Topa looked heavily puzzled, clearly caught off-guard by the question. She remained silent for what felt like several minutes, then turned her head away from me.

"Sorry, Ruby. I am not. I was born a vulpix. The only transformation I underwent was my evolution."

I wasn't sure if I was relieved or sad to hear it. If that was true, then I still didn't understand how and why she seemed to believe my story even though she had absolutely no reason to, which meant I was at a complete loss when it came to understanding her. On the other hand, that would mean that she would indeed be able to help me with behaving like a normal vulpix and teaching me moves and possibly how to fight, which I was looking forward to. If however she turned out to be lying and to be a human like me, there would probably be a lot of things that I would not learn from her, as she herself couldn't possibly know them.

I had a hard time believing her. Her saying that she was born the same day as Melissa, the human she was assigned to, felt a bit too big of a coincidence for me. Could it be that she referred to the day she turned into a vulpix as her "birth"? Why would she lie to me or hide the fact she was human? Did she think I took pride in my transformation, because it was something that never happened to anyone before? Was she, on the contrary, rightfully assuming that turning into a vulpix caused me dismay and was trying to reassure me by saying no one else had gone through that before?

"Is something the matter?" Topa asked, seeing my thoughtful face.

"Why do you believe me?" I abruptly asked after a few seconds of silence.

"When you say you are a human? I just do. I cannot explain it. I suppose you are expecting a logical explanation, or at least a few reasons that make me believe you, but I cannot provide that."

I wasn't satisfied with her cryptic answer. To me, it felt like she didn't want to give me her reasons to believe me (or her lack of reasons not to), but I couldn't understand why. Was she afraid I would use them against her, to fuel my hatred for this body and this transformation?

"Are you alright?" she asked, clearly worried.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I... I don't understand why you believe me. I myself have a hard time believing you. I just... I just feel like you're more intelligent than me and..."

She came up to me and petted me on the head. When she talked, however, she sounded annoyed.

"You cannot keep thinking like this, Ruby. I am not more intelligent than you and you are not more intelligent than me. You cannot think of someone as superior to someone else. It is very obviously hurting you. Who is more intelligent does not matter. What matters is that you have been turned into a vulpix, neither of us know why, and we have to make sure that your life here is as pleasant as possible. I do not know if it is possible for you to turn back into a human, but in the eventuality it is not, it is no use fretting over such insignificant matters and make yourself miserable."

"It's not my fault," I said.

"I know. The way I see, you can either let yourself be miserable or do something against it. It feels to me like you've chosen the first one, but I do hope that with time, you will start feeling better. As much as I wish I could, I cannot make you happy. This effort will have to come from you."

Did I even want to be happy? I was not fine with this body and I wished I could turn back into a human, but would I accept to be happy as a vulpix if that were impossible? Would being happy mean that I accepted the new body? Why did I even refuse to?

I turned my head, looking at Topa, who was looking at me, clearly worried. If she was actually more intelligent than me, would she be able to help me for more than I initially thought? Did I trust her?

"You should sleep," she said, breaking the silence. "You look tired. Hopefully you will feel clearer tomorrow. We will have to continue practising, too, so you should get some sleep. Please rest."

I couldn't disagree with that. Laying on my pillow, I turned around to face a wall, staring at it trying to imagine what I looked like. I was no longer human - was that enough to make me unhappy?

"Will you want to continue practising firebreathing?" Topa asked me after Agnes left for college.

"Do I really have anything else to do?" I asked.

"I have yet to make you visit the gardens," Topa said after a moment of hesitation. "I am waiting for assurance from the pokemon centre that you have recovered. I do not want to risk anything with the grass or the water."

"Water?"

"There is a stream of water that runs near the house. You have heard it, have you not?"

I had to admit that I had never noticed. Was Topa's hearing better than mine? How come I never heard it?

"Yeah," I lied, unsure of how Topa would take the news. "But... I didn't know it was close. I still have a hard time figuring out where things are..."

"Oh. New senses? How are a human's senses?"

I was surprised by the question and took some time to think about it. While I was silent, Topa lead me to the pokemon training room, crouching to pass through the small cat door, while I could pass through it without trouble.

"Well, hearing is a lot worse. A human's ears aren't very sensitive, and they can't move, so it's hard to make out a sound's location. But these..."

I moved my ears around to better feel them. It felt a bit weird to move them, as I heard things differently depending on where my ears were facing. I was aware it was meant to help me locate a sound's origin, but I was unable to do it properly.

