Pokémon Shepard Tones (complete)

[tomatorade]

Shepard Tones

Capelin can't say he's happy, but at least his routine is stable. Walk across the coast with Muskellunge--to the good fishing spot--and only return as it starts to get dark. The road is long.

Today, even longer.
​

Spoiler: CW and Author's note

CW: References to death and sex, light blood.

Sort of a weird take on a duo of pokemon discovering the existence of Mystery Dungeons. It's fairly self indulgent in terms of prose, but I really liked where it ended up so here we are.

Short little thing. Shouldn't be more than three chapters, each fairly short in and of themselves.

Part One
Past

Capelin’s fur smells like driftwood against his chin. Heat roils underneath his chest. The salt and sand and sawdust, too, and beyond, windows curtained up by heavy leather sheets. The sound of sea outside the door—creaking of the chandelier, the antlers, fishbones, tangled nets and shells. The darkness in his head unfogs. In an hour he’ll gum a half-baked sweet, let it cook halfway out his mouth and in the sunlight.

Good morning, he says to himself. And the room and to whatever’s happened outside. Repeat, repeat.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

~(0)~

The shopkeep is a kecleon. Rasbora. He had two hatchlings, both dead. It’s hard to imagine him crawling down from the attic above his shop, stumbling to his chair and settling his old bones there for the day. Every day. Repeat, repeat.

He does, though. And sometimes Capelin sits in the leaning shade of his home and watches. And sometimes Rasbora appears overwhelmed by a pair of empty chairs. Time is a swarm of mosquitoes around him. You can watch the blood drain out. And he seems like he's died on his chair looking off into the boiling sea and mouthing prayers and rubbing the salt from his cracking scales, long since unable to shift colour as they used to. He might get up and walk into the ocean one day. But not today.

Capelin always buys from Rasbora in the mornings. It's the closest shop. And he takes a space on the stools beside, leaning in the grassy alley between his shop and the other homes. Townsfolk come and go. Seafolk is not large. They have their wooden buildings and wooden walkways which creak eagerly whenever someone takes the chance to use them instead of trampling through desire paths carved through the tall grass growing wild through every available nook.

There’s a mailbird that alights atop the shop and drops stray letters onto the counter with all the grace of a rock tumbling down the cliffs and into the sea. It’s not his fault—nothing is anybody’s fault, really—but the clouds have crushed him. His feathers no longer sit in place evenly and the crisp line between blue and red and white has smeared into dulling gray tones. When Capelin’s eyes meet his, glazed and unfocused as everything else, Capelin must remind himself that he’s still a younger dewott. This is not his company. He takes his filled bag—bulging now with berries and rope, hooks, and nets and bait—and leaves.

He can only bear to look at them across town, when they’ve exploded in a shower of light and colour in the sun and might almost be beautiful, then, if only they stopped existing. It’s the reason Capelin never lets his kindness out. Not with pokemon like that. If he does, he fears they might finally keel over from the force of it.

~(0)~

It’s incredible to watch the rain come down over Seafolk, kilometers off, on hills rolling over themselves like sloughs of gelatin fat piling under a cooking furnace.

A tiny wooden village sits there one moment.

The next, a gray streak of paint exits the clouds and destroys it. Capelin tries to pick the ticks off his fur as he watches.

Muskellunge is with him. Skinny twig of a leafeon. Paws always brown from the mud. She never carries anything and he has to slow her roll so she doesn’t eat up two hours of conversation topics in the first ten minutes of walking. What he hasn’t learned yet is that she only exhausts herself on the way back, when he lets her steal the shrimpier eels to chew on. Two hours of talking, two of chewing is a good day. If not for the slime and limp bits of flesh dripping from her muzzle by the end.

Capelin will never understand anyone who can’t keep themselves clean. Lucky he doesn't have to understand Muskellunge, only work with her. And make sure she doesn’t run off. Or roll down a hill and hurt herself, lost amidst the green.

Walking makes him feel old. Muskellunge, too, but she’s so skinny. Like a cub. Not quite grown in. His own aches are not quite as clear. Stopping is not an option. Then he might glaze over and become an object, lost like Rasbora in his own world. But he will never know what hurts unless he stops. Is it the hooks digging into his side? It wouldn’t be the first hook he’s caught—in the ear, the cheek, above the eye. Tearing out bits of flesh and fur and blood. Some folks do it on purpose, but he will never understand that, either.

