elyvorg
somewhat backwards
- Pronouns
- she/they
Part One: Innocence
Learning
~i~
From the moment her parents’ panicked voices woke her in the night, she knew they were going to die. She was still young and understood little about the world, but one thing her parents had stressed was that they wouldn’t be there forever. One day, they’d be taken from her. And that day was today.
She saw the look of immense sadness in her mother’s eyes and clung desperately to her, wishing she could never let go. Her father was edging backwards across the branch until he was pressed up against the two of them. She felt him shiver as he gazed fearfully down through the foliage at the forest below.
Four tall, angular figures could be seen skulking in the shadows, circling their tree.
“It’s Them,” said her father, his voice so full of dread that he barely sounded anything like the Archopy she knew. Just hearing that word gave her a terrible feeling of finality. She knew who They were. They were the ones who would come to take her parents away. Now They were here, creeping around below, waiting for Their chance to strike.
Her parents had tried to tell her to be ready for this, but how could she ever be ready? Surely this had to be some kind of fantasy or nightmare. This couldn’t be happening now – her parents couldn’t be about to…
She clung even tighter to her mother, whimpering as she saw the figures below slink closer in the darkness.
“Forsira,” her mother said softly, prizing her away to gaze into her daughter’s eyes. She was still the same Archopy she’d always been; she just looked incredibly sad. “You’ll be okay. You’ll find someone else who’ll look after you and you’ll have a great life without us.”
Forsira blinked in incomprehension. “I don’t want someone else,” she said. She looked up at her mother and father, silhouetted against the branches and the starry sky, and saw the two people who’d always been there for her; how could she ever want someone else? “Don’t go.”
Her mother closed her eyes. “I wish we didn’t have to.”
“No, and we shouldn’t have to,” her father put in fervently, his gaze jerking around the treetops. “I’m not ready for this, Leathra. Why can’t we flee?”
Leathra shook her head. “There’s four of Them. They’ve surrounded our tree already. We’d never stand a cha –”
“We’d stand more of a chance than if we –”
“Resten.” Leathra stared firmly at her mate. “You’re not helping.”
“I don’t want to help!” protested Resten, his voice high and desperate. “I want to live!”
Forsira flinched, pressing herself back into the trunk behind her and trembling. Below, the sounds of movement drew closer. She stared at Resten, finding that he terrified her more than anything else. She couldn’t bear to see this frightened shadow of himself that her father had become.
It only took a pointed glance at their daughter from Leathra for Resten’s frantic gaze to drop. He drew in a shuddering breath and turned to Forsira, and her spirits rose the tiniest bit because he looked like her father again. “Sorry,” he whispered in a small voice. “You’ll be okay without us, won’t you, Forsira?”
Forsira shook her head helplessly. Her father didn’t seem any surer than she was.
But there was nothing she could do. She reached out in vain as Leathra began to move away from them, walking towards the end of her branch, further out into the open. Forsira could see the tips of her mother’s leaves shaking as she did so, but still she went, her head held high.
Without warning, the night was lit up with a searing bright green as one of Them shot up from below, the blades on his arms shining with blinding light. In a flash, Leathra morphed the outermost of her own arm leaves into blades and brought them up to meet his, but he was faster and stronger, knocking her from the branch as she screamed in surprise and pain.
Resten had been watching her go with helpless horror, but at this, something inside him seemed to snap. “Leathra!” he yelled, and with a sudden flash of grim determination in his eyes, he shot down to aid her, the leaves at the ends of his wings shining with green energy.
Forsira was left on her own. She let out a soft cry of “No…” but knew that even if her parents could hear her, they wouldn’t have been able to come back. Down below, she could hear them fighting, feel the clashes of the blades, see the bright glow of their leaves light up the tree from beneath. A brief glimpse between the branches showed her father already brutally held down by two of the tall figures while her mother frantically blocked blows from the other two of Them, clearly hurt and tiring.
Forsira instantly wished she hadn’t looked and turned away, clinging to a tree trunk and screwing her eyes shut, trying to forget that this was happening. The cries from below weren’t really the sound of her parents dying. That terribly bright green light that still found its way through her eyelids wasn’t the light from the weapons that were murdering them. If she stayed here long enough and kept her eyes shut, maybe it would all turn out to have been a bad dream.
The sounds down below were getting quieter. Her parents’ voices were silent. All she could hear was Them muttering among themselves.
The tree she was in rocked suddenly as something entered it. Forsira squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, huddling as small as she could against the tree trunk, hoping desperately that she wouldn’t be seen.
“Hey,” came a voice that she knew was one of Them, so close that he must have been right behind her. “There’s their Treecko up here. Should I put it out of its misery?”
She froze, barely able to even breathe.
“No,” said another voice from down below. “You know how it goes. We don’t kill the children or the adolescents.”
“But it’s just going to become –”
“You know what Skorrhen said,” the second voice insisted. “Leave it.”
There was a grumble from the first voice, then the tree shifted again as he leapt away. Before long, the sounds of all four of Them could be heard disappearing into the distance.
Forsira remained clinging to the trunk, her mind so full of terror that she could barely comprehend what had just happened. Maybe it was her parents managing to protect her, even now they were…
But though her parents always told her about how they wouldn’t be there for her forever, they’d never mentioned that They would come to kill her as well. So this… maybe this was supposed to happen, too.
