“Very good Bataille, record that please. Book three,” Pépé instructs from his perch behind their patinaed-brass suspension scales.
“Blazikens’ blush!” Mère chirps, peeking out from the pavilion flaps at the lines of villagers carrying staves strung with glowing paper bulbs. “Looks like Lumiose on parade!”
“Wha?!” he squawked back at his old woman.
Ulphia smiles and scans the festive metropolitan street that has magically manifested from nothing. “You’d think we took two wrong turns and stopped in Santalune!” she says, watching lines of rose-and-lavender lanterns cut like roserade blooms being drawn across the smokey starlit sky.
Usmar holds the shoulder of a weaver’s son, clapping a jingling pouch of wealth between their palms. “Good doing business with you! Oh? No no no, just leave them in the pavilion and we’ll do the rest.” His beard sweeps the dust from his wife’s shoulder as he negotiates a tender kiss of the lips. “What an incredible fortune of folks!”
Bataille’s scarlet, unfezant quill sips from a pot of horsea ink and scribbles neat number lines upon a well-worn book of hand-pressed parchment. “The carts are close to capacity, Pépé!”
The old man nearly pokes the boy’s eye out with his wrinkling nose as he turns to hear. “Blastoises! Certainly not.”
Odétte scurries in from beneath the canvas walls. “No more room in Smokey’s cart! Brutus can take a little more, but he’s having a hard time.”
The familiar thump of leather sacks filled with copper lumps grabs the tent’s undivided attention. “Well, I do hope there’s a little left for these, at least.”
Usmar, ever shrewd, is the first to sally forth and grab the melts for inspection. “Valko! Good Valko, we were worried you wouldn’t show. We’ve been in town for days.”
Valko swipes the front of his bright red cape away and flings an arm around Usmar’s shoulders. “Perish the thought! I was hoping you’d be here for The Long Blossom Night. All the settlements around come to celebrate as Shaymin’s shadow sweeps across the valley. Busy time of year; for both of us, it seems!"
Bataille’s quivering hand stoppers the pot as he wipes the sweat from his face with a smile, accidentally smearing a moustache of jet-black ink across his lip. A few loitering craftsfolk chuckle at his misfortune and his swelling enthusiasm is quenched in cold humiliation.
Valko snorts, rolling his shoulders with a tired crunch, and brushes a thumb across his fiery, whiskered lips. “That reminds me of a cruel autumn long past, spent locked in a duel of wits with a lovely little lady. Perhaps you’d like to hear the tale?”
The Sage’s words reignite Bataille’s excitement. “I was wondering if you might finish the last story too! I have imagined what came of you since the day my boots left the valley.”
Valko sighs. “I’m afraid I’ve time for only one tale tonight.”
He waits in a theatrical silence for the mood of the room to droop and chuckles.
“...fortunate for you they are one and the same!”
Odétte squeals. “Can we, Papa? Can we dine with Monsieur Valko again?”
Usmar starts weighing the copper out, inspecting the melts for a quality acceptable to the forges back in Lumiose. “If the good Sage would be so kind, we shall spare no expense!”
Valko ponders the idea, quite a bit longer than is really necessary. “Hmm, well, my purse isn’t the only thing here needing feeding.” He shrugs, palms up. “Ah, this hopeless, hungry romantic isn’t fooling anyone. Would you bless our nest this evening?”
The twiggy patches infesting grandfather’s brow climb up his face. “Come again?”
“If you can spare the honor, perhaps you’d join me in our tent. Near the western wall? This is the one time a year I stray from the mountain for more than a day,” he says, snatching a small linen sack of silver tossed to him with a snap. “I’d like to spend it amongst friends.”
Grandmother nods, bringing her hands together in an elated show of gratitude. “A feast it is! Only our finest hors d'oeuvres will do. It is fortunate also that Uxie saw fit to grant my daughter the thought to bring such great varieties of store and spice this time.”
Ulphia looks back at her aging mother with shock and pride.
Flickers of some, feral fire dance behind Valko’s eyes. “Spare yourself any obligations, madame, your family’s mere presence would be the finest gift of all.”
The village shines with the autumn dusklight of a thousand blossom pyres. Burning towers of wood split from sacred old-grove trees, cut to make way for man’s precious orchards, vineyards, and pastures. Tinder kept aside to pay the forest’s tithe.
The family feels a giddy rural celebrance totally unlike anything in the Heartland. Lumiose holds innumerable festivities; every grand celebration, every noble ball, every garden gathering for tea held in the honor of man’s triumphs over the unyielding wilds. But here in this far-flung place, the people burn away that which could be used for fuel, tools, and homes in thanks. All for the capricious whims of some unaccountable, legendary beast.
Children stumble up the rampart stairs carrying wooden platters of produce, fresh and dry, to toss across the palisade. The chorus of skittering, wailing, and roaring in the moonless dark makes Usmar’s chest tighten as he remembers why nobody leaves the walls at night.
They migrate through a shimmering stream of hospitality, baited by samples of candied fruits, barbecued meats, and slow roasted nuts; captured and released by a litany of locals keeping the newcomers’ cups wet with an ample supply of one-of-a-kind, family-secret brews.
