Pokémon krookodile tears [threeshot]

[kintsugi]

※​

first gift: the seeds​

※​

They don’t bind you when they take you to your judgment, and you’re grateful for the dignity that affords you. Besides, you know that even if you wanted to run, there’s nowhere for you to go. Without Nali you would stray from the path and quickly fall to the sun, no doubt. Without the sanhim, you would surely be able to live, but the shame would fester at your insides until the day you died.

The sun had just been peeking over the horizon when your group had started, and as the grasslands turn to sand beneath your feet, the shadows grow long and the winds slow. Despite your apprehension, despite your shame, it’s impossible to see these lands as anything but beautiful. Beyond the Southern Stones where you’d been born, the river washed into the grasslands; thick marshes buzzed with life. The landscape was broken up by craggy, overturned stones, but beyond that, the land was flat to the horizon, like a river’s stone run smooth.

This far from home, the ground forms dunes undulating across the horizon, looming ever-larger as they snake into the distance. The land beneath your feet is ground to a fine, orange powder that shifts as you stumble through it. The land that holds your judgment feels softer somehow, even as shame curdles in your chest.

Nali croons something to the sanhim, pointing with one spike-studded arm towards the horizon. The sanhim nods and adjusts course in response to the maractus’ advice, and the two of them plod on in shared silence. You trail behind them, hunched against the bright sun. The sanhim’s ceremonial cloak is a deep red; as the grass becomes more and more sparse and the oranges of the desert are all the remain, he remains the lone flower. Your gaze traces downward, to where his staff makes circular imprints, in even sync with his footprints, and then further down the line to Nali. The maractus bobs evenly, the swings of her arms almost exaggerated, placing one stubby foot in the direct center of the sanhim’s sandalprint each time.

Nali you have known your entire life. She’s young as far as maractus go, only fifty and barely up to your waist. You’ve been told stories of how she taught you how to walk—the bright pinks of her flowers were too tempting, and she would proudly take one step backwards and another until you finally crawled after her.

She watched you when you were young. You swallow past the uncomfortably tight knot in your throat. She didn’t have to come here today. The sanhim knows the way, even if Nali knows the shortcuts. And between you and the sanhim, you could’ve carried enough water for the both of you. But you suspect she came for you, and that knowledge gives you the strength to keep walking after her.

The dunes grow taller and closer; they cast long shadows and tower over you by the time you finally reach your destination. Lost in a walking trance, you don’t notice when Nali chirps something, and you crash into the sanhim’s extended arm. And then you look up. What you thought was a great dune shifts and sways, and then sand begins to cascade down its base as the peak stirs. Red shards flash silver in the sunset as the earth stirs to life, and with a lazy tailflick the biggest krookodile you’ve seen in your entire life emerges, the gap between her yawning jaws as large as you are tall.

“Samira,” the sanhim says solemnly, while Nali bows low next to him. “We have brought Baku of the Southern Stones for your judgment.”

The sands around Samira’s legs shiver as well, and another krookodile emerges, staring haughtily down at you. This one is closer to regular size, its wedged head as large as your torso and its body twice your height, but your heart still catches in your throat—when you cast your gaze around the dunes, you see dozens of pairs of beady black eyes peeking back from the sand. There is a low, vibrating hiss. You can’t tell from where.

“His tongue is heavy and his ears are young,” the sanhim explains in response. “As such I must use the dancer’s tongue for him to understand in full, and he must do the same to be heard. Forgive us the disrespect. Were it anything but asking your judgment, we would make do without it, but I fear he will only feel like justice is dealt if his words are also heard.” He waits for a moment. Another hiss, this one higher-pitched; the sanhim’s head tilts to the krookodile on the left. “Yes. That is likely part of why this happened. I cannot disagree.”

Samira does not look at you. Slowly, impassively, she turns her head to the krookodile that emerged beside her and growls something in a low, vibrating note. The smaller krookodile’s claws twitch in a short, gesticulated response, and then Samira turns to the sanhim and hisses. Nali chimes in then, and you watch mutely as the maractus waves her arms and chirrups in turn.

Finally, the sanhim turns to you. “She wants to hear your words, Baku,” he says. His face is unreadable. “She wants to hear why you did such a thing.”

With trembling legs, you walk forward until you’re standing before Samira. Each of her inhalations is large enough to pull your hair forward; each exhale cloaks you in a warm, moist breeze. You manage a shaky bow.

What you want to say is, I’m sorry. What comes out instead is: “Greetings, oh great one, Samira of the Sands.” When you pull up the respectful greeting that the sanhim passed to you, your voice finally quavers.

Samira blinks back, unimpressed.

Why you did such a thing.

It isn’t an answer that you’d like to admit.

On the winter solstice of each year, the peoples of the desert gather in your home in the south, along the banks of the river. From the northern foothills marches the darumaka troop; from the eastern plains comes the sonder of maractus. The krookodile must come from the western dunes, although the way they rise and vanish into the earth makes their movements impossible for you to track. The solstice is a time for coming together and growing apart: two of the desert peoples bring the relics of the Dragonmother, which they have safeguarded throughout the year; when the night is over, the relics are passed to their neighboring peoples, to be guarded for the next year. The same, too, is done with the desert’s children—those who wish to take a companion and stay in the oasis of the Southern Stones are invited to do so.

This was your tenth solstice. You were old enough. So when the sun touched the edge of the sky and it came time for the children to gather, you stepped forward alongside the other children of your clan with pounding ears, trembling hands clutched around a berry. You waited as two darumaka toddled past, their footprints briefly glowing orange in the sunset sands, and your excitement slowly faded to dread as they paired off. Mila beamed, bending down and offering her berry to a sputtering darumaka; when the two young maractus filed past solemnly, they went to Aruno and Harana while you stood still like a statue, your unclaimed berry suddenly like a stone that threatened to pull you under. Then came the sandile—just the one this year—and you were the last child. The other five were already sharing their meal together; there was just you left; there was no one else for it to choose. It slipped close to you, its short legs wobbling as if overcompensating for the firmness of the ground, and you saw its nostrils flare as it inhaled the scent around your hands. The sandile leaned in, dark eyes gleaming—

—And then it turned away.

You took half a step after it, but the sanhim’s hand was on your shoulder, firm. “This was her choice,” he said, a pang of regret in his words. Was that pity? “You must respect that, Baku.”