She didn’t know. She couldn’t think. Her parents – surely her parents couldn’t just be gone. She opened her eyes slowly and forced her shaking body to turn around and look down at where they’d all been fighting. Maybe, now that They had left, her parents would stop pretending and wake up?
She peered through the branches and saw her father lying face up on the ground. His face was fixed in a glassy expression of terror, a pool of blood streaming from the gash across his throat.
Forsira screamed and screwed her eyes shut, hoping that doing so would make the picture change, would make him suddenly all right. But when she opened them, he was still there exactly the same as before. She closed her eyes desperately again.
Her mother… what about her mother? What if she was still…?
Opening her eyes and making very sure not to look anywhere near where she knew her father was – the image of him like that appeared in her mind again and she tried desperately to ignore it – Forsira looked around for her mother.
She was there a short distance away, blood pooling not just from her throat but from gashes all over her body. By a cruel twist of luck, her face was staring right at her daughter in the tree, her eyes cold and empty.
Forsira let out a wail of terrible sadness and turned and ran. She leapt blindly into another tree, her eyes screwed shut in an effort to block out the horrible images in her mind, but they were still there against the back of her eyelids, a final memory of her mother and father. Unable to see, she nearly fell off the branch, so she started running with her eyes open instead, hoping that every tree and every branch and every leaf she saw as she fled past would push the picture of her dead parents out of her mind. She wanted to run so far from their deaths that they would never have happened, to run into another world where they were still alive.
She ran for so long that her hands and feet ached with soreness and her body was so tired it stopped listening to her. A simple leap into the next tree turned into a wayward stumble, and she found herself plummeting to the ground, tumbling over and over in the undergrowth as she landed.
Forcing herself up, she dragged her body to the base of the tree and curled up against it, kicking up some of the leaf litter to try and hide herself. Without her parents, nowhere felt safe anymore.
She stared fixedly at the bark of the tree’s trunk, trying to take in every crinkle and detail of it in the hope that it would get the image of her parents’ bodies out of her head. But they were still there whenever she stopped concentrating for just a moment: the piercing gaze of her mother’s dead eyes, her father’s final look of terror at the stars above.
Eventually, she drifted off into a fitful sleep, plagued with tall, angular figures creeping about in the shadows.
- - -
~ii~
~ii~
She didn’t know how long she lay there, still staring dully at the tree trunk in front of her nose. It might have been days. She’d given up trying to get her parents’ bodies out of her head – no matter how hard she tried, it didn’t seem like it was going to happen. She wasn’t even sure if she wanted to forget those images, horrible as they were. It would almost be like forgetting her parents had ever been there.
Her parents. Forsira screwed her eyes shut, trying to keep the latest of a long line of tears from escaping. Her parents would never be there, never give her food and protection, never teach her how to hunt when she was older, never make her laugh or smile or do anything for her ever again.
They’d told her she’d find someone else. She didn’t want anyone else.
Her stomach growled fiercely, but she ignored it. There wasn’t any way she could get food without her parents, after all. She wondered vaguely what would happen if she didn’t eat again, ever. Maybe she’d end up so thin she’d just disappear.
There was a rustling in the tree above her, the sound of some Pokémon or other moving about up there. Dimly, without really caring what she saw, Forsira looked up into the boughs, spotting something small and bright green bounding about up there. Two thick, dark tails were visible for a moment between the branches.
It was another Treecko, then. Forsira dully wondered what he was doing here, whether he had lost his parents to Them too.
She jumped as the other Treecko noticed her and suddenly his bright yellow eyes were looking straight down at her, full of curiosity. The next thing she knew, he’d scampered down the tree trunk until he was right above her, his upside-down face grinning into hers. “Hi!” he said brightly.
Forsira flinched and edged away, making herself smaller.
The stranger seemed to realise he’d done something wrong and jumped down from the trunk to approach her slowly on all fours, his head cocked to one side. “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Forsira said nothing, still staring at him in confusion. She didn’t think he was going to hurt her – he was only a Treecko like her, after all – but…
The other Treecko was smiling at her again. “I’m Zathern,” he told her, turning around to offer his tails to her as a way of greeting. “What’s your name?”
She was rather taken aback by the sudden introduction – why was he even interested in her? – but she managed to make herself turn around and touch his tails with hers. “F… Forsira,” she mumbled quietly.
“Hey, Forsira,” Zathern said, turning back around to face her. He looked like he was thinking for a moment. “No, that’s too long. I can’t say ‘Forsira’ all the time. I’ll call you Forse.” He brightened again. “So, what are you doing here, Forse?”
Forsira shrunk and looked away, staring at the bark of the tree again, not wanting to look this stranger in the eyes. She didn’t think she wanted to talk about it.
Zathern didn’t let up. He took a slow step towards her, still smiling that welcoming smile. “Aw, come on,” he said. “It can’t be that bad.”
Something in his friendly, open manner made her feel slightly better about telling him, enough to just manage to get the words out. “My… my parents,” she mumbled. “They’re… they’re not here anymore.”
“Oh.” Zathern sheepishly glanced at the ground. “Um. That… that is kinda bad, I guess. Sorry.” He looked back up at her again. “Was it Them?”
Forsira nodded, shuddering as the memory of those tall figures in the darkness came back to her.
“I don’t like Them,” Zathern said, nodding in agreement. “I don’t get why They want to kill all our parents. It’s stupid.”
“I don’t get it either,” Forsira whispered quietly. She wasn’t sure if he heard her.
Zathern suddenly brightened again. “Hey,” he said. “I could take you to see my mum. She’s great.”