Even the children are allowed a bit of liquid merry, so long as their portions are drawn from weaker casks of drink.
Assembled once or twice a year, a parade of woodwinds, strings, and leather drums plays down the grassy ways. Passed from master to student through archaic aural tradition, the men, women, and musically gifted children of the valley rival the grand capital orchestras in Lumiose.
These wonderful people swear their shares to Shaymin, first and foremost, without a word of thanks to His Majesty’s most-infinite generosity.
Grandfather winces with concern. Just how far could Man possibly stray from virtue?
Grandmother smiles with nary a care to spare. How nice it is to find such wonderful manners on display!
“There it is!” Bataille says, pointing straight toward a crimson canvas pavilion tucked deep in the darkest most unassuming corner of the wall.
How could they have suspected such a well-respected figure lies hidden behind such humble walls? Had they not been told by the man himself, they might've hustled the other way.
Especially as a gaggle of old women climb from their rocking chairs with conspicuous stares and a gang of fighting-age men slither from the shadows, ready to send these outsiders hustling still.
“No no,” crows a particularly-venerable crone rocking around her roost with the creak of a mausoleum door. “Leave them be.”
Mère slips them a subtle curtsy as Usmar urges them on with greater haste.
“Great Sage Valko, might we intrude upon your camp?” the merchantman calls.
They wait in a darkness mixed with the din of distant revelry behind them.
“Chu?”
Their eyes fall down upon the face of a raichu that’s twice the size of any they’ve seen before smiling out from the flaps of the tent.
Usmar chokes down a terrified scream and shoves his family away. “Easy there, boltbringer. No threat here,” he hushes backwards, palms raised in a show of peace.
Bataille and Odétte sneak around their father’s legs, curiosity overcoming the dread hammered into them since birth; a well-worn fear for those prolific, black-and-yellow mischiefs that raid with impunity and lay buildings to ruin at the tiniest perceived slight.
The monster chuckles with a paw over her little lips and snaps her claws, illuminating the group with a flashy spark of lightning.
The adults all scream in unison, sweeping the kids away in a terrified scurry as the critter bends over and rolls out from the tent in a fit of self-satisfied hysterics.
“Oh, don’t mind her little pranks!” Valko shouts from within. “She’s harmless. Mostly.”
Raichu wipes the tears from her eyes, beckoning them inside, and leaps back beyond the veil.
Usmar reaches forward to open the tent, but hesitates with his fingers curling back.
Overcome with naïve fascination, Bataille is the first to slip out of sight and his family follows him in with terror as they hear a gasp of surprise behind the curtain.
The ground within is flush with floral fantasy, teeming with blossoms, seedling stalks, and plumes of bushy grass. Odétte waves at the timid eyes of a floette peering out from a fortress of fronds and is delighted to see a dozen other hands return the gesture.
Laid along the edges of the grove are fluffy familial clumps of pink-and-blue wooloo-like creatures, thrumming with orbs glowing at the ends of their tails. Normally lanterns are needed to light such a space, but their natural radiance is more than enough to read even the smallest of texts in the darkest of nights.
Raichu snuggles up beside a huge yellow specimen in black hazard stripes patiently fathering a dozen pichu that cling to his fur like cockleburrs. She pats his thigh, snatches up a belligerent bitey hatchling, and carefully watches the outsiders creep in with an unbreakable, cheeky smile.
All the eldest folk shudder, recognizing the faint dormant hum of skyfire-force from years spent ousting boltbringer nests from musty cellars and dusty attics.
At the center of the tent is a pyroar, curled around her cub playfully biting his mother’s mane. Their furry fires roast a meaty web of garters strung with copper wire. Sweet and savory, the air is thick with fatty morsels seared on sizzling skewers, carefully beaded between pepper pieces, onion chunks, and carefully-peeled spelon-berry bits.
Sat atop a mound of crimson sheets, surrounded by winter-colored pillows, leaned back against a single slumbering mareep, Valko lays beside his talonflame in a nest of fabric, feathers, and fur. “Welcome, welcome! Please, make yourselves at home.”
Every string in Usmar’s body wants to yank him and his family back by the joints, sensing the very sudden, unimaginably real danger in the air. Every single one of the monsters piled around the mad-mountain-man are far too dangerous to tame in the fairest case, invariably hazardous as a rule, right on up to the direst apex predators right there, center stage.
Pépé swaggers past his son-in-law with bedlam and booze on his breath. “Haaa-wat now?” He looks around, bent over, peeking through the grass at a nervous fae. “Wherez an old codger gonna find a place to hang hiz bones?”
Valko chuckles. “Why, everywhere, honored elder!” he says and points to his left. ”There’s room by Anabelle there.” The man gestures toward another huddle of mareep to his right. “Roscoe’s been lonely lately.” Finally, he shrugs, leaning his head toward his raichu friend. “And Vivienne loves company, if you’ve got a sense of humor.”
