The wayward merchant son and his girls take them past the hamlet, onto a branching network of forested paths, winding them up and around the hills like a herd of migratory game.
“It was an especially cold winter in the valley that year.” Bataille pauses, plucking a handful of budding ferns to swallow them whole. “Strange, feral monsters I’d never seen or heard of before gathered to treat our scars. I didn’t know it yet, but Valko had assembled the heads of all the largest nests to inform them of my apprenticeship, and to work out any issues that may cause.”
Louka bounces at the opportunity to be included. “Ooh, ooh, ooh! I helped too! I remember Valko asking for some of my leaves when I was still lost to the woods.”
Bataille nods with his palms stacked at the center of his chest, thumbs locked in a Crown of Arceus over his heart. “Verily, and a great many thanks, friend Louka!
“Through the bitter winter months I was introduced to many names, things, and faces, but never any places. I pestered them to go and see even just a little of what the old Sage promised was there, but I was denied each and every time.”
He sighs, head shaking. “Honestly, never in my life had a tutor forced me to study so agonizingly slow, regardless of how much I promised I could handle the content, and at any pace.”
“Some things simply cannot be learned from the written word,” Mère muses, leaning between Poppy’s ears.
“ ‘It is not your mind that needs honed,’ ” Bataille recites, mimicking his tutor’s words from memory. “ ‘Your heart is blunt, and must be shaped before we can get to sharpening.’ ”
Odétte, who’s attracted an orbiting swarm of flabebe, skips along with rapt attention. “So, what then? He wouldn’t teach you what he knows? Wasn’t that the whole point of it all? What kind of teacher does that?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get to that,” he continues, stretching his tired body with a dangerous pair of dynamos hanging from his arms, arguing over their preferred snuggling positions at that exact moment.
“He gave me some of the basics by the fireside every now-and-again as I lived and worked in the great hall or helped around the village in any way I could. I was so excited to hear anything he had to say and I especially liked learning to make tools from nothing.”
“What did they have you do?” Mère asks, feeling her back starting to burn with burden and age.
“At first? Hardly anything at all. It was a strange way to be. To them we were outsiders; welcome outsiders, but outsiders all the same. They clothed and fed us well and we never wanted for warmth, but none would speak to me the moment you all left.
“Pikachu’s family was wintering, I’d been told. Valko, Tauron, and Estelle keep very busy bodies, never staying in one place for more than an hour or two. The locals would stare at me from across the building, drinking in silence, or mingling amongst themselves as if I wasn’t there. Even the monsters seemed to dodge me like a plagued grave. If it weren’t for Emeline, I might have lost my mind.”
Poppy chuffs, blowing dejected flames the boy’s way.
“Oh, I know you were there too, but not every day.
“Anyways, I was insistent; absolutely bored to tears waiting for the world to warm up on me. So Tauron put us to splitting wood for the ovens, Estelle had us mending torn garments, and the kitchen women made us scrub and dry the linens clean over the fire. To be completely honest, I had started to regret pestering them so much. The work might’ve been worse than watching the coals crackling away.”
“But you worked hard, didn’t you,” Usmar says, almost as a question instead of a statement of fact.
Bataille wrestles with Pikachu as she playfully bites at his hands. “And a good thing we did. Once the villagers saw that we’d come to live and not to eat, drink, and be merry, their hospitality slowly returned. The older folk showed me how to weave, and once I’d made my own pair of snowshoes I was busy doing little bits of everything that needed to be done.
”Papa, Mama, I had never known how hard life is for the laden folk. As far back as I can remember I could read and write and count. I am proud of these things, and it is the essence of man’s power… but none of it matters when there’s nothing left to read and nothing needing written down, all while a mountain of logs needs split so the fires are lit, day and night.”
Bataille stops talking as Pikachu hits him with a sneaky nip of the ear.
“We wanted to save your body from toil so you could do a thinking-man’s work,” Ulphia says with a defensive wince.
His family stares in shock as Bataille bites Pikachu’s tail and his palm is chomped right back.
“Chaaaa! Kicha pi!” he shouts, shaking the pain away as the yellow devil cackles with pleasure in his arms. “And for that I am infinitely grateful. At the same time, I can surely say that there is much to be gained from the aches and pains of honest labor. But in the end, and it may come as a surprise, my favorite task of all was sitting the eggs.”
“And why was that?” Mère asks with a wise, midwife’s smile.
“Because it meant they finally trusted me.” Bataille chuckles as Emeline joins in on the fun, tackling Pikachu into a rolling, snarling, sparkling ball. “And there’s just something amazing about being the first thing a person sees on their journey through life.”
Odétte rolls her eyes as Louka scuttles along behind her. “So you learned babysitting and peasant work, I don’t see how that explains anything.”
“Hold on Dot, I’m getting there!” Bataille says as Emeline and Pikachu end their scuffle, scrambling to their rightful places on his shoulder and in his arms. “Trust me, it’s all important.”
“When the snow melted away and it was time to prepare for the springtime sow, Emeline and I were pulled from the fields and brought to Valko’s side. Honestly, I was stunned to find that I hadn’t seen the man in months.”
Bataille laughs aloud. “We were all so busy and I was getting on so well that I’d nearly forgotten why I was here in the first place!”
He waits a moment, considering the right way to say the next part. “Then Master Valko brought us to his home. I won’t describe it to you, you’ll see the place soon enough. Suffice to say, I was ecstatic when he told me he was finally taking me into the woods!”
“We foraged and picked bushels of berries, tended to the wooloo herds, and I met even more creatures with totally different manners of shape and disposition. He taught me which of the many native plants were useful, which of them were dangerous, when the tides in the sky portend the storm, where to find the best stones for knapping blades, and how fire is made when you’ve nothing but your own skin.”
“Napping?!” Odétte laughs and Louka follows along with her. “Who knew rocks made such good pillows!”
Bataille’s head tilts with a visible hitch of confusion and shows her his jet-black, obsidian blade. “Not quite. It’s how I made this!”
Odétte responds with a facetious roll of the eyes. “It’s called a joke, Rat Man. I guess they don’t grow those in the woods, huh?”
Bataille sheathes his knife with a quirky baffled look. “You’re pricklier than I remember.”
“You have no idea,” Ulphia laments. “Odétte, please save the rakes for later.”
“Whatever,” Odétte snaps, guiding her posse to the edge of the herd.
“Please, keep going,” his mother insists as the group comes upon a dense, cavernous copse of cliffs and caves.
Pikachu insists he do so as well with a snarky, knowing smile.
