Nothing out here was familiar to me, but I noticed one thing as we headed for the distant forest. We were headed slightly downhill. I mentioned this to Mother, and she said I was right. We didn't live on a mountain, but we had been close enough to some that we were higher up. She thought that might be why more plants and trees grew down there.

Mother said that in some places enough berries grew that most pokémon didn't have to hunt at all. That was hard to imagine. "Why wouldn't we all live there?" I asked.

"That's where the humans are." Mother glanced over at me. "They sometimes call them Catchers—we don't see much of it up here because we're away from where they live. Humans don't come out to this area without plenty of pokémon already." She looked up for a moment, in thought. "And I suppose if we all went there they wouldn't have enough food anymore, would they?"

"Well, no." But why couldn't we go there? I wondered. Mother had said Father hated living in a forest, but to me it sounded perfect. "Do you ever wish you'd stayed?"

She thought for a moment. "I don't regret my life out here. I've never regretted being with your father. But sometimes it would have been nice to be somewhere where we didn't have to worry about all the other pokémon around." Mother smiled. "So no, I think I'm all right where I am, but I'm glad you get to see the forest for yourself now."

I smiled back. "Me too." Mother seemed more open, more willing to talk out here. Maybe because it was just us.

In the afternoon, we brought down a spearow without much difficulty. Mother stunned it midair with a shock, and I was there waiting for it to hit the ground. Mother said we should leave what we didn't eat. Carrying it would make our trip harder and would mostly serve to draw unwelcome attention. We'd seen a few larger pokémon since setting out, but we gave them space and none of them had bothered us, though a nidorino had looked like it wanted to.

That night, we slept hidden in some grass and brush—it was impossible for me to stay unseen in the open with my glowing rings. Mother told me to sleep first, and I managed to get to sleep before the moon rose. When she woke me in the early morning, I had no trouble staying awake until dawn, though I did start to feel a little more tired when the sun rose. It wasn't something I'd noticed before, since I hadn't woken before sunrise since my evolution, but it wasn't too bad. I'd come to accept it as how I normally felt, but nighttime was something else.

We continued for the next few days with no more danger than a few pokémon who tried to intimidate us out of a catch. We talked a lot more than I could remember doing with either of my parents, and I started to feel like I understood Mother better, and why she'd never felt the need to go back to a safer forest to live. She liked to hunt, and she liked the freedom of covering a wide, open territory.

On the fourth night, something that had been bothering me about my powers fell into place in my mind, but with Mother asleep I had to wait to ask her. The next morning I got my chance. "Mother?"

"Yes?"

"Why do I have glowing rings? It doesn't make any sense. They just make me easier to see in the dark—I don't need the light to see by. I thought, well, being an umbreon would make me a better night hunter."

Mother didn't answer immediately. "I've seen an umbreon darken his," she finally said. "I think you can do it."

"That doesn't answer my other question. Why do I have them in the first place?"

"Isn't that a little like asking 'Why am I me?'" Mother asked. "Maybe they're meant for something other than hunting. You might as well ask why I have a white mane."

"I think it looks nice," I admitted.

Mother smiled. "So do I, but it does something else. Have you ever noticed it's where I use electricity the most?" I shook my head. "It's easier to control in my mane than anywhere else. I don't know why, but it is." She stopped and took a breath. "My point is, most things are the way they are for a reason if you look hard enough. Your rings are part of you, and they're not worthless."

"I didn't say they were." I let my breath out. "I just want to actually know what they're good for."

Mother looked at me. "I don't know the answer to that. I think you'll find out in time. Don't look at me like that," she added, "I'm not supposed to know everything. You need to be patient with yourself."

That didn't help, but I realized Mother really didn't know what to tell me, as much as I wanted answers. I looked at her for a long moment, then swallowed my response. She waited, but when it was clear I wasn't going to say anything else, she nodded in the direction of the forest. "Let's go."

We didn't need to hunt that day; each day's journey toward the forest brought more and more green into the world, and we found a few berry bushes that clearly had enough to spare. By the end of the day, I saw trees.

They were nothing like I'd imagined. We had trees here and there out where I'd grown up, but they grew in thick clumps of tangled branches, almost like they were trying to hide—like us, like a lot of things out there.

These trees didn't try to hide. They grew thick and straight, with space between the roots on the ground and the branches in the air. The ground was filled in with bushes and other leafy plants, but the trees kept going, up and up, making a layer that crowded out the sky so I could only see it in bits and pieces. "I can see why Father didn't like it here," I commented. "It's all so closed in."

"Hmm," Mother said. "That can be true in some places, but I don't feel closed off. You just need your nose and ears as much as your eyes out here. Don't assume that the way is blocked just because you can't see through it, forests are full of trails and clearings."

"That's another thing, the trails. Who makes them all?"