Bataille simply cannot believe the magic flowing through his own two eyes. His mouth hangs open with hands clutching his stomach as he tries to keep from hooting and hollering in a way that might force his parents to take him away for bad behavior. “They’re all so amazing!”
Ulphia shoves her husband forth and plucks Odétte out of a field of flowers reaching up for her.
Usmar tugs at the collar of his good linens and swallows his concerns for the sake of his pride. “Good Sage, I’m impressed. Are those… mareep? Stormherds are notoriously grouchy, I am concer- I mean curious as to how you’ve managed to tame them?”
Valko plucks a stray molt-feather from Talonflame’s neck. “Tame’ is a funny word.”
Usmar spends a few long, uncomfortable moments waiting for Valko to expound upon that statement and jumps as Pépé busts through the line to charge the enemy.
“Welp, I’ve lived long enough. Don’t cock up the business, boy.” Grandfather wobbles up to a fluffy pile of wide, innocent eyes and moves on, choosing to trade aged understanding glances with a few graying-pink flaffy huddled in the back.
He falls to his ass, sighs with relief, and leans back into a seat of warm, welcoming bodies. He’s grateful for the comfortable spot, infinitely more so that it didn’t cost him his life.
“H-how is it, Papa?” Ulphia asks, holding an annoyed little girl trying to escape her chest.
Pépé purses his lips, swigs from his flask, and pats an open spot beside him. “Dunno, might be die’n. Think I need a second opinion,” he grouches with a smile shot his woman’s way.
Grandma smirks. “Can’t do anything without me, can you?”
“Nope.” He wraps a boney arm around her as she lounges beside him. “Still hopeless.”
Usmar is so stunned that he barely notices the fibers of Bataille’s cloak slipping from his grip, and his face goes white as the boy leaps onto a bleating pile of mareep. Then decades of experience prepares him for the deadly, whining discharge laying in wait to blast his son apart.
But the moment never comes.
Valko leans up, energized by the boy’s exuberant dive. “That's the spirit!”
“C’moooon! I wanna go too!” Odétte squirms out of her mother’s hold and falls into the foliage. “Batty didn’t die!”
“Well…” Ulphia looks to her frightened husband with a prayer as her daughter is consumed in glimmering waist-deep grass and ambushed by an army of flower-wielding fae.
Usmar stumbles over nothing in particular with a bulky, bright-red box as his wife urges him on. “Before I, uh, find a seat. We wanted to offer you something from the Heartland. Perhaps these will complement the,” he starts, and gazes at the lumps of meat and vegetables skewered above the ferocious predator at the center of the room, “...wonderful feast you’ve prepared.”
Vivienne’s hungry pichu swarm instantly detects something good and seizes the opportunity without a second’s hesitation. The merchant is struck with paralysis as the varmints stampede towards him, leap upon his shoulders, scurry up his legs, and wriggle around the inside of his cloak.
Usmar finally finds his screaming voice and falls back into a blob of tingly yellow wool. Then the mob robs him blind and makes off with the goods, stuffing their little cheeks with candied dates, spiced jerky, and many-flavored tarts.
“Rrraaai! CHU!” Vivienne snaps and a manic haze of sparks dances around a dotted line of snuggling skyfire beasts with a furious glare. “A-chah, rai-chu-ra!” she commands.
Ulphia can barely contain a nervous laughter, giggling through her silver-ringed fingers as the hatchlings slowly march back to her flabbergasted husband.
Ears folded back, claws behind their backs, they murmur little noises that she can only translate as humiliated prostration.
Valko rumbles at the display. “Children. Such an adventure, aren’t they?”
Ulphia joins her awe-struck husband in the grass and leans back against the couple of young mareep with an apologetic whisper toward what surely must be their parents staring her down. Another of one of their babies leaps into her lap, and they finally bleat in approval. “Indeed. It seems some things transcend nature.”
As recompense, the pichu are instructed by their mother to create an assembly line, passing the snacks around the room under Vivenne’s careful management.
Sounds of satisfaction and delight fill the room as every single living thing has their tongues teased by finest flavors the heartland has to offer. The package is received so well in fact that Valko’s human guests are smothered with companionship as the youngest creatures are permitted by their parents to snuggle and compete for the limited space in their laps.
Valko can’t help but slouch back and watch the party continue without his interference. He observes the little girl playing with flickering floette sparkles of a spontaneously choreographed monster ballet. He trades telegraphic glances with the wise, silver-haired Lumierre, and they both smirk as Mère’s precious old pickle of a husband snores with his head lost in Roscoe’s fluff. He sighs with relief as Ulphia hands Usmar a tiny hatchling ewe, warming him up to the abject insanity burning all around.
Most importantly, he takes careful note as Vivenne’s oldest hatched, a female pikachu with a chip on her shoulder, approaches Bataille to introduce herself with uncharacteristic curiosity.
The little lady chitters and squeaks in his lap, pantomiming her frustrations with a scowl.
“I… I’m sorry to bother, Sage. What should I do? I don’t understand.”
Valko looks behind his mountain of silks and wools and nods toward a scraping sloshing sound. “I’ll give you a hint this one time, alright?”