Two hours of walking would tire anyone. Muskellunge takes about halfway, then they find a knoll to rest in. It’s dusty and short with grass, letting wildflowers creep up and out from little bundles of mismatched leaves. And cornflowers. The blue blends in with the ocean from Capelin’s angle. As Muskellunge flops over on a bundle of petal-shed poppy stems.

Capelin only really pays attention because he’s been here before. Mukellunge can take it easy; he opts to sit across the path, hidden in a nest of long grass.

Some ways in the past, a sailor zangoose made him feel like a woman on that knoll. And then they sat in their indents.

They were unable to be so in love so young. So said he. And left him sitting on that knoll.

Everything you love will destroy you. Capelin learns this in the between—after two throbbing, red-hearted machines of muscles and flesh rolled over each other in the grass, but before two thinking objects sat sadly in the wind and wondering what they’d just done.

Let's just move on, Muskellunge.

~(0)~

A long time ago, the civilisation that destroyed itself to make room for Seafolk had a tradition. It’s something he heard from his father. He, himself, who was scarred and would neither forgive nor forget anything.

It’s what got him, eventually. Capelin said no and the samurott stared at him for a while. Then he left.

But before that he told stories.

They used to throw the children into the ocean right after they were born. The strong would survive. Or be battered to shore by relentless waves. Or not, and become among the sand and dried kelp and thousands of dead fish that washed up after heavy storms. Capelin would be one of the battered ones. If they did it these days, all the other hatchlings would drown.

And so the two hours pass by as they always do. Slowly, so slowly, then all at once in the end.

But then they keep passing. With no sundial or any timepieces like the ones Rasbora kept under the counter for mons with some coin to throw around, they relied on the sun.

And it hadn’t moved for quite some time.

He only noticed as the wind stilled.

 

[tomatorade]

Chapter two
Present

There’s a line against the horizon Capelin has never seen before.

Capelin draws across it with his scalchop. Sits it on an image of the waves like a distant ship drawing up to shore. He wipes across his whiskers to get the salt out. There are no boats on this ocean.

Muskellunge wanders.

As she always does.

Capelin doesn’t know what to say to her.

There’s something wrong, but if somebody acknowledges it, it becomes real. They just keep walking. Keep staring forward. Ignore the still sun and the sea and the way the flowers keep repeating themselves around. It isn’t warm anymore. Not cold either. The wind has stopped. There’s a constant, lingering smell of flowers and grass that mixes with the sea in a truly unpleasant way.

Capelin has to wrinkle his nose and turn his head, but that doesn’t help. It’s everywhere.

“Somethin’s fucked here, Capelin,” Muskellunge says. She wrinkles her nose also. A mirror to him.

He pauses. He’s not sure how she hadn’t figured it out until now. Though she’d been staring forward a while, creases slowly sinking into her muzzle.

He has nothing to say to her anyway. He counts his breaths instead.

“Haven’t gone anywhere.” She huffs. Not sternly. She’s stomping around, plowing nose first through grass and taking the area in.

Pointing out to the mountains. Which seem the least strange, only silhouettes against a cloudless blue sky. Because they were always strange—intimidating creatures that towered over the coast, reminding them exactly where Seafolk was allowed to spread. The rain hadn’t been that long ago. Following her gaze, Capelin expects clouds to roll over the mountain peaks, hiding them, cutting them off at the neck. They did not. And the blue sky seemed quite gray.

“Take this seriously,” he says.

“What, so you knew?”

She’s jumping to conclusions. Correctly. So Capeling doesn’t bother to lie. Just hum to himself. It’s a good opportunity to rest—hide the shaking of his paws in the dense fur at his hips. Sit in the grass. The stiff, unbending grass. Dense as straw and digging into his thighs as he hits the ground.

“Didn’t think to tell me?”

“What could you do about it?”

“Don’t know. Something. We keep walking or what?”

Keep walking? To where? Down the same path they’d been walking for hours?

“We should’ve reached the cove by now.”

Her ears twitch.

“Definitely gone somewhere, though.”

“Somewhere.”

