~ WINTER ~
“Mère, I’m so cold,” Odétte wheezes with cloudy words rolling across her face.
“We are strong, my sweet. You may bear the name Merchand, but your heart beats wit my blood. Lumière ladies live on!” Mère cheers, daring the brittle air to snap and bite her back.
Odétte manages a faint shivering smile and bundles up against Mère’s delphox fur coat.
Ulphia cracks the reins to one side, guiding her family’s prized team of furfrou pulling the sleigh. They bark her order up the line, to the front ‘frou, swimming through a sparkling sea of snow. “Good girls, good girls! Fly on Glastrier strides!”
In the covered shelter of the sleigh, Usmar and Bataille sit at opposite sides in the first sled of the train, trading stubborn stares at tariffed rates.
Pépé hacks and huddles from a mound of fleece and fur, ringing a brass spittoon with muddy mouthfuls of lung. He wipes the scum from his lips, silently appraising the negotiations at play.
“You know what must be done, son.”
Bataille’s face hides behind a wrapped ashen scarf, eyes gazing back at Usmar like a weavile in the dark. His Papa’s words punch him in the gut and he squirms with a nauseated whine, unable to distract himself with the bundle of copper puzzle rings in his hands or the box of hand-carved wooden gears and pulleys languishing under the bench.
A commotion starts exactly eleven-dogs-down and the sled slows, rocking with a wind that whips at the canvas walls.
Usmar breaks from his non-diplomacy and wraps his cheeks in pleated cloth. “My love, how goes it?”
Ulphia shields her snow-blind eyes, squinting off into the sleet and fog swallowing the front of the pack.
The lead dog’s gait has dissolved from her steady puller’s stride into a frantic zigging-zag.
“Roseli is spent, we need to turn the team,” she says, yanking at the reins.
Her husband wobbles up and peers out into the winter wastes. “The valley draws near, surely we can just push the dogs an hour longer?”
Ulphia pinches his ear through the hood with a huff. “Should you wish to carry my broken babies on your back!”
Usmar throws his hands up, grunting as her mitten yanks him from the canopy. “Ow! Alright, alright!”
They leap from both sides of the cab, sinking to the top of their knee-high gogoat boots. The dogs are a panting, winter wildfire, dancing in place as rimey chunks slough from their fluff.
Ulphia scrambles straight to the tip of the yammering spear and cuddles her frantic little lady into submission. “Hush! Hush, little baby. You’ve earned your time in the back,” she coos between tender smooches on the cheek.
Usmar begins unbuckling restraints, preparing to shuffle the girls around. “Easy, Apicot, steady girl…”
The rear ‘frou snorts and her chest rumbles with irritation at the man tugging her leash.
“Oook, that’s a girl, yes. Now let’s go. Aaah!” he yelps with an effeminate squeak as Apicot snaps at his woolen paws and snorts in disapproval. “Heel, bitch! Distorted beast.”
“Don’t say that, Papa!” Odétte peeps over the railing. “Apicots’ a good girl and I love her!”
“Good girls do as they’re told!” he gruffs and the entire pack eyes him with disdain.
Odétte reaches her coat-bloated arms out with a smile. “I’ll help you, Papa! She listens to me.”
“Very well.” Usmar waddles back and hauls his daughter onto his shoulders. “We’ll just see about–”
Apicot’s ebony face creeps into a smile as she spots Odétte and elects to trot herself to the front of the line with her nose held high.
“Good giiirl!” Odétte chirps and pats her Papa’s head. “See? She loves you too!”
It takes a half-hour working through a soup of swarming flakes of snow. The freshest shuffle forward, the tiredest rest in the back, and their owners help each other up the ladder.
Mère gives her granddaughter a big icy kiss between the eyes. “They see the Light of Lumiose within you, my sweet.”
Odétte’s face glows like a cloud hiding the sun as her father chuffs like a puffing pipe of mint.
Ulphia wraps the reins around her wrists, becoming one with the ranks. “SOUND OFF!”
The team stands in uniform attention.
“Apicot! – Occa, Pumkin, Leppa, Kelpsy! – Rabuta, Petaya, Maranga, Wiki! – Pecha and Roseli!” The maestro sings with a rising chorus of howls ringing as the names are called.
“YAH!” she roars with a snap and Usmar tumbles into the canopy as they crash back into the storm.
Pépé cackles through a shivering fist and kisses his flask as Bataille giggles and then crumples back into his clothes as his father casts arrows from his eyes.
The dogs howl and bark with ferocious warning calls and Ulphia looks around. “What is it, girls?” But the moment fades away and she continues guiding them forth with a suspicious raise of the brow.
An hour passes, then another, and another still, and Mère peeks through a polished dome of quartz kept safe in a special silk-lined satchel at her belt. “I am concerned.”
Ulphia purses her lips behind a woolen mask. “I thought this was the way, I’m sure of it. Where are the lights, the rolling climb to the cliffs, the evergreen woods? The valley is simply gone!”
“Oh no, are we lost?!” Odétte’s mittens smother her own mouth in fear. “What do we do, Mama? We’re so far from home!”
Both women silently shake hands with steely looks. “We split the train.”
Usmar shakes his head. “We don’t have time before sundown, we should circle and camp!”
The dogs raise an even more terrible fuss than the last and Ulpha whips the lines as they bring the string of sleds crashing into one another with a sudden stop. “Easy ladies! Whoa!”
“With what provisions, boy?” Mère throws her words like a stone.
Ulphia raises her hand, whipping around. “Enough bickering. We will do both. Boys, unpack the toboggans while I get–”
“Glaaayceon!”
Everyone shouts up in terror at a brilliant pair of polished sapphires blinking back at them from the top of the wagon as a curious pair of smaller, beady, black eyes peers out from a gap in Bataille’s coat.
Odétte boggles up at the monster concealed behind the blustering, blizzard curtain. “Mama, what is that?”
The thing hops down to the cab, perching its haunches where Odétte sat, smiling at the residual warmth on its paws. “Glay… Cee… Ahn!” he chirps to the children with a paw that bobs in a tutor’s sway.
Usmar snatches a heavy-headed hatchet from a log beside the bench and stands with it locked over one shoulder, poised to strike. “Release the hounds!” he shouts, shoving his children through the flaps.
The ‘frous tangle up into a tide of hungry teeth and gnashing paws, winding around the cart to protect their people as Ulphia leaps to pull the pin on their restraints.
CRACK!
A ballistic-blue shard of light strikes the axe and a million shattered bits of bronze scatter across the drifts.
“Very well, creature!” Usmar snarls, ready to grapple them down to the furfrou baying below.
Its ears and tail glisten like icicles in the sun, flopping around as the man’s hand wraps the hilt of a knife. Turquoise diamonds hackle its back, but relax with a patient breath as the creature touches something against his chest. “Ga-nay!”
Mère leaps from her seat and pushes Usmar away! “Wait!” She turns around and points. “Look!”
Glaceon taps its breast at a wooden pendant hanging from its neck. One carved into the image of a crying talonflame with its wings spread wide.
Bataille and Odétte clap their hands together. “Do you know Valko?”
The eeveelution grins with pride. “On.”
Mère kneels, sighing in relief. “You must be here to find us.”
“On! On!” he says and leaps down from the cart, landing on the fluffy surface of the snow like he weighs the same as the air.
The hounds lunge forward and Ulphia shocks them still with a shrill whistle. “ATTEN-TION!”
The team sits in perfect, synchronized silence.
Glaceon runs to the front of the line, spitting a mess of monster speech, and receives an understanding nod from the lead. He turns around, the air crackles like a shattered sheet of lakewater ice, and the wind rolls around the cart like a bubble in a storming sea.
Then he cuts the squall with a heart-gripping caterwaul, dashing through the storm, and the snowy globe moves with him.
“GO GIRLS! Follow that beast!” Ulphia screams.
“Follow that friend!” Mère says, clutching her chest with relief settling on her pruny cheeks.
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The firelights atop the walls of Shaymin’s Pass come into view, and with little time to spare too. The sun has sunk below the horizon and the bitter umbral air starts to stab their faces bare.
Glaceon leaps ahead and rattles the world with a spine-tingling trill.
His call returns to them as a boisterous gaggle of monstrous calls, and the nightwatch opens the gates without a single question or concern.
Their guide gallavants them through the streets like they’re on parade, chirping happily at anybody passing by. Ultimately, at the end of his cocky display, he brings them to the center of town.
“Ga lah na’la!” He directs them to an area beside the building where other smaller sleds are left.