The rest of the celebration felt grim. You watched the familiar sight as an outsider while everyone chattered and danced and ate. Utamo, the weaving elder of your village, cracked his stern lips into a smile as one wizened hand roved over the silvered hide of a darmanitan, marveling at the new rivers that time had carved in both of their skins. Nali grabbed Harana and her newfound maractus by the hands and introduced her to the other maractus, and four of them marveled at the stack of fruits laid out on the festival table. Your aunt Livari, toddler on her hip and Mila at her side, translated the desert tongue for her daughter from the darumaka who had chosen her.

And all the while you festered, silent, while one thought crystallized: that sandile hadn’t known what it was doing. That was the only reason it hadn’t chosen you. And it had been close—it’d leaned in, after all. As the night wore on, the pit in your stomach only grew. Could you be lonely like this for an entire year? When the sun rose, your clan would return to the south, with five new children. Five, not six. Everyone was already whispering, surely, about foolish Baku who couldn’t even get a pokémon if he was the last boy in the plains.

No. It had been so close. It hadn’t known any better. If you just could make it see—

The courage finally filled you when they were gathering themselves to leave. You chased after it, feet pounding on the reeds by the bank. It moved with an almost exaggerated slowness through the river, trailing behind the adult krookodile; together, their scales formed a glistening streak of red that moved upstream.

“Wait!” you shouted, and then a krookodile’s head snapped towards you, beads of saliva dripping from its maw. And in that moment, despite the enormous creature in front of you, you noticed the lack of stones beneath your feet, the trampled grasses around you, and you realized what you had done.

Your arms fall slack to your sides now as you look up at Samira. You had miles and miles of desert to plan your defense and this is all you can think about. “I don’t have a defense,” you say quietly. “I didn’t realize I had left the Southern Stones. I didn’t realize I had set foot on the Dragonmother’s Gift.” The words come more easily than you’d expected, once you understand what actually must be said. It had all happened so quickly: the sanhim had declared that because the lands were guarded by the krookodile, they would be your judge instead of him. The other humans you could convince, maybe, but not this ancient creature who stands before you, already older than you’ll ever be. Your only defense is the truth, and for you it is paper-thin.

Samira shutters one red eyelid solemnly, and then the other, and then turns her head back towards the krookodile at her side—that one must be the one who found you, you realize belatedly. At one point, Nali puffs up her chest and chimes in; both of the krookodile turn to look at the maractus with ponderous eyes. They converse too quickly for you to understand, and finally, Samira straightens and hisses back at the sanhim.

The sanhim’s shoulders seem more slouched than usual. You imagine for a moment that it’s from the solstice ceremony, when the leader of the darumaka pressed the Dragonmother’s white relic into his hands. Surely the stone was so heavy that it began to press him into the earth. All that’s left is for you to wait with bated breath before the sanhim passes back the translation. When he does, it is like his face is carved from stone. “They have heard your plea. The grasslands beyond northern banks are sacred grounds, the last gift from the Dragonmother to the desert peoples. Among the krookodile, to tread on them means death, but Samira recognizes that the old stories may have been forgotten for us in the south.”

Your ears burn with shame: that is a kindness she assumes of you. You’d learned the lessons when you were young. The Southern Stones were for you and yours, but every child knew not to cross the river.

“That much is understood when considering what must be done next.” The sanhim swallows, and even through his stern mask you can see the beginnings of anguish. “To Samira and her kind, it is clear that we of the Southern Stones have failed in raising you to respect the ways of this land. So she proposes this: they will raise you instead, and teach what we could not.”

The weight of his words crash in on you all at once, and your composure drops immediately. They will take you? But you need your home, and your friends, and—“Father, please,” you croak.

The sanhim’s face wrinkles, but he does not falter. “You will be permitted to visit on the solstice, and at that time your judgment will be reassessed, but your lesson must be learned.” He swallows once again. “She will return for you at sunrise. So shall it be.”

All eyes turn to you. Your eyelids suddenly sting when you blink, and the dunes blur.

“So shall it be,” the sanhim repeats expectantly.

You shouldn’t have done it. That much is clear. You want to scream and beg for your innocence, to explain to Samira that the people of the Southern Stones were not to blame. Your father, the sanhim, please, spare him the humiliation of having to return home to the people he leads empty-handed, because his own son could not follow in his footsteps.

“So shall it be,” you echo instead.

※​

You would later realize that Samira offered you a kindness—krookodile prefer to travel at night, when the baking sun could not pierce their scales and warm their blood. But they waited to set out until sunrise. Perhaps the kindness was for the sanhim instead, but all you know in the moment is that the two of you can spend one last night beneath the stars.

Nali has wandered off into the moonlight; you can only barely see her hazy outline, silvery and lilting against the dunes. So that just leaves you and the sanhim.

Here, in the firelight, with his cloak draped across both your shoulders, he’s just your father again. He twists his fingers around one another like he’s trying to tie a knot with his knuckles, and he stares into the fire even as you tend it with a small stick.

“I didn’t mean it,” you say at last. Your voice cracks. He has to know this, if nothing else. You can’t imagine what he thinks of you now, and you don’t want to, but you need him to understand: you know you shouldn’t have done it. You know you did something monstrous. You can be better. You will be better. It wasn’t his fault.

“I know, little flurry,” he says, and he pulls you a little closer. “I know.”

The fire pops and shifts. You don’t have anything else to say. Everyone knows you didn’t mean it, and yet here you are.

A weak smile cracks his lips and he says, “This is a lesson. Not a punishment.”

You stare glumly at your knees. Even with the fire to your front and his warmth to your sides, you still feel cold.

His grip tightens encouragingly on your shoulders when he continues: “Samira is an old friend. I have known her since I was younger than you are now. She once took your aunt Livari as her companion, and journeyed across the sands into our stones each week to see her and seek her company. Did you know that?”

He’s prodding you to answer, but you can’t make the words come.

Not to be discouraged, he continues: “She will be kind to you, little flurry. She will make sure you do not melt. And she taught my sister so many things. Imagine all the sights you’ll see with the krookodile, Baku. When we meet again you’ll have so much to tell me! The dunes are a beautiful place, and you’ll have so many adventures.”

“I don’t want adventures.” You sniffle. “I want you.”