Forsira stared at him in dull confusion. Why was he saying that? Had he known what her own mother had said about finding someone else? But no, he couldn’t have known that. And she didn’t want anyone else. She wanted her parents.
Again, Zathern seemed to realise his mistake and cocked his head, looking sort of concerned. “I mean, uh, she could give you some of our food? You look thin. Have you eaten anything since…?”
Forsira glanced down at the ground. Her stomach rumbled again. She shook her head.
“All right, then!” said Zathern. “Let’s go find my mum. Come on, Forse!” With that, he grabbed her by the arm and practically dragged her up the tree in his enthusiasm. Forsira managed to find her feet and scramble after him through her own power, even as she wondered what reason she had for following this Treecko other than hunger. She didn’t know if she wanted to see someone else’s mother and be reminded that hers wasn’t there anymore. But still she followed him.
“Faster, slowcoach!” Zathern called back to her as he sped up, dashing away ahead of her from tree to tree. Something sparked in Forsira, and she put on a burst of speed, racing to catch up to him. She almost smiled – somehow this Treecko was letting her forget what had happened to her parents, just a little bit, and enjoy herself.
“Where are we going?” she managed to ask as the two of them leapt from branch to branch.
“I know where she’ll be,” Zathern called back to her. “Just follow me!”
Forsira did so, realising she was feeling a flicker of something that might have been happiness beneath the pain of losing her parents. The sun’s rays fell onto her from between the leaves of the canopy above. This seemed worlds away from the dark night where tall, angular figures slunk through the shadows and took her parents from her.
She saw ahead of her that Zathern had stopped at the end of a branch. Forsira ran up to join him and nearly fell out of the tree in awe at the view he was looking at.
The forest thinned out in front of them, leaving a clearing which rolled gently downhill, decorated with crinkly outcrops of rock pushing their way out of the ground and a multitude of wild plants growing in between them. Beyond that was a long expanse of sand stretching from one side of her vision to the other – beyond the sand, there was only the sea, wide, flat and peacefully blue. The water glittered, catching the rays of the descending sun above, the sky behind tinged a pale yellow.
Zathern was watching her reaction and grinning. “Haven’t you ever seen the sea before?”
“Only through the trees,” Forsira murmured, taking in as much of the view as she could. “Not like this.” Her parents had told her what was meant by the fact that they were on an island, but she’d never realised the sea was so big.
“It’ll be sunset soon,” Zathern said. “We can watch it from here. It’s beautiful.” Abruptly, he looked away from the horizon, his attention caught by something else. “Here she comes. Over here, Mum!”
Forsira followed his gaze to see a huge winged shape gliding across the clearing towards where they were up on the slope, the setting sun glinting off the figure’s leafy wings and the crest of foliage that ran down her back. Seeing another Archopy alive and well gave Forsira a pang of sadness at the reminder that the two Archopy who had ever meant anything to her in this world were gone.
A small, limp red shape hung from the newcomer’s mouth; as she alighted in front of them with a massive gust of air from her wings, Zathern jumped up and eagerly grabbed it off her with an excited cry of “Food!”
“Calm down, Zathern,” the newcomer said in a soft, warm voice as she gave an amused glance to the Treecko, who was already tearing into the dead Wurmple. She nodded towards Forsira. “Who’s your friend?”
Zathern suddenly seemed to remember she was there and looked abruptly up from the Wurmple. “Oh, right!” he said. “Mum, this is Forse. I mean, um, For-siih-ra,” he added, saying it like he’d almost forgotten what her full name was. “She, uh, she doesn’t have her parents anymore.” He lowered his gaze awkwardly. “Them, you know.”
A huge sigh seemed to go through the Archopy as she closed her eyes in resigned sadness. “I see. Hello, Forsira,” she said, looking at the young Treecko with a warmth in her golden eyes that reminded Forsira of her own mother – but then, this stranger wasn’t her own mother. She didn’t know if she was happy to see somebody look at her like that again or not. Her mother had told her that she’d find someone else, but she still wasn’t sure if she wanted anyone else.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” the Archopy continued, and Forsira could tell that she meant it. “My name is Azma. Zathern here is my son.” She glanced at the other Treecko, who had busied himself with the Wurmple again. “Sorry if he startled you; he doesn’t mean any harm by it. He’s just like that.” She smiled.
“I don’t mind,” Forsira mumbled quietly. She still wasn’t sure what she was doing here, why she was with these two strangers when all she really wanted was her parents back.
“You look starved,” Azma told her. “Would you like some of the Wurmple?”
At this, Zathern’s head shot up from his meal again. “Oh, the food! Sorry, Forse, I forgot you were hungry! You should have reminded me.” He tossed the Wurmple carcass towards her. “Go on, have the rest.”
Forsira looked at it; Zathern hadn’t even eaten half yet. “All the rest? But…”
“No buts,” he said. “You need it more than I do. Go on.”
Forsira still felt bad for depriving him of most of his meal, but she didn’t want to argue, so she tucked into the red, squidgy flesh. Wurmple meat had never been her favourite, but it was better than nothing. She really was starved.
Azma sat herself down beside Forsira as she ate, facing out towards the horizon and the steadily descending sun. “So, Forsira,” she said kindly, “who were your parents, if you don’t mind me asking? If you don’t want to talk about them, I’ll understand.”