Usmar wobbles down, clearing his throat. “Many thanks, Glaceon. I uh… I’m sorry about earlier.”
What he does not at all expect is the flippant tail wag glistening in the lantern-light.
“Cee-cee-cee,” Glaceon jeers, socking Usmar in the shin with a gentle balled-up paw. “Gon ceelah.”
Ulphia brushes the snow from her team, scraping icy chunks as Glaceon hands amorous eyes out to a few of the girls as they’re freed from the bridle. Most snort and look away, but a few respond with interested glances.
“Ahem, sorry, friend. Might you show us the stables?” Usmar asks, ignorant of the mass-flirt going on.
Glaceon raises one ear with his head in a tilt, as if he didn’t quite hear. Then he jolts with understanding as beckons them, and especially their furfrou friends, toward the meeting hall doors.
Mère on the other hand rubs her chin, considering the little man’s advances as he bumps his rump against Apicot’s leg. She laughs aloud, and everyone stares with concern as she refuses to elaborate.
Usmar heaves an oaken trunk the size of his chest from the rear sleds and waddles to the entrance. “Odétte, Bataille! Help your Pépé down.”
The children go to make sure their grandfather stays bound in the warmest blankets as they can find and help him up from the bench.
As he shuffles forth, they move to wait by the ladder.
Pépé sputters and chokes, gagging on his own breath, then a jingling box with a leaden bronze lock slips free from his cloak and tumbles around the floor.
“Here you go, Pépé.” Odétte picks it up with an innocent smile. “You should be more careful, that looks important!”
He reaches out from his matted rags and snatches it up, patting her on the head as he stuffs it under his arm where it belongs. “Indeed it is, little one.”
“Pépé, hurry! Even the dogs are inside before us!” Bataille shouts with barely-reserved, anxious trembling.
The old miser purges his throat with a burbling spit and waves them away with another swig. “Go on, go on! I can walk my own damn self, thank you very much,” he says with arms trembling, down the ladder under his own weight.
“But could you walk me, Monsieur?” Mère asks, holding his hand as he crashes to a foot-hardened path of snow.
“It’ll cost ya, Mademoiselle,” he says with a shrewd raise of the brow.
She smiles up at him as he leads her in behind Bataille. “Name your price.”
“What’chu got?”
She holds his arm and lays her cheek upon his shoulder. “Just this.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” he says and locks the winter out behind them.
Round crowded tables fill the space, each with a copper bowl at the center hosting litleo cubs, actively on fire, waving with excitement at the new humans arriving.
The entire place erupts with raucous celebration, cups raised, and slabs of meat torn mid-bite.
One of the litleo scrambles over to the group and yowls with fawning eyes. “LEEEOOOO!” He smears their legs with his haunches, thankfully extinguishing the flames before painting them in salutation.
Usmar and Ulphia fight their instincts to back away, reminding themselves where they are, but stand stiff and confused at the strange show of affection.
Odétte and Bataille haven’t forgotten though and fall to their knees, squeezing him tight. He is older, bigger, but their young malleable minds recognize the subtle intricacies of his fur. “Litleo!” they call out and a chorus of adoration rolls across the building like a spilled cask of mead.
Their parents trade glances, clearing their throats. “Alright you two, give the creature some air.”
Mère guides her man to a bench beside the wall, smacking his back to scare the frogadier humping at his throat. He takes a long overdue breath and then something budges his boot with a gentle nudge.
Petri the shuckle sloshes about, nuzzling his knee with an empty wooden cup over his head like a helmet.
Pépé gives the critter a playful scowl. “Come back to finish the job, have you?”
Petri arcs his head around, plops the cup down at his feet, and serves some steaming burgundy drink.
“Your nemesis strikes again,” Mère jeers and reaches down for the cup, petting Petri with a smile.
“Mulled wine?!” he growls, sips from it, scowls, and then drinks it again with a long sigh of relief. “Just what the doctor ordered.” He raises his cup to the creature as it wobbles away. “I’ll get you next time, Petri!”
Glaceon prances up to a proud looking man with a bastle-house body and leather hands cured by the salts of the earth. He bows as the guy slips the pendant from Glaceon’s neck, stowing it in a rough-stitched pouch on his belt.
“You have my thanks, Noël. Help yourself to anything you like.”
Noël glances back at the Lumiere Pack with a smirk. “Ah la la.”
The furfrou chatter with confusion as a yeoman boy asks them what they’d like, serving the ladies their first literal taste of equality.
Casanova takes his place at their empty table end, basking in the expressive assortment of looks sent his way. They cut his welcome cold at first, but the bachelor grows on them like icicle rows as he helps to explain that old human custom of ‘getting to eat what you want’.
“Quite a coffer you’re hauling there in the dead of winter.” The voice of that strapping stockade of a man rattles the boards, shaking the air with a throat full of bass-organ pipes. “Usmar Merchand, I presume?
“The very one.” Usmar heaves and sets his chest onto a nearby table with a thud. “And my supplier outdid themselves this year. I really couldn’t say no. I am willing to take the rest on agreement and… Ah, sorry, but only one of us seems to be acquainted.”
Ulphia sees the opportunity to relieve that guilty sense of obligation she always got as a house guest and slips away. Vanishing in plain sight, she sneaks toward the kitchen to make and bake (and to uncover the culinary secrets floating around the air.)
The stranger chuckles at her retreat, low and slow, and gestures for Usmar to sit beside him. “Ah. Understandable, good merchant. I’m very busy in the sowing and harvest months; no time to be milling about with things left to do. I’m Tauron, Mayor of this fine Village.”
What an appropriate name, Usmar thinks, and his face scrunches up with confusion. “Ah… I’m very sorry, it would appear you’ve caught me at quite the disadvantage tonight. You are the mayor? Not…”
“Valko? No no, he leads a very different sort,” Tauron says from a sip of his mug.
Usmar’s face turns pink with penance. “In that case, please accept my sincerest apologies. If I’d thought to ask, we'd have sought you out sooner.”
“It is a common mistake. I’m all-about the valley most of the year and in my position a humdrum day is a job well done. Valko is blessed with the gift of gab, and his deeds are difficult to ignore.”
“Quite.” Usmar glances around, fidgeting with the clasp of his cloak. “I, uh, hope our intrusion isn’t much of an imposition. I’d love to say we brought more commerce than this but I’m afraid our business today is exclusively with him. Eh, well, more specifically-”
“Vivienne’s flock. Yes, yes, I’ve been made aware. Worry not, any guest of Valko’s is a guest of mine.” He beckons a woman to his side. “Have Skarmory send word his associates are waiting.”
Usmar succumbs to the many spells cast from a slew of stewing cauldrons in the back. “I see we’ll be holing up here for the night. My family shall compensate your people fairly for such incredible hospitality, you can rest assured.”
Tauron’s cheeks tighten with a patient smile. “Truly, it is my pleasure. Valko’s way with the wilds has brought great prosperity to the valley, and I like to think his people feel the same way about us.”
“You mean the wild things living alongside you?” Usmar asks, pointing to his family’s feline friend following Bataille and Odétte over to warm Pépé’s knees.
“That’s right, and quite exactly, monsieur. I’m pleased to hear such wise words; many who come to this place need reminding that these creatures are our allies, not some obedient horde of thralls.”
“I suppose they aren’t helping out of the goodness of their hearts,” Usmar says with a thumb on his lips.
The mayor leans back and pops a handful of raisins into his mouth. “Of course not. Mutually beneficial arrangements, however…” he begins, smiling as all the litleo leap from the tables all at once and race off to the kitchen, collecting baskets of dried berries, smoked mutton, and fresh loaves of bread.
Usmar purses his lips with a credent nod. “Well, alright fair enough; I bet it beats squabbling in the snow for scraps.”
Tauron nods. “And it sure beats fighting with the forest every day.”
Then a furry bipedal creature brushes the litleos’ backs as they depart, like a wicker broom scouting the hall with a sharp vulpine smile.
For a brief mysticized moment Usmar’s mind stops dead as the creature claps its tiny blackened paws together. All the copper sconces, tallow candles, and dying fireplaces roar to life with cozy violet flames.
The Delphox is bright, excited, seemingly devoid of its naturally skittish tendencies. They give a chittering bow and wander the room, greeting the guests they’ve mixed into medleys of wonder and warmth.
Even in light of that Long Blossom Night, Usmar has stacks of scruples left to sort. So he seizes his opportunity to gain the perspective of someone other than a crazy, cave-dwelling, egg-sitting wizard. Someone safe, sane, and mostly sober at the moment.