And she begins walking on the path they were going. Capeling does not have the muster to fight it. And maybe not ever except to wonder if the other path is the right one.

He looks back. And out to the mountains again. He only resolves not to look out to sea anymore. Nothing good could come from it.

~(0)~

There are some great towering trees along the coast. Just at the intersection between the plains and the hills. It’s odd only because of how singular they are—all these spires jutting from the distance, dark gray and warped in this early spring before growth. They reach up for something hidden in the clouds. Only, there are no clouds anymore so they reach for the endless blue instead.

Capelin has seen this exact same set of trees three times now. Muskellunge notices as well. She turns her nose up to the distance, whiskers twitching.

“Goin’ in circles, huh?”

“Or it’s just this unending path. Maybe we’re dead already,” Capelin says. He’s wrapped his paws around himself, scalchops pressing deep into his sides.

It’s a thought he has sometimes. Life seems unreal in early morning mists. But it’s painfully clear now. There’s so much definition to the rocks and grasses even out for kilometers. Each speck conspires with those beside them. Capelin can pick them apart like they might notice and shudder and turn to a pile of sand at his feet.

“Don’t feel very dead. I’ve been near dead, too. This ain’t it.”

It’s worrying how calm she is.

“We could be dead, though. Things like this don’t happen.”

She scrunches up her muzzle again. Tiny hairs catch on her nose, skewed out of place. Now, the trees rise above them, as they had two other times before.

Just in the distance, over the crest of the hill, another crown of branches suggests three more.

“Stop,” Capelin mutters.

Muskellunge whistles to herself. She pads along.

“Stop! Come on!” he snaps.

And she does. Digs her feet into the road. But does not turn. Her tail speaks for her, whipping back and forth with all the contained energy she held in her stillness.

“We’re not damn dead,” she says.

“You can die before death.”

Capelin almost looks out to the sea. The roaring waves. They wouldn’t be now, but he couldn’t stand them so still.

“Fuck off.”

He stands his ground.

“I always thought my father died when he went out on the boat.” He huffs. “Imagine. He’d come home hundreds of times. A man who could come back to life over and over. I never got used to it. Even now he’s truly dead.”

“He’s not. He just left. Off to the city, where I’d be goin’, too. After this, surely. Would help to get outta here first.”

And she looks at him and raises her brows as if he could do anything about that.

“Might as well be dead.”

She shrugs. Looks like she might scamper forward. But even she’s tired. He can hear her breathing loud and harsh through her teeth. So she plops down on the path for a break.

They sit there for a while. There is no wind nor rain to cool them down. When the unconscious pull to move comes once again they’re no less tired.

~(0)~

Capelin hates that he knows what will happen before it does. He hates asking what will go wrong because it always already has. In counting the things that repeat themselves more and more with a frequency that seemed to keep up with their aching muscles and slowing pace, Capelin finds himself avoiding the obvious subject.

Until it’s too late.

Muskellunge is off.

There is the knoll again.

Capelin tries to rub at his eyes. The dirt from his paws sticks everywhere and stings and draws tears. He bites his tongue and huffs one long, hot breath.

He shouldn’t be surprised, but all he can do is stand there.

The grass is still flat and stuck with knots. Matted, as if from sweat.

Capelin did love him. He did.

“Hey, chief.”

Capelin blinks. Wipes his nose before turning, Muskellunge waiting on the path before him.

Her legs tremble even folded beneath her. And there’s a curious red stain on the toes of her paws. But her eyes reflect the old sunlight brilliantly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Look around,” he croaks.

She doesn’t stop staring.

He continues.

“Do you think it’s about us? I mean, I’ve been seeing things.”

“Yeah. So have I.”

“But personal. Personal…” He trails off. Not sure what’s worth revealing. “Things.”

She clicks her tongue. Shakes her head. He thinks it means no, but then she turns out to sea. And while Capelin is hesitant to linger, he peeks just to remember the coast.

“There’s an island out there—little grassy ol’ thing like one I remember back home. Thought it wasn’t at first, but I… y’know, I think the flowers are the same as I remember them. Kinda want to swim out there. Well—” She bobs her head, stands for a second, bow-legged and shaking, before sitting back down again.