Forsira didn’t respond for a while, focusing on tearing off mouthfuls of Wurmple flesh and gulping them down. Eventually, she stopped eating for a moment to mumble, “Dad was Resten. Mum was… Leathra.” She said nothing else, concentrating again on the food. Azma didn’t ask anything further, and she was grateful of it.
“Leathra,” the Archopy said, almost to herself, a kind of wistful sadness in her voice. “Such a shame. I knew her, once…”
They sat there in silence as Forsira finished off the Wurmple, tossing away the leftover head and stingers. Across the shrubby expanse of clearing before them, the sun had touched the edge of the sea and was beginning to slip below it, tingeing everything with a warm reddish-orange glow. The tiny humps and bumps of water on the sea’s surface glinted in the light, a constantly changing pattern of sparkles. Despite everything, Forsira found herself smiling a little. “It is beautiful,” she murmured, catching Zathern’s eye. He just grinned back at her.
As the sun disappeared completely beneath the waves, Forsira felt glad that she had someone, at least, to share the sunset with.
- - -
~iii~
~iii~
She slept on her own that night. Zathern and Azma had a tree on the edge of the clearing that they slept in, but although they had offered, Forsira hadn’t wanted to join them. As much as she appreciated someone being there for her, they weren’t her real family. She wanted to sleep with her parents, and if that never happened again, then she didn’t want to just replace them like they’d never existed.
Azma had nonetheless insisted that Forsira sleep in a tree close to hers and Zathern’s, so that she could keep watch over her in case anything happened.
Forsira’s dreams were plagued again with her parents’ final lifeless stares and the tall dark figures in the shadows that had taken them from her. She woke over and over, shivering miserably with the horror that the night brought back to her. If only her parents were still here, she’d have someone to comfort her and make the nightmares go away. She knew Azma was nearby, but it didn’t feel right going to her. Azma was kind, but she wasn’t her real mother. Forsira stared up at the stars through the branches of the canopy as she waited for sleep and the nightmares to reclaim her, wishing that none of this had happened, wishing she still had her parents.
It wasn’t so bad in the daytime. Zathern’s company could keep her mind off things as he showed her around the parts of the forest that he knew, taking her up and down and all over the slopes of this side of the island. Forsira knew about how the island was like a hill, poking out of the sea, and that on the other side you could see the sun rising from beneath the waves in the morning just like you could see it set in the evening on this side. They never went over there, though; Zathern only seemed to know his way around places on the sunset side of the island. She didn’t blame him. Even if it was only half the world, it was still huge.
He’d also taken it upon himself to introduce her to various people. A lot of them were Treecko around their age that Zathern was friends with – although he never stayed around the same one for long – while others were Archopy who knew him through his mother. Forsira found herself noticing that most of the Archopy seemed to have an air of nervousness about them, almost as if they were constantly looking over their shoulders. She wondered if her parents had been the same, but already her memories of them were beginning to fade. She could only recall certain moments with them now, times they’d reassured her and made the dangers go away, times they’d made her laugh – moments that really shone. She couldn’t imagine that they’d ever have been nervous like the others, except on that one terrible night. They were her parents, after all.
Azma wasn’t like that, either. In fact, Azma seemed to be the most calm Archopy of all of them. Maybe it was just a parent thing.
In between meeting new people and exploring the forest, Zathern also introduced Forsira to his favourite thing to do: battling.
“Seriously?” he asked as the two of them sat up in a tree, looking down at the overgrown forest floor below with a clear view of anything that came by. “You’ve never battled before?”
Forsira shook her head slowly. “I practiced pounding my tail with my… with my parents,” she muttered. “But never wild Pokémon. I thought they were just food.”
“Nah,” Zathern said. “They’re only food when we want them to be. Come on! You have to battle lots if you want to get stronger and evolve. Don’t you want to be a Grovyle?”
Forsira thought about the Grovyle form – she’d met quite a few of them on Zathern’s tours, too – the taller, sleeker shape, the leaves, the claws. It would be nice to be something other than a tiny little Treecko. She nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Zathern scanned the undergrowth beneath them, eventually pointing at a small shape with brown, jagged fur, just visible as it rooted about underneath a fern. “Look! Zigzagoon!” With that, he dropped from the tree, rushed towards it and spun around, smacking it with his two thick tails to get its attention.
The mammal turned to him with an indignant yelp, looking almost a little worried by him.
“Hey,” Zathern said to it. “Battle?”
The worry left the Zigzagoon immediately, and it grinned. “Sure,” it said in a strange, barking sort of voice. Forsira was startled; she hadn’t realised the wild Pokémon could talk.
Zathern had obviously been used to it – at least, he wasn’t thrown off, dodging to the side as the Zigzagoon ran at him head on. He retaliated with another blow from his tails, this time to the Zigzagoon’s face.
As Forsira watched the battle from above, she noticed another stripy brown Pokémon emerge from a nearby bush and begin to watch with interest. Apparently the Zigzagoon had been with a friend.
“Get it, Forse!” Zathern called, having somehow managed to notice it even as he narrowly dodged a fast headbutt from his own Zigzagoon.
Forsira stared hesitantly down at the second Zigzagoon below her, not entirely sure what she was meant to be doing. But after more prompting from Zathern, some kind of inner drive overtook her and she leapt out of the tree, falling towards her foe. She found herself flipping over in midair before she met it – somehow her body just knew what to do – and her tails slammed the Zigzagoon against the ground with all the power from her fall. She leapt away and landed, if a little unsteadily, on her feet nearby, panting but pleased with herself.