His smile fades, and he grows silent. Then, wordlessly, he pulls you into his arms and holds you close to his chest. His chin presses your curls down tight to your head, and you grab his forearms, clutching them fiercely against you. You bury your face in the insides of his wrists, inhaling his scent with shaky gasps, and bite back tears.

“Oh, little flurry,” he whispers huskily into the crown of your head. When he swallows, you can feel his throat contract. “Do you know when I first fell in love with your mother?”

Wordlessly, you shake your head.

“We were so young, barely your age. On the winter solstice, during the night, it snowed. It was a truly beautiful sight to wake up to in the pink sunrise that followed. Everything was so soft, and the air was so still.” Dimly, you’re aware of how he’s gently rocking you back and forth, marking the rhythm of his words between you. “I found her in the dawn with her hands cupped around the Dragonmother’s black heart, the stone covered in snow, her body angled so her shadow could hide it away from the sun. She turned to show it to me, and when she did she was so gentle that not one flake melted, or even moved. I remember the way her voice lilted when she said that the way the stone embraced the snowfall made her think the white and black could be reunited, if only for a moment.” Even though you can’t see his face, you can hear his smile. “I was foolish even then, Baku, though as a boy I thought I was wise. I proudly asked her if she knew that the snow would melt no matter where she put it, that this stone would always be black. Instead of scorning me where I stood, she told me the story of Sun Sister and the Three Gifts. Do you remember that one?”

You remember it. You even remember when your mother told it to you herself. And you shouldn’t be wasting time on stories now, not when the time you have left is so strictly measured. But an aching part of you wants to hear the familiarity of the words, to curl up and close your eyes and lose yourself like Little Sister almost did. So instead you ask, “Could you tell it again?”

If he’s surprised by your answer, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he smiles, and begins speaking with the same ceremonial cadence with which he spins the solstice retellings. This time, the story’s just for you:

When the world was younger than you are now, Little Sister opened her eyes, and for the first time she was alone. She shivered; there was an emptiness in her side and a coldness in her palm. For as long as she could remember, she had held her twin sister by her side. Although the two of them had known nothing save for one another in the darkness before the world, she had been content, for there was nothing else she had known.

But this time, she opened her eyes and saw a brilliant light in the sky. For a moment, she hesitated. If she chased this light and her sister returned while she was gone, would her sister then wander off to look for her? Was it not more pressing to find her only companion? But the light was so unlike anything that she had ever seen, and even as she took a step into the darkness to see where her sister had gone, she could now see her shadow cast ahead of her, framed by that light.

Perhaps, she reasoned, her sister would also seek out the light. And then the two of them would be together once more.

So she braced herself, and for the first time, she began to walk with direction. Before long, she reached a vast chasm, one that she could not possibly cross. Seeing this, she hesitated. When the Dragonmother had given all the peoples of the world gifts, Little Sister had been forgotten. Her oldest sister had always protected her from the dark, and Little Sister had always been afraid to venture out of her sister’s shadow. But she could not hesitate now. Kneeling down, she dipped her head to the grass beneath her feet, and she closed her eyes, and she whispered, ‘Please hear me, oh great grass. I need to reach the light beyond you and use it to find my sister. Could you lend me your aid?’

The grass stirred at her words, and a great spirit emerged: Aranu, the First Maractus. Aranu smiled kindly at Little Sister and then plucked a flower from his head and threw it to the ground. Immediately, it sprouted into an enormous branch that grew and grew until it spanned the chasm, sturdy and strong enough for anyone to walk upon it. Thus Little Sister and the First Maractus planted the First Seeds.

She walked further, and the grasses guided her, and soon she reached a dark tunnel that even the brilliant light above could not penetrate. Her frail eyes could not guide her through the darkness, and though she strained and strained, she could see nothing. Kneeling down, she clasped her hands to her heart, and she whispered, ‘Please hear me, oh great warmth. I need to reach the light above you and use it to find my sister. Could you lend me your aid?’

The air rumbled at her words, and a great spirit emerged: Melai, the First Darmanitan. Melai smiled warmly at Little Sister and exhaled a puff of embers for her to cup in her hands. When she held it, it burst into a bright light that she could carry with her into the dark. Thus Little Sister and the First Darmanitan tended the First Flames.

So she entered the darkness, with the fire to light her way, until she came to a vast plain. The horizon seemed to stretch on endlessly, and yet the light was further ahead still, and plunging out of sight. Little Sister felt desperation fill her—if she lost the light now, all this would be for nothing. Kneeling down, she bowed her head to the earth, and she exhaled, and she whispered, ‘Please hear me, oh great earth. I need to reach the light in you and use it to find my sister. Could you lend me your aid?’

The earth trembled at her words, and a great spirit emerged: Zaathi, the first Krookodile. Zaathi smiled widely at Little Sister, and a tear slipped from her enormous snout. When it hit the ground, it blossomed into an enormous flood of water, so vast and powerful that it cut through the parched earth and surged towards the horizon. Thus Little Sister and the First Krookodile bounded the First River.

So she was borne, and at long last, she reached the end of the world. She had drawn close enough to the light that she had to thrust an arm up to shield herself, for it was brilliant. As she grew closer, though, she lowered her arm—the sound of her sister’s voice was unmistakable.

‘Sister?’ asked Little Sister. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I realized,’ replied Sun simply, ‘why we were made.’ And for a moment her sister’s brilliant light faded, and her form was revealed a little. Radiant white wings glowed brighter than anything Little Sister had ever seen. Sun smiled sadly. ‘You were made to do great things, and I, to illuminate you.’

This did not make much sense to Little Sister. ‘Can I stay with you?’ she asked.

‘Look at all the beautiful things you have seen and done.’ Sun pointed at the beautiful world that was beginning to form below them. ‘All of that without me.’

‘Beautiful things that I could not see without your light,’ Little Sister replied petulantly. ‘We should be together. That is how we were always meant to be.’

‘But if we are always together, how could you do so much? How could my light guide you?’

‘Come back with me,’ Little Sister pleaded. ‘We belong with one another.’

Sun was brave and strong, but she never had it in her heart to refuse her younger sister. So she alighted. No sooner had her feet touched the earth than the radiance faded from her and her wings fell away. Little Sister was overjoyed, and held Sun close to her, and the two of them slept soundly.

For a few days, all was well. Little Sister was happy. But in the darkness, she heard a great cry of anguish. Little Sister looked back to where Sun slept, but Sun did not stir. The crying continued, and finally, Little Sister braced herself and felt her way back through the darkness again.

