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Somehow I . . . haven't reviewed this?? And I don't even need to cross any picket lines to do it!
So. Where to even start. I read this fic back when you first posted it on "the other place" and was absolutely enchanted. It's what made me decide to give Salvage a go! First, I adore the narrative voice. You've captured Sara's childish voice so well. I love how sharp and prickly she is. This isn't, child pov so they're dumb--she's seeing and picking up on things that adults aren't including their own absurdities. It also lets you filter--dangle just enough details about the expedition and their scientific method to give the fic the edge of realism, without staying in that domain too totally.
The setting is so alive here, so lush. Setting this outside any of the familiar regions is such an effective choice, because we get this sense that the normal rules don't apply here, wonderfully fleshed out in the sections on wild pokemon. Poaching! I forgot you discussed my pet topic. You've landed on an answer that feels compelling and true to the world of pokemon we know--that's it's highly regulated and sanitized. But here, in this new place, anything could happen. This is a fic where horror and wonder really go together, I think. It reminds me of The Inkheart books by Cornelia Funke--the fascination of the wild and beautiful. By the time you scent the danger, you're in too deep.
Finally--love the moment when Titan chatters with the other pokemon at Oak's lab and Sara leaves them to it. Such a simple but effective way to show that the pokemon have their own lives and internal worlds that don't always intersect with their trainer's.
"Ah, yes, I understand they do call it a rainforest," Professor Oak said, and even though the picture was so bad Sara could barely see his face, she knew he was smiling. Well, let him come and walk in the rain and the mud and the bugs if he thought it was so funny.
She passed close to the camp stove, which sizzled under insect-swarmed kerosene lights, but one of the grad students was standing right there poking it, so she couldn't hope to sneak anything.
This read confusingly to me. It sounds like the whole stove is sizzling, and presumably what Sara wants to sneak is food, but there's no mention of what the food is, or even its smell?
Hunter the kadabra belonged to one of the grad students, and he'd made it very clear he would prefer to stay right where he was, using his psychic powers to blow dirt off of uncovered artifacts.
"You don't pack supplies because you expect to be gone for days, you pack supplies because you expect to be gone a few hours but end up getting lost and have to survive for days," Dad said grimly
A lot of the stuff they'd hauled up the mountainside was tribute, items to offer the local pokémon in exchange for permission to stay and reassurance that no one would bother the camp or the dig site or Mom's cameras.
All around the tree's massive buttress roots were pots, little clay statues, piled berries. With a fascinated shiver Sara recognized the huddled lumps among them as dead animals, some bloody or twisted and some just laid out still.
Sara felt like tiptoeing as she moved up next to Titan. A pokémon altar--it had to be pokémon, didn't it? There weren't any humans out here, not for miles and miles. She'd only ever read about places like this in books.
This moment really stuck with me. There's something so foreign and disturbing about it--this is a thing that has absolutely nothing to do with humans. And yet there Sara is.
Titan whined and shot a look around before returning his gaze to Sara, patting at her leg with one hand. Sara couldn't see anything scary. Maybe it was going to rain? But no, the sun was bright where it shone through the gaps in the canopy. There were trees and fallen trunks bristling with mushrooms and ferns, climbing vines, sprays of flowers. Nothing scary. Maybe there was a snake? Sara looked around in sudden panic. No snake.
The horror builds so well here, with the long list of things that aren't wrong, that aren't scary. And yet . . .
I've always appreciated in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None that she chooses to set the story in a bright, modern house as opposed to some dark, rickety mansion. It's all the scarier for that openess.
Back for @qva's Review Blitz prize—yes, that's not a typo—as well as for my own pleasure!
So, in part two we meet Mew. I realize I'm invoking horror a lot in these reviews, when this story maybe doesn't fit the traditional framework. But this chapter definitely uses a lot of horror tropes—we have a small child drawn back into the creepy woods, we have the terror of an animal, we have a creature that might be cute from a distance, but up-close is terrifying. The stories this reminds me most of are all from the sci-fi genre, though. Maybe because sci-fi is so preoccupied with strange new places, untouched by humanity, and the horrifying alieness of the creatures encountered there. The ending, where Sara reenters the camp and lets the familiarity of the place chase the encounter away was a moment where I felt this strongly. In so much of sci-fi (I'm thinking of Annihilation and Stanislaw Lem's works) humans try to ward off the alien by claiming places as human, following routines, errecting all kinds of signs and signifiers that are ultimately only there for their own reassurance, because as Sara's parents know, if the forces here want them gone, none of that matters. Normalcy is a barrier in the mind: the final chapter shows how quickly that barrier can be broken (but I'll get to that when I . . . get to that.)
Sara continues to make only good decisions. I love how everything she does feels completely natural from her perspective, how innocent every step of this is. Titan was really the stand-out to me in this chapter, though. His scene with the pokedex is oddly poignant, and his terror when Mew comes brings the writing writhing to life.
Sara watched and catalogued: trumbeak, snivy, the simipour, even a vespiquen--but the people were dispersing, too, some coming her way, and Sara had to get back from the tent flap while her mind whirled with curiosity.
Maybe, "Sara watched and catalogued: trumbeak, snivy, the simipour, even a vespiquen--but the people were dispersing, too, some coming her way, so Sara scuttled back from the tent flap, her mind whirring with curiosity."