Capelin takes that opportunity to sit down as well. And offer her his canteen, which she takes eagerly.

“There’s a little knot of grass that keeps coming back,” he says.

“The one I sat in this morning?”

Morning. Capelin almost finds himself checking the sun, but that wouldn’t show much of anything.

“Yes.”

And she hums and takes a drink and sinks down on her belly with a sigh. The conversation must have finished already.

Her voice cracks. She doesn’t stop talking.

“I used to love that place. Like this perfect, untouched continent just in reach from the shore. Had all these flowers on it—ones you shouldn’t be seeing out there. The foxgloves and fireweed, under the old trees and the ferns and moss. Probably the softest place on the coast, and with softness I needed back then, in the beginning times when you’d crawl around poking your nose into any corner for a bit of affection. You know, back home they threw all the hatchlings into the ocean. Just to see who’s strong. You can barely paddle that young, with the salt stinging your eyes, but I heard I got to the island no problem. It saved me, they said. And fuck that. I saved myself. Had a little patch of sand on the far end the turtles used to nest in, all the shade you could need on hot days and enough sun for cold—even by the ocean, you couldn’t smell salt and rot, it just smelled like flowers. ”

“The rocks were spackled and weird, kinda gemstone transclucent. Especially when tides were high and lapping at fingers of grass and you had to see past your reflection to find them. Literally couldn’t get there in a storm, so the sky was always blue and the winds were calm—but not too calm you couldn’t see dandelion seeds floating by. And you’d chew on the herbs if they grew there. Never planting anything, what’s the point? Just find something you think you can bite off and maybe it’s bitter and maybe it’s sweet but it always tastes like the soul of the earth and that’s all anyone’s ever needed.”

“And you could just sit there and not ever think about the future. And all the ocean out there, but how could you not know about that? And my mother was still alive.”

He almost misses it. In the deluge of information. Does she sigh, or have the waves started moving again?

“Because that’s all it is, really. I loved my mother. I loved when she could brush beside me as we walked and I could feel her heartbeat and it felt alive. The island is just an island. I remember every detail because sometimes places become people. But if I stayed, I would always be chasing a time when I could come home and curl into the crook of her neck and be happier than than place will let me. Who can compete with that? So I left.”

Capelin needs his mind to catch up. In the end, not much has changed, but he feels almost offended for a life that isn’t his. It’s not rational. He’s never done anything rationally.

“And that’s it? I don’t understand how you can just leave something like that. Even just the memory.”

“Why? Because you’ve never had happiness in your life? Seafolk's given you nothing?”

Capelin should be shocked. He should stand up and puff out his chest and draw his scalchop. But she’s right.

He sniffs. Digs the back of his paw into his cheek and looks back to the knoll.

No she isn’t.

“I did love him,” he pleads. He stares at her, long until her wandering eyes meet his and do not turn away. “If I ever told anyone, they’d say a month isn’t a long time. Sometimes you’ve got to love fast with another man. We couldn’t say how long it would last.”

“But he left.”

Capelin can chance it. He looks out to sea again. Nothing has changed.

“Yes.”

Was she insinuating something?

“He asked me to come with him.”

In a sense.

“And you didn’t go.”

The sun looks like an eye. Unblinking. He can't even tell what's the truth anymore.

“N-no.” He hiccups. “I didn’t”

 

[tomatorade]

Chapter three
future

They slept on the trail. In the rocks and gray dust that did not make Capelin feel anything. Then waking up hurts. A blink, and the exhaustion washes over him.

Muskellunge stands on the side of the path, looking past him and into the mountains.

“I know how to leave,” she says without joy or focus or any indication that this thought took hours to manifest.

Capelin blinks back at her.

“It’s the same as it’s always been. You just leave. Take off the trail. You know.”

He follows her gaze, but it doesn't reveal much new through bars of weeds and the biting mineral scent of earth.

“You can come with me.”

But she’s looking out towards the mountains.

“No,” he croaks. Smacks his lips to get rid of the morning taste, rolls over, and pushes his creaking bones up until he stands at her level.

“Well, you can’t stay here. You can go anywhere, Capelin. As long as you don’t stay here.”

But why not? No, things aren’t good here.. But they’re familiar.