Bataille nods in elation as Pikachu slumps down with a huff in his lap, then zaps his pinky-finger in protest as he tries to pet her ears. “Ow! Ah, of course, thank you, good Sage!”
“She wants to know your name!” Valko replies as a shuckle wobbles around the pillowy bend like a cask of ale rolling off in a storm and directs the critter towards Mère’s old man.
Bataille smiles brighter than the day he met that noibat face-to-face last year. He holds the little chu’s palms with his fingertips, feeling his hands seize up from the current passing through his skin, but grits his teeth and puts up with the pain. “My name is Bataille Marchand, but you can call me Batty, I don’t mind.”
“Ka-cha.” Pikachu scoffs with a tiny tilt of her head, but smiles all the same. “Pikachu.”
Bataille chuckles back. “Ah, well, I guess that’ll work too!”
Mère keeps a watchful eye on his new friend. “She’s very pretty, isn’t she?”
“Piii…kaaa.” Pikachu blushes and looks away, curling up into Bataille’s lap.
His sunny blue eyes gaze upon the rodent with a haze of gratitude as his fingers stroke the heart at the end of her tail, finding the painful sting of her touch once again. “Enchanting.”
Shuckle bumps into Grandpa’s leg, waking him with a manic seizing fit.
“Haa? Haaa?!” He squints at the creature, face bunched up with suspicion. “So this is how it ends, eh? Go on, beastie. Do your worst!”
The thing’s nubbly legs tilt its shell to the side a ways and a stream of glistening golden drink pools at the bottom of the old man’s mug.
Grandma cackles with a jovial slug upon her husband’s side. “What a wicked thing!”
Grandpa’s face turns over with a subverted frown and pats the thing on the head before it waddles on to quench every single empty cup and bowl. “Despicable.” Then he takes a drink and bobs his head in stunned concession. “And delicious. What is it?”
Bataille lifts a finger, excited to show the Sage he so admires how well his studies have gone. “Shuckle Nectar, Pépé! They ferment berries within their shell like a cask!” He drinks from his little cup and wiggles with a sensation that tastes like excitement and summer skies. “But I’ve no idea what sort of fruit this is.”
Ulphia sips with a startled gasp. “Oh Uxie, bless my memories. This is Golden Razzberry.”
Usmar is pulled from his endless watch of the pyroar that's too busy grooming their fussy cub to pay him any heed. “You’ve drunk from the Emperor’s own vines?!”
Her eyes slowly drift shut. “A cup was passed to me as a girl one Thunder’s Night as the Storm Priests passed through town. There was only enough for three to taste. I couldn’t possibly forget this flavor. Thank you, so very much, dear Sage.”
Grandmother scratches her chin and opens her eyes in recollection. “Oh my, yes. You shined with Zapdos wings that evening!”
Valko claps his hands with a motivational pop. “A round of applause for Petri, he worked hard all year so we might have this tiny taste of Arceus’ light.”
Everyone smacks their appendages together with rousing enthusiasm as Petri the shuckle waddles off to the corner with a beady, victorious stare. All but Usmar, whose thoughts are overcome with a mind-numbing surreality that comes when you’re sat cheering for an uncultured beast, as if they were some sort of master brewer.
Then again, he has to admit that his senses don’t betray him; it is the single most delectable lightly-fermented drink to ever tackle his thirst.
“Alright, I think it’s time we passed around the skewers and I made good on my promise. Where did we last leave off, young ones?” Valko hoists himself up atop his shins as his talonflame rustles awake from a comatose nap.
The pichu lineup gets right to work again as their mother plucks skewers from the tasty scaffold hanging above pyroar, handing them down to pass around from youngest to eldest.
Bataille patiently waits with moistened lips, kept satisfied with the liquid gold sloshing around his cup and the company of beings so awesome and powerful. “You were taken up to the nest!”
Odétte raises her hand but does not wait to be acknowledged. “And you had to work together!” she shouts as a pair of tiny floral fae tie her golden silken hair into intricate knotwork braids.
Their grandfather slowly sips his nectar, contemplating how ridiculous he would look to any of his associates back in Lumiose. “Ye were bein’ held prisoner by a giant, fire-breathing bird!”
“Right I was. Well…”
The whole room turns to listen, especially the hatchlings that sit beside the children, impatiently waiting to hear another story from the Sage of the Southern Peaks.
“Things were quiet for weeks, a month even. The great Alpha Talonflame would snatch up small game for me and I’d strip what I could from it. After the first few days she realized that I was freezing cold and her babies were too, so she brought me chunks of wood. I supposed she’d watched men working enough to know what I needed to produce the fire she can by simply existing.”
Talonflame breathes a tired sigh at that.
“I couldn’t rightly leave my flock to itself any longer; massive inferno birds besides. How many were lost to some new predatory horror I didn’t know about? There was so much to be done to prepare my wooloo winter huddles with enough food in their stomachs to graze in the spring. Citrus Berries needed to be picked and preserved. Vegetables needed plucked and pickled. Bags and bags of unworked wool needed to be brought to town and bargained for the barest necessities.”