Soon, she stumbled across a desiccated husk. She felt leathery bark crumble away beneath her hands, and she sensed Aranu’s presence beside her. The First Maractus mourned the dying of the First Tree; his sorrow was so great that all the grasses had withered away as well.

Melai soon joined them, although her face was shrouded in her shadow and even her gleaming eyes could barely illuminate the dark and the cold around them. Without the brilliant light above to guide her, the First Darmanitan could not produce flames.

But Zaathi was nowhere to be found. In the silence between Aranu’s cries, Little Sister could still hear the rushing of the river.

Heart heavy, she trudged home, and shook Sun to rouse her.

‘Sister,’ she said. ‘You were right. The world needs you. You must go be who you were meant to be.’

But Sun, tightly curled, did not stir. She had spent too much time in the earth’s embrace, and the darkness had sapped her strength. She still glowed faintly, but her body was like it had turned to stone. Little Sister shivered. The darkness was growing only colder, and Little Sister’s mind was numb with despair.

The thought of the river bearing her to the horizon, never faltering, ever constant, gave Little Sister strength for what she needed to do next. Sun would need to be returned to the edge of the world, and Little Sister would need to be the one to do it. She could not ask the others, who had already lent her so much.

So, with her sister on her back, Little Sister climbed across the vast chasm and felt her way through the dark tunnel. It took nearly all of the strength she had to reach the river, where her hardest task awaited her:

Arms trembling, Little Sister hugged Sun close, and then cast her into the river that led to the edge of the world.

“Little Sister and Sun love each other very much. Their cyclic dance gives us everything we know. In that moment where the sun embraces the horizon, the world is full of their color, their beauty, their joy. But it is not like that forever. That was when I understood why your mother cradled the snow.”

You choke back a sob.

“Little flurry, the things we love are only ours to hold, not to have,” he whispers into your scalp. “One day, we must let them go.”

In response, you clutch him tighter.

At some point, you fall asleep in his arms.

※​

When you awake, your father is breaking down the remains of your camp, scattering the burnt scrub brushes into the dunes, folding his cloak back up around his shoulders. He stoops carefully, slowly, but eventually his work is done. Wearily, he picks up his staff, and he is the sanhim again. “It’s time.”

What you want is to run away. Not even to save yourself; just anything to save your father the shame of having to accept this judgment you have brought upon yourself, upon him. You knew long ago that you would have big shoes to fill, but now with this stain you know you’ll never fill them. But that should be your shame to bear, not his.

What you want to do is tell him all the things you wish a son could say. You want to reassure him that this isn’t his fault, that you’ll learn his lessons well, that one day he’ll be proud of you again. There’s a hollowness in your heart, but it can’t stop you from seeing the way the shame you created craters his shoulders.

What you do instead is echo, “It’s time.”

Your face is like a mask. The rest of the morning blurs. Samira emerges from the sands. She exchanges quiet words with the sanhim. Nali throws her arms around your leg, her spines carefully withdrawn. You do not cry when the sanhim bids you farewell; all your tears came the night before.

The sanhim shakes his cloak out and wraps it around your shoulders. Your heart catches. This is a gift you are not meant to receive until you are a man. You look up, mouth cracked open in protest, before he says, “This cloak is not what makes me sanhim to our people, Baku; nor will it make you a leader to theirs. But what it will do is keep you warm, little flurry, and it will keep us with you.” He finishes arranging the cloak around you and takes a step back. “May the sands be kind.”

Samira circles in front of you, the fins on her back rippling in the sunrise. You look to the sanhim before you can stop yourself, and he jerks his chin forward in response.

You shouldn’t have asked him. Soon you won’t have him to fall back on. Carefully, you swing one leg over the krookodile’s waiting back—the gap between her fins is large enough for you to lay down in, so you kneel unsteadily on the slow-heaving scales. It’s cooler than you expected, rows and rows of rippling muscle, and then she plunges forward, halfway submerged in the sands. Her tail swishes out a low, sweeping rhythm.

You keep your back straight and your eyes straight ahead.

※​

 

[kintsugi]

aaaaaa Blitz has spoiled me immensely but I'll be getting responses + edits up this week except for that stupid baited/bated typo! thank you all <3

cw: some minor mentions of blood (akin to biting your tongue), allusions to violence

※​

second gift: the flame​

※​

The krookodile live further in the dunes than you’d ever thought. Samira and her kind must have traveled much further than you and the sanhim, you realize. She rips through the desert, her tail leaving a great serpentine trail that slowly collapses in on itself as the sand rushes to take its place. In the morning, a low, crooning sound leaks from her lips, almost incessantly; by noon, she’s fallen silent and put herself headlong into the travel.

Eventually, you grow bored, and you lay yourself along Samira’s back. The sun beats down. By midafternoon, Samira’s back is a rippling mass of heat. Although it’s stifling, you end up wrapping yourself in your father’s cloak to hide yourself from the scorching rays. The sky blurs by in a blue arc above. You trace over the dark embroidery in the cloak and vaguely wonder if it was red because of the krookodile, or if the krookodile trust the sanhim for wearing their colors.

Samira finally slows by nightfall. When you peek out above her fins you don’t recognize the landscape. The dunes faded into an indescribable mess a long time ago. She rumbles something, and belatedly you wonder if she’s been trying to speak to you this whole time.

Then, before you can do anything else, she plunges deep into the earth. You almost gasp—but then sand rushes around you, threatening to flood your lungs, and it’s the best you can do to hold your breath and wrap your arms around Samira’s fins. You hold your cloak as tightly as you can as the desert turns to darkness and a deluge of sand swallows you whole.

You clutch. That’s all you can do, clutch and wait for it to end. An eternity inside of a moment later, the air clears again, but the light does not return. Samira shakes beneath you, sand rolling down her sides, but no matter how many times you blink your eyes you can’t make you see. There’s only scent and sound and feel. She’s moving again. The air here feels more damp somehow; faintly, over the sound of sand shedding from her tail, you can almost hear a trickle of water. But you can’t see. Your hands reach instinctively for a torch, but there’s nothing. Samira presses on beneath you, unfazed, and when she pulls herself to a halt her breaths echo in the darkness. She hisses something.

