugging my foot loose, then doing the same with the other before grabbing them off the floor and shuffling my way towards the now-lit living room. “Sorry if I worried you.” I bit down a little on my lower lip as I took in the sight of my mother sprawled across the sofa, her eyes fixed vacantly on the ceiling as her fingers fidget with the cord of the lamp she lit. Mom looked awful these days, like a shriveled reflection of a woman I remembered loving. Her once silver hair had already started fading to dull gray and hung like loose drooping threads curtaining her face. Her eyes were dim and hollow, and the face I used to associate with bright smiles and laughter curled downwards with exhausted weariness.
She glanced up at my entrance, and I caught a hint of relief dancing across her face before she dropped her head back down to stare at the ceiling again. “Your father stormed out shortly after you, and then you didn’t come back. I thought…” she trailed off into a sigh, then said: “I told you you shouldn’t dress like that. It makes him angry.”
I bit my tongue, holding back the blistering retort that welled angrily in my heart, and said instead: “I would make him angry anyway, mom. You know that.”
Mom raised her head again to look at me, her expression forlorn, and she spoke like a ghost as she whispered: “Maybe less angry… Maybe less…”
Honestly, she was half-way to a ghost already.
I looked away. It was… hard to be around mom these days. Inevitably, it made me wonder how mom, and to a lesser extent dad, went from being so bright to so broken. An old woman in Aspertia told me once that mom used to be a pretty formidable trainer, and that she’d conquered five gyms before she fell in love with dad and gave it all up to help him with the family business.
It was difficult to imagine my mother being a formidable anything now.
“Good night mom,” I said. It was the best apology I could muster, and I quickly excused myself to rush up the stairs and hide myself away in the relative security of my room.
The door clicked softly shut behind me, and I wasted no time diving into my usual nighttime routine. My black pleated skirt and pale silk blouse I eased off gently, folding them carefully then wrapping them up in a spare bed sheet which I set down on the floor beside me. I’d have to wash them carefully in the morning. Plain wool pajamas replaced them, and I plopped myself down on the side of my bed as I dug a small hand mirror and a pack of cloth wipes out of my juniper wood side table. I wiped my face down carefully, being sure to check the mirror as I washed off the remnants of my mascara and struggled to scrub away the black smudges the motion left beneath my eyes.
I stowed the mirror once I was done, then grabbed the small bundle with my day clothes as I got down on my hands and knees to wiggle slightly under the frame of my bed. I’d bought them second hand on a rare trip to the Aspertia thrift shop, and I was only even able to afford them in the first place because the lady at the counter had abruptly decided they were taking up far too much space on the shelves when she caught me fawning over them, offering me ninety percent off if I helped her get rid of them. The clerk made the offer with a smile that was way too knowing, but I hadn’t had the willpower to refuse her charity
I loved them.
I pulled up the floorboards beneath my bed that I’d loosened way back when I first started sorting myself out, peeling back the underlayment before carefully tucking the bundle into the small alcove I’d built below, alongside all my other important possessions. Treasure secured, I fixed up the floor, crawled back out from underneath her bed, and flopped down on my back as I stared up at the wooden arches criss-crossing the vaulted ceiling.
“Would I like to be?” I let myself whisper, rolling the strange pokemon’s words about in my mouth, as if the shape of them would suddenly spark insight. “What does magic even mean?”
Magic was hardly a scientific term. People talked about pokemon that had magic-seeming abilities sometimes, but that wasn’t magic, that was like… type energy, and move power, and… sciency stuff. There were professors for it and everything.
I frowned, sitting up with a groan as I snatched my phone off the side of my bed and tapped my fingers rhythmically against the screen. Magic Pokemon, I plugged into the net search. Thousands of search results flooded my feed, almost all of them references to the mythos or superstitions of Unova’s legendary pokemon.
I was not naive enough to think I’d stumbled into and been chosen by a legendary pokemon or something, and the pokemon from the forest hadn’t looked anything like Unova’s gods. I sighed, practicing the timbre of it as I scrolled past dozens and dozens of unhelpful stories, legends, theories, and conspiracies. I was about to give up completely when an article near the bottom of the first results page finally caught my attention. The Mystical Magicians of Kalos - Fairy Type Pokemon: What They Are, What They Do, And Where to Find Them.