“A hundred hands of work won’t go about itself,” Pépé caws.
Valko nods his way, “and I couldn’t do any of that if I was stuck warming some cave-dweller’s eggs with my arse!”
“She wouldn’t let you leave at all?” Bataille asks, unaware that his hands were starting to search the places of Pikachu’s body where she preferred her pets and scratches.
Valko shakes his head and bites a huge chunk of meat away from his skewer. “Mmm. So good. Ahem, no! Any time I tried to sneak away or promise to return she’d snatch me up and plant me right back upon her young. She slept when I did, woke when I did, shared her kills as if I had wings of my own. And though it was the warmest cave-camping stay I’d ever had, I’ve no idea how many years of my life I’d lost worrying that she was just fattening me up for later.”
Usmar slowly, wearily nods as he watches Pyroar lick her fat-slathered jowls “Yeah…”
“So finally, after a few days of piling the hides of all the creatures she’d hunted for me atop the bed she made, I started a roaring fire near the eggs. I didn’t need that much time, just enough to keep my flock happy and safe. I knew they still weren’t welcome anywhere near the cliffs, it was the only rule you couldn’t break after all, so I’d need to prepare them as best I could with the little daylight Mother Bird afforded me.
“Because I would return, just as I said I would. I still needed to do right by the little lady!”
The old man raises his mug. “Bad form tuh cross a gal, feathers’r’not.”
“Rightly,” Valko says and holds his hands out in an exaggerated creep towards the younglings huddled closest to him, spooking a wee mareep back into his own fluff. “So in the late morning, when she left to hunt, I knew she wouldn’t be back for quite some time. Then the idiocy of youth came full circle and it hit me like a branch in the face…
“I couldn’t leave them alone at all! That was how I got stuck being bird-nanny in the first place! No. If I was going to get anything done, I’d need to take the eggs with me, to make absolutely sure I was keeping my word.”
Ulphia covers her face as he says this, muttering. “Oh gods, the idiocy of youth is right!”
“So, considering I’d eaten through a mess of mudsdale jerky, I stuffed my backpack with the spare hides and carried them on my long climb down. It was quite the trip, considering the time I spent keeping the shells safe from cracks, but sure enough I touched grass again and made my way back home.
“My home was in shambles. Creatures of all types and manners had helped themselves to our cabin, but by the grace of my grandfather’s best oaken hatch our cellar was untouched. Despite that, though, the flock had looked just the way I left them.
“The wooloo gave me a wide berth, like I had the Woozy, watching me with fearful eyes. It occurred to me immediately; of course they’re terrified, I smell like the enemy, and I’ve got their young strapped to my back! So I bundled the eggs up in the house beside the fireplace and set to my long overdue work.”
Odétte had cradled a bouquet of floette up in her arms like a big, squishy, private theatre box. “And she let you work?”
Valko nods. “Oh yes, it was the most productive day in my entire life. Ha, you’d have thought my brother and father had risen from the grave and plucked the bushels too!”
Then he lurches forward, looks left and right, then shields his mouth one way with a whispering tone. “But it was not the dead walking right beside me that evening.”
The human children panic and squirm around and the pichu lean towards Valko in perfect unison, eyes wide as saucers.
“Yer in trouble now, mhmmm!” Grandpa nods with liquor-pickled lips.
“As I carried my tenth basket into the house, I smelled something familiar. Charcoal mixed with the burning sap of pine. I whipped around, looking for Mama Bird, but she was nowhere to be seen. I peeked outside, hearing no flutter, nor the tell-tale cry of an angry tiercel!
“ ‘Haaa! The stress is finally getting to me. Next I’ll be talking with dad over wine and cheese!’ I said!”
Talonflame makes a tiny, adorable chirp.
Valko pauses to read the room. “But what was that?”
She chirps again, twice, then thrice.
Ulphia buries her face in her hands. “Oh gods.”
“Aaawww!” Odétte coos with her palms locked at her cheek.
The old drunk finally catches on. “Oh shite!”
Satisfied with the intensity in the room, Valko continues. “The eggs were broken open, shells burst apart, and right above the mantle of our fireplace was a baby fletchling. Ha… for the briefest of moments, I tricked myself into thinking it was one of Papa’s old hunting trophies.
He pauses, piercing the children’s hearts with his bright honeycomb eyes. “I must have stared at her for an eternity.”
“And she stared at me, her little head darting to-and-fro, bouncing around the shelves, trying to decide who or what I was. Soon enough the little one puked up a sticky column of fire and seemed so incredibly pleased with themselves that, even as I cried out and worked to smother the flames, I couldn’t help but be impressed myself.”
Talonflame raises her head in pride.
“Then I heard another shuffling… Another little bird. This one perched atop my many baskets, pecking at the fresh berries like they’d never eaten a day in their life. Which, thinking back, I suppose that was the case.
“They chirped at me with a smile, and I suddenly felt that strange, soft warmth in your guts you get witnessing an eevee hatch.”