The darkness hisses back. It must be an echo. Samira settles into place. You wait, feeling around on Samira’s back, but in the darkness she’s gone completely still. Minutes pass, perhaps hours. You can’t see your own hand in front of your face, and eventually you realize she must be letting you rest. But the weight of the day presses down on you like a stone; there’s nothing here but blackness and if you think about it too much it’ll rise and choke you, tendrils of worry and shame around your throat—

The air is cold down here, colder even than the night air above. Your father was right: the cloak will keep you warm. You clutch it close to you and fall into uneasy slumber.

※​

You awaken in the darkness. Samira is moving beneath you—not traveling, you decide; it’s not fast enough for that—and hissing fills your ears again. The echoes down here are louder than any cave you’ve ever been in.

Will she surface again? You wait for the deluge of sand, a warning, anything, but Samira slithers forward. They must have tunnels, you decide, and they must be enormous. You try to imagine how big they are based on the echoes.

With your ears strained, you finally hear it—the hissing isn’t symmetric. Samira hisses something; the darkness hisses something back. It is different.

Your eyes widen uselessly with the realization. This must be where all of the krookodile stay, you realize. A conversation is chattering around you, and yet you have no idea what’s being spoken, what’s being decided. How many of them are even here? Eventually, Samira stills. Their words pepper the air around you unintelligibly.

“Hello?” you ask tentatively.

For a moment, the darkness hushes, and then the noise doubles.

Your heart thuds in your chest, and you clutch the cloak closer to yourself. They mean no harm, and yet. To hear a voice in the darkness with no body to place to it sets off a fear in you, one primal and ancient, one that you cannot control. If you could just understand what was being said here ...

“My name is Baku,” you say, finally, when you realize there’s no understanding what they’re trying to say.

What comes next is louder than a hiss; Samira’s scales shift beneath you and the bass vibration rattles up your bones.

Your stomach rumbles in response. “I’m hungry,” you say, trying your best not to sound plaintive. How long has it been since the campfire with your father? You don’t even remember, but the pangs in your chest suggest that you’ve simply forgotten about eating until now. “Could I eat?”

There is a lurching stab of movement as Samira slithers forward with you on top of her, and then a wet, slapping sound against her scales a few feet away from where you’re sitting.

“Was that … was that for me?”

Another rumble. This one trails off into a hiss.

“Could you hiss twice if you’re talking to me?”

Silence.

Your fingers clench involuntarily around her fin. “Samira?”

She hisses twice.

“Should I wait here?”

Silence.

You crawl forward on your hands and knees towards where you heard the sound. Blindly, you feel your way around on her back, biting back a scream as your palms collide with something soft and slimy. Curiously, you grab onto it; it doesn’t resist, and you pull it closer.

“Is this for me?”

No response. It isn’t fair. You were supposed to learn the desert tongue in your own time, with your own people. The sandile who’d rejected you was supposed to teach you patiently, your father by your side to translate, all the elders of your village to guide you. Not this.

Hesitantly, you pull the thing close to your nostrils and inhale. It doesn’t smell like anything you could recognize.

“Samira?”

She doesn’t do anything else. You exhale slowly. In the dark and silence, you can feel your heartbeat throbbing in your ears. Even without words, you know what she’s trying to say. Your father apologized for using the human tongue with her in front of you, and you should as well. It is a disrespect to flaunt the Dancer’s tongue in front of those who cannot speak it.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I don’t know the desert tongue yet.”

No response. You imagine it instead: Then you must learn it quickly.

You exhale shakily. This is a lesson, you remind yourself. Not a punishment.

For now, your stomach growls louder than she does. You focus back on the thing in your hands. There’s nothing to lose, you suppose. Either she tried to feed you something inedible or you go to bed hungry. It isn’t reassuring logic, but it’s all you can think about as you close your eyes—stupid, despite the darkness, but you can’t help yourself—and bite.

Tiny stabs between your teeth, your gums. The taste of minerals on your tongue, quickly giving way to something softer and flaky. You chew, try to swallow, but it feels like your mouth is full of pebbles. On reflex you spit it out, and with it the coppery taste of blood—your own. It cut you.

Not badly, you reassure yourself before you can cry, using your spare hand to clutch your father’s cloak closer to you. You aren’t hurt. The taste is familiar, despite the pain, and it takes a few more shuddering breaths for you to place it. At the solstice. This is special food, ceremony food—and that’s when you realize belatedly that perhaps it was only special in the southern stones. But before, someone must have taken the scales off of the fish for you.

Laying out stones in the desert to bake breads and dry fruits. Carefully harvesting from the cactus fields with Nali by your side to delicately unpick the spines from your hands when you were too eager. These are not things they would do in the dunes, you realize, thinking of Samira’s gargantuan frame and maw.

What you want to do is cry. But hunger calls louder, so silently you spit out more scales and begin carefully picking out bits of the flesh beneath the skin, where it’s softer. It’s hard to find the bones in the dark, but at the same time you know Samira would not be able to help you if you missed one. With no vision and nothing else to do, you’re able to drown yourself in the task, and your thoughts circle in a vortex as you pick the carcass clean.

Your father told you a story once, of a beautiful pokémon with a voice so compelling that anyone who listened would believe her. She sang so beautifully, he explained, that everyone would immediately understand what she meant, and why she meant it. And eventually, through her generosity, the Dancer’s tongue was passed on to you. That was the fourth gift that your village received, after the seeds, the flame, and the river. That one was special, because could be shared in only one way, and only to those who listened.

Can you make yourself believe that this is a lesson? Can you believe away the punishment that it seems to be? Despite the darkness you clench your eyes shut. When you open them you will have learned, you tell yourself. You have the Dancer’s tongue. With her voice, you can make your hopes reality.

You open your eyes to darkness, and a silence you do not break.

On the moonless nights back at your home, you used to go out and trace stars with your father. This one was Venent, the Watcher, with his arms outstretched. There was the Thunderer prowling across the heavens. Each star had a name, and a story, and a place.

If you squeeze your eyes shut, you can pretend to feel his hands on your shoulders as he carefully points your arm up to the eastern horizon. In the summer, the six stars that form Little Sister rise across the mountains. She shimmers against the milky glow of the starry river, somehow brighter than all of the stars around her; on those warm nights, she is the first to appear, and she guides her shimmering brethren on their path across the horizon.

You can almost hear your father’s voice. In the winter, she rests. This is when she holds Sun Sister close, when the skies lose their warmth. Little Sister sinks with the sun and hides behind the mountains.