You use a similar thought process when she realizes she's lost! It feels realistic--she questions lots of things, but fundamentally she had faith in her adults.
I know piecing together a conversation like this is probably frutiless, but I was trying to work out what they were discussing here and getting a bit confused--the wild pokemon told them that the cameras are a problem. Is what Mom's discussing how to retrieve the cameras safely, so as not to lose the data?
"Do you think it could be a venusaur?" Mom asked. Professor Oak had brought the first bulbasaur back from around here, many years ago. There were supposed to be wild ones, but Sara hadn't seen one yet.
Sara's reemergence in the narrative felt a bit sudden here. Maybe something like, "Sara pricked up her ears. She knew Professor Oak had brought the first bulbasaur back from around here, many years ago. There were supposed to be wild ones, but Sara hadn't seen one yet."
Curious about the implications of Professor Oak introducing bulbasaur into this region. I wonder how regulated stuff like that is, and how much that kind of thing impacts native populations. It's not a major theme in this story, but I do get interesting colonialism vibes from bits of this.
Hah, this is cute, I can really feel Amanda's enthusiasm. Also does some nice worldbuilding work. I'm getting the impression that venosaur aren't rare in and of themselves, but wild venosaurs are. It's an interesting insight into trained vs wild pokemon. This reminds me a lot of the anime episode Bulbasaur's Secret Garden, where the wild venosaur is a big deal, and practically a god to the hoards of bulbasaur it shelters. The early anime really did have some nice moments that balanced wonder and terror, and you do a great job channeling that in your writing.
Several days later, Sara sat at a picnic table, flipping halfheartedly through a field guide and looking at the pictures. She wished she'd brought her video games with her. Mom said they wouldn't have much electricity in the forest, and Sara had expected to be out having adventures all day anyway. She hadn't thought she would need entertainment.
This is the sort of mundane detail that could be boring in another context, but here does the work of making Sara's expectations vs reality concrete. Expectation: romping through the wilds with Titan, finding Mew. Reality: dumb field guide.
She hadn't told anybody about what she'd found in the jungle. She had a feeling that if the wild pokémon were mad about something vague it was probably her accidentally stumbling into their church or whatever, not Mom's cameras. Which was stupid, because it wasn't like they had a sign or anything saying not to go there, and it was Titan who'd found it anyway. But she hadn't told Mom and Dad because if they knew they for sure wouldn't let her go back in the jungle ever again, like it was all her fault.
So much of horror relies on dumb decisions and people not saying important things until it's too late. That can be frustrating when done badly; your writing shows how satisfying it can feel when done well. Of course Sara's not going to fess up! She might get put in time-out!
Titan had the pokédex out beside her, stabbing the buttons with his claws. Professor Oak had recorded the audio himself, and Titan seemed to enjoy hearing his voice. He was more homesick than she was, Sara thought.
Hah, fun way to integrate that meme, especially since it's so on-point here, not that Sara will listen.
Also, I love "cluck" as a verb here. Canis was telling me that the name of my charmander is Dragon's Dance means "chicken" in Finnish, so it's funny to see another charmander-chicken connection here.
It was all covered in tangled berry bushes, every kind, and would stay that way until the little trees poking up from the forest floor got big enough to shade everything out again.
And it was close, so they could go and come back without anybody realizing they'd been.
It was as easy as heading towards Sara's tent, then skirting around behind instead of going in. Tack left, keeping a row of tents between her and the grad students, and she found the scuffed path and was on her way.
I don't love the double it sentences here. Maybe, "Making her escape was as easy as . . ." Love "tack" here--gives me this image of Sara as a this determined boat, cutting through the camp and into the wild blue beyond.
It was too young to control its water attacks, so mostly the two of them wrestled, trying to use their claws. Titan was stronger and heavier and after a couple of minutes he'd sent the panpour running to the low branches of a tree at the edge of the clearing, where it sat watching gloomily while the charmander paraded around, crowing his victory.
Soon Sara thought there weren't any more berries to try, and she was stuffed and sticky and her clothes were stained all different colors. Titan was napping under a chilan bush, and Sara sat down nearby, too full to even contemplate walking back to camp. The air was warm and felt thick, humid and dense with the smells of berries broken open and rotting on the ground. Those would grow into even more bushes. Sara wondered idly if she could pick some to take back to Cinnabar and plant at home.
Sara said a bad word under her breath, then, "It's okay, Titan! You don't have to--Titan!" But the charmander wanted to fight and went crashing after the venipede, heedless. The bug knew the forest better and didn't have to navigate the undergrowth, but Sara noted with approval that Titan was nearly keeping up. Then she realized both of them were going to be out of sight in a second if she didn't get moving herself.
"Titan!" she yelled. "Titan, wait! Don't go into the jungle!"
This line really hits me hard, for some reason. There's a whiff of betrayal to it, and that sudden chasm that opens up under you at the thought of going from being with someone in a jungle, to be alone in the jungle.
The venipede was up above on the trunk, apparently amused by the charmander who was growling and kept trying to climb up to reach it, his claws dragging up long curly strips of bark every time he slid back to the ground.
The only problem was that she didn't come to the berry patch. She'd been walking for what felt like way too long, and she didn't see it anywhere. Or smell it, or hear the sounds of pokémon eating. Maybe she'd run after Titan for longer than she thought.
