Author's Note
Disclaimer: Pokemon belongs to The Pokémon Company.
New chapters every Sunday before 10 PM Eastern. Comments are always appreciated :)
I'd describe the world of this story as Sapphire with one major divergence (what if May ran from Kyogre instead of confronting it?). However, I'll also draw from the anime and the manga. If you're looking for a game novelization, this probably isn't the fic for you. Almost all of the characters are OCs. If something seems unfamiliar, it's probably my invention
There are twists in the road ahead, which a careful reader might see coming. I had a lot of fun planning Souvenir and hope you have as much fun reading it. Thanks for your time!
"Selkie! Help me!"
I'm on the seafloor, twenty feet under, and the words are muffled, indistinct. Most people wouldn't have heard anything, but my senses are sharper in the water.
What have you gotten yourself into this time, Lena?
I kick to the surface. The world above grows brighter and brighter until I emerge, gasping, in the noonday sun.
"Help!"
I look around and see Lena perched on the buoy, cradling her spear. A sharpedo's fin juts above the water, tracing lazy circles.
Shit.
Sharpedo are rare here. They tend to stick to their territory near the underwater caves on the other side of the island. This one must have been lured by the box holding our catch, hooked to the buoy, bobbing up and down.
Even though sharpedo can bite through iron, their teeth glance off the box's psychic-forged alloy. It looks like Lena locked the box in time, so there's no getting at the fish inside. The buoy is made of the same impervious metal.
Human girls, unfortunately, aren't.
The sharpedo jets forward. At the last second it swerves, sending up a plume of water and rocking the buoy. Lena shrieks.
It's playing with its food. As long as no one provokes it, I still have time.
I inhale deeply, trying to calm myself. The water is strangely empty today. A wailmer is sunning itself in the shallows, its pod nowhere to be seen. Friendly, likely to help, but no use in a fight. Almost nothing in the sea can go fin-to-fin with a fully grown sharpedo. On the other hand…
I draw an auric coin from my pouch and toss it at the wailmer. The coin bounces off its blubbery hide, but I got its attention. I throw another auric. It sucks it through its baleen, then drifts over.
The safest option is to contact the shrine medicham and have them levitate us to shore. Normally they'd be able to sense if any of us were in trouble, but they're currently occupied with the. pre-festival rituals. That means I have to alert them.
I'm not a natural psychic, so I have to enter the emphatic meditative state to send telepathic messages. After years of practice, it takes me less than two minutes to do so. But I'm completely vulnerable during the trance.
The wailmer reaches me. Its beady eyes are inquisitive.
"I'm going to be out of commission for a few minutes. Can you wait here?"
It nods. I climb on its back and close my eyes, start breathing deeply, imagining my body falling away piece by piece.
"Hold on Lena, I gotcha."
A confident voice snaps me back to reality. I look up and groan. So much for the safest option.
Eileen was supposed to be cooking, but she must have come running as soon as she heard Lena scream. Her spear has been repurposed as a shish-kebob of roasted magikarp. A flock of wingull is pursuing her.
"That way, birdies!"
She flings the spear and the flock arcs to chase it, the birds squawking and jostling for position. They don't care about aurics, but they'll do anything for food. Much like Eileen actually.
Though the spear-kabob isn't very aerodynamic, Eileen's aim is perfect. The projectile bonks the sharpedo on the head and, moments after, the flock swarms in, tearing strips of meat from the sinking fish.
The sharpedo is also hungry, though, and isn't particular about what it eats. After one wingull goes down its gullet and another loses a wing, the rest snatch what they can and scatter.
Lena looks down at the sharpedo and inches to the other side of the buoy. Her legs are shaking. The sharpedo glares back.
"Don't even think about eating my friend," Eileen shouts. She winds up and flings an auric coin at the sharpedo. It lodges in the fish's eye, provoking a roar of pain.
"See, we're shrine girls! You're not allowed to eat us."
