The Word for Wilderness is Wild

"Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known."

― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

― Friedrich Nietzsche

The simple fact, which becomes increasingly sad as I realize how pointless it all is, is that I never wanted to be captured to begin with. It was a harsh life in the wild, but nothing mattered to me like it does now. There are so many things that I will have to relearn now I am alone in this wilderness again.

There was none of this thought… awareness, really, within me. I was, but I did not see that I was. Now I am and I think of it. In those days it was instinct, nothing more, now I am overcome by layers of morals and ethics, obstructing and limiting my actions. In those days my motivators were so basic, hunger, thirst, and now they have become so complex that I cannot even keep track of them. I do not know what I want. I stare at the sky, empty. Sentience has left me hollow.

It was when I was caught that I began. But now I have begun I know not how to end.

Even my emotions were cardboard cut-outs when I lived in the herd. They were contagious; any ripple of fear in one member meant a stampede. Similarly, excitement turned to a mania which also lead to rampaging hooves destroying the countryside. We were irrational and thoughtless.

I was just a part of something then, a hoof of the greater herd. I belonged, in a sense, although it is so strange to think of now because at the time I had not the capability to feel belonging or exclusion. How can I describe what it is like? It still seems alien, like I am watching someone else doing something. And even then the image is incomplete, colourless. It is so hard to think back.

I was stamping and rearing, as I so often did. Something had come which had made the herd nervous, but not scared enough to scatter. At that point I was at the edge, but due to my thirst I decided to stray from the group to drink some water. I was thirsty so I drank water. That was all there was to it: every demand could be met so easily. Oh, how I crave for my previous binary life, although I could not live with myself if I returned.

The younger tauros were pushed to the centre of the group. I picked up on this change in mood; we were all connected somehow back then. I described myself as a part of a whole, for we were like that. We thought like that. But I was thirsty, and the pool only seemed a few meters away. It would not, could not, be that dangerous. The herd were there.

I had my head down and was drinking when I was pulled under for the first time. Not under the water, oh no, but being in a pokéball feels like being swallowed by a wave. At first it is nauseating, spinning you around and around and you just can't breathe no matter how hard you try. Then suddenly it's all calm and you know you're safe from the waves, in the quiet under the water, but there is a sense of unease because you know that this safety is false and will be pulled out from under you. You're wired, on edge, with the terror of feeling that split-second change of state again.

It was such a shock for me. I had seen no trainer, and did not have the cognitive powers to understand what had happened to me. For the first time I was alone; normally the herd were around me, a natural defense from predators, but they were gone. The absence was terrifying.

This scared me at first, and then it stopped to. I do not know, I never did know, how long I remained in that grey limbo. It was timeless. Vaguely unpleasant and constantly verging on the boring. In those days I could not think to fill the time, but later thoughts had little relevance there anyway. It was a place so detached from the concrete world that nothing could survive the transition but my physical form. Pain and thirst faded into insignificance there.

All I could do was remain.

Maybe it was months, maybe mere moments, but the next thing I recall is being thrown into harsh sunlight. The terror of being alone again washed over me, causing me to cower. My location was entirely unfamiliar, only adding to the rising panic. I snorted in alarm, my instinct being to run, but not having any herd to tell me which direction to run in. For the first time in my life I felt confusion and was faced with a problem that could not easily be solved.

I had been wild, and that had been taken from me. I had been free, and that had been taken from me. I had been captured, and the realization that those things had been taken from me was soon to be given to me.

The light was disorienting, I lowered my horns to try and hit at whatever had displaced me from my herd. If I had been capable of thought on the level I am now I would have tried to run back to my herd, but I was scared. Instinct froze me to the spot. In the end it was my same damning thirst which caused me to move, first tentatively, towards a trough of some sort. I drank.

It was then that I saw another pokémon there. I had never seen anything so beautiful before, it was like me but elongated and pale. Its mane and tail were wavering, ever-changing, blossoming red. I did not make the connection with the prairie fires we had occasionally suffered. It was new, magical. Rapidash never seemed real to me until I began to develop.

He told me later that we were said to be untameable. Other pokémon lived with awareness in the wild, some even to the extent where they had structures which they lived in within groups, like humans. But tauros were mindless. We stampeded and grew fat, the predators only bothering to pick off the weak and sick. They did us a favour, purged the herd, we had no real competition. No need to look for ways to survive in our minds.

I have often been happy that I had the chance to train with him. Rapidash taught me how to think, and if I had gone into battle without months of his guidance I would have become like the only other tauros I had the misfortune of encountering whilst training. But that comes later. Memory is so subjective that I find it impossible to list events in chronological order, so I shall list them as they come to me. The picture that builds up may not be complete, but it will be mine.

I spent so long with Rapidash, and yet I still do not know how he managed to build me up from nothing, base instincts and occasional fury, into a being. He says it was me. I cannot be sure whether I agree or not.