His partner whips her tail-feathers around and lights Valko’s sleeve on fire
“The baskets were ablaze!” Valko flails around in mock panic as the children scramble and shriek with terror. “I carried them out of the house and only then realized my clothes had followed suit. Then I yanked shirt off to smack the fires dead,” Valko says, suddenly shifting into a calm lukewarm tone, as if his clothes were perfectly fine, then quells the flames with a flick of his arms and a reminiscing stare out into the air.
“By Arceus! I needed to get back to the cave. But how would I do it now? Each time I approached the hatchlings my clothes burned up and I was repaid with fresh strips of blistered skin!”
Bataille leaps forward and dives into the crowd with his hand raised. “A smithy’s smock!” he calls out and is plunged into a pile of riled pichu and startled mareep.
“Ah, that’s right. My papa’s old leathers! He kept them around for those times he baked the bricks and now all I had to do was wrap the little bandits up and get them snug and safe in my bag. It was leather too. Sure I’d have to deal with the smell of singed fur from the hides, but a real man answers the moment’s call!”
Talonflame inhales with the roar of a bellowed forge and douses Valko’s body in liquid flame.
Humans and hatchlings alike erupt with the sounds of distress.
“The first was an easy catch, since she went right back to devouring the fruits of my labor. She squeaked and peeped and burped hot air, but I got her in the bag.” The crazed hermit smiles with a comedic aside as his body flickers and ripples with fire. “Ugh, have you ever had to smell your own hair being burned away? Nasty stuff, truly.”
Vivienne wheezes with laughter, slapping her stumpy little feet in delight at their reaction.
“Anyways, the last one was a clever girl and I ended up having to knock an old fishing net down from the wall and feed it to the flames so I could jam her inside.” Every motion is made as if his life depended on it all over again, wiping the fire away from his vital areas before the flesh could suffer for his theatrics.
“My britches lit up as they belched and squawked. The little scamp bit my leg through a hole they poked in the bag! Soon enough I was outside hopping on my toes in nothing but a charred pair of braies, but I’d gotten the little rascals!” he says with a victory in his voice.
His partner extinguishes the flames with a gust that shakes the tent and startles the crowd.
“Roaaaaaar.” Pyroar’s jaws open so wide she could swallow any one of the younglings in a single bite and sighs with exhaustion, nuzzling her cub.
“Looo. Eeeooo.” The cub coos and whimpers, refusing to lift his head.
As pyroar rises with thunderous steps, Usmar’s back winds up like a toy spring.
“Leeoor, aye pyroar.”
Valko flaps his sleeve to silence the last tiny tongue of flame still licking his sleeve with a few cheeky puffs. “Aww, time to go, Mama?”
Bataille rocks back and forth with wanting eyes. “But wait, weren’t there thr-”
Pikachu shushes his mouth with her tail.
Everyone gives the queen a cordial round of goodbye cries as Pyroar swipes her baby up by the scruff, bows to the crowd, and squats to make it past the flaps.
The heat of her fur warms the cheeks of everybody by the door, but Usmar can barely feel her summer breeze above the cold disturbing truth freezing his blood down from his neck, to his hips, to the tips of his toes.
Valko is not in control.
“Y-you won’t stop her?” He regroups himself as he hears the broken tone in his throat. “The streets are so crowded after all; who knows what might happen!”
Everyone's eyes glance his way and then slowly turn back towards the play as Grandfather gives his son-in-law the single most distorted look he’d ever conjured up.
Valko clears his throat. “Of course not! Mother knows best, after all.”
Usmar wrinkles up and shrinks like a once-washed tunic. “Ah right, ha… haha…”
“Who’d wanna eat a screamin’, bloody somethin’ after a feast like that, anyway?” Pépé shouts, clearing the air with his mug raised high. “Wha’ ‘appened next? Kidz’r tied up in hitches wait’n!”
The pichu stamp their sparking little paws, filling the tent with tiny rolls of thunder. Usmar is more than happy to fall unnoticed in the storm, like a damp, dirty blanket.
Valko flourishes his cape. “Wait, wait! No! There were three eggs! Where was the last hatchling?!” he shouts, hopping to his feet, thrashing the covers around.
“Then I heard the rustle of wings outside, so I bolted out of the house and found myself nose-to-beak with the one-and-only newly-minted-mama.”
The floette gasp and faint, wilting like petals plucked and dropped to the ground.
“So there I was, burned and bum-bare with a bag full of trouble. Makes a man feel right pebble-small the way she screamed at me, with all the force she would calling from the head of the mountain’s peak.”
Mère tilts her head, grinning. “Oh? And how did you respond?”
Ulphia’s head shakes left and right, face still stuffed in her own palms. “He ran his mouth.”
“You bhuuur–et your bodice, I did!” Valko barks with a burp, proving that legendary beasts-amongst-men aren’t immune to mere-mortal-brews.
Talonflame whips her head around at her partner in abject humiliation. “Flaaay!”
“And it went like this!” Valko stands, pointing to Talonflame, reenacting the moment. “ ‘Don’t you give me no beak!’ “
Talonflame stands and scrapes the sheets, screeching in protest as fire rolls up her cheeks.