But no, she kept going and it still wasn't there. Sara stopped and looked around, and the forest looked the same in all directions. "Do you know how to get back, Titan?" she asked. The charmander made a puzzled noise, looked around like he hadn't really been considering it. He'd just been following her.
I'm so into how the sentences start getting really straightforward here in their structure. Sara does a thing. It doesn't work. She dos another thing. It's still not there. The sentence structure lets me experience her feeling of denial, that all she has to do is this or that, and then she won't be lost.
So precious. I don't think "chirping" is where my mind goes when I think charmander, but the incongruity of the sound-description really communicates that Titan's upset.
Getting lost in the wild. The worst thing. Way more trainers died just from going a little off the path and not being able to get back than were attacked by wild pokémon or got sick or drowned or anything. Not getting lost was always the first rule. And now here she was, lost, and she wasn't even on the same continent as home.
When you got lost you were supposed to stop moving. That way people could come and find you and you wouldn't get even more lost. It was basically lunchtime, so probably people had noticed she wasn't around. They'd start searching. If they didn't find her by the time her parents got back, then Mom and Dad would join in and things would really start to pick up.
They would find her. Even though they didn't know what direction she went, there were a lot of them and they wouldn't give up. She'd be able to hear them calling for sure.
So Sara wasn't worried about being lost forever. What really made the cold sink to the pit of her stomach was the thought of just how mad her parents would be when they found her. They always said to never go in the forest alone, especially not without telling anyone what you were doing. They said they trusted her to know how to do things properly, like a real trainer would. Then she did all the things she wasn't supposed to do, and now she was lost, just like they said. She hadn't brought anything with her, didn't have her compass or even any food or water.
Her parents were never going to let her go off on her own again. They probably wouldn't let her go on her journey either. Sara bet they wouldn't even let her leave the house until she turned fifteen.
She had to find her way back. No way could she wait and let them come to her and ground her until she was old enough to drive.
Yes, now that she was looking properly things did seem to be brighter off to her left. And she thought she remembered seeing that big spiderweb hanging just above head-height.
But then she didn't think she remembered that ridge of stone, rising up covered in tangled roots and creepers, and then up in front of her opened a ravine, the land suddenly sloping away down below, and she didn't know where she was at all. She was lost.
And, bumping off of what I said earlier about the simple sentence structure conveying her denial, the moment she recognizes the fact that she's lost contains a sprawling, almost out-of-control sentence.
She wanted to recall Titan so she could cry and it wouldn't make him anxious, but if she recalled him, then she'd be all alone in the middle of the woods.
The two button meme except . . . it's sad. I think what makes this hit harder is how much she's trying to be brave for Titan while really needing him there so she can be brave at all.
"Chah!" There was genuine panic in Titan's voice. "Chah, chah!"
"It's going to be okay, Titan," Sara said. "Calm down. Do you want to go in your ball? I think you should--"
"Chamanda!"
Sara had never heard him sound like that. She stopped, and once she stopped she realized the tightness in her chest wasn't just suppressed tears. Her heart was pounding loud. Her palms were sweaty and her arms were covered in goosebumps. Something was here, watching them. She could feel it.
It was was the same thing that had watched them at the altar. The same bad thing. Wild pokémon? Sara couldn't see anything or anyone at all. Still the shadows beneath the trees looked darker, the sway of hanging moss or fluttering leaf evidence of something unseen breathing, alien and hidden.
The shift into the suggestion of horror pre-saged by Titan is so effective. I was rewatching Lord of the Rings recently and appreciating how they film conveys the supernatural terror of the nazgul through the fear of the animals.
The last line here is lovely and really latches onto the two essential fears: you don't know what it is and you can't see it, but it can see you.
Titan was panting with his mouth open, splayed on four feet in the leaves next to her, his flame high and glowing yellow and orange. He could probably burn down the whole jungle if he stuck his tail down in the dry leaves. Sara didn't know why that thought kept going around and around in her head--maybe because her brain needed something to think about other than the awful feeling smothering her, telling her she was going to die.
The pokémon blinked at them. It let go of the branch but didn't fall, instead moving zigzag through the air, so fast Sara struggled to keep it in view, tracking it back and forth while it moved in and out of sight around intervening trees, watching her the whole time.
I love how you suggest something off about Mew even from its first actions. There are so many benign ways to describe levitation, but letting go of a branch but not falling is one that underscores a wrongness.
Then Titan went back over Sara's head like he'd been launched from a slingshot, slamming against a tree trunk with a thud so solid Sara could swear she felt it, too.
She felt... something. Like something had brushed against, not her skin, but her brain, like someone had said something quiet she just barely couldn't make out.
The last clause here really gets to me. It makes the pretty intangible and difficult to image concept of psychic intrusion feel visceral in a way that's very unsettling.
(Think you may want to cut out some of these commas? "Like something had brushed against not her skin but her brain, like someone had said something quiet she just barely couldn't make out.)
Mew wasn't going to hurt her. Mew was cute. Mew was a fun pokémon that liked to bounce and play and pick berries and fly around with its pokémon friends.
The pokémon in front of her did not seem much like an illustration in a children's book. It moved too fast, hovering up, down, around in a circle, examining Sara from all sides. The eyes were huge and brilliant blue, but here, alive, they held a shrewd intelligence that artists had missed.