“Doesn’t it all seem… dangerous to you? Don’t accidents happen while you’re working with monsters?”
Tauron hits the man with a snubull’s stare. “Don’t accidents happen while you’re working with humans?”
Usmar is glad to be sitting, else he might've crashed his ass to the ground tasting both boots.
Tauron roars with a jolly belly-shaking laugh. “Fret not, my friend. I understand your concerns. Being totally honest with you, if not for the Sage calling the cliffsides home we’d be like any old Kalosian hold anyplace else.”
Usmar manages to yank the shoe leather from his throat and huffs in frustration. “But there’s a reason, lots of reasons, why we don’t work with wildlings! Surely you haven’t forgotten. Even if you’ve never set foot beyond the valley, nobody lives in a glass flask. What if your Valko isn’t around when things go wrong? At least any normal person can deal with other people.”
The mayor winces at the faux pas, but chooses instead to scan the room, looking for something; silently, confidently keeping an eye on his village with a thoughtful nod.
Then, just as Usmar breathes to say something else, he sees it. Tauron puts a finger up to the merchant’s lips with a hush. “Watch,” he says and points with a tilted cup in his hand.
Delphox circles Mère and Pépé with a curious gaze as they bid Litleo fond farewells with a smile and a scratch between the ears. They sharpen their little chin with a scratch, squinting with bunched up brows, then end up sweeping that way with an enthusiastic sway.
“Delfaaa!!” they sing on approach and that entire corner of the room falls still as a dune of snow.
Mère squeaks and shrinks into her seat and her old man rattles his throat in surprise, both sat like statues as she’s scrunched into a paper facade of her proper self and Pépé’s face sets to stone.
Delphox scrapes to a stop with their paws clasped together, hunched over in concern. “Faaa?”
“Mère? Pépé?” Odétte cracks the quiet with a whisper. “What’s wrong? They’re really nice!”
Grandmother chokes on a croak in her throat, clutching at the arm of her heirloom coat like it was a patch of gangrene. “I… didn’t consider...”
Delphox fidgets and scuffles forward, gesturing to that genuine article in surprise. “Lovely coat you’re wearing tonight…” Their words are heard in the minds of those around them with lips sewn shut.
Pépé’s mouth tightens. “It’s our mistake. We’ll leave.” His tone isn’t angry or spiteful, it’s nervous and contrite.
Mère stands, helping her husband up, and bows with tears in her eyes. Her grandchildren have never seen the woman like this, nor has Usmar witnessed it either. In fact, the merchantman only then realizes the issue in time to watch a horrible spectacle unfolding from afar.
But Ulphia, who’d just plopped a buttery plate of baguettes upon her furfrous’ table, nearly drops the tray as she recognizes her mother in a way she hadn’t seen since she was a very little girl.
Laurie, Mère, Matriarch of Kennel Lumiere, is a wizened sandshrew of a woman. She’d burned through life bright as midday light and chased her family’s shadows out of sight. The intensity of her upbringing had spent her youth like a candle tossed in a forge, but it certainly wasn’t wasted. That little light died striking the coals of family, charity, and justice lying within her; woe be the wicked of the world.
No home or kennel of Laurie’s had ever heard the crack of a whip. She saved the licking of her lash for the reprobates foolish enough to steal her family’s air, always with a whisper and smile. She chose her words like she did her friends, carefully, and she treated her friends as she would her family, rightly. But today she’d made a mistake.
A big mistake.
Laurie Odétte Lumiere peels the delphox fur from her body and folds it beneath her arm. “How could I be so inconsiderate? I’m sorry, please forgive my indiscretion, Monsieur Delphox.”
Everyone around flinches as the fox snatches the coat and snaps the thing wide open to inspect it with squinting eyes.
They smile. “Indeed it is cold, Madame. Thank you…”
Then Mère freezes in place as the delphox gently reaches around and helps her put the thing back on.
“...but you need it more than I.” They giggle, tugging at their own fluff. “As you can see, I’ve brought my own.”
The audience takes a single, long, collective breath.
Mère’s air returns to her a moment later. “You’re not upset?”
Delphox acts confused at first, but ends up clearing the spinarak webs from the air with a handful of chuckling claws. “A simple misunderstanding, Madame. As we say in the wilds…” The creature gestures to themselves and all around the room. “It wasn't me or mine, so it’s fine.”
The kids stare at each other, completely oblivious to the morbid exchange that had just taken place.
Usmar slumps into his seat as the boulder rolling around his stomach finally settles down.
Mère’s skin runs cold with the rhyme, but warms again as she realizes the reason. “Of course, my mistake. It is a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur.”
“The pleasure is all mine.” Delphox smiles, bowing with a flaming flourish of the paw, and blesses Mère’s house with a gentle kiss of the wrist. “Truly.”
Pépé struggles to contain a raucous laugh at the absurdity of it all and opens his mouth to talk, but finally breaks like a dropped vase. He turns over, hacking into his cap as the monster politely waits for him to regain his composure.
“Smart and polite. Someone's raised you right!” he says with a hoisted flask. “The finest fur I've ever seen.”
Delphox giggles and looks away, bashfully swatting at the air. “A gentleman and a sage.”
Mère sighs as the flames inside her reignite. “Indeed, a priceless piece,” she says, giving the creature a playful diplomatic glance she considered inappropriate for a predator until that very moment.
Pépé pats his wife’s palm, glazing them both in a sugary grin. “Might I know the name of the fire warming our hearts tonight?”
Then Grandpa gasps as his hand snared in a pair of ashen paws, and a hot rush of humility climbs his back as the Delphox leans forward and lays a long bewitching kiss upon his palm.
“Estelle, monsieur,” she says with a smitten smile on her face.
Both Usmar and Tauron bellow, smacking their knees like hammers in a smithy as Pépé’s skin runs red without the aid of any strong sherry.
“You see? We can take care of ourselves. She’s no sage, but she did just fine,” Tauron says and knocks back the rest of his cup as another lad arrives to keep their whistles wet.
Usmar feels disarmed as a circumcised spear. “It’s just incredible, if only other places could gain a fraction of the fortunes you’ve found.”
The mayor’s cheek twists into a sober smirk. “If other places had the mind for it, I’d wish your way too, but I don’t think the heartland could bear such a stomach strike.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying the only thing keeping the kingdom back from this… greatness is pride?”
Tauron nods. “You’re asking spoilt nobility to… ‘negotiate’ with ‘animals’. In a couple days they’d trick the wild ones with a broken promise or two and any hope for a home like ours would burn to cinders.
“The world was made without mankind in mind, so the sages say, anyway. Rare is the wildling without the power to kill a dozen men with a snap, and wandering the woods without a wingman is still the surest sort of death. Even if the Heartland gave an earnest try, the monsters nearest the cities have the fiercest dispositions towards our kind.”
Usmar nods with a grumble. “For good reason. That… makes another decision of mine taste better too.”
“Life is hard this far from the Heartland, and this world is full of risks, despite our guarantees. So my people chose to set their fears aside, eating heaps of human pride to learn the ties that bind. Bloom or burn, we take our fates in stride.”
The master negotiator wants to say something to add to the conversation, to somehow keep up with this unexpectedly intelligent man, but the axe has dropped upon the stump and stuck itself firm.
How in the world had he wavered in the wake of such an indisputable feat of foresight? In spite of the immediate uncertainty and strife these people had stared into the eyes of ruin and dared to see that which others could not. Through sheer temerity they strayed from that well-worn road and blazed a better path. Through the unknown. On to victory.
And even as fortune filled their coffers, they never forgot the steadfast souls that had trekked beside them, man and monster alike.
The heart of Kalos beats with the blood of the gallant, chivalrous, and true. Perhaps he doesn’t fully understand or even accept these peoples’ way of life. However, he’s always been able to see it when audacity, courage, and resolve join hands to strike the earth and make something great.
And besides, he simply cannot resist reveling in the rightful spoils of a risky business venture. His or not.
With nothing left to say he lifts his dripping skin of wine, proud to share a swig with the Tauros of Shaymin’s Pass.
An hour later, as many folks have passed into the night, on to their humble homes, all that’s left is Usmar and his ilk. Beds have been made upon the earth with mounds of fresh quilts, hay-sack cushions, and furfrou fluff.
Tauron readies to leave the building with Estelle behind him, allowing his guests to sleep the night away around the center hearth with a heaping stack of wood. However, he’s intercepted by a tumbleweed of shiny bronze feathers clamoring its way through the front door. The noise it makes frightens and chills them with the wind breaking in behind that golden metal bird waddling through.