Valko swipes his nose with a calloused thumb. “ ‘Got a whole mess of problems you birds made before I ever said I’d help, and I’m still helping, look!’ ” He nabs a pillow connected to a sneaky pair of pichu crawling up for a closer look and swings them around in a huff.
The pichu squeal in surprise, sparkling through the air as Valko yelps in amusement at their lightning licking his skin.
Odétte, Bataille, and the hatchling hoard giggle at the ridiculous display, overcome with amusement.
The rest of the pichu bunch around the stage pointing, screaming, following their siblings with their eyes as they fly through the air.
“Ta-la! No-la Talon-FLAME!” she roars with a roiling superheated breath that Valko blocks with his cloak like a Paldean bull-fighter.
Valko squints. “ ‘You would, you lamb-snatching harlot!’ ”
The room gasps.
Talonflame jerks her head back, hissing with disgust. “Ta-cala!”
“ ‘My flock is free eats for any hungry predator passing through without me here.’ ” Valko shouts back. “ ‘Bet you’d grab them all for yourself if I wasn’t looking!’ ”
Talonflame snaps her beak and puffs her chest. “Chinay, fe-la-tinlay!” She squawks and flails her wings around towards a bunched-up pack of mareep that shake in the spotlight of the role they’d unwittingly been cast.
Valko finally returns to his audience. “I saw her point to my flock, then to the mountain pass leading on up to the grassy glade beneath her lair on the mountain’s peak; on the other side of the valley. That was when it came to me, it was too ridiculous to even consider, I hadn’t spared a moment of thought for such a silly idea before…”
“She said to take them with you!” Odétte cries with a head full of braids and flowery wreaths.
Valko ends his dramatic aside and squares off with Talonflame atop the heap of blankets, as if only one of them could leave alive. “ ‘You promise you won’xcz t kill them? Not a single one?’ ”
She rolls her massive blackened eyes and groans with a frustrated nod. “Flay-Flay.”
Valko sets the squealing pichu down at her feet and backs away as the babies run in terror. “ ‘Alright. Just let me get my–’ ”
His eyes dart around, leaving his listeners in suspense. “Do you smell something, darling?” he asks the smoking hot lady behind him.
Then smoke rises from the sheets and their laying spot suddenly bursts into flames.
Valko leaps away and clutches at his own hair, turning back to the audience with a genuine look of surprise. “Ah– Ow! Where is that– Ah, Our cabin was lit like a dry stack of kindling.”
He scans his perimeter with a frustrated furrowed brow. “What in bl– Absolutely nothing I could have done would have saved it. I thought to recover what little I could, but even my foolish soul simply couldn’t convince myself to waste this life on a home haunted with bad memories.”
Litleo pops out of the burning comforters with a squeaky roar.
The floette faint a second time.
Valko laughs like he’s heard the best kind of inappropriate joke and plucks the cub up into his arms with a ruffle of the tangerine tuft between his ears. “Ah, that’s where the third one was.”
“A fine trick, you two…” He walks around the fire, to the edge of the tent where pyroar’s tail holds a space open just big enough for her baby to escape. “Gratitude, Madame. Travel safe.”
Now it was Ulphia’s turn to panic as the fire spreads around the grassy floor. “Fire! Let’s go, everyone, single file!”
Valko and Talonflame squawk with identical bestial laughter as the mountain of silks burn behind them. “Relaaax.”
Talonflame swirls her wings like a top and a flurrying purple dervish leaps around the room. The flames are gobbled up like rattata in an open field and the smoke vanishes, carried away by the tiny whirlwind that slithers out of a hole in the ceiling of the tent.
Everyone cheers, smacking their paws, claws, and hooves together with glee.
Valko falls backwards onto a pile of now very warm pillows. “Larvesta silk. Quite the stuff, eh?”
The entrepreneurial coals in Usmar’s gut spark him back to life. “It is… My gods!”
Talonflame nestles up beside her partner, and he nestles back in turn. “For the first time in my life I’d broken the sacred Woolherd’s Rule. ‘Stay on your side!’ I’m sure my family was screaming at me from behind the Citrus Berry Vines. Maybe they were drowned out as the cabin crackled and roared behind me. Perhaps I couldn’t hear them over the sound of my own heart pounding in my ears…
“One thing was certain, though; it wasn’t madness that made me raise my crook that day. Then I crossed sides, to raise a new flock in a new home, and I never looked back.”
Pikachu smiles at the story, her tail gently swaying back and forth as Bataille brushes the stripes on her rear end. She catches the boy marveling at her calm demeanor and zaps his fingers with blush and a scoffing growl.
Bataille’s fingers flail around, shaking the pain away. “Ooow! What’s that for?”
“She’s her mother’s child.” Valko smirks, trading sideways glances with a grumbling Vivienne. “Seems she’s taken a liking to you.”
He pulls a finger out of his mouth, lamenting the tiny burns she left. “If you say so, gosh!”
Usmar looks to his father-in-law, who’d passed out with exhaustion and intoxication again, and finally feels brave enough to raise his voice. “Sage Valko, if it isn’t too much trouble. Would you be able to tell me how you procured such a rare and valuable material?” he asks, pointing to the blankets.