This isn't actually true. The sharpedo seems pretty interested in disproving her claim. It nudges the buoy experimentally, then rams it, hard. Lena barely holds on.
Suddenly, the wailmer carrying me tips and I fall unceremoniously into the water. Coughing and sputtering, I look up.
The girl who displaced me has strawberry blonde hair, which falls in cinematic waves. She lifts her spear and stabs the wailmer in the blowhole. It squeals, then inflates. Then, it spouts a torrent of water—thirty, forty feet high. Somehow, instead of being knocked back or torn apart by the immense pressure, the girl balances on the fountain's crest.
(If you were close enough, though, you'd see that the water shimmered under her feet, unnaturally smooth and still.)
She stands there for only a fraction of a second, composing herself, before diving: fluid, graceful, her weapon like an extension of her body. Before the sharpedo can react, it's bleeding out, speared through the gills. It wriggles away, slipping quickly into the water. They're hardy creatures, but the wound is probably fatal.
The girl surfaces again.
"Fiona!" Lena gasps.
"Almost had it. Get to shore," Fiona says. "They smell blood from two miles away. Probably a rogue, but best to be safe. When I can, I'll telepath a medicham to get our catch box."
She swims out a little, then looks back. Lena hasn't moved.
"What? If you're too tired to swim, I can drag you back. But I think I've carried the group enough for the day."
Lena nods, then dives into the water.
Fiona then turns to me.
"Same goes for you. Also, kill that wailmer. "
The wailmer looks at me indignantly.
"Obviously, I'm not going to listen to her," I raise my voice so Fiona hears. "You helped us and plus we're allied with you guys."
No response.
I start swimming. I'm only halfway to the beach, though, when a flash of silver catches my eye. A harpoon's blade. The wailmer keels over in the water, thrashing, darkening the water. Fiona starts to reel it in.
Eventually, I haul myself onto the beach. Though I'm a quicker swimmer than most, I'm much worse than the other acolytes.
Eileen is busy gutting the wailmer. She looks at me apologetically and I avert my gaze.
"What the hell, Fiona?"
"How are you feeling about your social studies exam?" She smirks. "We're allied with the western tribe of wailmer. They use a different type of Water Spout and are a deeper shade of blue. This one is free food."
The jab about the exam hits its mark.
"I summoned it though."
I try to sound authoritative, composed, but my voice comes out wrong.
"Oh really? Sorry, I didn't realize you were trying to help. Thought you were taking a nap."
I catch the barb in her voice, the glint in her dark eyes, and think of sharpedo.
We troop into the fishing hut—Fiona in front, imperious, poised, and me behind, glowering. I hear iron scraping against stone. Siobhan is already there, sitting in the corner, whetting her fishing spear. She's the best diver of us, short and slim-hipped, so she was fishing the deeper waters with the full-fledged priestesses.
Lena is there too, sitting by the fire. She's shivering even though the water was warm. I hug her from behind and she leans into me.
"What's wrong?" she asks.
"Just Fiona. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. Just a little rattled. Remember the last time we saw a sharpedo?"
We were eight, only a year into our acolyte training. I saw what looked like a jagged rock far out in the ocean. But it wasn't a rock—it was a fin.
I recognized the serrated shape from the blackboard in the natural history classroom. If you see this fin, the teacher said, never, ever, ever approach it. It's attached to a fish that was pretty much just a mouth full of fangs.
Eight-year-old me thought that would be an awesome pet.
The apathetic teenage acolyte nominally supervising our diving had disappeared somewhere. She did this every practice, showing up at the end with new red bruises on her neck. We assumed that this was from some secret training that the older girls did.
Anyway. Once the other girls realized where I was going, they sprung into action. Fiona recruited a seadra to rescue me. Siobhan threw aurics at a wingull until it agreed to help out of irritation. Eileen summoned a geodude somehow but it wasn't very useful.
Auric coins were a shiny new toy at that point, and we were all very excited about using them.