You raise your hand uselessly in the darkness and count. One to six. There is Little Sister. May she journey far and return the sun to us one day.

Although you know it’s foolish, you hope that halfway across the desert, your father is doing the same.

※​

Samira resurfaces at night. You aren’t sure which night. You traced the sky, and later you’d grown hungry and she’d fed you—ten times, you reason. Perhaps more. You stopped counting.

She’d shifted beneath you, stirring you from your slumber, and that was the only warning you got before she plunged bodily into the sands. You almost were washed off—you reached blindly for her tail, screaming, before you felt it smack you in the face and you managed to wrap your hands around it on reflex.

The world around you burns your eyes. The moonlight is silver and it hurts. How long were you underground, without seeing?

Krookodile do not mind the dark. That much you knew even before this. Most hatchlings do not see the light of day; they live safely underground in their broods until their scales harden—that is why the solstice celebration must happen at night. You think from last night you heard three different registers: the sandile, the krookorok, and the krookodile. The krookodile are the deepest. The knowledge is hard-earned, from endless hours spent in the dark, straining, categorizing, trying to understand.

Now the mountains, sillhouetted in the silvery glow of the moon, cut across your vision like a spear. You don’t bother saying anything—Samira will not answer you if you speak, and you don’t know what else you’d tell her anyway. Surely she must know that you are not like the rest of the brood; that your eyes were not made to piece the subterranean darkness and that when you live among them you live blind. This was part of her lesson for you, not her punishment.

You blink rapidly to help adjust. On reflex, before you can stop yourself, you try to see if you can recognize the mountainshapes here, if you feel any closer to home now that you’re above ground. You don’t, try though you might to find a familiar piece of horizon. You clutch your father’s cloak to you.

Samira begins to move, slowly, methodically. You can tell in the way that she travels that this time she’s doing it differently, although you can’t tell why or for what purpose—but before, she seemed to surge through the sands; now, she moves almost lazily. You’re reminded of how you used to lounge in the river in the summertime, letting the warm waves carry you along. In time, the movement in your peripherals becomes distracting: down, in the underground caverns that the krookodile called home, the world was quiet and still. There were occasional hisses, tiny shifts in movement. Sometimes Samira would shake until you slowly climbed off of her, and then you would sit huddled in the darkness until the rasping of her scales against the cool sandstone announced her return.

An unfamiliar sound assaults your ears—it’s like the creek, but louder, and then all at once the dunes give way to a massive deluge of water that winds through them, white-crested rapids gleaming in the starlight. You inhale sharply. The river in the southern stones flooded sometimes in the summer, but never like this; the water seems to stretch on with no end, ripping mightily in the center and then lapping along the banks.

You have one moment more to appreciate the sight, and then Samira leaps into the water.

There’s no time to scream. It’s nothing like diving into sand, not for you. The water slams into your chest and flings you off of her immediately, and then you’re floating, free, sinking, tumbling—

Beneath the surface the water churns. Your father’s cloak fills immediately and wraps around your limbs like rope, and no matter how much you flail you can’t propel yourself upward again. Panic seizes you when you look down and can’t even see the bottom. The river at home was no deeper than you were tall, and your father was careful to keep everyone clear if it ever flooded. You’ve never been submerged like this before, and the sensation of weightlessness combines with the massive, crushing force of the waves around you.

Your lungs burn. You inhale; water floods your nostrils; you cough on reflex and water fills your throat. Overhead you can just make out the glimmering of the moon, suddenly obscured by a four-limbed shadow descending upon you. You flail desperately for her, the last bubbles trailing from your lips, but the eddy currents that she creates send you spiraling out of her grasp. Samira lunges for you but her swing goes awry; her claws rake a gash in your arm. Blearily, your throbbing vision focuses on a thin ribbon of blood trailing towards a surface you can’t reach, and then Samira’s tail collides with your ribs with bone-crushing force, flinging you upward.

The surface of the water breaks against you, and you barely manage to inhale a greedy, damp breath, desperately churning your legs to keep yourself from being forced under again. But you can’t; your strength left you long ago. You barely register the feeling of slick scales beneath you, and by then Samira is gently depositing you onto a reedy shore with her tail.

You lay on your side for a moment, curled up as small as you can before a spasming cough unfolds you. One enormous, black eye watches you with a look that you can parse as concern. A hiss cuts across your labored, damp breaths, and you startle when you realize: the sound is familiar. You’ve heard this word from Nali before.

{Alright?} she’s asking you, fixing you with a burning gaze.

You splutter for a moment, shaking the water from your hair.

{Alright?} she presses, and the rest of her words are unfamiliar to you. You see the hesitation burning at her; her muscles are tensed but her eyes are fixed on the bloody water that’s dripping down your arm.

You cannot answer in the Dancer’s tongue if you want her to listen. That fact cuts through even your panic and your pain. But you don’t know what other words you can say.

{Alright,} you respond weakly.

The trip back is colder and far less wondrous. You arm throbs. The cool night air is only made worse by the dampness of your father’s cloak around you, but you hold fast to it, too tired to look at the new landscapes rushing by, petrified by the thought of it floating away in the breeze. Eventually she pulls you back beneath the surface, and you’re almost grateful for it—you don’t have to feel guilty for wasting your precious surface time on tears.

You’re lying soggily on her back, eyes closed, sleep eluding you, when suddenly the thought strikes you and you sit upright. There’s nothing to see down here, where the krookodile gather to sleep during the day. But there’s something to hear.

You listen.

There’s a pattern in the hissing around you, if only you could figure it out. You strain to replicate that brief moment of clarity, back when you’d finally understood for a fleeting moment what Samira was trying to say, but you this time it doesn’t come. The sounds of their language washes over your ears, and eventually exhaustion overtakes you and you drift asleep.

The next sunset, Samira stirs you awake with a familiar hissing sound. You’ve heard this one before; she always seems to ask it before she moves you. Curiously, you echo it back.

She freezes beneath you, and then after a pause she repeats it. There’s something different here, something you can’t quite place or replicate—it echoes in a more sibilant way and the pauses feel less protracted.

“Ready,” you croak. Your vocal chords twinge with disuse. “That’s what you were trying to ask me, right?”

This time you understand the difference in her response. {Ready?}

{Ready.}

※​

Your father was right: there are many beautiful things to witness out in the dunes at night, sights you’ve never dreamed of. You grow to crave these moments, each of them wondrous in their own way, but you treasure each of them for what you learned.