Valko’s finger metronomes with the ticking of his tongue. “You’re not ready for that, my friend. Buuut…” He turns towards the mother rat with a nod. “She’s got a proposal, if you’re keen.”
Vivienne squeaks up at Ampharos, chittering sensual words as she nuzzles his thighs, shamelessly slathering him in Charms and sweet-nothings.
Her mate enters a long humming contemplation with his brow furrowed and his body buzzing with what must be an positively-immense reserve of power. All of their children watch with anticipation as Father makes a decision they knew nothing about until today, but they could still feel the importance hanging in the air.
In the pause, Ulphia finds Odette fallen slumbering on a bed of magical grass. Her little fairy friends protest her rescue, but must relent as the giant human takes the slightly-less-giant girl away from them.
Mère opens her waterskin, pours it onto Pépé’s face, and helps him to his feet as he shakes off the sudden intrusion of his sleep.
Ampharos nods and stares at Usmar from a face set with determination, a single paw held out.
“I. Um, I’m… sorry?” Usmar frowns as Valko refuses to give him any hints at all.
Ampharos spits into his paw, and thrusts it forth again.
“Aaah! Now you’re speaking my language!” Usmar marches forward and grips the thing’s hand with all the vigour he can muster, sucking in a huge breath in case a thousand thunderbolts take him to an early grave.
Ampharos’ arm is so dastardly strong that Usmar is stuck helpless in his grip, as if the meaty fibers in his limbs were made of threaded bronze; but hey no sign o–
ZAP!
Usmar yanks his hand back, clutching it in agony, and stares at the blistering signature that monster has seared into his palm. “Distortion! What did I just agree to?!”
Valko pops his neck and stretches his arms, unwinding for the night. “Your travels here have done us so much good. I was concerned that my pitiful lumps of copper might not be enough to keep your wagon coming back. So, I wondered if some mareep wool would better secure your route. Since it isn’t mine to give, they wanted to meet you.”
Usmar’s jaw drops. “You’re tugging my leash! I can’t…” He coughs, blushing for the first time in decades. “I’m so grateful for this opportunity, I can’t find the words.”
Vivienne makes a loud crackling squeak. “Chai!”
Valko jumps at the sound. “Oh yes, right! She and her mate will allow the wool of their flock to be harvested once a year, sold exclusively to you. She does, however, have a very important condition that needs to be met.”
Usmar grins like a gimmigoul on a stolen stack of coins. “Anything, little lad– I mean…” he looks around then down at Vivienne tapping a long floppy foot in annoyance. “Name your price, Madame!” he shouts, kneeling down to her level.
Vivienne smiles, happy to see that some humans can indeed be taught. She chitters up a storm of ecstatic speech and, leaving Usmar bewildered and breathless as her entire family explodes into arcing sparking blasts of cheer.
Valko smiles at the divine intrapersonal magic at work as Vivienne returns to finish their little deal. “Wool is measured in stones, yes? Well, she wants stones too; thunder stones. I’m sure you know of them,” he says, directly translating for her in real time.
Usmar holsters his thumb in his belt, confidence restored. “Of course! They are tough to come by, but I’ve got some sources.”
“A stone for a stone, she says. One stone’s weight of wool for a thunderstone no smaller than her paw,” Valko says as Vivienne clenches her fist with a leathery crunch.
Usmar wipes his brow. “Whew, fortunate for me the terms were favorable. What an incredible thing this is! It will be good doing business with you, Vivienne.”
Valko snatches a pipe he’d hidden from the hatchlings’ sight. “What a wonderful day it is.”
Mama ‘Chu ruffles her face in a puff of excited sparks and then waves them all goodbye before scooping all of her miscreants up with a bossy snap of the tongue. Vivienne’s mareep march through the opening of the tent in a neat single-file line and their pichu scurry past like insects between their legs.
Pikachu groans at her mother’s command and slowly stretches, hops down from Bataille’s lap, and looks back up at him with a lazy disinterested gaze.
Bataille’s face splits from ear to ear in a smile that betrays his soul. “It was amazing meeting you, Pikachu. I hope I get to see you again. I really do!”
Pikachu snorts and bolts for the exit with a speed that hurts the eyes to watch…
“Hey, um…” The boy’s feet shuffle as he stands in Valko’s shadow. “Does she have a name? Like her mom does, I mean.”
…but then the little lady secretly peeks her head back through, smiling with glowing cheeks.
Valko’s partner lights the mint of his long, dragonbone pipe. “Not yet.”
Hail, friend! Welcome to the Imperial Star of Kalos, where the indomitable light of man still shines in the darkness of a world ruled by savage monsters! Some hide behind the many great city walls. Others bring their fight to the wilds, for fame, fortune, and folly. But in the far-flung fields of Shaymin's Pass... they live in a very different sort of way.
Brought by the promise of a prosperous trade, a hopeful house of merchants braves the backwater lanes, landing in an impossible world that flies on the wings of a Sage.