"Also," I added, "the range of sounds they can hear is much lower."

"Range of sounds?"

"Frequencies," I corrected.

"What is a frequency?"

"Huh?"

"I do know what a frequency is when it comes to... doing things regularly, but I do not understand how it applies to sounds."

I remained silent a few seconds with a satisfied look on my face that I hoped Topa would not see. As much as I felt that she was more intelligent than me, I had never realized how much more I knew about how the world worked thanks to school. Topa was just a fox and had never learnt about anything like that. There was no way she could understand.

"Well... I can explain?" I proposed. "Basically... Er..."

How should I explain how sound waves worked to someone who had no notions of physics whatsoever? I would have to explain up to the very basics and I wasn't sure I would be able to.

"Sounds are waves," I hazarded.

"Waves? Like when water advances towards a beach?"

"Yes! Except... water doesn't actually move forward. It only moves up and down."

"But... The waves move forward. And then they crash into the beach. And if water only moves up and down, why do waves crash ashore instead of just collapsing where they are?"

"I... I don't know," I admitted. "That's a good question, honestly. But it's besides the point. Hold on, I'll show you."

I lead Topa to where our water bowls were. Her bowl was a lot bigger than mine, probably to accomodate to her larger muzzle, and would do fine for my experiment. I had to find something to put in the water to float.

"Topa where can I find something that floats?"

"I can find some little piece of wood in the gardens, if you want," she proposed. "Please wait, I will be back soon."

She left the room walking fast, visibly excited to hear what I had to say. Did she know what I planned on doing? Was she playing dumb to make me feel better? If she used to be a human, she would know those things, so why was she acting like she didn't?

Waiting for Topa, I regularly poked the water to create circular waves in it. Although I found it amusing, I felt like my stomach was collapsing on itself. I would probably never get to learn more physics or math or any of the things I used to study as a human. Would my current knowledge eventually fade away and disappear as I became more of a vulpix?

"Having fun, Ruby?" I heard a voice say.

I turned around and recognized Rakuen. She was not wearing her maid outfit, but a simple white summer dress with a small light blue vest on top it. She looked gorgeous in it, standing by the door, smiling at me, holding a book in her hand. I remembered Agnes' order to trust the maids, but I wasn't quite sure I wanted to be petted. I wasn't in the mood for it. In spite of that, I knew I would get in trouble if Agnes learnt I was still avoiding Rakuen. Walking slowly, I made my way from the bowls of water to her, unhappy about having to let her touch me against my will.

She stretched her hand towards me for me to sniff. She had a very pleasant smell partially hidden by her perfume. I found that I enjoyed her smell even more than Agnes' even though I couldn't explain why. There was something about her that I really liked. In an effort to get more of her smell and to show her that I did like her, I started licking her hand, then allowed her to pet me. I could see on her face that she was extremely happy, but I felt disappointed at myself. I still remembered the little game I had unwillingly played with her and felt ashamed of it. However, Rakuen seemed to enjoy petting me more than I enjoyed being petted.

"Today is a day off for me," she said. "I don't have much to do here, so I was thinking I could try and read. Maybe I'll play some video games with Melissa when she returns. Until then, why don't you stay with me?"

She walked to the couches, sat on the big one, and invited me to jump on it to lay by her side. I accepted after a moment of hesitation, thinking I could wait for Topa there. Although I wouldn't have admitted it to the ninetales, I did enjoy Rakuen's company and the way she petted me. As she opened her book, I nested next to her, pushing her with my shoulder, my head on her lap. I felt strangely comfortable in that position. I even felt at ease, a lot more than when Agnes had tried comforting me after the houndour's death, and found myself enjoying the shy cuddle with the maid. Although she was mostly focused on her book, she was petting me from time to time, and for the first time since I had turned into a vulpix, I felt like there was someone I could attach to.

Shortly after, Topa came back from the gardens with a small piece of wood in her muzzle. She found me cuddling with the reading maid but didn't comment on it. I jumped from the couch when she came by and waited for her as she requested a few pets on the head.

"Don't overdo it," Rakuen said, thinking Topa and I were going to play. "Ruby's still recovering, so please don't exhaust her."

Topa nodded and we went back to the bowls of water. She put the piece of wood in her bowl.

"Look," I said, poking the water to create waves again. "You can see that the wood only goes up and down. It doesn't move."

"That is surprising," Topa said, staring at my little experiment. "Thank you for showing me this. I like it!"