Estelle claps her paws together and chirps with delight. “Valko’s here! Valko’s here!”
Tauron points towards the hearth. “Go, Bladewing, warm yourself. Help yourself to the stores, you’ve done my house a great service this night.”
Bataille pops from his blankets like a diglett, forced to sleep farther from the fire, away from all the others. “Already?!” he cheers, reaching around to console the tiny wriggling lump fighting against the blankets of his bed.
Usmar grunts and clutches the front of his cloak shut, ready for the ice-fanged air to gnaw at his skin again. “Stay and rest, I shall deal with the Sage.”
Bataille leaps up and something small, yellow, and white crawls from the sheets and up into his robes. “No! Please, Papa!”
“We will speak with him in the ‘morn. We have many things to discuss that don’t require you, and I’d rather keep Vivienne’s business swift and sweet so her hoard can get back to… whatever they do.”
Ulphia rubs her eyes with a groan. “My love, is there no means to shift your stance on this?”
Her husband clenches his jaw with a frown. “I’m nipping this damage in the bud.”
Odétte rouses with a sharp fascinated squeak as the skarmory rattles to a stop, perched at the edge of the hearth, and she waves hello. “Papa, I wanna see Valko too!”
“It’s too cold, Odé–”
“I’ll help, I’ll help!” Estelle says in her native tongue as well as with her mind. “Nobodys’ cold while I’m around!”
“Now you list–”
Pépé clears a rotten gulpin from his lungs and shudders up from the dogs and blankets set beside the fire. “We’re going, all of us!”
Usmar grunts, he groans, and he growls, but ultimately he grits his teeth with a sigh. “Alright, everyone, but don’t blame me when you’ve caught the ice-stone throat.”
Everyone leaves the meeting hall way-past-bedtime in their boots, gowns, and the barest of cloaks. As promised, Estelle's body is wreathed in purple flames and a dome of homely warmth protects them from the dry skin-searing air.
She snaps her claws again, eyes leaking fire, and the heartland humans watch as the rumors they’d heard about fire-furs are proven true. Lanterns burst to life, torches yawn and flicker awake, and globes of lavender light the longest street like a midday sun.
They hear some whistling in the darkness, a long, metallic squeaking, and then the slam of the massive palisade gates. The ground shakes and misty swirls of snow lift as a blob of darkness approaches.
Just when the family thought they’d seen everything, the town has to catch them unawares as Valko arrives to remind them that reality really is stranger than fiction.
He rides into town on a sleigh made of decimated trees. Whole old-growth pines split straight in two have been carved into massive sledding blades. Everything is bound in bright silvery rope to a colossal rattling chassis of rough-cut trees. Practically a log cabin on skis, dragged through the snow by the tusks of a massive pair of mamoswine. It leads a procession of beartic and abomasnow slogging through the snow.
The stowage wobbles and groans in a swollen blob of lashed canvas sacks, bulging like the belly of a triplet-laden woman bound in rope. It shifts out of control again and again with the conspicuous goods seeming ready to topple over and crush someone’s home. But every time, just in time, a team of weavile acrobats scurries around and saves the day as they tug those lines the other way, chittering like sleigh bells as they work.
“Look out below!” Valko cries from the top of the makeshift monstrosity, wearing a fluffy red-and-white parka with his talonflame partner perched upon his shoulders.
The delivery lurches one final time and the weavile see just one chance to stick the landing right at the last possible second. Their claws cut the lines in a butcher's-twine snap, leaping from a heaving tidal-wave of snow and toppled trees as the bloated heap of sparkling sacks careens to the ground. The bags, the logs, and the ropes come apart all at once and spill down the road, burying the group in an ankle-deep tsunami of woolen powder snow.
Everyone coughs, splutters, and spits slush from their lips. Except Estelle, whose clapping and cackling lights her fires more.
Pikachu and two short-haired mareep pop their heads out of the snow in front of the kids like daisies breaking frost in the spring. “Pi-ka-chuuuuuu!” she roars out in victory.
The mareep shuffle their fluff clean with a glare.
Usmar’s cheeks flubber as he opens a sack of sparking mareep wool, red with a chill that vanishes in the foxfire warmth “This, this is… SO MUCH! I don’t–”
Valko is swept up in his partner’s talons and brought down with his vermillion boots sticking knee-high in the snow. “Ha! Well, that’s alright. Vivienne says she’s willing to take the rest on delivery.”
Pikachu spots Bataille and her face lights up. “Cha! Chaaa!”
The two mareep smirk right behind her with synchronized chortes and she stops with a frustrated blush.
Bataille doesn’t care at all, barely noticing the other two and reaches out for his old friend. “Pikachu! It’s you!” he shouts and holds her up. “It’s so good to—”
ZZZAP!
Bataille squeaks as Pikachu nips at him with her barely-contained boltbringer might and points her little paw his way. “Chaa, chupacha!” she chitters, chastising him for the sudden unwanted touch.
But before Bataille can let the dejection rush across his face she smiles with a sigh, climbing up into his arms. She nods in approval as he cradles her up against his chest, letting her legs hang down like a good napping branch. “Pi. Ka.”
Odétte gasps, gushing with a smile. “Oooh, Batty, you’re so good with the wild ones!”
“Odétte!” Usmar hisses as Ulphia winces with an uncomfortable shift of the eyes.
She looks down, rubbing the shoulders of her gown. “Y… yes… I know, Papa.”
Usmar clears his throat, dragging the chest of shimmering green thunderstones through the snow. “I suppose we’ll need a moment to load the sleds. I didn’t anticipate so much.”
“Ah, yes. Well, Vivienne didn’t anticipate so much enthusiasm from her flock. Every couple wants a stone for their young, it seems.”
Usmar started the day distraught, but those words suddenly sound like a beautiful business relationship to him and he hums like they’ve brought him a perfectly-cooked steak. “I’ll let my suppliers know I’ve got a buyer that simply cannot be refused.”
“Springsongs to my ears.” Valko runs his bare fingers through Talonflames feathers, nuzzling her beak as she stoops down in front of his head. “Worry not, The Ice-Cave Nests agreed to help in loading your things; they owe me a favor or two. We can work out the details inside.”
Usmar stares off and around like he’s lost in a dream as beartic and abomasnow lift sacks of wool and stack them onto his empty sleds. “Where is Vivienne? I only see one boltbringer here.”
“As the eldest egg, Vivienne wants the girl to show some responsibility, learn what leadership means and all that. She’s still a little rascal on a good day, of course, so these cousins are the first of her herd.”
Pikachu begins purring, welcoming the boy’s warmth against her fur, and the precious moment is broken by some hysterical mareeping and bleating wooly laughter
“Ka!” she spits with her cheeks sparkling and looks away from them with her paw thrust out.
Bataille gets the message and shoves his own, mittened palm out too. “Yeah, talk to the paw, you two… whatever you said.”
Pikachu’s eyes glow and she nuzzles his arm with pride.
“I see, so… Is it just ‘Piakchu’ then?” Usmar asks.
“For now,” Valko says, slogging towards the meeting hall.
“Right, Um… If it is ok with you, I’d like to get some bitter business out of the way before we shake claws.”
Smiles sneak across both Mère and Valko’s lips at that suddenly-natural turn of phrase.
“A good cocoa brew comes that way, doesn’t it?” Valko continues his march, locking talons with Tauron as they clap each others’ backs in a monumental, brotherly hug. “You look well.”
“As do you. Good to see you too, Lailla.” Tauron directs his words up above Valko’s shoulders.
Lailla the Talonflame chirps and nuzzles the big man’s wind-swept cheeks.
“What a pretty name!” Odétte gushes.
Valko turns to the delphox and bows, blowing her a playful platonic kiss. “Radiant as always, Estelle.”
He greets everyone, pausing with each person a moment to assess their faces, and then he stops at Pépé. “Is everything alright, Monsieur?”
“Well, it is that bitter business I mentioned. Perhaps you’d be willing to consider Bataille for a moment,” Usmar starts, swapping glances with Ulphia, who looks away with a sigh.
Valko gives him a jester’s smile. “I don’t think Vivienne would take him as payment. Yet.”
Neither of his parents laugh; not even a chuckle.
Pikachu works her way up Bataille’s shoulder and her ears twitch behind her head as she smells… something. She commands him to show her with a claw pointed at a rustling bump in his cloak.
“I, ah… I really shouldn’t right now,” Bataille says with his father’s gaze shining down on him.