“Nice hit, Forse!” Zathern called, smacking his own opponent with his tails, before adding, “She’s only battling, too!” seemingly for her Zigzagoon’s benefit. The apprehension that had been on the Zigzagoon’s face vanished and it rushed towards Forsira, catching her off guard with a fast tackle to the gut. She tried to retaliate but couldn’t get the proper momentum to spin and ended up barely tapping it with her tails.
The Zigzagoon backed away a short distance and growled at her. Something in the noise made it more than just a normal growl, and Forsira shivered, not sure if she wanted to risk hitting this Pokémon as hard as she could. But at the same time, she didn’t like being growled at; she shot the Zigzagoon a look of disdain without thinking, somehow feeling twice as large as she did so. The mammal whined and shrunk back slightly, but then seemingly shook it off and rushed at her again.
Forsira reacted faster than she thought she could, leaping upwards so that the Zigzagoon dashed past underneath her. It skidded to a confused halt, and she found herself landing clumsily on its back. Not sure what else to do, she was about to get off and resume attacking when a strange feeling overcame her. Instead of jumping away, she ended up grabbing tightly onto the Zigzagoon, wrapping herself in a green glow and simply… sucking some energy out of it? It felt incredibly strange, but somehow the aching in her gut from her opponent’s tackle had lessened a bit.
Clearly not happy at having its energy drained, the Zigzagoon dashed forwards with her still on top of it and rammed her into a nearby tree. Forsira fell to the ground, dazed, not quite able to summon up the energy to get out of the way as she saw the Zigzagoon turn and rush straight at her, head on. She stared at it, frozen – what would happen if the blow was too powerful? The thought of her parents flashed through her mind. Would this kill her, too?
The Zigzagoon was almost upon her when a green blur appeared from the left and smacked its tails into the charging Pokémon, sending it sprawling away. “Ha!” Zathern shouted in triumph as the Zigzagoon struggled and failed to rise. He turned to Forsira, a little sheepishly. “Sorry, Forse,” he said. “Didn’t mean to butt in, but I’d already finished mine, and you looked like you were in trouble, so…”
Forsira shook her head. “It’s fine,” she mumbled. “Thanks.” She shook herself down and blinked a couple of times, realising she was panting. The Zigzagoon lay off to the side, not moving as she walked over to it. Its eyes were open, but they were glazed and unfocused. Forsira instantly knew that this wasn’t the same as the horrific, empty gazes of her parents. “It’s not dead, is it?” she asked Zathern.
“Nope,” he said. “Just fainted. Mine, too. They’ll wake up in a while and be fine.” He laughed. “That’s all that was going to happen to you if it hit you, Forse. You looked so worried!”
Forsira stared down at the ground, embarrassed. “I didn’t know,” she muttered. “And… my parents…”
“Oh.” Zathern grimaced awkwardly. “Yeah. I guess. But still!” He perked up again, never down for long. “Battling is good, isn’t it?”
Forsira nodded, hesitantly at first but then more strongly as she realised that yes, it really was. She hadn’t felt even the slightest pang of grief at her parents’ death while she’d been battling. She’d been so focused on her opponent that it had all just gone. It was back now, of course – the sadness was always lingering at the edge of her mind, even with Zathern at his cheeriest – but during the battle, it hadn’t been there at all.
“Yes,” she agreed quietly. “Battling is good.”
Zathern grinned. “So,” he said, “want to go against me?”
Forsira looked at him, taken aback. He was obviously better at it than her, given that he’d knocked out his Zigzagoon without help. But then, she supposed, it wouldn’t hurt for her to practice against someone stronger; perhaps that was why he’d suggested it. She smiled a little. “Okay.”
“Great!” With that, Zathern rushed forward before she could properly prepare for anything and pounded her with his tails. She yelped in surprise and skidded backwards. “Come on now, Forse,” he teased. “You gotta be quicker than that!”
Forsira gritted her teeth, feeling the adrenaline of battle rush back to her. Never mind him telling her what to do – she’d show him something she’d learnt on her own. She leapt towards him and, much to his confusion, grabbed hold of his body, using that same green glow from before to drain his energy. It helped lessen the pain from his tails, but not as much as it had done with the Zigzagoon.
“Oh, that,” Zathern said as she let go. “You don’t want to use that on me – it doesn’t work so well against another Treecko.” He charged at her again for another strike of his tails, but she jumped frantically out of the way, feeling embarrassed at her mistake. She was about to counter with an ordinary tail pounding, but as she turned, she caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye, something that sent a shiver through her. The exhilaration of battle disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, leaving her with only a dull sense of dread.
Zathern was rushing at her again, but then he skidded to a confused halt as she still paid him no attention. Forsira stared through the trees anxiously; she knew she’d seen something a little further up the slope, something that had made her stop battling. There it was: a tall, green figure, watching her through the branches with beady yellow eyes. It shifted, coming further into view, and Forsira recognised with horror the angular shape, the thin arms with sharp leaves jutting from them, the huge spiked tail.
This was the creature that had plagued her nightmares for several nights now. It was one of Them. It had to be.
Without another thought, she turned and fled up the nearest tree, speeding across its branches to leap into the next one, her heart racing in terror, desperate to put as much distance between herself and the creature as possible. She could hear Zathern behind her, calling out to her, but he sounded puzzled rather than as scared as he should be. “What’s the matter, Forse? Is this because of the Sceptile? It’s only Verdan – he won’t hurt you!”