I wasn't sure what there was to like, but I felt relieved to know that I had just taught Topa something. Even if she proved to be more intelligent than me, I had all my human knowledge that gave me the edge over her.

"See, you can count how many times the piece of wood reaches its highest point, right? Well, the number of times it does per second is the frequency of the wave."

"I think I understand," Topa said. "So this applies to sound too? If it does, what does sound move? The water moves the piece of wood, but..."

She wasn't too sure how to word her question, but I understood it anyway.

"Air," I replied. "Sound waves move air. Inside your ear is a very small hammer, that is moved from sound waves too, and that is how you can hear things."

"I admit I did not understand that part," Topa replied after a moment of hesitation. "How can air be moved?"

"That would be a bit too hard to explain," I said, not wanting to give it a try. "But... When you feel the wind on your body, that's air moving. Sound waves move air like waves move water, except... water moves up and down, and sound moves forward and backwards."

"How come I cannot feel the air moving from sounds, then? I can definitely feel the wind on my fur."

"Because their movement are extremely small and very fast. With wind, air moves massively, but with sound, it doesn't move much. See, waves have... two important parameters, I'll say. Frequency, which I explained earlier, and amplitude, which is basically... How high the piece of wood goes."

"Amplitude," she repeated, as if to try to learn the word. "So... the more amplitude the sound waves have, the more air moves, right?"

"That's correct."

"Does that mean that it can reach a point where I could feel sound waves on my fur?"

That was a good question.

"Probably," I replied, unsure of what I was saying. "But... You'd probably be deaf before that happens. For sounds, amplitude is called volume."

"Oh, I see! The more the air moves, the louder a sound is!"

"Yes!" I said, smiling.

I felt... happy. I had always enjoyed explaining things and teaching others, and I felt like I had just taught Topa something major that she had no idea about. She looked very excited and eager to learn more, and I could only share her enthusiasm.

"That is amazing!" she said, breaking the silence.

"Pardon?"

"Did you learn that in school? That is really amazing. Do humans know more about how the world works? How much do you yourself know? I want to learn more!"

"Well..." I replied, blushing. "Humans have entire jobs dedicated to trying to understand how the world works. As far as I am concerned... I don't know much compared to everything humans have figured out, but I used to study physics, so I would say I know a lot of things you would be curious to learn."

"Can you tell me more? What subjects do you know about?"

"Lots... I suppose. I have a lot of general knowledge, but I don't know many things in depth. I had only started learning about deeper physics before I..."

My throat clenched. Why was it so hard for me to talk about my transformation?

"I want to learn more," Topa repeated. "Please tell me more!"

"Later," I said, unwilling to explain more at the moment. "When we come across something I can explain, I'll try."

We went to the pokemon sports room for me to keep practising breathing fire.

"What about your other senses?" she asked on our way.

"The sense of smell is... different. I can't explain it, really. A human's nose is weak. Really weak."

"Did you get used to your new senses? Can you use them?"

"No," I replied bluntly. "I still have no idea what I'm smelling most of the time. I can hear things alright, but I can't locate them."

"Use your ears to do that," Topa said. "You have to move your ears to locate the sound. It is a bit hard to explain, but if you want, we can practise that."

"I... wouldn't mind," I admitted.

"For now, let us focus on firebreathing. You still need to be able to breathe fire with your muzzle open."

I spent the rest of the day practising firebreathing under Topa's careful eye. She seemed to be pretty satisfied with how I was improving, and before Agnes came back from college, I was finally able to breathe long streams of fire with my muzzle open. Unfortunately, I didn't have much stamina, and my flames still felt rather weak, but Topa said it was fairly normal for my young age, and my flames would gain in power as I improved at fighting and aged up.

When Agnes came back from college, I was waiting for her in the main hall. I wanted to compare her scent to Rakuen's and figure out exactly why I enjoyed Rakuen's more.

"Hello Ruby," she said as I jumped on my hind legs to request to be in her arms.

As she talked, I spent time sniffing at her, but I wasn't listening. As expected, I enjoyed Rakuen's scent more, but in spite of my smelling her with insistance, I didn't understand why.

After petting me gently, then petting Topa, she put me back on the floor and went to her room. I went to the couch where the maid was still sitting. Melissa was sitting next to her and they were playing a video game together. Upon seeing me, Melissa grabbed me and put me on the couch, where I laid cuddling with Rakuen as I did earlier. Melissa petted me from time to time when her game allowed her to, and I stayed there until dinner.