She’s perched on the tips of her paws. At the edge of a cliff. All Capelin can think of is how annoyed he should be. Any other day, he’d be forced to grit his teeth and listen to her talk as they walked back. They should be in Seafolk again now, where he can sigh and shrug off the day and slip back into bed and it feels warm as if he’d never left.

Now, he’s afraid to watch her go.

“Aren’t you ever scared?” he asks.

“What could I possibly be scared of?”

“What if you’ll never be happy running? What if you have to sit somewhere a while and build something first?”

She actually seems to pause a while. Think deeply about something.

“Alright then. Fine. Let me die unhappy, I just know I won’t die here. I’ll get one last spark of joy for that.”

It’s not an answer Capelin wants. It’s not much of an answer at all. He feels faintly pathetic screwing up his face at her. Like a child. She stares back at him the same way. Mockingly, maybe.

“If you’re that afraid of your father, then just find him. Kill him. Cut the head off the snake.”

He thinks about it, certain he’d had a dream like that before. But it could've turned out very differently—when he hears his father’s voice, he has a tendency to listen.

“I-I couldn’t.”

“Oh, well.”

She steps forward. The stiff, unyielding grass bristles around her, draws in as if to keep her here. A flick of her tail bats it away. And she vanishes into the brush.

The fluttering sound of leaves follows her. And then silence except the sound of Capelin’s breath.

Capelin looks around. Nothing has changed. He thinks she’s dead. He also thinks she’s right. He’s not sure what to think.

~(0)~

Capelin decides not to move. He lies flat on his back and stares at the endless blue sky waiting for a cloud to appear. He’s blinked away the last of sleep at this point, but a rumble turns in his stomach.

How long has it even been?

He almost misses the shadow crossing his path. Or he’d missed it before and only noticed now, craning his neck to check for Muskellunge again.

It’s long and dark against the shoulder of the road, just creasing over his paw. He clenches, capturing the line of it between his fingers.

It moves. He thinks it’s Muskellunge at first until the wizened old face of a samurott lurches by, long whiskers frayed and dragging. His horn is the prow of a great ship and he takes the shape of old myths—of tattered vessels that appear as silhouettes across moonlight sealines. He’s long and stocky and blurring at the edges.

Capelin holds his breath. His father looks him in the eye. Direct, but missing that old sinking feeling.

“Well?” he snaps, “are you coming?”

And cuts his chin forward. And plods off, limping, tail dragging, and dragging so close it brushes against Capelin’s much frailer whiskers and seems to knock the breath from him.

By the time he recovers the shadow is gone. There is no bend in the trail and no fog to hide in the distance, but Capelin knows where he’s going.

He gets up.

~(0)~

He thinks it’s a memory.

It strikes him that he always feels this way as he walks to the sea. Day after day. Repeat, repeat. It’s empty and dulling. Muskellunge is not here and although she hurt him today and irritated him every other, that’s something at least.

And now he’s following his father’s ghost knowing he will never catch it.

He has to slow down. He’s limping. He stepped on a rock or something. But there are no rocks. Why is he bleeding?

Looking down, one of his claws is askew against the dirt, and dragging a line of red through the dust, curling into little red marbles coated in brown. He doesn’t feel it. Not even when he scrapes it across the ground and watches it jitter frailly.

Now he’s stopped again—lord, he didn’t even realise. And he squints forward, where he knows the path he should follow.

But he’d turned at some point, facing the mountains.

And the knoll. The knoll is back.

Only a carpet of white fur is sprawled out there, now.

“Hello,” Capelin says.

He’s not real.

He smiles, stretches out plainly against the grass, huffs a little breath and shuffles in place a little. It’s only a second of staring that reveals he’s making space for Capelin.

“Sit down with me,” he says. With a warm voice like the summer and just enough show of teeth to feel dangerous.

Capelin’s heart is trying to escape his chest. He can almost feel the puddle of blood growing at his feet, taste it in his mouth, feel it slick and sticky under his fur.

“You aren’t real. I don’t know what you want from me—what I can give you. I have nothing. I am nothing.”

“Of course I’m real. You hear me, you see me—we meet in this strange place, but that doesn’t have to mean anything.” He leans up, reaching out with long claws that Capelin first saw wrapped in the rigging of his boat. “Touch me.”