Forsira didn’t believe him. The memory of the dark figures circling her tree the night she’d lost her parents played vividly through her mind. This was a Sceptile – he had to be one of Them, surely. He could kill Forsira and even Zathern too if they didn’t get away.
Racing through the treetops, Forsira realised dimly that she was headed towards where Azma usually was on the edge of the clearing – that in the absence of her real parents, she wanted Azma to comfort her and tell her everything would be okay.
She came to a stop, exhausted, as the clearing came into view in front of her. Dropping from a tree, she crawled forwards along the ground towards where she could see Azma, perched on a rock and eating something while gazing out towards the sea.
Zathern caught up with Forsira, panting almost as hard as she was. “It’s okay, Forse,” he insisted, touching her shaking tails with his to calm her down as he walked alongside her. “See, he hasn’t followed. He doesn’t mean us any harm.”
Forsira still wasn’t convinced, but she walked the rest of the way towards Azma at a less panicked pace, even though instinctive warnings of danger still coursed through her mind. Azma lifted her head from a brown and stripy carcass as she heard them approach. “Hello, you two,” she said. “Have some of this Zigzagoon if you’re…” She broke off, frowning with concern at Forsira. “What’s wrong?”
Zathern immediately reached for the Zigzagoon and tore off a strip of flesh. “Forse saw a Sceptile and got spooked,” he said with his mouth full.
Azma looked half questioningly, half accusingly at Forsira. She shrank a little but still spoke. “He was the same as the ones that…” She closed her eyes and swallowed. “I thought… he must be one of Them, too…”
Azma let out a long sigh, with a murmur of something that sounded like, “Of course.” She fixed Forsira with a firm, almost stern gaze. “Forsira,” she said. “It’s very important that you understand this. Not every Sceptile is one of Them. Yes, every one of Them is a Sceptile, but it doesn’t work the other way. There are many Sceptile living over on the sunrise side of the island, as many as there are Archopy on this side – more, even – and most of them are entirely peaceful, wish harm to nobody and do not deserve to be thought of in the same way as Them.”
Forsira stared at her for a moment, taking it in. Part of her still thought it couldn’t possibly be that way, but the sensible side of her trusted Azma and believed she must have been telling the truth. “So…” she said, “that Sceptile I saw wasn’t bad?”
“I told her he wouldn’t hurt her,” Zathern mumbled between mouthfuls of Zigzagoon. “It was only Verdan.”
Azma nodded. “Most of the peaceful Sceptile stay over on the sunrise side nowadays, but some, like Verdan, come over here every so often. He says the hunting is better on this side. There’s no need to worry; he’s never hurt anyone.”
“See, Forse?” Zathern said. “Told you it was fine. Come and have some Zigzagoon already.”
Forsira dutifully moved forward and tore off a mouthful of flesh. She took in the Zigzagoon carcass as she ate, seeing an empty, half-eaten shell of the same species that she and Zathern had been battling for fun just a moment ago. It felt strange.
“We just battled two Zigzagoon,” she muttered, not sure why she was saying it. “Now we’re eating one.”
“Did you tell them you wanted to battle first?” asked Azma.
“Zathern did,” said Forsira.
“Then there is nothing wrong with that,” said Azma. “It’s less important when you’re a Treecko, as you don’t have any deadly weapons you can hunt and kill with, but once you are a Grovyle, it is vital when you’re not hunting that you make it clear to a wild Pokémon that you just want a friendly battle. That way, the Pokémon knows what it’s fighting for. Asking for a battle is like a promise that you’re not going to kill them. You should never break it.”
Zathern had stayed engrossed in his meal while she’d been talking; it seemed like he’d already heard this from her before. It made sense now why he’d made sure to tell the Zigzagoon that they wanted to battle, and why the Zigzagoon had looked worried beforehand, even if he and Forsira were only Treecko.
What Azma said made Forsira feel less uncomfortable about the fact that she was sat in front of a half-eaten Zigzagoon right now, so she pushed the worries out of her mind and focused on eating her fill. All the battling had made her hungry, after all.
- - -
~iv~
~iv~
Forsira slept in Azma and Zathern’s tree that night. She still wasn’t too close to them, staying alone on one of the outermost branches, but nonetheless she found herself feeling safer if she had Azma watching over her, since she knew her parents would never be able to do that for her again. The nightmares still came, though. Having her friends nearby didn’t keep them away.
She was lying awake, huddling small to try and offer herself some comfort as she stared up at the night sky, when she felt the branch beneath her shift with someone’s weight. Azma was making her way towards Forsira, coming to sit next to her on the branch and join her in watching the stars.
“Nightmares of the past,” she said out of nowhere. “They don’t last forever. Over time, they begin to come less often. They fade.” She let out a long, tired sigh and looked sadly at Forsira. “It’s nightmares of the future you should worry about.”
Forsira tilted her head in puzzlement. She wasn’t sure if that reassured her or made things worse. Azma didn’t say anything more on the matter.
Forsira found herself edging a little closer to the Archopy nonetheless, feeling some of the anxiety leave her as she did. Maybe Azma really could make the nightmares go away.
There was a long silence as the two of them continued to look up at the stars, interrupted only by Zathern’s snores behind them and the sounds of nocturnal Pokémon in the forest below.
“Azma,” Forsira asked quietly after a while, “why do They want to kill us?”