The last line here is one I remember reading the first time I read this, and one that really lingered with me. There's so much going on here: the storybook image vs the real creature. It makes me think of Grimm's fairy tales vs the Disney versions. Suddenly you're confronted with this creature that humans have worked so hard to mold into something cute and safe, but it doesn't belong to humans and it isn't safe.
(I feel like there should be a "the" before artists?)
A wave of hot, then cold passed over Sara as she realized that was Mew talking. It was talking inside her head, it was that good of a psychic. Even Hunter couldn't do much more than give people headaches or make them feel sick to their stomach.
Great world-building nugget. I'm down for a world of more limited psychics--if psychic pokemon could all talk in people's heads, it feels like the pokemon world would have to be different.
Legendary pokémon helped lost people all the time in stories, and not even just old stories--Moltres was supposed to have saved Blaine when he was lost in the mountains, and he was old but not dead yet.
Love that there's a specific example that Sara, and probably any random person on the street could cite, because that's how myth and popular culture work. Legendary pokemon help lost people--just like with Blaine! And everyone nods, because of course one anecdote is enough to shine a flashlight on the unknown.
There was music, faint and crackly but with the unmistakeable beat of one of Sanesh's pop CD's. He played them in an immense boxy CD player that looked like it weighed a hundred pounds and had been dropped down at least three flights of stairs in its lifetime, but he said it was indestructible and worth the hassle of carrying to have his tunes while he was out on an expedition.
Sara wasn't far. She could follow the music and she'd be back in camp in no time. It was only then that she realized she actually was crying, staring dazed at the dark holes her tears had left in the leaf litter. She wanted to go back and have lunch and lie down for a very long time.
The catharsis here is so good. And I love how illusory it is. A CD player isn't going to keep anything out, but it's a signal of normalcy, of a boundary-crossing--here be civilization once again. The way you've included all these little details about Sanesh's CD makes Sara's relief come through really clearly, you can feel her mind gushing with it.
"No," Sara said, with extra defiance. There were multicolored berry stains on her shirt, sticks in her hair, Titan's scratches on her arm. June took all this in for a moment, then said, "Good. Because if your parents found out you'd been wandering around in the jungle on my watch, they'd kill me."
"Uh-huh."
"Kill. K-I-L-L. Murder. Decapitate. Bury in a shallow grave. Come on." June flapped her hands at Sara, herding her in the direction of the picnic tables. "Have you had lunch yet? Let's get you lunch."
Sara didn't know what woke her. It was still early; she could smell coffee brewing, always the first thing to get done in the morning. She rolled over and covered her face with her arm. She didn't need to get up for a while yet and wasn't going to.
Usually people were chatty in the morning, discussing what they'd do for the day, clattery with their bowls and plates. There were voices out there, but not many. They sounded serious.
Sara unzipped the tent flap just enough to peek through. She wasn't at a good angle, and there was a tent in her way, but what she could see enough to recognize pokémon.
Sara waited, straining her ears to listen and debating whether to go out and join her parents--she could recognize their voices now and then but not understand the words--or even just get a little closer, hide behind a tent or something. Whatever was going on was definitely something for grown-ups, but Sara didn't want to wait and hear about it second-hand if at all.
Think the first sentence could be tightened up a little: "Sara waited, straining her ears and debating whether to go out and join her parents--she could catch their voices now and then but not the words--or even just get a little closer, hide behind a tent or something."
I'm not sure about the logic in the second sentence--the fact that it's clearly something for grownups is Sara's motivation for wanting to hear about it now, since it means she probably won't get told later, so is the contradiction implied by the 'but' appropriate?
She couldn't let her one time out in the jungle be one that ended with her getting scared and running away over nothing. She fumed in silence, because her parents came into the tent and she had to pretend to be asleep. And then she was asleep, again, without even realizing it.
The second sentence read a little funky to me, like her parents coming into the tent was the reasoning for her fuming, not for her silence.
Maybe, "She couldn't let her one time out in the jungle be one that ended with her getting scared and running away over nothing, Sara fumed—silently, because her parents had just come into the tent and she had to pretend to be asleep. And then she was asleep, again, without even realizing it."
I do love how easily she drops off to sleep. Smol child; sleep comes easy.
She'd done her best, but Mom and Dad had been firm about keeping her out of the jungle. She'd gone with Dad a couple times and watched people move dirt, then hung around staring at the Mew carving looming large on the wall. She wandered as close as she could get to the edge of the forest before Dad called her back. Sometimes she thought she felt something watching her from the trees, a cold feeling that set goosebumps all up and down her arms, but probably it was just her imagination.
To vary the sentence structure up a little, maybe, "She'd done her best, but Mom and Dad had been firm about keeping her out of the jungle. She'd gone with Dad a couple times and watched people move dirt, then hung around staring at the Mew carving looming large on the wall. When they seemed distracted, she'd wandered as close as she could get to the edge of the forest, but every time Dad had noticed and called her back. Sometimes she thought she felt something watching her from the trees, a cold feeling that set goosebumps all up and down her arms, but probably it was just her imagination.
There were pokémon in the berry patch, eating, but they scattered when Sara and Titan came walking up. After a while they started coming back, though, when they saw it was just the two of them.
Sara tossed oran berries to the panpour, and she was going to ask if it wanted to join her, but once it was feeling better it ran off instead. Sara didn't even mind.