He’s strong. Strong arms, strong heart.

“You left me.”

“I did.”

“I left you.”

The zangoose shakes his head.

“No. You were right the first time. You can’t let just anyone tell you what to think. They put ideas in your head.”

And he smiles again, wide with a flick of the ears. His piercings shine up there. They can’t escape the dullness.

Capelin bites his lip. Turns to look out to the sea. Still no boats, No waves. It’s almost familiar. He remembers this. So many trips between Seafolk and the bay, and this is about all he remembers.

He sighs and shuffles forward. Reaches. Tentatively, at first, a shaky paw hovering around a solid outcropping of an arm. But when he touches, he feels it. Hard claws, a shaggy coat, those that used to dig into his chest and hug close. They’re warm, finally. The first bit of warmth Capelin’s felt in a while. It’s not real—he knows that—but it takes him by the tongue and drags him forward until he slumps down beside, and is quickly captured by those arms, held in close until he can feel a real heart beat against his side.

“See? It’s nice, isn’t it? It’s right. You should stay here with me.” he whispers, leaning closer until Capelin can feel hot breaths against his ear. “I can make you happy like you’ve always wanted.”

Capelin lets it happen. With a patience that would be frustrating, if not for the place he’d found himself in. He lets his memory talk to him, finding all those images he’d forgotten and digging them up from the sand. He hums and enjoys the moment, a chuckle reverberating through his chest and back again. His jittering stills and he feels like water.

But there’s only one bother. A building throbbing alongside the sudden pain from his loose claw.

“I did leave you,” Capelin says.

“You love me too much,” he responds.

“I remember.”

“I do, too,” the zangoose says. He shifts. Capelin opens his eyes to track him leaning up, smile turning softer. “We met at your house. We talked. I was leaving, but you loved me and wanted me to stay. Held onto me. I couldn’t. I hurt you. I lied. But now we’re here.” He holds out his arms, like some grand reveal. “And I’ve made such a mistake, Capelin, I realise. So I will stay. For you.”

“You don’t remember?”

And that smile falters a moment.

“What else is there to remember?”

The knoll. Those last goodbyes and all the time spent sitting beside each other. And then one brief moment in a fit of sleep where something glances his cheek. And when Capelin turns, he’s so close their noses touch. Cold and wet against each other.

You could come with me, he heard. That warm voice turning desperate

“Nothing. You aren’t real.”

The zangoose scoffs. His smile falters.

“I could be. I could be him. Better than him. This is what you wanted, Capelin, and believe it’s beautiful. Just try to fill in the blanks and you’ll realise why you should stay, give up on the world that hates you—that won’t let you be happy.”

Capelin almost wants to. He sits up instead. Meets the zangoose eye level. Understands all the things he used to love—that fanged grin, earrings he didn’t understand but always tried to compliment, the weird knick in his nose and patch of black fur mysteriously plastered over his shoulder.

“Muskellunge told me she was thrown into the ocean as a kid. Can you believe that? I thought they’d stopped doing that. My father was the last to know about it in Seafolk. He almost did it with me. Just me, alone.”
“Why are we talking about unpleasant things like that?”

Capelin ignores the edge in his voice.

“I’d like to stop it for good. I’m not sure how. All it takes is a generation to forget and one bad idea to take root again.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

“I have to leave.”

And the smile returns. An odd copy of the first one. Unsettling in the way it snaps into place.

“No you don’t. Please. Stay.”

“You wouldn’t believe how much I dreamed after everybody left,’ Caplein sighs, shaking off a stray arm reaching around his shoulders. “I’m so miserable, you’d think I get more nightmares, but all I could think about were the times you might stay. Or I might leave. And these surreal adventures along the surf—I couldn’t stop smiling, sometimes through the morning, even once I knew you wouldn’t be coming back.” He stands, brushing off stray shafts of grass prodding his legs. The zangoose watches him with an unusual frown. “I think that’s the only reason I can continue. You were right. They were beautiful. But not real. Even if I followed, I would hate it. The boat would ruin me. I would never love you again.”

“You can’t say that.”

Capelin steps back into the road. Then past, and waits to hear if the zangoose will follow. After a minute of silence, he turns. Those details he used to remember have flattened into indistinct white fur.