With Samira you watch the glowing red lines of darmanitan troop steadily cross the northern plains, little more than motes of glowing light from a distance. At first you take them for stars, but you quickly learn that the orange glow sets them apart from the rest. “Darmanitan?” you query, and she repeats it back to you in the desert tongue.

(You wonder briefly if the darmanitan have the tale of Little Sister, if in their culture the First Darmanitan is held in the same high regard as she is for you. You hope so, but when you pose the question to Samira, you must use the Dancer’s tongue, and so she offers you no response.)

You fish again. This time you’re safely tucked to one side as she gathers an enormous treasure trove of fish in her jaws, and you learn many words for thanks.

She takes you to enormous spires of sandstone, weathered into layers and with as many colors as the cloaks you used to help weave, towering even taller than you and her stacked together. There, she introduces you to the vulture queen, a young but proud mandibuzz who pecks curiously at your skull before a warning hiss sends her scooting back.

{Caution,} she says, to both the mandibuzz and to you. And then, just to you, on the way home: {Your father’s-sister was injured in this way.}

(Aunt Livari hadn’t mentioned this, but once more you have no words to ask the question, so you bury it away for the time being).

In the nights you travel with Samira and see great things. Most of the time she swims through the desert, her tail churning through dried earth, you on her back. She seems to seek no destination, no company. During these times the world is peaceful; she’s so large that when she’s at her full speed her body barely rocks, and if you don’t peer over the edge of her back you’d barely know she was moving at all. But during these times the rush of wind on her back is so loud that when you speak, she can’t hear you, and you’re left to your own thoughts as the world rushes by. You wish you could ask her purpose but you don’t have the words.

During the days you rest with them underground. Samira holds council. As you learn more and more words you realize how important she is to them—she is a sanhim of sorts, although you struggle to follow the conversations. You cling to her scales in the darkness and try to guess at what they’re saying, gradually piece together a slapshod vocabulary made up of things you’ve heard them say. At first it’s slow. These words you gather and hoard greedily—greetings, ways to count fish, descriptions of traverses across the desert—but no matter how hard you try, you cannot form the question you want to ask.

Am I learning what you want?

※​

The nights begin to blur together interminably. Halfway through the summer, when the days grow long—you and Samira must spend most of your time under the sands—you find yourself longing for the sensation of harsh warmth on your skin, the tingling feeling of imminent sunburn, soft light against your closed eyelids. You miss the others, of course, and above all your father, but you’d learned to miss them in the quiet nights you’d spent alone. You’d expected that feeling of loss, and learned to codify it, and treasured their faces carefully so that you could still hold them tight even when you went far. But you’d forgotten to hold fast to the simpler aspects of your old life, and now you can only catch the sun on the edge of each night, a red orb peering over the horizon while Samira runs further away.

You spend many starlit nights with Samira. She’s quite talkative for a krookodile of her age, you learn. After a few centuries, many of them simply burrow their way underground, far enough away from the young ones who still disturb the earth. And Samira certainly loves to answer your questions, so long as you ask them in the desert tongue.

{Do you have many …} you trail off. “Children?” you ask. “Hatchlings?”

{We call our young hatchlings,} she says in response, carefully churning through a dune before plunging the two of you down. Tonight there is a soft, warm breeze. {And yes. I have many. All of them are older than you.} She pauses to consider. {Most of them are older than your father.}

You struggle to think of the right phrasing. {Is that uncommon?}

{Perhaps. Krookodile have children when the desert can bear it. We live long. It would not do if there were too many of us.}

You think that through while she swims through the sands. {What is that word you call me? What is its … meaning?}

A low rumble shakes her, one that you’ve come to associate with amusement. {I forget how quickly hatchlings become distracted. Always something new for you. Very well. Your name is hard to pronounce without the Dancer’s tongue. Because of who we are—we take great care to ensure that there is never more or less of our number each year—our names are passed down. When we lose one of our own, the new hatchling takes that name. Thus we remember our burden, and what our burden is to the desert.}

You understand where Samira’s going with this. {But whose name would I take?}

{There was not one for you. There was not one for your father’s-sister, either. I named her Fangkeeper, for she had teeth like us, though they were not in her jaw.}

{My father had a name for me. As a parent. To make me feel like his.} The sentence is difficult; Samira has yet to teach you the words you would need to encompass those feelings. You understand Baku has no translation, but you try to string together the words: {Small Snow. You could use it if you want.}

{Small Snow.} She rolls it around, thinking, and then she rumbled the word she’s called you before. {Your father’s name is one he made for you. I will not steal it from him.} She chuffs the sound that you think is your name again. {So I made one. You are so named because you have no fangs.}

You wait expectantly.

{Never in my life have I had to name something. This is new to me. I consulted the other krookodile and they though this name fit you well.}

“Nofangs?”

{Precisely.}

※​

In the weeks before the solstice, you finally remember to count the days—the nights are long again, and even though the underground was never warm in the summer, now the chill has settled into your bones. But you’re used to it now, and you’ve learned to sleep like a sandile, curled safely under Samira’s foreleg where her warmth can protect yours.

{My aunt,} you begin. {Fangkeeper. How did she become hurt?}

{She looks unhurt now,} Samira observes, which you realize doesn’t have the intonation-hiss for an answer. An observation instead. {I forget how quickly your kind heals. We live much longer, and hold our pain for longer as a result.}

{You warned me to be careful,} you remember. {Or else I would be like her.}

There’s a dull rumbling sound behind you, and you realize it’s Samira’s tail lashing across the floor. Anger. Instinctively, you recoil, before she asks a question of her own. {How did your father tell you the First Mandibuzz lost her crown?}

You rack your brains, but you don’t remember. So Samira tells you:

Mandibuzz was one of the First Peoples as well. Her name was Nekya, and she had a long, beautiful crown of feathers on the top of her head. The feathers were a gift from the Dragonmother herself, plucked from her wings to protect Nekya from the harsh talons of Death. For Nekya had a solemn duty: when someone died, Nekya was to descend upon their body and devour their heart, so that it would be freed from the corpse and be born once more.

This was the cycle that Nekya knew, and she served the Dragonmother faithfully. Though she was kind, many of the First People’s still feared Nekya shadow overhead, for they knew what happened when she drew near. Only the Dragonmother did not shy from her, because the Dragonmother could not hate her children.