The last sentence feels a little incomplete to me. Sara didn't mind--because it's such a good day it doesn't matter? Because she didn't want a panpour on her team anyway?
Sara didn't even mind. Titan ate oran berries, too, until he'd gotten blue all over his scales and his scratches had healed so he didn't even need a potion.
It's fitting that I get to part three today, since part three introduces Hunter, and it hit me as I was posting part two of The Days of Miracle and Wonder that my testy kadabra in that pulled some inspiration from him. I continue to be impressed by how your pokemon characters feel as fully realized as the human ones, even when the pokemon can't be understood by the narrator. There are some unknowns about Hunter, of course. He doesn't quite seem to be frightened of Mew, and I wonder what it is he's trying to hard to tell her or learn from her. She's clearly not interested in it, whatever it is.
We get the darker side of Mew in this chapter, not just the implication of it. There's something so terrifying about Titan's ball being thrown away like that. It makes you wonder if Mew understands the full implications--then on the tail of that you wonder if Mew would care about the full implications if she knew. And lastly, I at least wonder which is more horrifying. You do a great job showing that while Sara and Mew are both having fun, all the power is on one side here. But Sara can do one thing--she can refuse to play along, and she does. Stubbornness is definitely a character trait here. Both Mew's impersonation of Titan and of Sara feel icky and invasive, though in different ways. Becoming Sara creates some serious uncanny valley, and drives home how alien Mew is. But impersonating Titan almost gets to me more, because Mew's the reason Titan is gone, and yet she tries to take Titan's place like all that matters is the outward appearance. Very the child impersonating Leonard Kerrigan's kid.
The pokemon attack at the end is interesting. I wonder if they're intervening to defend their god, or intervening because they're afraid of their god, and Sara is riling her up. Or maybe, when your god is Mew, there's no difference.
You mentioned this part is the longest one, but it goes really quickly. And all the pieces are now in place for the final segment.
"Hmm?" Mom was flipping through photos and didn't even look up when Sara sat down next to her. "Well, lots of things. It depends on the species. Xatu don't eat the same things as staryu, for example."
Love how Mom has an answer for this, even though she's barely paying any attention. You draw them in light strokes, but Sara's parents really do come through as kind and caring, if prone to a little scientist-style absentmindedness.
"Oh. They found the camera again." Most of the rest were pictures of pansear, who knew about the experiment, striking poses and mugging for the camera trap.
A twinge of pain sparked behind one of Sara's eyebrows. Not good; a sudden headache was how Hunter told you he was annoyed with you and wanted you to leave.
Sara flashed cold and then hot, her nerves skittering so she bounced her foot under the table, but also, inexplicably, her eyes itched? And she felt faintly headache-y.
Mew sent more shadowy not-noises into Sara's head. It was frustrating. Sara felt like if she really concentrated, really listened, she'd be able to make out actual words. But the psychic communications were always over too fast.
Mm, and I bet Mew doesn't have much experience being understood by humans, either. Even for a powerful psychic, that's probably a new brain structure to get used to, and Mew isn't the most patient.
She remembered hard, sunlight shining off the big glass windows of skyscrapers, popsicles on the beach, pokémon battles on TV. "There's cities now, big cities. And all kinds of people... and pokémon... it must be so boring all the time in the jungle. Don't you want to see it? There's so much, you don't even know. Come with me! We can travel all over, we'll be the best team. I'm going to be a great trainer, and you can be my pokémon!"
She almost ran straight into Hunter, who was skulking outside, raking his claws through his moustache and looking just about as suspicious as it was possible to look.
For a moment Sara was exasperated, and then confused about why she was exasperated, and then exasperated again when she realized that was Hunter being irritated with her.
Hunter's response was a luxurious feeling that made Sara think of sliding into a wonderfully warm bath. It was like being with Mew when it was happy or excited. It was strange to learn this, when she'd never been around many psychic pokémon before. It was kind of cool, but also kind of creepy, too.
Mew floated the ball up overhead and examined it from all angles, twirling around it in the air. "Give that back," Sara said, her heart beating even harder now. Mew dropped the pokéball into its paws and then threw it up again, caught the ball with its tail and bounced it experimentally.
"I mean it," Sara said. "Give it back. That's Titan's pokéball. If you lose it or something happens to it, he's stuck in there forever. You have to be careful with pokéballs. They're where somebody lives."
"Titan could be lost forever, do you understand? It's like dying. He could be gone forever because you thought it was funny to play with his pokéball."
"Charmander char!" And Sara felt "come here" so strongly that she looked up in surprise, already tensed to get to her feet. Titan had stopped and was glaring at her, reproachful.
Oh, that's really interesting. I wonder why not? Maybe it needs to keep the form of something with a brain to be able to remember who it is/transform back?
The pokémon paused and turned back to face her, and then Mew was Sara.
It was perfect, like looking in the mirror. Mew had her own brown eyes, without any of the beadiness you normally saw with ditto. It had the same wild hair, trying to go every way at once. It even had the little mole on her shoulder. There was no expression on its perfectly-formed face.
The not-her smiled, slowly. It was the kind of smile you'd get from practicing in the mirror, if you didn't know what a smile meant. Sara looked at the exposed teeth and how Mew's cheeks pulled up and it was just the worst.
