It was not long before she and the shedding-skin woman reached the river. "Ah, ah," said the woman. "So there are forests here. Is yellow their color here?"
"There are trees in many places," she agreed. She gestured to the komala on her arm. "This one, he eats from the most common of trees, and the poison of their leaves burns the flesh beneath his skin black and keeps him asleep (5). He will wake when he's been starved for some time, and only then will he share what he's discovered in his dreams. And then something can be done about the color of the trees."
The river was shallow but there were still some fish to catch. "Back in the beginning," she says, "this was only a tiny stream. (6) A grand hunter of my people traveled down it, searching for his wives, when for the first time appeared a wishiwashi, greater than any you've ever seen. As he fled the spears of the hunter, the thrashing of his tail dug out the stream into a river. Here at this bend is where the hunter threw one spear and he twisted the river in dodging, and then he swam and swam in a frenzy until he reached Sweetwater Sea. There, the hunter sank his spear into the wishiwashi's heart and pulled the body to the shore. He cut out the brain and it became the first bruxish, cut out the testes and they became basculin and set to fighting, cut out the swim bladder and it became wailord, cut out the kidney and it became rivamudii (7), cut off the tail and it became alomomola, cut off the lower fins and they became luvdisc and feebas and magikarp, cut off the upper fin and it became dokuprik (8), cut out the intestines and they became huntail and gorebyss, cut out the eyes and they became lenslet (9), cut out the stomach and it became manaphy, cut out the spleen and it became remoraid. Then the muscle he sliced to pieces and threw them into the water as well and now today wishiwashi are small. They still remember that they were once one creature, though, and keep trying to come together again, but they haven't the rest of themself."
When the lycanroc came in the night, he said, "You break the rules, trying to feed her. Those are not for you to cook. Let me eat her. Then you will be safe from us both."
She gave him the half of the wishiwashi she had saved instead. He snapped it up, crunching the bones. "It is only prohibited if I were seen by a human man, and there's only a lycanroc man and human woman here."
5) Eucalyptus trees contain a variety of toxins, some so flammable they can spontaneously ignite.
6) Based off the story of Ngurunderi.
7) Rivamudii: Barramundi + river + mud. A pokemon based off what's now known as the Queensland lungfish. The fish currently referred to as the barramundi, ironically, does not appear to be one of the fish the word was meant to apply to.
8) Dokuprik: dorsal + kuparu + prick. A pokemon based off the fish known in English as the John Dory, called kuparu by the people who live on what's now known as New Zealand. A flat fish with a pronounced dorsal fin. Doku is additionally poison in Japanese.
9) Lenslet: Eye lens + Agassiz's perchlet/-let suffix, a diminutive. Partly transparent and so sometimes called glass fish, but not as transparent as the glass fish common to the aquarium trade.