A tiny, black pair of curious ears pop out from his sleeve and squeak as Pikachu stabs at them with daggers from her eyes.
Then Pikachu leaps onto Bataille's chest, gripping the fibers of his tunic. “CHA!” she roars, tugging at the scarf, grunting as Bataille fights back.
“N-no, I… I’m sorry, I can't.” He scrapes his clumsy wool-covered hands around his neck, trying to keep the cloth in place.
“Ku-Cha! Pi-chu-ka!” she growls, digging her claws in, slowly unwinding it from his cheeks.
He falls onto his butt, the scarf tears away, and everyone quietly gasps.
An emolga, tiny, young, barely beyond a hatchling, tumbles out from Bataille’s cloak. Then it flutters up to his shoulder, hiding behind his head.
Bataille’s cheeks bear ragged pink marks, but he covers them back up in time while the others are distracted with his other surprise.
Pikachu glares at Bataille with absolute, unrestrained anger.
Valko has nothing at all to say. He is stunned, for the first time in many, many moons.
Usmar grunts. “Let’s talk inside.”
The initial wave of jubilation crashes against the rocks of reality as everyone judges Bataille by the fire.
Estelle steals Ulphia to brew something cozy, and sitrus-ginger cider seems like just the thing to warm a group of cold mens’ hearts.
Ulphia surprises herself with the speed at which she takes to the creature’s natural cadence. Despite the involuntary spasms of the ears and the random swipey ruffles across her muzzle in frustration, she could tell with just a little bit of effort what the pretty lady did and didn’t want to say. Even before the psychic speech was put to use.
The men circle Bataille, of which only Valko is willing to sit beside him, watching the ground with patient eyes as he waits for the boy’s tiny frightened creature to relax.
Usmar stomps his feet. “The boy hasn’t ceased since the day we met. Now, I don’t blame you at all. You’re a master of your craft, and Tauron obviously knows a thing or two as well, but this foolishness simply cannot go on.”
Tauron wanders off, leaning against a wooden support as Valko slides closer. Both of them peek over at Pépé, curious at the lack of… words coming from that mouthy old coot.
“What foolishness can’t go on, exactly?” Valko asks with a curious squint.
Usmar wanders to and fro, pacing like a caged beast. “He keeps playing with wild monsters, predators especially, and he keeps getting hurt, Valko. I can’t let him risk his life hoping he’ll stumble on a miracle like you had.”
The emolga whines and buries her face in Bataille’s hair as Usmar’s angry eyes find her again.
“And that thing won’t leave his side. I can’t make her go with force, I’m not… I know better than to… I can’t hurt someone else anymore without a good reason, ok?! Not after what I’ve seen here.”
Everyone drinks from steaming mugs of merriment as the women pass the cider ‘round.
“The people I do business with are frightened of my son. Family refuses to enter our home unless he’s left hunkered in a field, far away. All the rumors sprouting through the city like weeds… gah, running rampant since the day we found her, snuck in the gods-damned house.”
Pikachu’s cheeks spark. “Chaaa. Chaaa!” she snarls towards Emolga, hot in the face with jealousy.
Emolga makes a sour, defiant scowl. “Gaa… mol…” she replies, shaking her head with a furrowed brow.
Bataille’s silence breaks with his face wrapped up in shame. “What is she saying, Sage?”
Valko breaks eyes with Pépé and hums in consideration. “She says she thought you were her friend. She’s demanding the girl hit the road, more or less.”
“I couldn’t do that! No!” the boy shouts. “Pikachu, of course we’re still friends. But I couldn’t just let her go!”
Usmar points to Pikachu. “Smart girl, like her mother!” He huffs and rubs his temple, as the absurdity of what he’d just said sinks in, and his temper fires off without him. “And why not? It’s nature, Bataille! It would be better off–”
Bataille’s body tightens like a mooring rope. “Her name is Emeline!”
Pikachu gives a buzzing grouse, jaw clenched with frustration.
Usmar can barely contain himself as he continues. “Very well. She isn’t welcome in the nest she fell out of anymore. Apparently she must have smelled like us and it scared them off.”
Bataille huffs. “No! That’s not the reason at all!”
“You named her after my sister? Bataille!” Ulpha covers her face, shaking her head in shock. “You weren’t supposed to name her at all!”
Valko’s gaze floats back onto the boy. “How’d you settle on that one?”
Battaile didn’t expect such a direct question from his idol and jumps a bit, prompting a squeak from Emeline as he pets her little neck. “I asked her a whole bunch… and she liked that one.”
Pikachu moves closer and spits some more hot angry commands. Emeline builds a little bit of fire in her guts as well, and bright flashing sparks arc between their cheeks as they start a long growling match.
Everyone but Valko jumps away from the scene, sitting without a single flinch.
“Pikachu, stop!” Bataille begs. “I haven’t forgotten about you. We can both be friends.”
Pikachu hisses up at Emolga with cheeks glowing deep and red, tiny tears sparkling at the edges of her eyes as she babbles an incomprehensible froth of boltbringer noise.
Emeline chitters back just as quickly, still hidden behind Bataille’s skull. Whatever she says, she holds his head and nuzzles his cheek with a sorrowful tone.
“Really…” Valko mumbles. “Show me.”
Both Bataille and Emeline shake their heads, refusing to remove the cloth.
Pikachu and Valko remain insistent and the others nod in agreement.
“Show them, son,” Usmar demands.
Bataille sighs from the pressure and against Emeline’s protests he slowly peels the cloak, hood, and scarf away from his face.
Pikachu gasps in horror, slowly pacing up towards him to grasp his wrist with tender concern.
Bataille’s right arm is covered in ragged, jagged scars. From his fingers and thumb, they run all the way past the shoulder, around his neck, painting his cheek with brutal thunder-bolts that stop short of his eye.
Pikachu is overwhelmed with anger at first, burning hot with indignant rage, ready to attack the little shite that stole her friend from her and hurt him so badly. But her expression softens as she sees the way Bataille shields Emeline from her with his own body, paired with the guilt painted over the little doe’s face.
She leaps up into his arms and licks his hand for a moment, ignoring the pest crawling around his coat. For now.
Mère leans in to her husband, whispering, “What are you thinking about?”
Pépé clears his throat, finishing a long, hard drink from his flask. “The future.”
Valko raises his chin, clearing his throat. “Everyone sit down.”
“Say again, Monsieur?” Usmar wheezes. “I’m sorry, I’m just too–”
“I said sit DOWN!” He shouts this time, Lailla pointing to the ground with flames in her beak, and everyone decides it’s in their best interest to plant their asses in the dirt.
Valko leans up against Bataille, eyes averted, and he brings his voice down to a gentle whisper. “Tal fee-la nay?” he stumbles on the unnatural feral speech a bit, cooing like he’s waiting for a frightened pup to drink from a bowl of broth. “Na-le fleta-lan.”
The room sits shocked at the man’s wild words as Emeline babbles with flailing flapping wings.
Pikachu nods sagely, pointing to the actual Sage in question, and pokes Valko in the leg to continue as she gives a reluctant glance to Bataille’s new… friend.
Then, after a long hesitation, Emeline waddles out from behind Bataille’s head, scoots along her little paws, and then scampers out onto Valko’s arm.
“Yeahhh, I bet it’s scary having everyone tower above you when you’re meant to flutter in the treetops, huh?” Valko says, gently nudging her cheek to lift her chin up. “You must think he’s really something special to put up with all that."
Bataille is stunned at the things he’s hearing, at what he’s learning, and he leans forward to listen but Pikachu shoves him back down to lick his wounds some more.
“Oh,” Valko reaches into his coat and unfolds a little leather satchel. “This is difficult to make, use it carefully.” He withdraws a glazed redware vial stoppered with a treebark cork and tosses it to Pikachu. “Minccinno oils and powdered phantump leaves.”
He gives Bataille a serious look. “A gift from that child who’d passed away last spring.”
Pikachu gives Valko a thankful bow, to everyone’s amazement, and she barks something at Bataille.
To Valko’s amazement, the lad understands her words and removes his shirt to reveal the full extent of the injury. Once she’s done petting his naked skin, looking up at Emeline in frustration, she starts meticulously tracing the thin web of scars running up his arm in a nasty brown ichor.
Bataille winces as her paws scrape the sensitive, exposed nerves of his freshly healed flesh. “Tell them I’m grateful, if you see them again.”
“I’ll be sure to let little Louka know.” Valko scratches Emeline’s ears, bringing a smile to her face, and he tickles her further down to reveal the furry flaps of her wings.