Bataille sighs. “One day, when spring had earnestly come, Master Valko blindfolded us, asking me to name various plants and areas by smell as we hiked for hours-on-end; until my legs turned to porridge. I have no idea if I got any of it right… not that it mattered.
“When we were good and lost, he sat me down and said…”
He clears his throat and straightens his back in a proud, regal stance.
“ ‘Nothing matters more than this’,” he recounts in a deep pensive voice. “ ‘Listen. What do you hear?’ ”
“My answer?” He chuckles at his own follies. “ ‘The wild ones talking.’ “
Bataille’s face shifts as he puts on a bigger, better, broader-chested impression of Valko. “ ‘And what are they saying?’ ”
Usmar pushes his knuckles up into his back with a gravely crunch, loosening himself up from the longest walking stint he’d done in ages. “What did you say?”
“Nothing, for a while,” Bataille muses. “I just… guessed. Babbled on about how they could be looking for a mate, or warning the others that a predator is near, or sharing news around the woods.”
“ ‘Listen to me. Very, very carefully.’ ”
Bataille’s posture straightens again and he makes the exact face his master did, despite the blindness and his memory fading with time.
“ ‘Bataille Merchand, as of this moment you are banished to the wilds. You are forbidden from returning to me or to the villages, and shall survive without their comforts, company, or care.’
“ ‘Do not poison your ears with the voices of men. Hide, far from any wandering human eyes. Move with steps so subtle that even our own hunters won’t find a trace’ ”
He clenches his fist with pallid skin as he hears Master Valko’s voice in his own throat.
“ ‘Until the snow sloughs from these very trees again, you shall be a wild thing.’ ”
Everyone's strides fall still, staring on in horror.
“We stayed there in total silence, for how long I couldn’t even say. I simply didn’t believe what I’d just heard.” Bataille rubs noses with his partners. “When we finally took the blindfolds off, he was gone.”
Usmar’s face turns red as a bushel of autumn-picked apples. “What?!”
“He left you two in the woods?” Ulphia cries through quivering lips. “All by yourselves?!”
Odétte spins to a stop on her heels. “Lies! You’d never survive!”
Mère, however, does nothing, listening with a patience seasoned with decades of hard-lived wisdom.
Pikachu buckles over with entertained cackles at the response.
Bataille flails around with his palms out. “Everyone, please, it’s ok. It’s not what you think…
“I sure thought it was though. For hours I took nature in with all of my senses, as if I’d woken from a flog across the head. Then I cried, curled up wondering what I’d done wrong.
“Did I fail to measure up in some way or commit some horrible, unforgivable faux pas? Was this the plan all along? Would we die before I could see everyone again?”
Emeline hisses at Pikachu as her rival vaults atop his shoulder, leaning like a sailor from a mast. “Chupah! Pi-Chu!”
“Right, we couldn’t just quit! I started walking, working out a plan as Emeline took to the sky, the little she could as a baby with a healing wing. This had to be some kind of test, and nobody passed a test they didn’t take. I knew we needed to find a source of water so I could follow it to a major stream. Where there’s clean water, there’s food.”
“And Monsters,” Odétte butts in.
Before Ulphia can snap back at the girl, Pikachu leaps to the front of the line, jabbering to them with a confident bout of narration in a backwards walk.
“You would think so, but most of the other monsters kept their distance, even as Emeline beckoned them near. Even the so-called predators knew better. After all, any good nest teaches their hatchlings from a very early age that humans travel in packs.
“That first week outside was a cold, fitful test of our mettle. Gosh, I didn’t realize how cold spring can be at night… Each morning I’d stand in the sunlight for an hour, just to warm my bones so I could work at all.
His mother’s sickened stare pushes him to get on with the better bits.
“Master said once that ‘when you’re alone, first look for a weapon.’ So I knapped an axe and a knife and lashed some sharpened flint to a stick. Groups of angry monsters guarded any edible fruiting plants we could find, so foraging was a bust. I tried fishing with my spear and quickly discovered that magikarp are way meaner than they look.’
Emeline nods, shuddering at the thought.
“We made a lean-to by the creekside, pushing ourselves to a faint, and that was when the hunger started really setting in.
Bataille kneels, scrapes a sprouting patch of soil, and pries a long tuberous knot up to split for vittles.
“Such a curious thing, being hungry,” he says, gazing at his cut of root. “It’s very different from starving, you know. I knew what I could eat, and I gratefully devoured any scrap that nature was kind enough to provide me, but nothing could have prepared me for that week-long marathon of measly woodland meals.”
Emeline whines with a grumbly tummy as she’s suddenly reminded that they had skipped dinner, lunch, and breakfast.
“Our bellies had been spoilt with the comforts kept behind the walls of man, protesting with such a vengeance as we worked, whittled, and fought for the scantiest of scraps.”
He pauses, looking around the fork of a three-pronged trail without a single sign or marking, and takes them rightly. “Then, when I could take my childish pangs of hunger no more, I got desperate.”
Pikachu forces back a chuckle with a smirk.
“Yeah, I know you’re enjoying this,” Bataille says, smiling. “I thought about which monster would be easiest to catch and eat. The idea of killing something and just… eating it turned my stomach over, but it was empty anyway, so…”
He hides a gag behind a convenient, coughing fit. “In that moment we’d resolved to learn that most visceral of skills. The hard way.”
"Oh, this oughta be good,” Odétte jeers from the cheap seats.
Pikachu nods in response.
“I remembered that early-season weedle and caterpie eggs hatch from the spring-melt soil around that time. We couldn’t risk a weedle’s poisonous sting, so that left us with only one choice.”
Usmar chimes in with anger still visible on his face, needing to say anything other than the things he knows he might regret. “Caterpie are notoriously nimble when they mean to be.”
Bataille sighs again. “After half a day of looking, I found a cluster of three huddled by the stream. Now, I’d learned a lot of things by that time, but the proper way to stalk and hunt? Well… that just wasn’t covered at the academy at all. Emeline couldn’t even bear to look. She hates conflict, you see, and covered her face the whole time.
“I leapt out, thinking my screams might stun them in some hunger-fueled delusion, and they spewed something at me; a wretched spittle that clouds the mind with stench. I coughed and gagged and would’ve vomited if I could. Then I broke the end of my spear in the tree behind them as I tripped over myself, and smacked my head against the trunk. I know now that if you mean to kill a caterpie, you’d better do it fast.
“As I tumbled over in a daze, two of them ran to the bushes on either side and vanished without a trace. The last one panicked and scrambled up the trunk. But I wasn’t about to give up, and the tree wasn’t that tall anyway. I threw rock after rock as best I could. Thanks to all the rounds of Boules we’d played in the orchards back home, I nailed the thing square in the head.”