But Lena swam.
I was treading water, diligently trying to catch the sharpedo's attention. Fortunately for me, the sharpedo was more interested in hunting a magikarp. When Lena called out to me, though, it was like I woke from a dream. I was suddenly aware how much danger we were in.
I'm not sure what happened next. Maybe, one of the shrine medicham realized what was happening and yanked us back; probably, we rode the seadra back to shore. My memory ends with me taking Lena's hand, clinging to her in the deep, cold water.
"Lena," I start but whatever I was about to say next isn't necessary. I just hold her tighter.
"This time, you saved me," she whispers.
Except I didn't. It was all Fiona. The rest of us just got in the way.
And I'm back to earth, the hut stinking of salt and fish and the fire that's never warm enough and the friend who I can't do anything for.
Siobhan snorts.
"Cuddling is all well and good, but where's lunch?"
"Threw it into the ocean," Eileen says. She walks in, bloody from her butchery.
Siobhan just sighs, shakes her head, and returns to her sharpening.
Siobhan is the daughter of the blacksmith, who disowned her after her mother died. Said a girl was like a cast iron anvil. Worse than useless, a liability in the forge.
Now she makes most of the shrine's weapons. Her father works odd jobs on the rare occasions he's sober. Alcoholism is a liability in the forge.
"I finished flossing the wailmer," Eileen says. "Do you think the sea god likes blubber?"
"Flensing," Fiona says. "And do you like eating blubber?"
"Nah. That's why I say we toss it down the offering pool."
"No, here's what we do. We keep the fin meat, offer a cut of the rest, then send whatever's left over to the kitchen for the feast. Blubber is for oil. "
Though Fiona's the best theology student in a decade, she's never been very pious. She didn't know that I summoned the wailmer, so it's not a breach of divine law that she killed it. Still, it's unlucky, especially on a holy day.
It's always best to offer the choicest meat to the sea god. Twice so now. The fin is the only good cut of wailmer—the rest is bland and overly chewy.
"I'll be the delivery girl," Lena says. I thought she was asleep, but she must have been listening the whole time. She rises and stretches, getting ready to leave.
"Lena—" I say, but Fiona glances at me. The threat is clear. We're hungry and exhausted from fishing well into the afternoon. Even more, we've just finished a grueling season of studying and training. A good meal would do a lot for morale.
This fight isn't worth it.
Hope you're not picky, sea god. Hope you're not petty either.
"What is it, Selkie?"
"Never mind."
The smell of the roasting wailmer is hard to resist. The fat browns and drips, sending hissing splashes of smoke up from the fire, and the skin crackles.
"You gonna eat that?"
Eileen jerks her thumb towards the piece of fin skewered on my spear.
"I don't know, it feels wrong."
She grins. "Well I'm always happy to help a friend out of a moral bind."
Her stomach growls to punctuate her remark. She reaches into the fire and snatches the fin.
"Ow ow ow goddamn that's hot!" She drops it on the ground, wringing her burnt hand. After a few seconds, though, she gingerly picks it up again, brushes off the sand, takes a bite
"Mmmpgh," she says. Tears well up in her eyes from the heat, but she continues chewing.
"Please," Siobhan says. "You're making more of a fool of yourself than usual."
"Eileen, wait." Fiona says. She turns to me. "The wailmer's just meat now. If you never ate meat, you'd have washed out of training years ago. Finish your lunch."
She pulls her spear out of the fire and inspects the roast fin.
"Siobhan, can you pass the salt?"
I'm starving, but also starting to get pissed off.
"It's only meat because you killed it, Fiona. It wanted to help us and you stabbed it in the back. If I murdered and cooked Siobhan, would you eat her?"
Lena walks in. She's been out for a while now, longer than her errands should have taken. She looks disheveled and the red ribbon she tied her hair back with is gone. A boy? If she wants to, she'll tell me later.
"What are you all talking about?" She bites her lip.