"The gardens?" I hazarded.

"Too vague!" Topa replied.

We were both in Topa's room, sitting on our respective pillow. Topa was making me listen to faint noises and try to guess where they came from.

"How can I give more precise directions if I don't even know what the gardens look like?"

"You have a point. Well then, just precise north, south, east or west!"

"How do I tell where north is?"

Topa stood up, turned around a few times, then raised her head a bit as if she were smelling something far away, and said:

"North is that way."

I had no idea how she did that. It felt like magic to me.

"How do you do that?"

"You can feel it," she said. "The same way you learnt about your inner flame. Trust your senses and let the vulpix part of you tell you."

As much as I disliked her cryptic way of saying it that made me feel like I was in some bad movie, what she said did make sense to me. Unfortunately, in spite of all my efforts, I couldn't even hazard a guess and gave up.

"What about this one?" Topa asked.

Raising my ears, I could hear a faint noise that I identified as a critter walking through the grass. Moving both of my ears in different directions and listening to how it affected the sound, I noticed that the sound felt louder when my left ear was turned to the side of my body. My right ear didn't seem to change the sound much by moving, which meant it probably came from my left. Based on that and on what direction Topa identified as north, I hazarded a guess:

"South?"

"Correct," Topa said. "You should be able to locate the sounds more accurately, but this will have to do. The entrance of the manor and the gates face south. That is the properly maintained part of the garden, too. The northern part is part of the forest that extends far into the mountains, and it has been kept that way with minimal human intervention for pokemon to play in. There are a lot of critters and birds there, but a fence prevents most wild pokemon from getting in. Even without the gate, I doubt they would risk stepping into human territory. Some wild pokemon are scared of humans."

"How come?" I asked.

"It is natural. Were animals not scared of humans in your world too?"

"Well... yeah," I conceded. "But..."

I wasn't sure how to word my question and gave up on asking it.

"You talked about a stream of water," I remembered. "Where is it?"

"Why do you not tell me where it is?" Topa said smiling. "Raise your ears and try to locate the water."

I did but had trouble locating it. I could hear the water alright, but it seemed to spread over a long distance, going from somewhere northeast, which I assumed to be the mountains, to southeast-east, where it gradually fainted until I couldn't hear it anymore. The water stream sounded loudest around northeast, where I assumed to passed close to the house.

"Northeast?"

"That is where it is closest, yes. You are doing good!"

She continued testing me by making me locate different kinds of critters and owls that we could hear. The more I tried, the more accurate I became and the faster I could locate my target by moving my ears more efficiently. Unfortunately, all this required active effort on my end, and ideally, I should be able to do it automatically, but I was yet to reach that level of mastery. My body still felt very new to me, and although I was still learning to use it, I still felt like a stranger in it.

After I could locate critters properly, Topa made me track the movement of several guards and their growlithe, one at a time at first, then several at once. Following several sounds at once proved to be very difficult, but it was definitely doable, and after what felt like hours of effort, I finally was able to do it although still approximately. However, there was a new noise that caught my attention.

"Topa, what's that noise?"

She raised an ear herself, focusing deeply on the noise I was talking about. It sounded like metal moving, as if an animal was hitting the fence. After a few seconds of it, the sound stopped, and the gardens were filled with silence. Shortly after, the growlithe started barking, and I heard guards shouting orders at each others. I could clearly hear rapid footsteps in the back gardens. They were closing in to the house.

"Topa, what's going on?" I asked, shivering.

"Do not worry," she said, walking up to me to cover me with her tails. "You will have to get used to those sounds and wake up to them. Do you remember what I said about thieves? This is one of them. The guards and growlithe will give chase until they catch the burglar."

After a few minutes of what sounded like a chase, the footsteps stopped momentarily, only to resume, still followed by the barks of growlithe and the shouts of guards. The voices surrounded the house, patrolling around it, searching the gardens.

"Topa?" I whispered.

It took me a moment to realize that I felt anxious. My heart was beating faster than it should, and despite Topa's tails cover my body, I felt immensely cold. I was staring at the door, expecting some kind of monster to appear at any moment, then jump at me to swallow me whole.

"Wait here," Topa said, standing up and walking to the door.

Before leaving, she turned to me, extremely serious.

"Hide. No matter what happens, do not come out. Do you hear me?"

I nodded. Topa's suddenly serious attitude had finished terrorizing me. As she was running to leave the door, I hid as I could, trembling in fear. Whatever was happening, I wasn't ready for it.