He rolls his arm, holding his shoulder with the other hand. “Must have knocked the thing out cold, for it dropped from the branches like a sack of spuds.”
“You always did have a good throwing arm,” Usmar grunts.
He draws his blade again and makes a menacing pose.
Everyone leans to the side, closer to Bataille.
“That was my chance! Hands clenched, Emeline screaming in terror, I fell down upon it and lunged…”
The group collectively breathes as Emeline hides her head in Bataille’s neck at the memory of it all.
“...but in my fervor I’d forgotten that even the lowliest monsters are cunning in their own unique ways. From the grass shot sticky shimmering strands of white that snagged me from every angle. There must have been a dozen of them, spraying me and Emeline down in silk to save their helpless friend.
“That caterpie swarm left us stuck to the base of that tree, wrapped in a tacky spool of twine.”
Pikachu cackles as Emeline blushes with a frustrated puff of the cheeks, joined by a nervous chuckling from his parents and the breathless laughter of Odétte and her monster tag-alongs.
“Yeah, yeah, not my greatest moment… Thankfully they don’t eat meat, but I knew a few things that would, given the chance at an easy meal. I won’t try to bluff about my courage; we cried for help for hours, until my throat went dry and I could scream no more. I knew it might be the end, but I couldn’t give up. We managed to roll hard enough that the treebark pulled away, and tumbled ourselves back down to the creek for a drink.”
He stops a moment for a wee, comedic pause. “Did you know fresh caterpie-silk is tasty and edible? Neither did Valko.
“Aaanyway, I couldn’t eat very much of it, the neck can only croon so far, of course. And we spent a really long, very uncomfortable, extremely scary moonless night there by the waters edge.”
“Go-la mogala,” Emeline peeps with a shy hidden smile.
Bataille chuckles, rubbing between her ears. “Yeah, I guess we were warm, at least.”
Pikachu points into the woods, chittering a mouthful of monsterspeech so fast and complex it seems impossible that anyone could derive meaning from the noise.
“Aaah, that’s not great. Picha-ka, chu-ki acha ki.”
Ulphia gawks in astonishment. “You really can understand them now, can’t you? Like Valko does!”
For the first time since being rescued on the trail, Bataille’s family catches a slight glimmer of pride flashing over his face, like the glint of a coin tossed in the pouch.
Beggaring all belief, Bataille returns his partner’s call with a nearly identical slurry of indecipherable, animalistic chatter.
Pika chews on the plan her human had just proposed, and gives him a tiny thumbs up before dashing down a branching path that seems to lead her off to nowhere.
“Sorry, we’ll need to take the long way around,” he says over his shoulder to an audience of astonished kin. “Snorlax are grumpy when they wake up hungry."
Usmar’s anger is quashed that very instant, smothered with patrilineal pride. “In… Incredible…”
Odétte, on the other hand, sees a little of something she might want for herself. “Ok, Smockachu. What’s the secret? I’m tired of missing out on all the inside jokes around the meadows back home.”
“I was almost to that part.” Bataille waves at nothing around the bushes in particular.
Then everyone jumps as the massive, hooded neck of an arbok bursts from the brush with a look of someone that’s getting up to who-knows-what.
“Hey Sanna!“ he shouts with a respectful nod. “Don’t worry about him, he’s patrolling for predators.”
“Isn’t he a predator?” Mère asks without a hint of mockery in her voice.
Bataille nods to the snake with an averted sideways gaze. “Definitely can be if he wanted. Honestly, most monsters would rather eat berries and roots all day than risk getting hurt in a hunt.”
The snake nods in return and slithers back into the bushes.
“A forest fed is safe to tread.” Bataille bobs his hand up and down with the rhyme. “Alright, so, like I said, we stayed there the whole night. Then, just as I’d passed out, I woke again to a rustling, sparking…”
“Pi-ka-pi!” Pikachu chimes in.
“Indeed. Call me a liar if you want, but there, fresh from their winter sleep, were five pichu rummaging through the cattails. I couldn’t even make a peep, I was so tired and hungry, but Emeline told them who we were and their little faces lit right up. I had hoped that maybe they’d be able to cut us free, but frankly, I was happy to be rolled and dragged through the forest all the same.”
A tiny pair of yellow-and-black arrowhead ears poke out from the grass. “Pi?”
“Pi-ka-piii!” Bataille squeaks aloud to the pichu romping around, stamping his copper-lined crook down.
“Pi?” Another peeks out through the leafage.
Then another one, and another two, then three or four more.
“There’s so many! Aaaaaa!” Odétte squeals, dropping her gamine pretense in the face of a swarm of tiny, hatchling eyes sprinting out from the tall grass to meet Bataille’s surprise entourage.
Pikachu leaps atop her usual soap-box (Bataille’s head) barking authoritative commands to the free-range younglings huddled before them. She gives a series of clear, simple, concise orders once she has everyone’s attention, more or less, which is always less than more when herding boltbringer babies.
Every single one smiles with ragged sparks, chittering amongst themselves in a discordant joyful ruckus.
A few of the Merchands raise a brow as the adorable hoard argues with itself, each miscreant pointing to this visitor or that.
Pikachu peeks at Ulphia’s bulging belly, leaps beside the babies, finger stuck out, and taps one of them on the head. With a sharp dazzling flash, the babies’ poorly-controlled, sky-fire force is drawn straight into her cheeks.
Then she sticks her claws between her lips and whistles the signal, siccing the terrible tide of siblings upon their guests. Dozens of squeaking, skittering, pink-cheeked devils leap in sync, descending on the Merchands in a torrent of happy hangers-on.
Odétte is left breathless, paralyzed with adoration-poisoning as the adults are busy screaming under the surprise assault.
Bataille bellows with a jolly, eerily familiar laughter as four of the youngest, rowdiest ‘chus tackle his arms to engage in combat with his hands. “When Vivienne found us in the afternoon, she was furious. I had no idea why at the time, either.”
He flails his hand around and tickles a pichu to free his wrist from its jaws. “Turns out she was mad at Valko for leaving us in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a smack on the arse and a prayer.”
Usmar huffs. “Rightly so! She spat fire in his face, no doubt.”
“Like the sun rises in the east! I wasn’t anywhere near the northern cliffs when she found him, and I could hear her screaming clear as thunder in the sky.” Bataille gives his passengers a disapproving wag of the finger as they rough-house a bit too long. “Oh, and guess who was the last to know.”
Mère catches a pair of sideways, Pikachu eyes. “Perhaps a certain, very worried someone?”
Pikachu scoffs, waving her paw with a dismissive chirp.