Azma gazed solemnly out towards the other side of the island. She didn’t answer for a moment. “They’re convinced that a Sceptile is better than an Archopy,” she said eventually.
Forsira felt tears pricking at her eyes. It didn’t make any sense. Her parents had died because of that? “But then… why kill us?”
Azma closed her eyes and shook her head. “Some people need no more reason than that.”
The tears were beginning to overtake Forsira, and she was trembling again. “But… but…”
“I know,” Azma agreed. The Archopy was crouching down to Forsira’s level, looking straight at her. She gave a small smile. “You shouldn’t let it worry you. They won’t kill you, at least not for a long time.”
“Why?”
“You’re still a Treecko. The Sceptile evolve from Grovyle, just like Archopy do. Treecko and Grovyle are safe from Them because you’re exactly like Their own children.”
Forsira stared, trying to take it all in; she hadn’t realised a Grovyle could evolve into Sceptile as well as Archopy. The thought that her parents had been killed not by a separate race of monsters but a species so closely related to them made it somehow even worse. “But… when I evolve…?”
Azma shook her head firmly. “Don’t let it worry you. Forget what I said about nightmares of the future. You should do your best to enjoy the time you have now.”
Something was beginning to click in Forsira’s head. “But… if they kill Archopy… what about you?” The thought was terrifying – to lose her new beacon of security so soon after losing her parents…
“They won’t kill me,” said Azma darkly, in such a way that Forsira knew she utterly believed that. “Not for a long time.”
“Why?”
Azma seemed uncomfortable, not quite meeting her eye. “I’m sorry,” she said after a strained pause. “I shouldn’t have said all this; I shouldn’t have made you worry. You should be with your parents, not me.” She shook her wings out awkwardly and retreated up the branch. “I’ll leave you to sleep. Good night, Forsira.”
Forsira could only mumble a confused “Good night” back to Azma as she disappeared into the boughs of the tree from which Zathern’s snoring could still be heard. She was left watching the stars on her own, wondering why some of the Sceptile thought being better than Archopy meant They could kill them, wondering what was going on in Azma’s head.
Adult minds made no sense.
- - -
~v~
~v~
Forsira sometimes thought about one of the last things her mother had said to her: that she’d find someone else and everything would be okay. She was increasingly realising that, without her really having noticed, this had somehow come true. While she would never, ever deliberately have tried to replace her parents, Azma and Zathern had just fallen into place in the hole they’d left. She still missed her parents – of course she did – but the thought that her mother might have been right after all made her feel a little bit warmer inside. It was no longer such a bad thing that she had to move on. She began trying to make the most of the time she had while she was still young and safe, just like Azma had said.
And Azma had been right, too. Forsira’s nights were still restless, but the nightmares were beginning to fade, if only a little.
With Zathern’s encouragement, she began battling more and more – it was one of the few things that let her completely forget the ache that her parents had left and simply enjoy herself. She and Zathern would spend all their time exploring the forests on the sunset side of the island, looking for wild Pokémon around their level of strength – or even a little higher – to fight, sometimes working together, sometimes battling one each to see who could win first. They always watched out for each other, too; Zathern had declared early on that whenever either of them fainted, the other would always forfeit their battle and wait for their friend to come around. Forsira had fainted a lot in the beginning, but it always cheered her up to wake up to Zathern’s grinning face.
Zathern talked excitedly about evolution almost every day. While nowhere near as vocal, Forsira silently shared his enthusiasm about becoming a Grovyle someday soon.
“So,” Zathern said brightly as they leapt across the treetops in an area they’d passed through but never properly explored before. “What d’you want to battle today, Forse?”
Forsira mumbled in indifference, but then looked down at the tree they were currently in, seeing lots of small red Pokémon all over the lower branches. “Wurmple?” she suggested.
Zathern looked at her like she was mad. “Wurmple? Seriously? We’re way too strong for Wurmple now.”
Forsira almost gave in and admitted it had been a bad idea but then decided not to. “There’s a lot of them,” she pointed out.
Zathern followed her gaze down, properly looking at them for the first time. The tree’s lower branches were practically covered in the caterpillar Pokémon. “True,” he admitted. “Two each, then? Go!” As soon as he’d said that, he dropped from where he was, spinning in midair as he fell past the Wurmple, his tails smacking into one and then another on the way down to fling them out of the tree.
Smiling at his enthusiasm, Forsira followed suit. Pounding with her tails in midair had become second nature with the practice she’d had; it wasn’t hard to pinpoint two of the bugs and send them flying to the ground, squealing with indignation as they were knocked out of their homes. Forsira landed neatly on her feet as the two Wurmple wriggled themselves upright and rounded on her accusingly. “Battle?” she said, grinning.
One of the Wurmple rolled its eyes and shot a spray of silk at her, which she took as a yes. Dodging out of the way put her in the path of the other as it rammed into her, but she moved with it, using the momentum of the blow to spin herself around and slam it with her tails in retaliation.
The first Wurmple looked as though it was about to fire off some more silk; before it could, Forsira summoned up the inner speed that she’d learned to harness recently and rushed towards it faster than it could react, tackling it. Having learnt from experience that the absorbing attack of hers didn’t work too well on bugs like Wurmple either, she followed up with a fast blow from her tails, and the Wurmple squeaked in pain and gave in, slumping to the ground.
She almost let her guard down at the premature victory, but remembered just in time that this wasn’t over and managed to duck a dart shot at her from the stingers on the second Wurmple’s back end. Before it could fire off another one, she zoomed at it with the same speed from before, tackling it so hard it was sent flying into a nearby tree. It, too, didn’t get up again.