He runs a pointed finger along a gnarly scar from Emeline's elbow, all the way to the edge of her wing. “What is this?”
“That is where this farce began,” Usmar butts back in.
Vako strikes him with an impatient glare. “I respect your rights as father, but I’d like to hear it from them.”
Bataille looks at his parents and clenches his jaw, preparing to openly defy his elders. “W-well. Ah-Ouch. Am, Pikachu, could you–”
“Pi-KA!” she barks and continues her work.
“Ah, um, ok. Well, the rains had come and I knew it was g-Eeeee!-gonna be a bad one ‘cuz Mère said her knees were hurting and I could smell that Pépé was swigging the hard stuff. Halfway through the storm season one day, when the streets ran like a creek, I was watching the rain through the loft with the shutters open. I like doing that when everyone is sleeping, you see.”
Valko prods him. “Yes, go on.”
“Well, I was checking on the family of emolga living nearby in a big old oak tree. I’d gotten to know a few of them and I was able to smell the berries they cooked sometimes. That always made me happy.”
“Nothing like watching how the wild ones live, huh?” Valko chuckles. “Did you get close? That could be dangerous; emolga are very protective of their dens.”
“They never let me near, but they didn’t mind me watching, and that’s enough for me. I’d always stay away, like my parent’s say, but I heard a horrible commotion coming from them that night… even through all that thunder and rain and rushing water.”
“Ignoring the dozen or so times I pulled you from the trunk of that tree,” Usmar chides.
Valko ignores the man. “You approached alone, didn’t you… Snuck from the house to see because your parents might stop you?”
Bataille’s head shakes as if his golden lox was sopping wet with rain again. “No way could I stealth my way down the stairs, Pépé was up reading, so I used the rope I snuck out with sometimes to see for myself.”
Ulphia coughs. “You little Impidimp!”
Bataille doesn’t acknowledge his mother’s voice. “Even as the storm smothered me like a quilt, I saw sparks, smelled burning green leaves, and heard what I didn’t know was a gliscor until it was too late. It crushed that big twiggy nest the emolga had made and ruined all their hard work in an instant!”
“What in the blazes happened to you ‘finding her in the attic!’ ” Usmar shouts with shocked indignation.
The old sage brushes the callouses of his knuckles with that fiery, wiry beard. “Say wh–”
“What did you do?!” Odétte squeaks from a pile of blankets, leaned against a heap of furfrou as Estelle lights fresh stacks of wood with puffy cheeks blowing cones of fire.
Ulphia and Usmar smack their own faces in unison as they realize their son is about to drop some harrowing, adventurous story upon their exciteable, impressionable, incredibly independent daughter.
Valko gestures to Bataille, hiding the zoruish grin sneaking across his lips. “What she said.”
Bataille bounces up and down in his seat and Pikachu shocks him for the mistake. “Ow! Haaa! Ah. I was really scared, I knew they could carry a kid off if they got the chance. I was confused too, because gliscor didn’t go out in the rain. Or at least I read that in the academy.”
“Is that true?” Odétte asks like a dish wanting for water in a drought.
Valko’s golden eyes sway back the girl’s way. “Not in the slightest."
“I wanted to go back inside, I know I probably should have too, but it had Emeline’s wing in its claw!” Bataille chokes on his own bleeding heart. “Pulling her away from her screaming mama’s arms.”
Everyone winces as Emeline shakes with tiny timid tears.
All except Valko, who leans in with fleece-wrapped elbows perched atop his knees, and his head turns sideways like a curious hawk. “Did you run?”
“N-no!” Bataille’s eyes go vacant as he recalls the story. “Emeline fought so hard, biting, scratching, shocking, beating at its big stupid head. Then she pulled away so hard it cut her wing clean through!”
Everyone gasps, murmuring whispers of care, condolence, and praise to them both.
“She fell down by me as I sloshed forth in my bare feet, drenched in muddy rain. She saw me and called out for help as the horrible thing fell down onto her!”
“Oh no!” Odétte cries as she fights her mother trying to cover her tender little ears. “What happened next?!”
“I reached for Papa’s trusty spade stuck inside the compost heap, a big heavy thing the brazier had cast too thick,” the boy recounts from eyes still dripping with memories.
Valko hums with a finger-and-thumb twisting his mane as he’s trapped in his own waking gaze, stuck watching an eerie shadow-puppet play. “A brave choice.”
“A foolish choice!” his father balks, but recoils as Mayor Tauron clears his throat with a cannonball boom.
Bataille’s fists clench around the linen of his legs.“I’d watched her hatch, seen her growing up, we’d wave and make faces at each other, traded presents when our mama’s weren’t looking. The moment I saw her screaming for me, I just couldn’t stand by…”
Emeline scrunches up into an anxious ball, gnawing at her unscathed wing with tiny shivering teeth in Valko's arms.
“...so I lifted Papa’s shovel and hit it over and over again. The monster raised its claw, surely to cut me in twain, but I didn’t care. It snapped at my clothes, got me in the arm in a bloody clamp that sliced my skin, but I felt its shell snap too so I just kept swinging.”
Valko’s eyes glow at the boy like ambers in the sand. “You lunged like she was one of your own.”
Bataille swings a spectral spade in his arms, but Pikachu doesn’t gripe anymore, instead looking up at him with glassy admiring eyes. “I didn’t want her family getting caught too, so I threw her back up into the nest before it tackled me down. People must have heard me screaming, because the garrison bell rang and I heard folks shouting to get the spears!”
“So that was you!” Usmar smacks his knee with a scowl. “I should have known.”
“I fought with all I had but it was too strong, and I thought it was all over as the thing held me down and opened jaws for my neck. But then I heard the nest screeching and we both looked up. Emeline jumped back down onto the gliscor’s head and bit one of its eyes out!”
He sighs with relief as his fingers play through her delicate ivory fuzz. “She bought me the chance we needed. The monster let me go to pull her off and I brought my shovel down so hard both heads broke; got its wings good too!”
Ulphia’s heart stops and her breath hitches at all the horrible details he’d kept from them until now, staring at the stowaway rodent with a cold new humility.
Pikachu glances up at Emeline, nods, and then goes back to quietly coating her boy’s wounds in gunk.
Bataille raises his left hand up. “I stood and tried to hand Emeline back to the nest with my good arm again but they wouldn’t reach for her. Then the gliscor finally woke back up and Emeline climbed through the hole in my torn-up tunic in terror. She was wet, we were bleeding all over each other, and I was out of time.
“I just ran, I didn’t know where, but thankfully we ended up behind the house and I jumped inside the stables. The bastard didn’t stand a chance against ol’ Brutus, though. He tauros-stomped it to paste real good, yeah!” the storyteller of the night shouts as Emeline mirrors the motion of his swinging fists.
“Language!” Ulphia snarls, her face lost in her palms.
“I did think that was a peculiar thing to find in the morning,” Mère says, chuckling. “Made a good stew, too.”
Bataille is totally oblivious of his family’s commentary, lost in a memetic trance. “I ran back inside the house when everyone was outside and we hid inside a big, empty, grain barrel… stayed there with her bleeding in my arms until we both fell asleep.”
Estelle groans with an empathetic look and a muzzle wrapped in fuzzy-wuzzy claws. “You poor things.”
Usmar grumbles. “I had no idea any of that took place at all, Bataille! Why didn’t you say something?!”
“Because you wouldn’t understand.” His son turns with a nasty look. “You don’t even want to understand!”
Valko sways to the side and nudges Bataille’s shoulder. “None of that explains these scars, young one.”
Bataille holds his arm out and Emeline dashes across their limbs to hide behind his head again. “Her wing was all ruined and I knew she’d never fly again if it healed wrong. That’s what they said to Uncle Kor when he got that big cut on his leg too.
“So I pulled apart a quilt and studied the stitches to make sure I got things right. Then I took Mama’s sewing needles and some silk and I went up to the loft where she was hiding. I knew nobody would look in there until spring, so it was a safe place to get it done. I got myself grounded, so I’d be stuck in the house alone too.”
Ulphia covers her mouth in horror as this part is spoken aloud for the second time in her mortal life.
Valko listens in silence, bringing a finger up to anyone else that dares interrupt.
“I watched real close the day my uncle got his leg fixed, you know. I always watch close.” Bataille winces, holding Emeline and Pikachu close to his body. “I made Emeline take a big swig of Pépé’s whiskey, handed her the tail end of my belt, and told her to bite down. She was scared at first, I was too, but I know she trusted me because she stayed still and just closed her eyes.”