It began with him offering me food. I was fascinated by him… he was just so different. In the savannah everything had been the same. Pokémon, vegetation, rocks, sky. And there I was: somewhere I could not have been able to comprehend with this blazing pokémon. I looked at him often and, slowly, he taught me. I broke out of a voiceless certainty into an uncertain misery.

The teaching process was difficult for us both. First learning language, ours and the human tongue, was filled with trial and error. Mostly Rapidash talked to me, ceaselessly, and although sometimes I felt as though my head would explode meaning began to take shape. He called this extraordinary. Eventually, I could talk back. By the time two years had gone past he had told me everything I could ever need to know to be trained, all from within a dingy fenced courtyard.

I learned initially to fear, later to respect, and final to trust those who brought our food and sometimes looked at us. I learned that I had been brought here because I had been a gift to the young male human who came to see us. Rapidash was here because he had travelled with the elderly female once, but now had retired.

The more I learned the more discontent I grew. My monochrome world had expanded into shades of grey that brought me only misery. I belonged to someone. This idea seemed inherently wrong, because although he described it as a partnership I knew it could not be. A partnership implied both sides had equal power. I wanted to live freely again but I was scared of leaving without Rapidash and he would not go.

I do not know what to think of him. He helped me to understand how hopeless everything was, which in hindsight seems extremely cruel.

Then, one day, all out-routes ceased to be. Money changed hands somewhere, it always did in that kind of interaction, and I found myself jerked out of that field by an unfamiliar young female human and back into familiar limbo.

How can I describe what followed? She made me fight, I fought.

If only it was that simple.

Memory is fickle and there is far too much pointless detail about my time with her. It is painful and an order is meaningless. I will start with the middle. I did not hate her at this point, although I still resented her. Insidiously, without my knowledge, loyalty had begun to creep through me. Affection had not begun yet.

I was thrown back above the surface of the water with the thud of the pokéball hitting the ground. I dutifully shook my head half-heartedly, to intimidate my foe, but froze when I saw what they were. Beige, horned, tauros. They were me. Not how I was then or am now, but before Rapidash, before everything. They were the blind fury and instinct, only this one also held obedience. It was odd how powerful a trainer's authority is. When I disagreed with the female who commanded me her commands felt like bricks pelting me.

My movements were sluggish and reluctant, but not rebellious. I feared this reminder of what I had been, what I could become, but also as I began to understand the loss in its eyes my resolve faded. It was lonely, there was no herd and it did not understand why. It was happy to see me, and could not understand why it kept attacking me when I seemed to be a friend. Its eyes were as apologetic as the eyes of something that purely wild could be.

It was entirely constrained by its trainer's commands, but was barely even aware of this. Its life was perpetual confusion, punctuated only by occasional cruel bursts of pain in battle. I was familiar and it wanted to run with me, stampede as it once had, but it could not. This confused it even further, and it tried to disobey its trainer which only caused its movements to become more erratic and for it to yelp in pain. There was nothing I could do but knock it out on a command.

Then, within me, my own loneliness became crushing. The feeling of being part of something I had not felt since the herd suddenly seemed essential. But before I could ruminate I was crushed by the wave again.

There was nothing but her and hardly even her to begin with. At first we just battled as a team, her belting out commands and I following, but before long she started to take me out of my pokéball. We had long evenings together by a fire that made me miss Rapidash, and then I began to walk with her between towns. I took it in turns with her other pokémon but I never really talked to them. I was always surprised by what they were in double battles.

To begin with I was sullen and taciturn, to no avail. I tried to hate her, for taking away my true/false natural life and enslaving me, but she was so kind. I started to grow fond of her, then later dependant on her. I began to look for her for guidance, using her as an unnatural crutch. She became my brain. She almost made me feral again.

Sometimes I wonder if that tauros really was straight from the wild. Maybe they had a middleman like me. Maybe they were taught to think, and then had that taken away from them. Because that's what training does.

Even now, it's the uncertainty that gets to me. I hate not knowing what would have been better even though the knowledge would be useless. I want to regret and resent, but would I have minded if I had become unthinking, just a vessel for her commands? Was it ever a good thing to be sentient? And the worst part is that these questions do not matter. There is no need to answer them and yet they burn me.

I began to lose more frequently. It was so gradual I didn't notice the change until I was losing half of the battles I fought, not that it mattered what I saw, anyway. There was nothing I could do.

In the end the cruel truth is that some pokémon are better than others. Some are intelligent naturally, like the accursed alakazam, and some are better at battling than others. We tauros are neither. We find our strength in herds and survive only with numbers and strong flight instincts. It never crossed my mind that I would eventually become too weak to be of use, maybe I just didn't want to think of it. I do not know whether it was better to not know what was coming or not.

Eventually I reached a stage where no combination of moves and tactics could bring me to an easy win. I was brought out outside of battle less. I battled less. The timeless limbo stretched ahead of me.