I initially read this before starting Salvage, but aware of Salvage, so the open-ended, ominous tone of the close landed strongly with me. As a short story, it's complete in some ways--Sara sets out to capture Mew and she does, yay!! But everything we see go down in the story, as well as the background of canon, makes it clear that nothing is simple here, and that the story of a little girl and a little god is going to domino into something large and monstrous.
On to the chapter itself. The other shoe drops here, and boy, do you know how to pull off a terrifying shoe. I like how we start with Sara in her tent, with the noises of the disruption filtering in. The chaos is sketched nicely from Sara's POV--it's a place that really shows how effective close third is, because I think disastrous experiences feel so much more real when funneled through one person's limited perception. Before the attack, I like the time we spend with Sara wrestling with her guilt. That's the necessary internal precursor to how she acts once the attack hits. That mixture of guilt, fear, hope that sends her out into the forest.
This part is the one where we most explore the implications of Mew as a god--cherished and fickle, destructive. I really like how impenetrable Mew's motives remain up through the end. Why does she go and defend the camp? Did Sara's argument about her reputation and glory really make the difference? Or was it just fun and exciting, and why not? Did all of Sara's happy ramblings about the fun of being a trained pokemon mean anything to Mew? How much of this story would be different if a mental coinflip went another way, or a pokeball landed on a different angle? Mew must make a choice to not break out--but that choice is ultimately mysterious. I really enjoy the sense of precarity that gives this whole story. Things are always one slip away from complete disaster. And maybe the ending is itself the complete disaster.
Finally, there's just a sheer pleasure as a reader in being swept up so thoroughly by events. Every moment is so vivid and tangible, and I'm with Sara every part of the way, through every rollercoaster. The only thing that tripped me up a little is the question of how badly injured Sara really is--I wonder if you could dial back the implication her ribs are broken, because I don't see how she could do all that running around if they were.
The ending of this story, the first time I read it, made me think a lot about power. Sara spends so much of this story in Mew's power, tossed around by her, playing her games, pleading with her, begging her. That sense of helplessness and defiance is so pronounced. But in a single instant, at the every end, that power flips. All at once, Sara has Mew. And with that, the precarity of the human camp begins to feel illusory. Sure, their expedition could have been overrun. But if that happened, what respite would the jungle pokemon have earned? Humans always return.
It's interesting to me, that though you never describe it exactly this way, when I think of this fic, I always think of Sara, huddled in the back of a jeep, turning that pokeball over in her hands. Anyway, really awesome job on this one, it's one of my favorite pokemon short stories.
She lay very still and breathed as shallowly as she could, to almost let the air roll out and in of its own accord, but no matter how hard she tried she always had to move a little bit.
Titan's flame lit the tent, yellow-hot with worry. He was curled unhappily in the aisle between the cots. He'd wanted to snuggle with Sara, but it hurt to have him pressing against her, and she'd started to cry, and that hurt even worse, so now Titan was on the floor, by himself.
This place here, what I think we've found, they used to say it was the little god's home. The whole city founded just to honor it. People waited on it hand and foot, created art in its likeness for it to admire, tempted it with foods from far-off places. In return their land was bountiful and the weather fair and they feared no army, for even that one single pokémon was supposed to be stronger than a thousand men.
He was having a good time, had been having a good time this entire trip. He didn't know Sara had found Mew, that she'd been disobeying him and Mom and going off to see it by herself. She'd been breaking rules they made up just to keep her safe, and then of course the exact thing they'd said would happen had happened.
That wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing, the very worst thing, was that nobody had even asked her what she'd been doing outside the camp. They hadn't been mad. Nobody had even asked.
Oof. Sara's guilt and lonliness really come through here. Tinged with the smallest bit of resentment, perhaps, that nobody took her seriously, and now she's messed everything up.
Good girl! Sara does a lot of brave things in this story, but in a sense, this is the bravest. Admitting you did something wrong is its own kind of bravery.
Sara walked, because being carried was worse. There was no way to hold her without pressing on her screaming ribs, and lying on a stretcher only meant she felt every tiny bump in her maybe-broken bones. So she walked, and when night came she slept, exhausted and insensible, and then got up to walk again.
"Don't worry about it. Once we find Hunter we'll teleport straight back to town. We'll get there first, you'll see. We'll be waiting when you get out of the jungle," Dad had said, but Sara was old enough to be able to tell when he was pretending to be brave. He smiled too much and never at the right times.
She hadn't talked about Mew. Why didn't she tell? It wasn't like she'd thought about it and decided. Maybe she'd thought it would make everything harder, that people would want to stay and search for Mew, too. Maybe she still had some hope, somewhere, that she could catch Mew and bring it out of the forest herself. Maybe she was just used to keeping it a secret now.
Maybe, "Why did she say anything" instead of "Why didn't she tell?"
This paragraph did feel a little more turn to camera than the rest. A little defensive? I'm not sure you need to run through every reason here--we can infer most of them.
The air swirled with cold irritation, a tingling psychic buzz.
"It's okay, Titan," Sara said through gritted teeth, but the charmander yelled and pounced anyway, claws flashing. He was on his back at the far end of the tent a second later, eyes rolled up in his head. Mew turned its gaze on Sara, prodding her with impatient thoughts.