The scarred tips of his fingers twitch and he clenches his fire-branded fist. “Then I just… started sewing.”
Ulphia chokes and throws her gaze away from him with quivering, clenched teeth.
“It must have hurt so much, because she started sparking and scratching at me in a panic. My hands seized up, the needle burned, and I wanted to stop so bad, but I knew I had to go on and fight through the pain. Emeline couldn’t live in the wild like that! I could make it better, and even if I failed she could still be happy with us.”
Lailla chirps, soft as silver chimes as Valko recognizes that strange feral fire blazing behind Bataille’s eyes.
“The burns, gods, I thought my soul might cinder to ashes as my fingernails blistered and broke. But I kept going as we cried through our teeth and my eyes watered at the smoke of my burning skin and hair. She kicked and shocked me worse than any grown man ever has. I don’t know how, but by Azelf’s grace I managed to hold her down the whole time.
“I finished tying the ends with my eyes closed as I felt the thunder coming for my face. The very moment I cut the line with my teeth she ran from me and wouldn’t leave the barrel for three whole days. When she finally did… the nest was empty. Her family had gone away…”
Everyone in the room is left silent with looks of horror, disgust, and distress. Their furfrou whine at the words, curling up around their humans with concern.
Ulphia chugs at the sweet and spicy brew, hoping in vain to calm her nerves. “And you lied to us about your injuries for three whole days as well!”
Bataille leaves his menagerie of memories, pressing Emeline into his neck as he looks up to the Sage, and then around at everyone else, like he’s woken from a dream. “So she decided to stay with me, you see? You understand, right?”
“You are an exceptional boy, Bataille.” Valko says, and wraps his arm around the lad’s shoulders. “Truly.”
“Chu!” Pikachu concurs, with a reticent acceptance towards Emeline’s existence.
“Exceptionally stupid!” Usmar stands again, his flustering bluster stoked back up. “I’m spent as a two-wick candle, Bataille. Just look at what this idiocy has cost you!” He chuffs, tugging at his own beard in fury. “You want to mingle with monsters so bad? Want to crawl around the woods and play sage? You’re missing half the sense he needs to wake and bake breakfast!”
“Papa, I–”
“You what? Want my blessing when all you’ll do is snuff your own lights out for a random beast falling from a tree?! What a joke. Valko would never risk his life on such a lost cause!”
The old Sage flies up on his heels to stare down at Usmar with an imposing predatory glare. “I’ll accept no such slander from the likes of you!”
The room is stifled with the tension of a stormcloud ready to strike.
Then he shatters the gloom with a jovial chuckling grin. “No friend of mine would dare say that I am sound of mind.”
Usmar reels with intrapersonal whiplash at the horrible stoneward dive of him insulting one of this family’s closest friends suddenly doubling back into a somersaulting joke. “F-friend Valko, I know any man in your profession is sure to have a few knots hanging loose, but you’re alive and well and fair… enough of skin.”
Tauron chuckles into his spiced jug of cider as he spots a weavile glint passing over Valko’s eyes.
“I think there’s a story I’ve neglected to continue,” Valko says. “How about we all unwind with a spot of reserves while I fulfill my duty as weird bird-man uncle.” He nods to Estelle and the Delphox dashes off to lug jugs of vintage perry up from the cellar.
The Sage pierces Usmar’s angry masculine fortifications with a relaxed but serious stare.
“I assure you it is relevant.”
Usmar’s fists slowly unclench, so incredibly slowly, but still surely as he finds his way back down to a polished log seat, silently seething like a white-hot piece of bronze left to cool atop the anvil.
Valko waits until everyone, children included, is properly seasoned with a piece of his personal supply of comfortable drink and candied sweets. Then, when Odétte can stand to sit in patient suspense no longer, he clears his throat with an oratorical fashion that lacks his cheery valkotypical whimsy.
“When I lived with Mother Bird and my Flock laid huddled at the foot of her cliffs with the promise of protection, it was a tough time.” He leans his back against the wall nearest the windows, looking out as if the snowflakes were stars in a crystal-clear sky. “Not for me, really. You hunker down in the winter, it’s just another stone-scripted law of these sorts of lands. In some ways it is the best time of the year, you get close to everyone you live with, rely on one-another for more than just bread, wine, and a bed…”
Valko looks around the room with a serious sort of warmth, the kind that a man radiates when he’s got a bitter batch of medicine the people he cares about need to take for everyone’s sake.
“...You get to see every person’s gilded edge, but also find the dark corners where even they themselves cannot see the ghosts and shadows haunting their souls. It was that season, after months of listening to the wind howling out for our demise, that I saw that blackened edge.”
Bataille finds a spark of courage as Emeline welcomes the change of topic with enthusiastic deficits of attention. “Who about, Sage?” he asks, occasionally watching the corners of his own eyes as he searches his mind for answers to his own predicament.
“Was it Mama Bird?” Odétte asks as her mother slumps down into a tired heap beside her.
The adults can smell a moral lesson from leagues away when it’s laid so plainly, expecting the man to turn the tables on them all by declaring that the one harboring ichor in their bones was in fact himself. Or perhaps he’d wax fondly at learning how difficult baby hatchlings are to handle, the most timeless of parenthood tropes.
“Yes.”
The adults doubt their ability to sniff out a predictable tale as Valko runs them down in their moment of weakness.
“I had thought for the longest of times that there were fundamental facts of life that always worked the same, monster or man aside.” Valko tosses a splintered wooden scrap he’d been picking his teeth with into the fire. “Most of those facts held up, to my amazement even from time to time, but there was one moment atop the icy cliffs that tested me worse than almost anything else in my life.”
Valko looks back to Lailla with an apologetic sigh. “My love, forgive my recounting of this tale, just this once,” he says with undisguised intention to continue, consequences be damned.
The great, flaming bird-of-prey simply squawks with a tired nod, then her beak rolls down and around her neck to dig through the feathers of her back. “Ay-flay.”
“For weeks the smallest hatchling, the one that so very boldly lit my clothes ablaze as I pulled them from the rubble of my old home, had tried to sneak their way out from the cave to find a sneasel living in the tiny cracks at the base of the mountain.”
“Mama Bird let that happen?!” Bataille cries out, astonished at this seemingly tiny detail. “I thought the hunters of the sky cleared the areas around their den of any threat, no matter how small.”
Valko nods, but the smile everyone hopes to see again does not yet return. “Such monsters often do, but our Mama Bird was no foolish youngling. For she hatched in the nest of a mother who’d come from a long line of clever mothers that had passed their ways all the way down to her. She knew that a few carefully-chosen allies nearby could bring security and aid in the worst of times. And I think we can all agree that winter is a universally bad time… unless you happen to be a monster borne of ice-made-flesh. The Weaviles and their babies were given exclusive permission to nest at the foot of her home, with all the security that came with such a powerful creature watching over them in the hottest times of year.”
“Ooh, I think I get it.” Odétte rocks back and forth beside her mother with an energy that can barely be contained within her silken gown. “Then they protect the place when it gets too cold!”
“Right you are,” Valko responds as he carefully watches Pikachu obsessing over Bataille’s scars even after she’d managed to coat every miniscule speck of them in rare and valuable medicine. “Very good neighbors whose hatchlings played very well with ours.”
He winces as he works to draw the details up from the hiding places of his mind. “One night as we slept beside my tiny claywork hearth, we heard an awful sort of commotion coming from the bottom of the cliffs. Weaviles screeching and scraping stone on claw. I looked to the great beast who’d forced me to share her home, and when she shook her head and went back to sleep I accepted that it wasn’t our place to step in. Nest disputes are common in the wild, and the Weavile seemed to have grown to a number that even I as an idiot adolescent could see was unsustainable.
“We knew the hatchlings couldn’t fly, and not once before had they tested the weather’s mercy nor their luck with the heights, but I watched them as if they came from my own beloved woman’s womb. Over the months I’d learned so much, seen the beauty of just how different and complex each of them are, and loved them despite the stresses and the scars.
“She, more than her sisters and mother, was a loyal friend before anything else, and that honorable flame refused to be smothered by the sheets of solstice snow. When she heard her friends screeching, she waited for the one and only moment we both happened to look away and started hopping down the cliffs!” He nearly raises his voice to a shout at the end, eyes wide with an amazement that seems just as fresh as the moment originally came to pass.