“Fairy…” I gnawed on my lower lip as I considered the idea. I’d heard of fairies before. They were a pokemon type non-native to Unova. They weren’t unheard of among the rosters of modern Unovan trainers, supposedly, but the import process was super strict and complicated and apparently the fines for releasing one in the wild were high enough to bankrupt most people. One of my classmates at school - back when I still went - gave a presentation once on how the Whimsicott species was thought to be evolving minor fairy traits to combat its draconic predators as a result of exposure to ambient type energy from imported fairies, and how the government might tighten regulations on exotic pokemon imports even more because it was some sort of “invasive adaptation.” They’d gone on to argue about… something to do with dragons, I vaguely remembered. Something about their cultural value and heritage, and how the Unovan League obviously saw fairy pokemon as a threat to that.
It seemed like a reasonable lead. I tapped the link, and then groaned in frustration when the link took me to a permission locked thread from one of the Unovan trainer forums. What was it with trainers and their secrecy? “Why show me the link if I’m not allowed to click the article?” I groused, but I bookmarked the page anyway, just in case. “New plan.”
I searched pink pokemon with tentacle and sighed when a million pictures of lady Jellicents immediately flooded my screen, then tried: forest pokemon with tentacle. This time I was graced with hundreds of photos of the Kantonian grass type Tangela, and its intimidating evolution, the hulking behemoth Tangrowth. pink forest pokemon with tentacle, I offered to the net in desperation, biting back a growl as some artist’s rendition of a cute frillish/tangela hybrid heralded a parade of artist renditions, bad photo edits, and other nonsense.
“So much for that avenue,” I mutter. “Why is it so hard to research stuff from other regions, anyway?”. At least it narrowed things down a bit. The Unovan online network had quite a bit of information on the regions from the old continent, as well as Hoenn, and information from and connections with the far off Kalos region had at least at least expanded a little in the wake of some sort of major trade deal, but info from the really distant regions was hard to find, and most of it was just hearsay anyway, like wild tales of Galarian pokemon turning into mountains. Maybe the forest pokemon was from one of those places, like the island nation of Paldea, or the lawless wastes of Orre.
If I just ignored the question of how in the world it ended up in Floccesy Forest, the idea almost seemed reasonable.
“Oh!” I felt a sudden spark of excitement as I remembered the little bird pokemon that followed me into the woods at the start, and how it almost felt like it called the forest pokemon to help me? Or eat me. I definitely didn’t recognize that one either, but bird pokemon were often recognized as defining symbols of their native region, like the Kantonian Pidgey or the Sinnohvian Starly. The two pokemon seemed familiar with each other, so I figured maybe if I could learn where the bird pokemon was from, I could learn more about the forest pokemon as well? bird pokemon, I tried, then clarified: yellow belly, blue feathers, black crown. Several photos loaded onto my phone screen, followed by a number of artist renderings.
They were exactly the bird from the forest. I smiled wide, enjoying the bright spark of excitement of discovery and read the web listing for the first photo. Rookidee, the link reads. The Tiny Bird of Galar.
Galar! I couldn’t help the thrill that ran through me at that. How many people ever got to see a real live pokemon from Galar? The Tiny Bird of Galar, and all my instincts told me that the other pokemon must therefore be from Galar too. “What kind of journey did you two make to get here?” I let myself wonder, imagining a great voyage across raging oceans. Galar was a part of the continent on the other side of the world, so to end up here, those pokemon must have traveled at least half the world! I shut off my phone, satisfied with the conclusion of my research, and crawled under the covers of my bed, only barely remembering to plug the device into its charger. I still had so many questions - maybe even more than I did before I knew where they came from - and based on my first attempts I doubted the net was going to have the answers to them. It’d be so nice if the pokemon could just tell me.
I closed my eyes, letting the thrill of discovery chase away the dread that usually crept up my spine when I was alone in the dark.
Would you like to be? The pokemon from the forest had asked.
It had asked me.
I inhaled sharply as the obvious revelation finally came to me.
The pokemon from the forest could just tell me, if it didn’t decide to murder me or something first.
I just had to be brave enough to ask.