“A month is a long time for me, but it can’t be enough, can it? I can’t say that, you’re right, but I could love somebody else. Somewhere.”

“Not like me, you can’t.”

“All my love exists in one moment. I can’t have it anymore. Certainly not with you.”

“With who?”

But the zangoose doesn’t seem to notice his earrings have gone. The softness has been beaten out of him and the warmth has left his voice. In his final word, he is just another zangoose relaxing in the grass. His eyes flicker last. Then narrow into something mean.

“Do you know me?” he growls.

It must be one last bit of cruelty. Another trick. If Capelin were to step forward would all that personality flood back into him until he burned as bright as before? He shakes his head.

“No. Sorry.”

He ignores the next warning growl. Instead, he looks right, to where his father went. Sure enough, he’s back, standing at the edge of the path, horn pointed at Capelin. But he isn't real. Just a hole in the universe.

So Capelin watches that strange samurott turn and lumber away as he heads to the beach.

~(0)~

He would not be so confident to say he knows how he would leave.

All he knows is to march to the sea.

The water is lukewarm around his ankles. The kind of temperature that makes you feel weightless as you float there, caught midair. Even as the sea is heavier and more like fresh water, despite the smell of salt refusing to ebb in either direction.

It’s familiar as it creeps up around his tail and belly, and up his chest and to his neck. All of a sudden he’s stranded and creeping from shore. He whips his tail behind him and kicks up a whirlpool in his wake, propelling him across flat water with an unusual speed that tears a yelp from him. When his legs join in he’s unstoppable. And his torn claw protests.

But he likes the pain.

He’s comfortable on his back. Here, he likes the sensory deprivation. The water fills his ears and muffles his own grunts and huffs, forcing them into his chest with his heartbeat. It drags down his limbs and sticks them to his sides until they exist only as masses of extraneous fur. The routine centers him, takes away the fear and nagging want to look back to shore. He can focus on the pain.

He tries to count the seconds for a while—hours and hours of seconds—but almost finds himself falling asleep. Maybe he hums a song, but doesn’t know the words and lets the melody tumble into the deep. All he knows is that time passes and the one moment he’s brave enough to open his eyes, he spots something strange.

He stops, coming to a near standstill without much effort besides the tearing strain on his muscles. He lets his mouth drop open in disbelief.

An arch stretches behind him, just on the edge of his vision like the door to some great cathedral half-drowning out here. It has a dull-yellow edge so thin he could cut himself on it. And it’s perfectly proportioned as a circle. And of course, bizarre rising out of the middle of the ocean, letting the waves Capelin kicked up ripple around its edges.

He backs up a bit, grunting against the water until he spots the connector—the yellow flattening and stretching into a wall, then building further up until it cuts into a flat blue the exact same colour as the sky.

Which also stretches into the sky.

It takes an alarming while to figure out what it is.

“The sun?” he whispers, recognising the half-circle shape that once watched them from the horizon. Now, a hole in a wall.

He paddles up to it. Floats a couple nervous meters before it. Builds up the courage to draw close enough to touch it. It’s smooth, featureless as the sky it’s imitating. Craning his neck, it seems to rise on forever above and dive deep below without seams or hooks or nails to keep it together.

Capelin should not be surprised by the impossible anymore, but he finds it in himself to be dumbfounded for the moment and to bob in the water a while trying to make sense of it all. Bob up and down a brief length of it, too, until he eventually finds his way back to the sun and stares beyond it.

Is anything different? The sky is empty beyond, too, but faint swirls speak of something more. His whiskers twitch, picking up on something before even he can—the whorls reaching his toes, maybe, and not from him. He hadn’t moved in a while.

There is no land beyond. But in the distance, the straight line of horizon is serrated.

Capelin holds his breath. Turns on his back again and pushes on. He only releases as he passes below the edge and the hole blinks away.

He’s stranded again. Feeling everything all at once. Without the presence of mind to notice the choppy waves battering him around. The sun is blaring again, up and high and flickering as a cloud passes by. There are gulls screeching somewhere he can’t place.

He takes in a breath. It’s cold.

And although he’s exhausted and aching and hungry and doesn’t know where to go, there’s a shape on the horizon that almost looks like a boat.