Maybe Zathern was right. That had been a bit too easy.
A loud “Ow!” from her friend caught Forsira’s attention, and she looked towards him to see him struggling with one of his Wurmple. His feet were caught up in the sticky silk, slowing him down as he tried to duck and dodge the stingers that the caterpillar was jabbing at him, all the while grimacing in pain. Wanting to help, Forsira sped forwards to ram the Wurmple away from him across the ground, delivering a strike with her tails for good measure. Satisfied that it had fainted, she turned back to Zathern.
“Oi,” he said jokingly, still looking like he was in pain. “Spoilsport. I could have – ow – done that myself.”
Forsira approached to help untangle the sticky thread around his feet. As she did so, she noticed a nasty-looking purple tinge in the skin surrounding a puncture mark on his stomach. “You’re poisoned,” she said.
He grinned, although it came out looking like a grimace. “Yeah,” he said. “Stupid stingers. ’S the only reason you beat me; it’s not that you’re – ow – better than me or anything.” Despite her anxiety, Forsira couldn’t help but smile; Zathern had to be his competitive self, even when poisoned. “Don’t look so worried, Forse,” he told her. “It was only a battle; it’s not going to kill me.” He tried to smile again and winced in pain. “I just need a –”
“I know this one,” Forsira said. “Stay here.” She left him where he was and scampered off across the ground, looking up at the different types of trees around her. There were so many things her parents hadn’t had the time to teach her before they’d passed away, things she’d had to be told about by Zathern or Azma instead; it felt good to be needed for something she already knew by herself. It didn’t take her long to spot a tree with long, blue-green leaves and pinkish, fleshy fruits hanging from it. She climbed up to knock one of the berries off with her tails before carrying it back to Zathern.
“Pecha berry,” he said, biting into it and already beginning to relax. “Thanks, Forse.”
She just smiled at him, and together they made their way up into a nearby Wurmple-free tree where Zathern could finish his berry without risk of being stung again.
As they sat in companionable silence – the silence was unusual, but Zathern had his mouth full, and that had been known to keep him quiet on occasion – Forsira watched the four Wurmple they’d defeated slowly begin to stir. The one closest to them, one of the ones Forsira had beaten, lifted its head to spray its silk around itself and suddenly burst out in a white glow as it did so.
“Look, Forse!” Zathern said, pointing dramatically and accidentally flinging the remnants of his berry away as he did so. “They’re evolving!”
Forsira simply nodded quietly, watching with interest as another of the four Wurmple, this time one of Zathern’s, also began to cocoon itself in its own thread and shine with a bright light.
“That is so not fair!” Zathern complained as the glows faded from the two bug Pokémon. “How come they get to evolve from that battle and not us, even though we won?”
Forsira didn’t answer, too busy observing the two oval-shaped cocoon Pokémon that now sat on the ground. They seemed slightly different from each other; one was a greyish white and had an extra tuft of silk above its eyes, while the other was a more purple shade, its eyes large and beady as it stared up at them in the tree in what might have been an amused look of thanks. “They evolved into different things,” she said.
“Oh, yeah,” Zathern said. “That one’s called a Silcoon, I think –” he pointed to the one Forsira had helped to evolve – “and the other one’s a Cascoon. Mum told me about how Wurmple can evolve into two different things. Kinda like how Grovyle can.”
Forsira looked at Zathern with curiosity. She’d never really thought too hard about it until now, but the knowledge that Grovyle could evolve into either Sceptile or Archopy had been nagging at her since that conversation with Azma. “How do they choose?”
“Mum says they don’t. Apparently they don’t get a choice and it’s fixed for each Wurmple as soon as they’re born.”
“Is it the same for Grovyle?” Forsira asked.
Zathern looked unsure for a moment. “I… think so,” he said eventually. “At least, Mum’s always been sure about what I’m going to evolve into after Grovyle.”
A sense of foreboding crept over Forsira. She wasn’t sure if she wanted the answer, but something still made her ask. “Which?”
“Sceptile,” he said, grinning.
Forsira tried to keep the disappointment out of her eyes. She believed what Azma had told her about not all Sceptile being Them, but still, the thought of Zathern turning into one made her uneasy. But she didn’t want to upset her friend, so she said nothing except, “How does she know?”
Zathern shrugged. “She’s my mum.”
Forsira nodded numbly and stared back down at the Wurmple they’d beaten, only to see that her other opponent had also become a Silcoon while they’d been talking, with the white glow fading from the fourth one to reveal a Cascoon. She thought of evolving into a Sceptile herself one day and shuddered. “I hope I’ll be an Archopy,” she muttered.
“I hope you will, too!” Zathern agreed, surprisingly brightly. “Go for it, Forse. Then at least one of us gets to fly. Sceptile’ll be cool and all, but it’s a shame I won’t ever be able to fly around like Mum does.”
Despite nodding her agreement, Forsira couldn’t help feeling a little apprehensive. What if she and Zathern really did have no choice but to evolve into different species? Would they still be friends even if he was a Sceptile and she was an Archopy? She didn’t want to lose him as a friend.
Before those thoughts could sink in, Forsira reminded herself of Azma’s advice not to worry about the future. She should be making the most of the here and now.
“Come on,” Zathern said all of a sudden, standing up. “Let’s go find something else to battle.”
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