I don't own Pokemon.
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"Mama?" He nudged her with his nose. "Mama, wake up! Wake up, Mama!"
The Kangaskhan didn't stir. Her eyes didn't open, her wounds didn't bleed.
"Mama, please! P-please..."
The baby Kangaskhan's eyes grew darker with despair and the embers of understanding. He curled up next to his mother's belly, her body still warm, and cried. And cried and cried and cried.
"Let me tell you a story, a story of our people. Come out and listen, my little one, as I tell the story of the First.
A young mother Kangaskhan and her little daughter walked along the cliff sides, the day after a rainy night. What they didn't know was that in the storm, a fire was started by lightning in the cliff side forest. But they noticed now, oh, they noticed. The mother had her daughter climb back in her pouch so she could climb down the cliff, to bring them both to safety. But the cliff side was wet, and she slipped, and fell, and died. The little Kangaskhan grieved, and knew it was her fault, she wanted the walk, they wouldn't have been there if she hadn't begged. And so, to remind her of her grief and guilt all her days, she retrieved her mother's skull from her head, and one of her femurs, and named herself a Cubone. Cubone was shunned by her former Kangaskhan herd, after she told her story, as all Cubone are today.
Upon the day she let herself love another, to accept their love and also love herself, to finally forgive herself for her mother's death, she evolved, as no Kangaskhan does, into a Marowak. And when she and her mate had an egg, and it hatched into a Kangaskhan, She and her little one returned to the Kangaskhan herd, to share her tale, her new tale.
'Look' she said, 'look. My cub is one of you, though I am not. Let all Kangaskhan hear my tale, so that it be known how similar, yet different I am am from you. Let all Kangaskhan cubs know what to do if their mother dies before they are grown, because all cubs will blame themselves if it happens.'
And so she said, so it is. Upon the hatching of our cubs, we tell her tale."
His first memory, the story engraved upon the soul of all Kangaskhan, passed down through all generations, rang through his head. His tears at last had dried, for he had a task, a purpose. He would follow the path of the Cubone, as so many had before. To grieve and wallow, to shun and be shunned, as all Cubone do, to live for his mother. So he used his tiny sharp claws and retrieved his mother's skull, and put it over his head, to keep his grief and emotions inside. And he dug out his mother's right femur, so as to keep others away and himself defended through his grief and recovery.
And he set off, to travel the region in solitude and thought.