Bataille nuzzles her buzzing, cherri-berry cheek. “She had been far away, watching the flock with Ampharos. I found out later that Vivienne wanted her to stay steadfast in her duties, keeping me as a surprise after I was properly settled in. Her siblings disobeyed mother’s orders, of course, and word spread throughout the forest until the tale of our misfortune had found my dearest Pikachu’s ears.”
She blushes at the affectation, shoving his leg away in disgust.
It’s Bataille’s turn to rib and jab and he doesn’t waste a single second of it. “Ha-haa! She ran so fast a storm of dust chased her into the den as she called out for me.” He ruffles her fluff into a shower of irritated sparks. “I’d always thought you cared about me, but that was theday I knew for sure.”
Emeline chirps in delight as Pikachu winces with a groan and bops Bataille over the head with her tail.
“Ow, aaachaaa!” he hisses and chuckles as his counterpart slowly settles down. “Everyone in the nest was gathered together and the matter was settled that very night. I couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying yet, but it was clear that Vivienne and Ampharos had claimed us as one of their own.”
The pichu mob chitters and cheers with belated celebration at that.
Pikachu waves her paws around, desperate to end the schmaltzy reminiscing, and points towards the top of a nearby hill. “Chaaa, chaaa!”
“And, well…” Bataille says as they crest the well-worn, foot-trodden slope. “...the rest is simply history.”
A wide, glacial valley opens up before them, flooded with an ancient tangle of spruces, oaks, and pines. Hundreds of cozy interlaced caves knit the cliffs into a raucous honeycomb of hustling, bustling, monster homes. Boltbringers, Thunderfleece, and a smattering of other kinds mingle in a single massive colony.
It is a chaotic canvas, painted with community, framed in necessity.
The sight of a city made of wild monsters, thriving in the shadows of human civilization, blinds the senses and boggles the mind. Even these intrepid outsiders, whose hearts have been opened to this place’s strange way of life, can barely believe what they are seeing… and where they’re going.
“Is this a… festival?” Ulphia asks as their pichu passengers abandon-ship and stampede down the trail.
Bataille turns around, eyebrow raised. “Cha? Ahhh, no. Just a regular old day in the nest.”
“Nest?” Usmar anxiously clears his throat like he’s approaching a client’s hold in yesterday’s nightwear. “You mean those caves are the nests, yes? Which one is Vivienne’s?” he asks, squinting off into the distance, trying in vain to count them all out.
Bataille’s face is blank with confusion a moment, then realization hits him as he catches a hysterical laugh in his palm. “No, father, this is the nest. Ournest…” he states, but then corrects his manners in a swift shift of tone, “...is the largest in Shaymin’s Pass, perhaps the whole county, but there are a few corners of the land I’ve yet to tread.”
Pikachu lifts her face in pride. “Chaaa! Cha’a ki pa!”
Bataille nods. “Yes, yes, largest in the whole tribe as well.”
Now it’s Odétte’s turn to share in the confusion. “This isn’t a tribe?”
Louka’s leaves shake left and right. “Nope! It’s big, but the whole tribe is way, way bigger!”
“Yeah… my apologies, it must all be very confusing. There aren’t words in our language for it; ‘nest’ and ‘tribe’ are the closest we’ve got to the concept. I’m not sure how well I can explain it.” Bataille scratches his chin as the din of congregated-population swells in the air.
“Might you still try?” Mère huffs with exhaustion as her old bones protest at all the work she’s put them through those last few days. “There’s nobody better here to teach us.”
Emeline’s still, quiet body jumps with a start as the words Ulphia said to her that morning come to mind. She whispers into Bataille’s ear again, smiling with pride at the idea.
Bataille nods, rubbing his chin. “Riiight, yeah… yeah… Ok. Well, think of a nest as a ‘family’ sort of. But not a family like you and me. More like… you, me, and the extended family: our cousins, second cousins, adopted siblings, that uncle-grandpa situation with Merle’s sister, the twice-removed aunts, and all their kin living as one household.
“And a tribe is just a bunch of nests, to put it way too simple.” He squirms a bit, doing his best to carry himself with confidence. “There are some… awkward details around the edges but that’s a good start.”
“That sounds like madness!” Usmar blusters as he meets eyes with a few ‘chus peering out from a bulbous, stick-and-mud, treehouse home. “How does anyone get any privacy? Who gets what and why? And the disputes… Gods, we’d be at each others’ throats before the first year was out.”
“I suppose it’s just how a nest thinks.” Bataille’s cheerful disposition returns as nobody seeks further clarification on that last matter. “Everybody works together to ensure that everyone is fed, sheltered, and cared for. Because, in the end, they’re all family. How to put it…”
Bataille stretches his tired shoulders. “...humans think in terms of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’. With monsters, everything is either ‘ours’ or ‘theirs’.”
Mère straightens herself back up and apologizes for laying against Poppy’s mane, but the big cat reaches his paw up and nudges her back into position. “But what if a monster wants something another monster already has?”
“That’s nonsense-thinking in a nest. Everything is already everyone’s anyway.”
She lays back down, petting the noble beast in thanks. “Verily, but say some monsters are living in one of those,” she says, pointing to the growing number of birdhouse-style huts nestled in the trees, “and another monster wants to live there, but the current residents won’t let them. What then?”
Bataille waves to and fro at the many, wary, staring eyes. “They would have already taken them in if the new person got along and they had the space. To do anything else would be so appalling they’d be treated with disgust for a very long time.”
“I see. And what if every place is full or they don’t get along with anyone?”
“Then another home would be found or made for them. Anyone struggling to find shelter would be a humiliating crisis for a nest to have.”
Mère smiles at the idea, wanting to find the darkened edges of her bright-eyed boy’s feral utopia. “And what if they want more than that for themselves?”
“Then they can do so for themselves, so long as they’ve first done their part for the nest.”
“And if they do well for themselves, when does ‘mine’ become ‘ours’?”
“If the needs of the nest are not being met, they should give or lend it to those in need.”
“And if they don’t?”
Somewhere deep in the grove a pair of shrieking voices trade visceral noises back and forth. Then, despite the clearest of skies, a lightning strike snaps the conversation in twain.
“Then they would be taught a very valuable lesson.”
Mère replies with a slow, stoic nod. “We all take the good with the bad.”
Usmar’s throat rumbles at the thought. “If they can get what they want by doing nothing. Why would anyone work at all, then?”
Bataille looks over his shoulder, right into his father’s eyes. “If I was lazy, but hungry, sick, and homeless. What would you do to make sure I was ok?”
Ulphia answers without a second’s thought. “Anything.”