"Eating people," Siobhan says.
"I don't know," Eileen says. While we were arguing, she managed to finish my piece of fin. "I don't want you to hurt Siobhan, but I bet she'd taste good. In fact—"
She pounces on Siobhan.
"You're so cute I could eat you up right—oh, ow, frick, what's that?"
Siobhan sighs.
"Spear. You're lucky you didn't land on the sharp end."
As Eileen rolls up her wetsuit to inspect the bruise, Fiona turns back to me.
"Why are you so hung up on this anyway?" she asks. "It's not like you."
I take a deep breath. She's right. I'm angrier than I should be. I could tack it up to the fact I summoned the wailmer, but the issue is deeper than that.
"I guess it's just the sharpedo attack. Sharpedo are smart, right? We trade with them for heart scales and corsola branches. But they go out of their way to torture their prey."
"Yeah they're vicious little bastards," Eileen says. "Can't blame 'em for their nature though."
"That's my point, though. Why do the sharpedo get off on suffering? Why do we have to add to that suffering? I don't understand why the sea god would make intelligent creatures like that.
"Really?" The firelight glints off Fiona's sharp smile. "To me, it seems perfectly consistent with the god who purged the world with water a century ago. We can't hope to ever understand Them. We listen and we fear and—who knows—maybe our suffering is the best offering we can give."
"Don't say that!" Lena admonishes.
"This is an awful lunch conversation," Siobhan says.
"No, I'm rather enjoying it." Fiona blanches at the voice. Our theology teacher is leaning against the entrance to the hut. She's playing with her hair, which is a deep green. I don't know how long she's been eavesdropping.
"That's an interesting take you have, Fiona. Where's the girl who waxed poetic on the sea god's benevolence in her final essay?"
"Lady Kathleen! I'm so sorry. Please forgive me if I've suggested anything heretical in my ignorance."
Kathleen laughs. "Wow, we've really trained you well. I'm just messing with you. Also, don't bother with the 'Lady'. You're going to be priestesses too in a few days."
She ruffles Fiona's hair. Fiona grits her teeth, but tolerates it.
Then Kathleen's expression turns distant, and she adopts the familiar, dry tone of the lecturer.
"Fiona wasn't all wrong though. As the scriptures say, the sea god is wise beyond comprehension. There are pokemon who see colors we don't. In the same way, the sea god grasps the whole of the moral law, while we cling to broken fragments. What seems unjust from our perspective is perfected in the sea god's totality of vision."
I open my mouth to respond, but I see Kathleen trying hard not to crack a smile. Right, she's baiting me. She'd be happy spending the rest of the afternoon debating. Night, too, festival be damned.
"Are those papers what I think they are?" I ask instead, pointing to the sheaf in her hand.
"Selkie, you're no fun." She pouts. "Yes, these are your exams. We're announcing the highest scorer on the second day of the festival, of course, but I figured you should get to review our feedback, learn a little. Don't worry though—you all did fine."
In the first few years of acolyte training, the physical challenges and practicals matter much more than the exams. Children without the gifts of the sea god rarely make it through this stage.
Those who do, though, like Kathleen, compete on equal footing in the last few years. Our performance on the written finals alone determines how prestigious a position we're assigned in the shrine.
Kathleen starts handing back our exams. Eileen glances at hers, then crumples it up and throws it in the fire. Siobhan's face is unreadable as she scans the pages. Lena receives hers, but she's busy watching me.
Fiona doesn't even look at her exam, just places it beside her. The only indication she notices I'm paying attention is a slight upturn of the right side of her mouth.
She knew how fiercely I was gunning for her these past two years, the hours I spent in the shrine library by candlelight. None of it made her study any harder. I don't care about the difference in career prospects or who gets to undergo Flowering tomorrow. I just want to see her knocked down a peg, made temporarily mortal.
When I get my exam back, through silent agreement, Fiona and I lift our papers like duelists preparing to inflict fatal blows.