There came a point where she decided I had to be replaced. I hate myself for understanding that she had to get rid of me; I was dragging down the team. To top it all off I was a normal type, not super effective against anything, and her team had a weakness to poison and fighting which I did nothing to help. There was an obvious type slot in the team which I filled incorrectly. One type missing to make it all perfect.

I still think it was cruel and wrong, or I tell myself I think that anyway. I can't bring myself to hate her. She captured me and brainwashed me into liking her. Stockholm Syndrome. I still can't bring back the old resentment. What she did was a crime, but I still just can't… I can't…

It was inevitable. I must be clinical about this recollection. It was inevitable. She found an alakazam in some grass. That was odd enough, to begin with, because they were not found in the wild. She knew this, and since trained pokémon are normally stronger decided to try and capture it. Released pokémon are anyone's game.

The pokéball rocked once.

Twice.

Thrice.

I was walking besides her at the time, looking at her with betrayal but no hatred. I was pathetic. I am pathetic. Then she released the alakazam, leaving me out.

Maybe he thought he was doing me a favour.

He showed her, like Rapidash had shown me, everything she could not see before. He showed her mentally, broadcasting to me also, with practiced ease. It was clear that he was talented, even amongst his own kind, to be able to display such prowess to a human. Suddenly my trainer felt the sickening lurch in and out of pokéballs and the nothingness within. She felt the pain of battles and the force of refused commands. And he showed her my early resentment and later warming to her, in a forced chronological procession which I am incapable of recreating here.

He made her see what she had done and was doing. He made her see it was wrong. Not in perspective but in crushing cold fact.

I told myself it didn't matter, she was going to release me anyway, but it still hurt when she did. I wished the alakazam had shown her this feeling, of crushing rejection, of your sole God discarding you like broken, useless glassware. But he did not. She released me, and the others, and alakazam. She apologized to us tearfully, and that just made it worse. Some of the others were uncomprehending and followed her, pointlessly, others fled. I just stood there for a few hours to try and come to terms with it. When I could not I moved on.

I thought deeply for hours and hours before deciding where I could go. When I had chosen I travelled so very far to reach there, and there was no need in the end. Rapidash was gone, and a small miltank in his place. The action of him being replaced was clinical and flawless. It was as though he had never existed to the young male, and the elderly female had showed neither much regard. It chilled me how she, too, could discard her partner from her training days. Oh, I could definitely hate her.

Rapidash taught me that humans are kind. He taught me that they have a special partnership with pokémon which allows both to expand into a greater being. At the time I thought this sounded like the herd, and in a way he was right. To be a part of the herd, to be trained, means discarding yourself so you can become something bigger. Only in training the human does not have to discard anything. That is why it is unfair.

So here I am with a disused internal compass as my only guide. I hope it will guide me back to where it all began. I have been told that life is cyclic, so perhaps I will find solace here. The journey has been long, but I feel that I am almost there.

It hurts, to see these plains through my awareness. They are so dull in comparison to what I saw on the journey. Unremarkable. And they change no feeling within me. Maybe I need to find the others. Yes, I will walk until I find the herd.

The grass is smooth and I stop to graze. There is a pool here, I stop to drink. It is odd how washed-up and tired I have become. Maybe this will make it all change, or maybe it will all just become another unanswerable question. When I look away from my own lonely eyes I see the herd in this distance. My tired legs can manage one run.

Before I know it I am among them. Their eyes are glassy, stupid. Animals, I think, before I can stop myself, and suddenly something startles them and they begin to run. I try to join the stampede as I once would have, but something within me has broken. My footfalls are out of sync and all I can think about is how pointless this running is. I am not old and yet I ache, all over, constantly, and this place does not help. There is no comfort here.

I think about my mindlessness in the herd. I think about my awakening. I think about my slow decent back into emptiness through training. I think about my reawakening. I think about being wild, what I longed for all those years ago. All I can do is think for myself, humans' words and instincts have gone now.

I stop and let them crash into me, crush me, laughing absurdly. There is no solace for me anywhere, for I am an anomaly. I will not relearn to be wild. I will not live in this wilderness, not even to overcome my loneliness, not if it means forgetting again. There is no place for me here.

Sadly my laughter scares them. They run around me, past me, something I did not think them capable of doing. It is odd that they are capable such action when overcome by blind terror. Blindness is all there is to it, really. I can see and therefore I suffer. There is no opening for me.

I sink to the ground, I lament.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This was written in a solid stream from midnight to 3 AM. I drew inspiration from Starlingnight's Almost Like Flying, but I think it's still very different. I wanted to explore characterization, memory, and sense of identity. I'm still having difficulty making characters believable, so this was an exercise of sorts. I hope I have given them an actual personality, not just made them generally confused. I really don't like the way I did the background characters (I would have liked to develop them more) but generally when rewriting or even proof-reading excessively I just find myself hating what I've written and deleting it all. That's why the development of Rapidash, the trainer, and the alakazam is basically nonexistent.