The time Mew took to go through the transformation had to be deliberate. Sara had plenty of time to see how Mew's skin flushed brilliant orange and split open in scales, limbs shrunk and thickened and eyes grew wide, wide, wide. Its hair sank out of sight as though its skin had turned to liquid, molten orange flowing to cover it up. It was so gross, Sara wanted to look away but couldn't, and then all of a sudden everything was normal again and Titan was sitting on the ground in front of her, impassive.
Gingerly she reached out and took the glowing egg from Mew. It was warm against her fingers, and after a second of wondering Sara shoved it into her mouth whole.
It was like taking a bite of the sun; Sara saw a flash of light, and a burst of heat swept down her throat and out across her whole body, and that was all. Did she feel any better? Maybe, maybe a tiny little bit.
Golduck's quacking voice sounded outside, and the deep hiss-roar of a hydro pump. Running feet, the crash of something metal falling. Titan was awake, pacing the front of the tent, eyes wide and tail-flame high and fizzing.
She threw balls at pokémon before they even noticed her, the seconds they spent struggling to escape enough for her to get safely past. One passimian went into the ball for only a heartbeat before exploding back out, then shied away from the spent pokéball in the grass, fur bristling, and ran off screaming. The pokémon here weren't used to pokéballs like the ones at home. Maybe they didn't even realize such things were possible.
The tall black columns of trees, the lumpy abstract shapes of undergrowth, the shifting orange light--it was like a dream-world, something invented by fever.
It attacked with swirling shadow balls and black scythes of power, forking lightning and creeping frost. Here and there pokémon fought back, leaping at Mew as it swooped past, reaching with claws and vines. Mew hardly seemed to notice, and the one time Sara saw a lucky flame burst graze Mew's side, the legend crushed the pansear that had hurled it into the ground without so much as slowing down.
This sentence struck me as being a little out-of-POV? Skulking, humans rather than people, shell-shocked--it wasn't terminology that matched Sara's narrative voice.
Mew shot along close to the ground, letting a terrified pair of pansage make it almost to the treeline before blasting them into unconsciousness, then doubling back to fire lazy dark pulses at a noctowl. The bird went through desperate banks and dives until finally it couldn't dodge fast enough and plowed into the dirt.
The storm passed as quickly as it had come, thunder grumbling away into the distance to leave the camp in unnatural quiet, and dark, so Sara fumbled with her flashlight, banged it against her palm until it flickered alive again. It felt like she'd been running around all night, but the whole attack couldn't have lasted more than, what, half an hour? She didn't know. Maybe everybody was okay. She had to find Mom.
The deflationary beat is so good. Love the thunder "grumbling away," how with the lights of the battle gone, it's suddenly hard to see, that Sara just wants to find Mom.
Sara jumped and gasped when something appeared in the air in front of her, a sudden pink glow and clamor in her mind. Mew wriggled with delight, turning loop-the-loops. Her laughter pealed around the camp, echoing soundlessly in the minds of dazed researchers. Sara found herself laughing, too, painfully and wishing she wasn't. But why not? It was over, wasn't it?
Tents were upended everywhere, tangles of canvas and metal poles. Unconscious pokémon littered the ground, and smoke billowed up through dripping branches. Mew giggled and spun, as delighted as Sara'd ever felt her.
Mew looked down at Sara, great blue eyes inscrutable. It caught the ball as it came back down, daintily with the tip of its tail, square on the button. In a flash of light the pokémon was gone.
Hello hello, here’s your Smeargle Swap!!
I hope you like it, I had a lot of fun with it! Your depiction of Mew in this story is still my favorite one that I’ve ever read—you did a great job with Sara’s naive thinking “Mew is cute and will be my best friend!” and contrasting it with just how dangerous and scary Mew can be. (Also, as a kid, I was 100% like Sara and thought I could just befriend any wild animal I’d find while camping. Thankfully, I never got the chance to test that theory with anything dangerous.) 🤣
Just wanted to say thank you again for drawing this for me! It's just got such gorgeous lighting. I'm always a sucker for sunlight coming in through trees. Mew is so cute here!
I'm glad you enjoyed the story--great that the portrayal of Mew here had such an impact! It's always good to hear that I've captured something appropriately childlike with Sara, too.
also I've been making mark dabbing memes for so long and I'm disappointed in myself for not returning to the obvious gold mine
anyway. here for the rest.
I did read this story pre-Salvage and was just super bad at forming any sort of useful thoughts for a proper review, and then I ended up rereading it again. It's a fun story that works really well in different ways depending on the context, and I do find that really enjoyable, and just a mark of a good story in general.
I remember no-context-me really enjoying the general buildup of this, especially from Sara's point of view, since the reactions get to be so muted. There's a freaky-freaky tree that's definitely not a stopgap for some weird shit, don't tell mom!, my new friend yeeted my old friend into the woods and then committed identity theft, sure is weird that all these pokemon are following us! It's a great way to build up tension without necessarily bogging the narrative down in strings of "Sara realized this is really bad", and a really effective use of the child narrator.
Even as she said it Sara realized: of course there was nothing Mew wanted from her. It had lived longer than she could imagine and seen things she probably wouldn't even understand. And it was leaving, unmoved by her words if it was even listening at all.