His father does not relent, feeling an old, cold stubbornness rising in the face of his long-lost son. “Indeed, but surely there’s something else to it. If doing more than your barest share means nothing in the end, what’s the point of it all?”
Bataille gives his father a warm familial smile. “Why do you work so hard, Papa?”
“So my family can–” He stops his ignorant lips right then and there. “Ah. Right…”
“We’re all family in the end,” Bataille says, “it just so happens that my family is much, much bigger now.”
“Son, I…” Usmar reaches for Bataille, like he’s watching someone leave for the very last time. “Was it because of me?” he asks as the crowd stops at a double-doored dome covering the mouth of a great, yawning cave at the center of the settlement.
Silence ensues as a concerned yellow crowd has formed around them.
“Chaaa?” Bataille gasps, taken completely aback. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“It… seems you’ve forsaken our name and found a different house, apart from your own kind even.” His normally red flustered face is spotty and pale as the words slip past his lips. “If it’s because of the things I said back then, I take it all back.”
Ulphia, Mère, and Odétte freeze with mouths gawking on in awe.
“I’m sorry. I hope that you’ll come back to us, when you are ready.” Usmar straightens his shoulders, blood running hot with a very necessary rush of contrition. “I love you, all the same.”
Bataille’s brain is broken for a good, long moment. “Ha… Ha ha hahaha.” He buckles over with hilarity, returning to that jolly belly-laughter everyone seems to recognize from somewhere else.
“Ha. Hoo… ho my goodness. I love you too, Papa… but it seems I’ve misinformed you, and that’s a shame.”
The audience of pichu, pikachu, and a few, rare, raichu sibs murmurs from the sidelines with excitement.
“You see, this isn't my new family.”
The sea of gathering chus parts as a huge, rugged, tired-looking raichu stomps her way through the crowd, shaking clumps of needy pichu-burrs from her fur.
“It's ours.”
“Chaaa! Raaaiii!” Vivienne shouts with a wry, roguish smile and an egg under her arm. “Rai rai CHU!”
Usmar does not recognize the gang of pikachu rushing towards him in that moment, but they most certainly recognize him. They leap onto his body, scurry up into his tunic, and around his back, patting the man down for any tasty treats he might be hiding.
And to the victors go the spoils as they pry an expensive, suede-wrapped bundle of goodies with a waxen Lumiere seal out from Usmar’s screaming hands. A surprise, stealthily packed for him to give when the moment was right.
Thankfully, the little monsters picked the perfect moment to crash.
In contrast to their last encounter, however, her squad of hellions obediently delivers the packet straight to the woman in charge. “Chaaai,” Vivienne says with gratefulness in her voice and not an ounce of care to spare for her first and best business partner.
“You’re welcome…” Usmar grunts once the final pikachu menace is finished snuggling his cheeks hello while searching his satchels for scraps of sugary treats. “...so good to see you.”
“Rah chai,” Vivienne huffs at him with a brusque nod.
She turns away from the man, pointing to her many varied kin (adopted or otherwise) barking orders all around with a regal authority that simply cannot be ignored.
Bataille and his partners do exactly as they are told, running off into the twisted maze of trees and rocks. A fluffy sled of mareep helps Mère and Ulphia slide down Poppy’s side to a gentle stop. Vivienne greets Ulphia with a nod of solidarity as she sees just how heavy with child the woman has become, and snaps her tail.
The crowd scatters in all directions, with a chosen few ‘chus assigned to guide their guests inside.
One would think that walking into a cave with an entrance door encased in slabs of wattle-and-daub would be an interesting but ultimately outdoorsy affair. What the Merchands get instead is a perfectly-lit lesson in extra-rural interior design.
Its rough stone walls have long been hewn down and polished to a smooth, finished dome. At the entrance, a pint-sized raichu sits squinting with his tongue stuck to the side, drawing something saturated in vivid, hand-ground pigments from a monster-hair brush and his tail-tip dipped in paint.
Waving to the humans, the critter accidentally smears his nose in ruddy-red shade as his tail whips around. He saunters over with drowsy half-lidded eyes, stepping in a pewter dish of dyes. Then the little guy sticks his sopping-blue brush in his weedlesilk smock, coated in crusts of paint.
What is he busy drawing, they wonder, as the light inside shifts and dances in time with their steps?
“Awww, that’s so cute. He’s like a little painter!” Odétte squeaks as he walks by. “Wanna trade sketches, little guy?”
The swaying smiling ‘chu looks in the general direction of her face with an uneasy pause, then hands the girl a listless emphatic nod. “Chai~”
The floor is a manic mosaic made from multicolored tiles of shale. Furnished with rustic claw-hewn furniture, carved from whole chunks of tree, little sets of tables and chairs dot the interior. A monstrous facsimile of the great hall behind the walls of Shaymin’s Pass.
At the center of it all, ringed with tiny split-log benches, a great stoney pit of coals finally gets its rest, cold and quiet as the snow has finally come and gone.
All of it far too small for their newest friends to use.
So convenient it is then that the local stump-smith ‘chus were given advance notice. They finish six man-sized seats in the nick of time with skillful, Iron Tail swats. They bow, cheeks glowing with pride, and the place grows darker as they leave in a furry flash.
A pair of mareep with bright tails pull the nicest seat out and the painter gently guides Ulphia there to rest her feet. “Oh, oh my. Merci beaucoup,” she sighs with a hand on her stomach, finally letting her springs wind down as all of the monsters zip away. “Such a gentle monster.”
“A gentlemon, one could say,” Mère declares, eyes squinting as the illumination shifts and moves away, leaving her totally blind.
Usmar stumbles through the darkness and barely makes it to his own seat. “Gah, who snuffed the candles out?”
“Kiii, ki ki ki!” the raichu squeaks in apology and scampers back, tracking viridian, left-foot prints across the table’s virgin surface as he scrambles up and plops back down.
Paint-stained paws rub cerulean circles into his cheeks, sparkling and snapping, and the light from his face grows brighter than before.
Ulphia chuckles at his blessèd little heart, waiting until the sparks fizzle from his fur before petting a stainless spot behind the ears. “Apologies, monsieur, but it seems you’re stuck with us for the time being.”
“Chahhh~” The raichu’s leg kicks in delight at that human woman’s touch, satisfied that he must unfortunately remain with his guests as their lantern in the darkness.
The Merchands expected there to be a few more monsters joining them as they arrived, and sit for a long, silent while as a pile of scared hatchlings stares from the safety of a grassy sleeping-pit.
“So… Um…” Usmar shifts with an awkward twist in his seat. “Do you understand Kalosian?”
He waggles his messy little feet, nodding with a contented sway.
“Ah. Well, hmm. Do you know Bataille well?”