"Different pokémon. I told you, life is different here. There are too many pokémon to try to hold a large territory like we do on the steppes. Don't bother them, and most of them won't bother you either."

"What about hunting?" I asked, suddenly confused.

"Only when you need to." I noticed Mother said you and not we. "And be careful what you hunt, it's a good way to make enemies if you're not careful."

"How am I supposed to know what to do?"

"It'll be all right. We have family here."

It was getting late, but we still hadn't gone far into the forest. "Can we…maybe go back out?" I asked. "I don't know if I'm ready to sleep in a forest." The idea of being surrounded by so many pokémon—I could already hear some of them starting to make noises as the sun went down—was starting to unnerve me. Mother looked around for a moment, head tilted and ears pricked, listening to something beyond me, and didn't answer. "Please?" I added.

Mother kept staring out into the dimming trees for another long moment, then she sighed. "For tonight, yes." She didn't go on, but I knew why tonight. We'd be deep in the trees when the sun set tomorrow.

I nodded, knowing that was all I could ask for. "Thanks."

We left the treeline behind again and found some grass to bed down in. It still didn't feel like home, but I felt safer out here, watching spearow and pidgey flutter back to their nests. As stars appeared in the sky, I saw a noctowl take to the air. They didn't frequent the area I'd grown up in, but I knew they were efficient hunters.

As an eevee, I would have been terrified. Now, though, my night vision was as good as any pokémon around. I could take care of myself. And…Mother was here.

I woke her when I started to get sleepy, with the moon high in the sky, and she kept watch until morning. After that, it was time to finally enter the forest proper.

We quickly left the edges behind, and started traveling the paths treaded through the undergrowth. It didn't feel that different from what I was used to in some places, but many of them were more tunnel than path, and I couldn't help feeling closed in. I heard rustles to the sides and sometimes noticed flashes of movement, but no pokémon actually confronted us.

As we moved further into the forest, I started to realize that not everywhere was like that. Some parts had clear areas around the trees with smaller plants. One or two of these bore charred smells; Mother said that certain pokémon liked to clear out the underbrush around them. So there were fire-breathers around here.

We also came across some natural clearings, where grass replaced the trees and the undergrowth and circles of sky were visible. Oddly, the pokémon seemed less inclined to hide here. I saw pidgey and sentret, and even some quieter species like a slowly wandering shuckle. Mother nodded back and returned greetings when they took notice of us. The tense hunter side of her seemed to be slowly falling away. She didn't relax, exactly, but she didn't pause at corners or movements. I still hadn't relaxed, trying to listen to everything at once as we trotted through the trees.

Of course, I couldn't flare electricity through my body if something decided to pounce. I tried to tell myself that was why she seemed less concerned, but I didn't believe it. We were in a different world now, and it was her world. Not mine. I'd known the forest would be different—I'd even wanted to come here, wondered why Father would have ever left, but now that we were here, all the instincts that had kept me alive on the steppes wouldn't let me relax here.

I mentioned this to her when we stopped to eat—at another bush. "You seem different," I finally said after wondering how to put it for a while.

"I'd forgotten how nice it was out here," Mother replied.

I flicked an ear. "It's strange."

She gave me a sideways look. "What, because we're not hunting?"

"Well, that. But you don't seem concerned about anything else hunting either."

"It doesn't happen much, not to eons. Anything we need to worry about will make enough noise to hear."

"Like?" This was the first time Mother had really talked about what life was normally like in the forest. I'd heard about her family and den.

"Either large pokémon, like ursaring or nidoking, or else Catchers. But none of those are much good at keeping hidden, and we'd have heard if there were any in the area."

"What, the pokémon we met would just tell us?"

Mother's eyes sparkled. "It's a lot more social around here. Fewer predators, so they find it a lot easier to live together. It's easier to find out what's going on, news gets around fast."

"Is there any hunting at all?" I was still trying to get my mind around that.

"A bit. Mostly the birds hunting the bugs. Usually we don't need to; you've seen there's plenty of food around."

"What if there's not?"

"Well, you do what you have to. But we try to avoid the ones that can think."

I nodded. I'd always felt a little odd about that. "I guess that makes sense." I have a lot to get used to, don't I? The answer to that would turn out to be 'more than I knew,' but I was young and still hadn't grasped what lay at the end of our journey. For the moment, it was all I could do to just try to make peace with a life that wasn't ready to pounce the moment I let down my guard. I wanted to be like Mother and enjoy the day, but it was too new, too much.

"You just need time," Mother told me. "Don't try to make everything fit now. You're young and you have time to get used to it all. Just take things one day at a time. We're nearly there."

It took me a moment to understand, but when I did my rings flared. With everything that I'd seen, I'd forgotten we were headed to find more of our kind, and I still wasn't sure what that would be like.