(I also really liked this line back on my first read because it was a cool line, but also because of how it hints--the artists have been missing things; the stories aren't good any more because people don't remember Mew. It's a fun little detail)
I remember really liking how child!Sara's the one to interest Mew, how Sara accidentally stumbles on the answer of appealing to Mew's ego about being forgotten, and how that all really made sense--Mew here is self-interested, egotistical, and gives zero fucks about anyone else; Sara, a literal child, is probably the only person on this expedition who would be capable of providing that endless awe and reverence without ever feeling the need to distract any of the attention from the most important person in the room (Mew). Sara's got endless time to play games, be impressed by Mew's tricks, and tell stories, without any of the boring adult shit. I really enjoyed how childish Mew seemed, and the almost lazy way it went around destroying its followers. There's not really a moral or anything to the story, but it's still really fun watching everyone get in way over their depth, both with the fraught balance that the pokemon of the forest had with Mew and with the fraught balance that the expedition team had with the pokemon of the forest.
The realism really worked for me, and it felt like a genuine exploration crew (at least as best as I can imagine; I have not tried) except like, looking for enormous ancient frog monsters and gods. Sara, even young, knows that you shouldn't wander around when you're lost makes a lot of sense in a world that tries to responsibly train kids to wander around from a young age. The crates full of expedition supplies, with mundane ones and then more "magical" things like HM's for Cut, help make things feel lived in; Sara knowing these details emphasizes that this is a thing she's interested in and able to grasp. Sara's mom being most excited about seeing a REAL VENUSAUR and then her daughter catches a fucking god, lol.
With-context-me also enjoyed it, and it was a lot of fun seeing the pieces put together in light of the events of Salvage. I haven't read stuff from you in a while that doesn't involve a narrator who can inherently understand pokemon, so it's really fun to see the outsider human's view on pokemon, trying to make sense of a growling simipour or an irritated kadabra. Baby Titan was cute without context and tbh nothing has changed except his size; I love how he's so earnest even though he's still getting bullied relentlessly by everyone else, lol.
I really enjoyed reading this to see what is and isn't Sara. I mostly just thought that the child acts the way it does because it's Sara given a ton of trauma and a ton of power, and there are definite lines here from Sara that I peg as the child, but I found myself seeing more of the child in Mew, which makes sense. The child can see into her dreams or something from that one line from forever ago--so who's to say they aren't linked on a deeper level? But the callous destruction, the need to be focused on, the inability to understand when Sara's trying to explain things, and generally just being appeased by people stroking its ego--these are all traits that seem familiar, yeah. Shoving softboiled into people's mouths and gleefully transforming into them while they're horrified is RUDE ok.
Also, knowing what happens next and how basically everyone on this expedition is fucked one way or another, the whole closing is horrifying but delightful to read. I remember really liking ch11 of Salvage for the image of Sara luring out/placating Mew--it's a flip of the coin on the idea that little kids can befriend gods/unicorns/etc because they're too pure to understand why anyone would want to exploit them--and it's still really effective here, knowing what comes next.
Overall this ministory is a lot of fun, although perhaps moreso with the emotional weight of an additional 340k words worth of reading behind it, lol. Glad I could finally come back to it.
Mew came cautiously forward again, prodding at Sara's mind with curious murmurings. Sara's own enthusiasm was rising, her words running away with her. "You don't even know--there were humans here before, weren't there? But you don't even know! You've been in the forest the whole time! It's nothing like it was then, there are all kinds of... buildings, and technology, and art and everything! You have to come back with me! You have to see it--we can go to the movie theater and the carnival and on an airplane and--the ocean! Have you ever even seen the ocean?"
Mom smiled. "How did I see that one coming? Of course, Sara. Let's say we stick it out for another couple of weeks with the bugs and the mud, and then we can spend the rest of the summer in air conditioning with a robot kabutops. Sound good?"
"They have three robot kabutops!" Sara said with a laugh. "I really want to see the armaldo, it's supposed to be scary."
"Some of them. I know it's hard to imagine for a cute little pokémon, but Mew was said to be very powerful. That's one thing the stories agree on. Legendary pokémon do tend to be dangerous, even the ones who are usually helpful. Even if Mew wasn't a proper legendary, it must have really been something. And it couldn't have been everyone's friend."
I loved this line as a setup--"it couldn't have been everyone's friend" feels like a good storybook line, and when that's taken to its natural extension, lol, the forest is covered in bodies
The time Mew took to go through the transformation had to be deliberate. Sara had plenty of time to see how Mew's skin flushed brilliant orange and split open in scales, limbs shrunk and thickened and eyes grew wide, wide, wide. Its hair sank out of sight as though its skin had turned to liquid, molten orange flowing to cover it up. It was so gross, Sara wanted to look away but couldn't, and then all of a sudden everything was normal again and Titan was sitting on the ground in front of her, impassive.
"That doesn't work on humans," she said. Mew waved it up and down, prodding at Sara's mind. "Okay, but it's not going to do anything." Gingerly she reached out and took the glowing egg from Mew. It was warm against her fingers, and after a second of wondering Sara shoved it into her mouth whole.
"Then if you won't help," Sara said, "I'll have to catch you. I'll show you I'm strong enough to be your trainer and that you should listen to me. When we go and save the camp, that can be our first battle together."
Mew looked down at Sara, great blue eyes inscrutable. It caught the ball as it came back down, daintily with the tip of its tail, square on the button. In a flash of light the pokémon was gone.