Their happy source of light shines with a bright, cheerful smile. “Chu! Chu!”
“Oh, well…” He clears his throat. “Very good, yes,” he mutters, wanting for something to say next.
Odétte groans with her hands clutching the table’s edge. “I should’ve stayed that day as well. Maybe then I’d get to talk to all these monsters too.”
The raichu brings a paw to his mouth, grumbling with concern and a humming surge in his throat. He leaps with an animated start and jumps into the hearth as his guests are left watching in the dark. He sifts and sorts through cold ember piles, plucks a choice couple coals up, and bounds back on floppy, feral feet.
“Chi-ah,” he starts, kneeling at the edge of the tabletop with char-blackened hands.
With eyes hung half-closed, he scrapes, scratches, and smears, sketching lines and subtle shades of gray against the pinewood grain. A picture comes together; a pichu hugging the legs of a young boy with thick-rimmed goggles and a cloak, both subjects smiling at the other.
“Rah,” he says, pointing with a tapered, charcoal chunk.
“Oh, that’s so sweet,” Ulphia says. “You’ve known him for a while!”
He nods, smiling at the opportunity to give recognition where it’s due to one of his favorite people in the whole wide world. “Kaaa!”
“How did you get to know each other? Just living in the same, uh… cave?” Usmar asks, struggling to read or understand any of his monstrous facial expressions. “I’m sorry if that’s impolite. Um, home, house, or—”
“Rai-a cha,” he chus, scrawling on the table once again, legs sprawled out like a toddler scraping figures in the mud.
A picture of a great powerful raichu standing with a stare and a horrified pichu born two sizes too small. Behind them, a group of ‘chus, in all stages of life, dies with laughter. Despite the minimalist style, sketched in streaks of carbon, both ‘chus clearly and undeniably express a desperate sort of disappointment.
The artist swipes his claws across his own paint-stained face and scrapes runny, indigo tears down the baby’s cheeks.
“No one gets to choose the vessel Arceus challenges them with.” Mère reaches out and holds the end of the monster’s foot. “I’m so sorry.”
The raichu pats Mère’s wrinkled hand. “Chachu,” he assures, then lays on his side, scribbling faster and more expertly than before, and hums in an uncanny, tradesman’s trance, eyes barely opened.
The scene is sculpted from simple shapes, bottom up, foregrounds first. Like the painters they’d seen embellishing those marble-arched temples lining Lumiose square with stunning scenes of color.
Kneeling in a leather smithy's smock, Bataille is portrayed in perfect detail. Down to the tiny scars webbing his humble patient face; burned into the table with precise, sparking claws. He’s handing something to a tiny, crying runt of a ‘chu at his knees. A box of brushes and bottles of paint, filled in with the goopy scraps of color stuck in his fur.
Odétte wants to make a snarky, smart remark, but her heart and soul betray every ounce of astonishment, all over her gaping paralyzed face.
He lifts his drawing paw, gesturing to the whole ceiling above. “Raaaiiiiii~”
His cheeks illuminate the place. Intricate tribalistic murals coat the walls from foot to crown, painted there with passionate care. Each and every one marks a moment, packed with meaning, drawn from the many seasons, struggles, sorrows, and satisfactions of life in the nest.
The tail-hewn double-doors slap the walls, garishly kicked aside with blinding rays of afternoon light.
The party has arrived. Marching lines of pikachu, festooned in ropes of ripened berry vines, lead a trampling, pichu throng. Each hatchling lugs a basket full of this or that, tiny morsels saved for a special day. The procession ends with elder-raichu kin hauling bigger wicker basins, piled high with dried kernels of maize.
“Chu?” Vivienne chirps and launches herself into the air, landing beside the table in a single, bounding leap. Her jaw drops with an exasperated sigh, aghast at the technicolor turmoil wrought upon that brand-new table made special for this event. “CHU!”
The cheerful disposition of her adult-child-at-play doesn’t shift a bit, even as his mother picks him up by the scruff and gives him such a glare.
He makes a buzzing chirp, and wraps his filthy arms around his mother’s biiig angry face, covering her muzzle in smears of sooty stripes. “Chahhh~”
“No need to be upset, Madame.” Usmar points to the tiny murals crafted just for them. “He was… telling us how our son has been getting along,” he says, running a finger across the hot, blackened burns on Bataille's tiny wooden face. “I, for one, am quite impressed.”
The others nod with fervent tandem approval.
“A talented monster you have there, Mama,” Ulphia chimes with a wide maternal smile. “You must be so proud.”
“Yeah...” Odétte wheezes, finally able to find words brave enough to willingly leave her lips.
“Raaauuugh!” Vivienne groans into the air, totally unable to stay angry with the wild artistic reveries of her esoteric savant of a son. “Ah-chi pu-chi ka,” she commands, anger quenched into smoldering frustration as she points to his abandoned patch of cave.
Her son waves goodbye to his new friends, off to complete his designated job for the day. “Cha-aaah~”
They catch a glimpse of his work in progress as the glowing of his cheeks lights the spot on the wall. A boy who’s nearly a man, reunited with his sister, parents, and grandparents; three human generations surrounded by a wall of smiling, boltbringer kin.
“Ha! My little Monet decided to pay you a visit, I see,” Bataille says, startling his mother and father as he somehow manages to evade their eyes and ears on the way in. All while carrying a pair of sap-sealed, bottle-gourd jugs under his arms. “Seems he’s taken a liking to you.”
Usmar’s hand slides across the image of his son, marveling at those tiny burns that stay, even as his fingers smudge the coals away. “It seems so…”
“What a lovely na– Wait, he has a name? I thought that Pikachu–” Ulphia pauses with a tiny hiccup as a circle of pikachu prepping chunks of wild, woodland veggies looks her way in response. “-ah, sorry, Bataille’s Pikachu. Anyway, I thought she was the oldest… wasn’t she?”
Bataille hands the jugs off to a pack of adopted ‘sibs, taking time to recognize each monster with a quick look of the eyes. “Chu? Yes, Mama, you heard right. Why do you ask?” he says just before the inside of the cave lights up with cheek-fried fruit and the air grows smokey and sweet.
“She’s trying to say it is interesting to see that he is named and changed into his final shape while she is missing both.” Mère says, pointing from one to the other as she speaks.
“Oh! I suppose that would seem strange, huh?” He turns his jaw around his mouth in thought. “They don’t advance in form with age alone. Many forces come together to push a monster past the point of advancement; I haven’t identified them all just yet. Age is a factor, but more often than not it’s some pivotal moment in their life, testing them at the very edge, that breaks them through.”