A cold sobriety flushes over Valko’s face. “I’d like to say that there was some horrible thing waiting for us there at the bottom, that my little bird was right to brave that fathomless drop. But when I landed, carried there by Lailla’s wings…”
He pauses a moment, fidgeting with the clasp of his cloak to drop it from his shoulders, despite the chill and the clamminess of his skin just now. “There she was, brought to us in Mama Weavile’s claws, with her tiny wing drooping from an extra joint.”
Nobody dares say a thing, hoping there was something else, something there to sweeten the story after that hard bitter taste in his words.
“But you and Mama Bird helped them…” Odétte whimpers on behalf of everyone else. “...right, Monsieur Sage?”
“Eventually.” Valko winces at the corner of his mouth a bit as he hears Laillia’s preening growing louder and more flustered by the minute. “Mama brought us to the cliffs that night and put the other two hatchlings to bed. Then she told me, with a bitter look in her eyes and a stab of the wing, to stay inside.”
Odétte and Bataille sit with innocence in their eyes. “I don’t understand, you weren’t the one in trouble at all!” his sister cries out.
Mère opens her mouth to speak, but Pépé raises his hand to catch hers for a silencing kiss of the palm.
“There is a lot you can recover from as a monster, even with your shell still sitting in the corner.” Valko regrets that this is the way either of those children must learn such an awful truth of the wilds… well, most wilds, anyway. “However, when the limb is rent or torn away, not even the life-giving energies of the most selfless sort of audino mercybringer can bring the bones back together on their own.”
“I don’t understand, why not just make a splint, put the body in place so it may do its god-granted work?” Bataille asks, leaning in, wondering why the magic had suddenly vanished from his hero’s face.
Valko nods with a shadow cast above his eyes. “And it is there in that cold, quiet cave, after hours of standing between a mother and her screaming hatchling, that I’d seen a darkness neither of us had known was there.”
But then the shadows lift as he looks back, lifts his arm, and waits for Lailla to lay her chest upon his lap. “But in that moment too, I saw the truth.” He smiles at Bataille, unbuttoning the top of his parka. “Where there is darkness in one, another brings the light.”
He bends over and kisses Lailla’s beak. “A herdsman learns from an early age to set and splint a wounded wooloo’s leg. Where the wilds had shown me goodness I’d never seen in the likes of man, I alone held the torch this mother’s nest needed that night.”
Usmar and Ulpha look each-other’s way, suddenly understanding the point of this crazy campfire parable.
“So you fixed her baby’s wing!” Odétte throws her arms out in celebration.
Bataille smiles with Emeline and Pikachu close to his heart as he watches Valko sooth Lailla’s spiritual wounds. “Man and Monster need each other in the end, don’t they?”
The Merchand elders shudder in silence under the boy's precocious spark of prescience.
Valko nods, brushing the feathers of his Partner’s cheek. “That’s right, but not every moment in the light is a pleasant one,” he says, peeling the rim of his woolen top away. “Sometimes it burns, no matter how right the moment is.”
He yanks the collar down, showing off a sheet of rippling, savaged skin, long healed from a horrible distorted injury coating his whole entire chest. “I put our baby back together, but this was the price I paid.”
Estelle sneaks up to Ulphia and hugs her from behind, able to feel the tension of a ruffled mother that needs her fur smoothed back out.
Pikachu and Emeline lock eyes a moment and can, at the very least, agree that Bataille is worth fighting over.
Pépé nods with decision and places his wife’s hand back into her lap for safe keeping.
Usmar sighs as his patralineal fire has petered out into a tired, desperate plea. “Thats why this has to end Valko, please, can’t you convince the… Emeline to just stay with you and live here or something?”
“Eeee! Mol-ee ga!” Emeline cries, perishing the thought with tears in her eyes.
“Papa, nooo!” Odétte screams. “We love Emeline!”
Pikachu hisses, spitting wads of sparkling phlegm that send Usmar’s feet tap-dancing back.
“Just think about this, Bataille.” Ulphia takes a deep breath with a patient, diplomatic face trapped in Estelle’s fluffy bosom. “How on Arceus’ green earth will you find a woman to marry with the face of a sky-struck tree?! And a monster surely won’t take you,” she begs as Estelle glances around the room and suddenly skulks away with a sooty cough.
Bataille holds Emeline’s head against his ear and squeezes Pikachu tight against his chest, forcing the little yellow rodent to gasp in surprise. “I don’t care!”
“Well you can’t keep these creatures in the Heartland if you’re not a court-sanctioned Sage!” Usmar shouts, his voice finally cracking with paternal frustration. “And you, son, are no Sage!”
Valko watches Bataille's face curl up with disgusted intensity as the boy’s words are slowly, painfully… deliberately chosen in that fateful moment, forged in frightened hesitation.
“Then I’ll go somewhere else!” He looks up at Valko and Tauron. “I work hard. I can read and write and count. Could I live here with you? I promise I’ll do my part.” He glares back his father’s way. “Then Emeline can be out of your hair for good.”
His parents scoff, shaken with shock, and his little sister cries in horror.
“You’re not staying here, Bataille!” his parents shout him down in tandem.
Usmar stomps his foot. “I’m saying right here, right now, you are going to tell Emeline to stay here and you are going to stop this non—”
“Shut up.” Pépé says from his dark icy corner.
Ulphia whips around with her dress dusting a nearby table side. “Papa?”
A grown woman’s over-aged father stands on wobbling legs, hanging the chest he’s sat upon the whole night from a flimsy brass handle. “SHUT UP! Are your ears lame, girl?” he shouts with a throat full of gravel as Usmar goes red in the face. “I know you know how.”
Usmar chokes a scream back. “You can’t just–”
“Yes I can and I am. Until this broken body croaks I am head of house.” Pépé leers at everyone in a neatly-considered line of importance. “Sit down. Be quiet. Wait here. All of you!”
Then he leans over, hands on his knees, and coughs a spackle of bloody phlegm onto the floor. “Valko!”
The man stands and Lailla flutters off beside Odétte. “Yes, Monsieur?”
“We have business to discuss,” Grandfather says with breathless coughs, beckoning Valko by the sleeve.
Pépé leads Valko to the back. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s never even been inside this building, least of which made himself familiar with their economic customs, but where there’s a heavy door and a candlelit room…
“That will do just fine…” always has, always will. He’s made less favorable deals in more degenerate places.
The old man yanks at a rope handle, slamming the door shut. Hunched, scrawny, fighting for every breath of life, he says, “I wish I could have made this offer under finer circumstances.”
Valko stands tall, healthy, young by comparison, breathing easy even as he misses Lailla’s place with a rub of the shoulders. “It’s bad, isn’t it.”
Pépé regains his mettle, sips his spirits for good measure, and slams the wooden chest down atop a chopping table. “It’s not the Woozy, if that’s your concern,” he says as a copper cleaver clatters to the ground.
“I concern myself with the people I like.” Valko’s face is still, humble, reverent in the old man’s presence.
Pépé gives him a shuddering jaded smile. “As do I,” he croaks, and turns the lock with an old key kept inside his coat.
“Please, take Bataille—” he says, interrupted by yet-another coughing fit..
Valko looks on with serious intention. “I was true to you when I said we don’t trade in people, Monsieur.”
Pépé laughs. “Not done talk’n, ya cheeky falcon.”
Valko smiles and gestures for him to continue.
“The boy has made himself quite the pickle, too spicy for anyone in either hold. We thought this was all some silly season in his life that might pass with time, but if it goes on like this he'll surely perish by his own hand.
“He is an exceptional boy, you are an exceptional man. My daughter is a frightened woman, as any mother should be. Her husband is not blind, but he has no vision. I’m a cantankerous old drunk, but I’ll be dead with my head up a spewpa’s ass before I’m anyone’s fool.”
He opens the chest with his tip-worn clutches revealing a shimmering pile of precious-metal coins, struck from a great many mints, makes, and shapes.
Valko clasps his hands together, unmoved, despite the cache. “What is it you would ask of me, Sér?”
“Valko Woolooman…”
“I, Mærwine Isarn Lumiere, ask of you…”
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The moment passes exactly as Pépé had asked: still, silent, patient.
Then the heavy, pinewood door swings open, smacking the stone wall, and both men march for the hearth with speed and purpose.
Valko stops and stalks Bataille in his shadow, setting his talons upon the boys’ shoulders. “Gather your things.”
Everyone hangs with anticipation, like an imperial judge is bound to pass judgement upon him after committing some heinous crime.
“What have you decided, mon amour?” Mère asks with a knowing grin.
Pépé stands before his grandson with a stern nod of approval.
“Bataille is staying here.”