For this reason, when it came time for the Dragonmother to pass, Nekya hesitated in her duty for the first time. The Dragonmother curled up and entered the eternal slumber; the desert waited for her to be returned to life. But Nekya descended; seeing her mother in such a state, she wept.

The peoples of the desert pleaded with Nekya, but it was too late. The Dragonmother’s heart had turned to stone.

At this, the desert burst into chaos. The First Darmanitan and the First Maractus began to squabble, each unable to decide who was responsible for the fate of the sands now. But then Zaathi, the First Krookodile, burst forth.

{Fix this,} she commanded of their sister.

Nekya refused, saying, {I cannot.}

So Zaathi seized the mandibuzz in her jaws and thrust her into the sun. Nekya’s crown burst into flames and fell in ashen lumps to the ground. But Zaathi did not have it in her to kill her sister, so before Nekya could burn, she withdrew them both and threw Nekya to the ground.

{Fly beyond the horizon, sister, and pray that we never see you again.} Samira finishes the story for you in a low, dramatic hiss.

You wait.

{My aunt flew into the sun?} you guess at last.

{She forgot her role,} Samira says cryptically, and no more.

※​

The solstice arrives before you know it. Your father is there, welcoming the clans as they arrive one by one at the oasis. You see him stiffen when the krookodile arrive, but you’re already leaping off of Samira’s back, the ground weirdly firm beneath your feet as you pelt towards him and bury him in an embrace.

“Baku!” He picks you up and swings you onto his hip, almost staggering under your weight. {Were the sands kind?} His smile is so wide it threatens to cleave his face in two.

{The sands were kind,} you reply proudly, your heart almost bursting.

His eyes twinkle, and the pride in his voice when he responds in the desert tongue makes you feel like you could run a thousand miles. {You must tell us all that you have learned,} he says, setting you back down onto the ground. {And look how much you’ve grown!} He puts you down and places his hands on your shoulders, and for a moment you can’t help but revel in the feeling of soft, unscaled skin. How long has it been? You hold him close, suddenly aware that over the year your hands have turned leathery, chafed to callouses from the scales, and yet even in the moonlight you can see how much paler you are than him, sun-starved as you are.

“I missed you,” you whisper into his chest.

For a moment something in his face crumbles, but he turns triumphantly. “Come, Baku. Tonight we sing for you.”

And they do sing. The Dragonmother’s relics are passed from the humans to the darumaka, and from the maractus to the krookodile. Your father presses a plate full of food into your hands and triumphantly steers you to the fire. You can’t help but notice that Haruna’s grown taller in the past year; she’s unfolded like a sapling and stands a full four inches over you. Her maractus, a new flower bloomed on his forehead, introduces himself as Aji. Mila wears a cloak you’ve never seen before; her darumaka peers out anxiously from its folds. You watch, mostly, while they chatter. Has it really been a year since you heard the human tongue?

Mila is halfway through explaining a joke—for your benefit, you suspect; those of the southern stones already know—when the sensation hits you all at once: they’ve moved on. They missed you, but they’ve moved on. An entire year passed while you lived under the sands. Suddenly the food tastes like dust in your mouth. The evening begins to blur and pass you by.

Later you drift. Your father is speaking to Samira in a hushed voice. Both of them look up when you draw close. At ten feet away you can see the arched trepidation ingrained in Samira’s spine, even if in the soft moonlight you can’t make out the expression on your father’s face.

“Please,” you begin, although you aren’t even sure what you’d ask for. The second judgment crept up on you throughout the night, and yet you know—the stones Samira and the sanhim needed to decide here were cast long before this moment. But you can’t help but be a tiny bit desperate. You think about how Mila spoke in stuttering, halting words to her darumaka, how much smoother your own response was in kind. {I’ve learned. I’ve grown}

“You have learned much,” he says at last. “And yet you have much to learn still. Samira will teach you for another year. So shall it be.”

You want to be angry at both of them. At Samira, for keeping you even though you’ve struggled so hard. At your father, for not protesting. It stings. They’re acting out of love, you remind yourself, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. It isn’t fair. If you’d known that this would be your fate, you would’ve never done it. But that isn’t the lesson they want you to learn, you know.

You want one of them to protest. You want to protest. But—

{So shall it be,} you echo.

The desert tongue is heavy on your lips.

When you return to the circle of human children for your farewells, you’re sure that you look like a stranger to them. Even in the moonlight you can see how you’re so much paler than the rest. You get a change of clothes, but your father’s cloak is tattered, cut nearly to ribbons from the constant beating it’s received in the past year. It’s tattered. You let that happen. It’s tattered and it’s irreplaceable.

Truthfully you hadn’t even thought of your cloak until you catch Livari’s eyes lingering on it. She looks away guiltily before you can say anything, and she hurriedly brushes hair over her face so you can’t see her expression, but not before you see her upturned brow, her parted lips with the words dead upon them. Livari had been kind to you, and promised one day to teach you how to tend to the field of wheat that she raised. It would be your duty as the sanhim to know these things, she’d explained proudly, shifting her weight from her bad leg, but she shook her head and smiled as Mila pulled you away to play Stacking Stones. One day.

Self-consciously, you pull your cloak more tightly around your shoulders, painfully aware of how threadbare it has become. This cloak is supposed to last until you are a man, old enough to make a cloak to guard a child of your own. Your father began spinning the threads as soon as your mother realized you were growing inside of her; together, they dyed the flaxen strands to match the winter sunrise. Standing in the shadow of your home, for a moment you’re struck with a memory you never had—the sensation of the two of them tracing their fingers over the freshly-woven fabric, discussing in soft voices the patterning of the golden grass stitched into the border, their hands drifting to the swell of your mother’s belly as they imagined the world they’d show their son.

Was that world full of plunging into dunes, of raging rivers, of krookodile scales? Had they woven with extra care, to ensure it could withstand the chafing of Samira’s back? Or had they expected you to hold tight to them, to stay protected in their visage in a world they’d always known?

It’s almost a relief when you clamber onto Samira’s back at the end of the night.

On the way back, you almost wish Livari had looked scornful or judgmental when her eyes lingered on you, on your cloak. Instead, she’d just looked sad, the corners of her eyes tinged with the shame you’d forgotten to feel until this moment.

Thus the first year passes.

※​