Bataille reaches into a pouch at his belt and rolls a thunderstone around his palm, polished smooth from years of nervous fidgeting. “That, and Boltbringers need a little something extra at the end.”
He chuckles, gazing into its minty-green sheen. “There’s a tradition in the tribe. See, no monster may deal in human affairs alone until they come-of-shape. When they’re ready to be trusted on their own, a human they know well must pick a suitable name. Then, a chosen, older sibling advances them with a thunderstone and they are given a duty suited to their strengths.”
Vivienne turns, giving her daughter a sour sideways eye.
Pikachu squints back with a smirk.
Odétte frowns, arms crossed. “I still don’t understand what a tribe is.”
“You said it yourself that she’s trusted, and we’ve seen her power for ourselves. Even Emeline has a name. What’s stopping her?” Ulphia asks, picking up on the line of animosity drawn between Mama-‘Chu and her oldest kid.
“Heh. Well, it’s me, I guess.” Bataille winces as his adoptive mom gives him the signature ‘look’ too.
Pikachu smiles, snuggling into Bataille’s knee with a piteous pat of the thigh. “Ka cha pi-kaaai.”
Vivienne scoffs and turns around to work on something other than her single-most, obstinate daughter.
“You mean she’s picked you to name her.” Mère’s mouth makes a purloin curl. “And you certainly are older than she is. Which means…”
“She can’t change until I find a name that suits her.” Bataille rolls his eyes. “She’s very picky.”
Pikachu crosses her arms, cheeks sparking as she huffs the other way with a hmph. “Cha-a ka.”
“You certainly are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you?” Odétte jives. “I hate work too. Good thing I like my name, huh Mama?” she says with a sigh. “Well, I dunno now; maybe it’s all worn out…”
“You’ll pull your sorry, nameless weight like everyone else, little ferroseed,” Ulphia says with a cheeky smile.
Bataille thinks for a moment as the raichu dump tubs of maize into the firepit at the center of the room. “Hey Papa, who’s that Zapdos Priestess in the family, again?”
Usmar wakes from his contemplations. “Huh? Oh, on your mother’s side? It was, ah… um…”
“Ulga, love,” Ulphia reminds, tickling a pichu under the chin after a helpful older sibling discharges them.
“Yeah, she’s amazing! Whad’ya think of that, Pikach–AAAH!” Bataille shouts, bouncing on one leg at his partner kicking him square in the shin.
“Kah-aaagh!” she gags.
The squabbling hysterics come to an abrupt stop with squeals of a hundred boltbringer babes and the thunder of a million popping kernels puffed up into an edible mountain-range of fluff.
A good pan of popped corn is no secret to a well-traveled family like theirs, but an advancing avalanche of snacks is more than enough to send them all screaming from their seats with terrified laughter.
Hours pass in a flash, consumed by an endless feast of seared fruit, clouds of corn, and skewers of forest bounty. It is the biggest meal they’ve had in months, and the strangest since the last fall-fetched festival they’d spent in Shaymin’s Pass. Unlike those four Long Blossom Nights though, the family is finally all together again.
Mostly.
Fruity, herbal drinks are passed from youngest to oldest, sip by sip, taken from sloshing, hollow gourds until the hatchlings finally succumb to succulence-induced sleep. The other dens filter out, heading home now that the festivities are finished and every scrap of food has been devoured.
“My family, I hope you do not mind,” Bataille whispers so the egg-mothers of Vivienne’s den will better get the babies to follow their appetites to bed. “But I’d like to write a bit while we’re lounging tonight.”
“Write? Well, I suppose this is as good a time as any,” Usmar says in hushed tones, and points to Monet, who’s taken a break from his work to lay in Ulphia’s lap. “Best lighting in the dark I’ve ever seen.”
Bataille bounds off in a quadruped’s gait, to what must be his personal bed, soundless as an espurr’s step. Pikachu helps him to peel that ugly leather suit off, folding it like his old academy robes in Lumiose. Emeline wraps his goggles in a soft woolen cloth, and he finally strips everything down to nothing but his linen hose.
Finally, after all this time, they can see what the tenure in Valko’s care has done to Bataille’s body. He’s built like an onyx now, with tiny mottled scars pocking every inch of his rocky physique. The evidence of the trauma sustained from Emeline’s accident has healed into a soft, pearly, lightning strike running from his fingers to the right side of his face. If none of them knew better, they might have thought it was a tattoo.
Bataille reaches into his pants for a small metal something on a string and crouches down. Kept under lock and key to keep mischievous wandering paws out from his things, he opens a copper-banded box. Then the young man hustles back over to his people. The ones he’d watched come and go from the forests as they visited the valley each and every season.
He flops down, breathing in relief without the burden of his kit. Even the weight of both Pikachu and Emeline on his shoulders is a feather. He un-wraps a brass-hinged box containing bottles of ink, unfezant quills, and a gorgeous leather-bound book. “I learned some things this week, today especially.”
Odétte leans forward, wanting to distract herself from the game of slap-hands Louka was demolishing her with. “You journal now?”
“Expensive habit,” Usmar quips. “But if that’s the worst vice you have, I count myself a lucky man.”
Bataille shakes his head, opening the book to a precise page titled ‘Boltbringer’ in blocky, ineloquent calligraphy. Below that is a collage of masterfully-inked sketches of a pichu, a pikachu, and a raichu, along with closeups of their sexually-dimorphic anatomies.
“It’s a book I’m writing,” he says, careful to scribe in even tiny text so as to preserve space and paper.
“A book? My goodness, what about? Your time here in the valley?” Ulphia asks, as Monet churls with delight in her arms.
“Not exactly. Pépé said I was to learn everything Master Valko has to teach me. I can remember so many things, Mama, but I lack Dialga’s mind.” He scribbles something down, and leaves the page to dry. “So, I resolved myself to record everything I could about every species my Master knows anything about. He brought me all the materials I needed, too. The first ledger was filled in a week.”
“The first one?” Odétte coughs. “How many have you gone through?”
He looks up from the book, eyes searching around his head for the answer. “Seven.”
Just the thought of seven, full, tome-cut stacks of parchment stuffed to the margins with arcane shamanistic lore brings gasps to the table.
Usmar sits for a moment with his lips agape. “Is there enough time? Would you need to stay longer?”
Monet hears Usmar’s words with a worried look in his eyes.
Bataille waves his hand. “No, Master has taught me everything that could be kept in writing a year ago. Anything added now is brand-new or changed.”
Mère leans forward. “What might you call this book of yours?”
“I’m calling it ‘L’index Monstre’,” he replies, fanning the pages so he can shut the ledger without a smear.
“The Index of Monsters? Quite on the nose, I suppose,” Usmar says with a stiff pair of lips at the name.
Odétte chuckles. “That name wilts roses, Batty.”
Everyone coughs as Bataille takes a second to respond. “I don’t suppose you have a better one?”
“Ah, duuuhhh. Yeah I do.” She purses her lips and eats a few popped kernels of corn she’d kept in her satchels. “Monstredex.”
Her family’s heads bob up and down, considering the idea with visible interest.
“Monstred— that means the exact same thing!” Bataille snipes back at regular volume, followed by the mean growls of a disgruntled denmother.
Odétte does not ease off the breaks. Her punching bag is back in town, being spoiled by Estelle, after all. “Yeah, well Olya means the same thing as Olga but, y’know, it doesn’t suck dead eggs.”
Bataille sits in a furious silence, grumbling at the approval of those all around him, and yipes as Pikachu pops him on the head. “Pi-ka-chu. Pa, chi, acha-ki!” she chides, pointing to Odétte with a mocking tone.
“Yeah, well, shecan’tname you, so phbbbbbbtttttt.” He sticks his tongue out, blowing raspberries to the rat on his shoulder. She spits berries back at him and then they’re right back to scrapping, with Bataille in his bare-ass skivvies.
Everyone flinches, expecting her to shock him at full strength, like she had been for the last two days. Without the protective leathers on.
For whatever reason though, Pikachu just scratches his chest up some, snaps a bit, and then simmers down. She socks him in the shoulder, hops down into his lap, and resorts to a long tired cuddle against his belly as recompense.
Even Emeline, who normally watches on with concern at their tussling matches, doesn’t flinch a bit. In fact, she seems more relaxed than any other time they’d witnessed before, bringing her petite little lips behind his ear to whisper her sweet, silent words again.
“Yeah… Alright, alright. I guess it is pretty good. My book shall henceforth be known as the ‘Monstredex’.” Bataille blushes, mouth twisting with resignation. “Thanks, Dot.”
All around him, ‘chu’s and young mareep huddle in massive puddles of cuddle, each with a tail or ear of some other member of the nest in their mouths and paws. The stacks of supercharged fluff arc and spark in the darkness, glowing like embers in a starving fire that lay in wait for any excuse at all to reignite.
Bataille points to a bigger, triple-packed pit of hay held together with mandible-strung silk. “We’ve made a bed for you over there. Don’t touch the sleeping ‘chus. I really mean it, do your business at ‘the drops’ now before you sleep. Come find me if you need help in the night.”
Odétte huffs. “And what if I do touch them, huh?” she asks as her mother and father drink the last of their bladder flasks from across the table.
“You won’t wake up,” he replies, totally devoid of his normal rat-man chivalry.
“...Right. Noted.” The girl looks over her back, up at the ever-quiet Louka. “Ready for your first snuggle with a girl?”
Her parents spit freckles of wine across the table.
Louka barely suppresses a choke, backing away. “Yo– I… I, uh…” his deathly echoing voice somehow fails to touch the many, sleeping eardrums all around. “I don’t sleep much anymore. At all,” he whispers, sinking into the darkness where his one, fierce eye is the only thing glowing through. “I’ll keep watch outside. It’s not too cold and I’ve got a few moonwalkers I’d like to see again.”
Odétte chuckles with a hiss in her lips. “I jest, silly. Not with mom and dad right there, gosh,” she giggles the words out as father and mother stare arrows at her from across the table.
“Young lady,” Ulphia grumbles, preparing her level-best to maintain a simmering, seething, bedtime voice. “Ever since your Pépé passed you’ve done nothing but kill us with concern. Could you at least assure us that you won–”
Everyone stops as Bataille’s quill drops.
Silence, boiling in an ink of snoring monsters.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Mère puts her hand on Ulphia’s shoulder, nudging the pregnant woman back down. “There hasn’t been a decent time. So much has been happening, my little gem. So quickly.”
Mère walks around the table and discovers that Pikachu’s light has floundered into a sickly, pale flicker. Emeline is stiff as a january stone, clung dead to her human’s back. Bataille clutches his fists together, stomach clenching as the corners of his eyes glisten with drops of boltbringer light.
“When?”
“This last winter, my love.” Mère wraps him in her arms. “Your Pépé was sick when we left you, but it never passed,” she says to the sounds of sniffling rodents.
“I wanted him to see.” Bataille cups his hands around Mère’s palms, locked together at the front of his chest. “More than anybody else.”
Pikachu pushes her temple against his tummy with tiny undisguised tears.
“The healers said he wouldn’t last a year, but your grandfather refused to drink a drop and held on and on and on… until Arceus finally came to call his name in the night.” Mère’s cold heartbroken tears roll down the boy’s chest as she squeezes him tight. “But… you know what he always said?”
“ ‘Darkrai’ll wait for this pretty arse of mine until our Bataille is a Sage. Mmhmm’.” She quakes, barely making the words out before she cracks like a broken oboe reed. “‘Until then, he can squat and thirst’. “
Pained laughter pierces the clouds bearing down upon them… and the Monstredex is shoved across the table as raindrops start to fall.
“Daring the Gods to cross him ‘til the end.” Bataille’s cheeks drip with devastation as his head is laid back upon his grandmother’s shoulder. “Nothing less would satisfy him.”
Pikachu wedges herself up beneath their hands, wrapping little, loving arms around her nest-mate’s neck. “Chiuu…” she coos, ears twitching in front of his face.
Ulphia falls like a mortarless wall as she watches her little man breaking apart right before her eyes. “Son I… I’m sor–”
“It’s… It’s ok, Mama, but…” he slides a dry finger across the page, finding none of his hard work has been lost in the storm. “I think I need to close my eyes for a while.”
With nothing left to be said, Bataille picks his partners up, slinks off to his darkened edge of the den, and packs the precious work where nothing more can threaten it.
He shuffles into a fetal curl atop a massive feather-packed cushion, hugging Pikachu and Emeline against the skin of his chest. Pikachu’s ears tickle at his face again and this time he takes one between his teeth, gently biting down as his partners hold fast to a couple of golden strands of hair.
The Merchand members of Vivienne’s nest watch in total silence, until he falls into a deep uncomfortable sleep. Then they huddle in their designated pit, packed with weeds and webs, wondering what might come in the mourning.
A family changed forever finally meets their prodigal son again, but five years is a long, long time when a million things are happening in the blink of an eye.
How will they handle bearing witness to all the ways he has altered the world, or all the ways the world has altered him?
How will they react as they watch their bright-eyed fair-skinned boy lay down the silver-and-scales to take up the crook and walk his path as man?
