Unbeknownst to most of the Territory, there lived a growlithe named Doggy. No one asked for him let alone gave birth to him. He came from Outside, also referred to as a miraculous birth since no child survives away from the Territory. During quiet times, not a single creature in Pathen, city of adventurers, spared a thought for the growlithe or knew he existed. Nor in the East Territory, the rich fortunate, nor the rest of the Territory, the unfortunate, beginning to growl with more than their stomachs. As a foreboding revolt brewed in the belly of the last pokémon, he miraculously escaped any kind of special attention.
Doggy only knew three pokémon to live at or visit his cabin. Grace, his caretaker, a gardevoir gentle enough to bear with all his spirit. Daté, the grovyle who slid in during the night and communicated in firm nods that roused Doggy, but to what purpose, he didn't know.
And the third, now, was a quilava drowning in the pond by the cabin.
Doggy had bounded off the dirt path, choosing to waylay chores for more playtime. To the pond, where the sodden bark of sycamores were ripe for scratching.
First came the splashes, followed by the narrow muzzle of a pokémon bobbing in the water like a reed. Rainclouds still loomed over the pond, and Doggy couldn't tell if the quilava was caught by lakeweed or unable to swim, the water was so murky. At first the muzzle seemed like another reed in the lake. Its beige fur stood out once it opened to cry for help.
"Hey! Hold on," Doggy called, broken from his stupor by the cry. "Grace. Grace!"
Then he stood, frozen. Water wasn't his place, either. A single, wild eye peeked at him from under the water. It closed, and the quilava opened his mouth wide as he sank. Things fell into motion. Doggy threw himself toward the water, wading through until his legs slipped off of the mud.
It was as if touching the water forbade him from breathing ever again. Even above the surface, the iciness closed his chest against air. The idea of going diving—Doggy thought of sinking and started to retreat.
He spun around. It had to be awful for the quilava, too. He drove his head under the water. It was like a chunk of hard snow to the head. An instant later the growlithe kicked up, screaming Grace's name, swimming for a log in the water.
Doggy took a breath and dove. Going under the water made the murkiness too deep, and he imagined he was at the wrong place, that the quilava was somewhere to the left or right, and they would both drown. But by this point, almost giving up twice had strengthened his resolve.
A shape appeared in the murkiness. Too panicked to care for the semantics, Doggy lunged and bit into the quilava's thigh. The way the thigh tensed told Doggy to kick hard and save the creature.
Steady ground laid far away. Blood and water frothed in the growlithe's jaw. The numbness lied to him: it sapped his strength faster than it let on, and soon he couldn't prevent himself from drifting deeper. Doggy refused to let go, even as the world began to rumble, and his chest started to eat itself alive in want of air.
Suddenly, a tremendous force prevented his foot from kicking. Terrified, Doggy drove his paw into it, causing him to lurch backwards. It was the ground.
Step by step, it was the longest haul of the pup's life. But in the end, the two children reached land.
"Grace." Doggy coughed out a swallow's worth of water. "Grace, help."
The quilava wasn't responding. His chest didn't rise and fall with air. After swallowing so much water, it would be a wonder if any air-breather survived. Somewhere Doggy knew this, yet he pushed it so far back it was less than a whisper.
Footfalls approached—Doggy tried to call out, but the water hadn't been merciful on him. Another voice cried: the quilava, choking on the water. The growlithe pushed him over onto his side then fell, defeated.
Daté, not Grace, appeared from the thicket. He forgot to nod to Doggy as he rushed to their aid.
"When a child swallows water," Daté said, "it is a matter of luck whether their mind remains intact. Unconsciousness for this long alone confers a great risk."
The grovyle paced around Doggy's bed. The hay was now soaked and would need a replacement before the day was through. On it laid a bundle of mottled fur, out from it came the rasping breaths of a quilava who badly needed air and was for too long declined.
"If I didn't turn around so much," Doggy said from under his blanket. "If only."
Daté nodded to him. "Some understand fear as gospel. They say it is their instincts, the presumptive force. You are wise to fight against it."
The growlithe turned his head aside, eyes squinting at the bed.
"What is wrong?" Daté asked.
"This is the first time we've talked. I see you so a lot, helping Grace with chores and giving her deliveries of food. And there was the time..."
The time with the shinx named Grain. A bully of a creature who put boundaries on the schoolyard and as if by taking grasp of a previous life, ran it better than the hardest thug. She weighed more, got fat on something out there in a village where food had to be rationed by trained guards to prevent inequity. When she pinned Doggy it felt similar to submerging in the pond—except Arceus gave Grain the gift of thunder early, so she got to "see him flail," as bolts of energy forced his body to spasm. It became a one-sided battle: soon enough Grain only bullied him, the lone student who disappeared into the forest rather than playing wrestle after school. The child who, if a son or daughter asked about him, the parent forbade them to ask again with a curt growl. Rather than confront her, Doggy begged to stay home and play—or even help Grace take on whatever business she did.
Then Grain came up to him one day. She sobbed for a full minute, and then pined about his "protection:" A green shade had seeped into her bedroom and put a stalk of leafy blades against her neck, the intent obvious. She called him cursed and claimed she understood why grownups shooed away all her questions about him.
Doggy smiled at the grovyle. "You're so cool."
If the complement flustered Daté, he didn't show it. "Grace says you use that often," he said. "So cool."
Doggy's tail, still soaked, whipped against the floor. "Yup!"
"In this forest, I suppose you find one cool thing. Then another, or even two more. And you go to sleep, wake up, and go again to find more things which warrant your approval."
Doggy pressed his large tongue against his canines, as was his habit when confused. "I'm not following."
"How long can you find cool things in this forest?" Daté leaned down, pressing a hand onto the quilava's head. The creature shuddered and curled into a ball. "Maybe now is the wrong time to bring this up. I'm sure you will glean a year or two of excitement from this newcomer. Eventually, however, you shall become jaded. Letting things come to you is hardly adventurous. Trust me."
At first, talking with his idol was fantastic, yet now Doggy wished the grovyle was less wordy. There was so much truth in the words, and so little of the forest left for his four paws to discover. He hung his head, burying his nose in his fluffy chest—or tried, as water matted the fluff. In fact, if the quilava wasn't awake in the next several minutes, he would need to bathe before Grace returned to a cabin full of wet-fur-smell. The smell of antiseptic billowing from the quilava's bandage already stank enough.
The quilava's eyes opened and he let out a rasping sigh. Daté retreated to Doggy's side.
"Hey may be a docile," Daté said. "Do not make sudden movements, lest he tries to defend himself."
The quilava had a blasé expression, his jowls set straight and his eyes scanning the room, not for objects, but as if relearning his cardinal directions. Once, twice his stare passed right by the two pokémon, hitching on their bodies then rolling up to stare at an unlit lantern resting on the table. His limbs contorted, shooting out in every direction, unraveling from the tension of a forced slumber.
Then the blasé expression was smitten by terror. He threw his body against the wall, he took cover underneath his paws and trembled for dear life.
"All is well," Daté said. "Do not be alarmed."
"W-W-Why am I back here?" He asked.
"He's not docile," Doggy whispered. Docile pokémon were incapable of speech or reason. This behavior didn't quite prove the latter. "That's not the first question I'd ask, though."
"It is remarkable to see him so animated. Quilava, you almost drowned. This pokémon here saved you."
The quilava twisted, falling onto his bitten thigh. The resulting screech made Doggy scramble to plug his ears.
"No," the creature said.
"No?" Doggy asked, hunched over. "You looked right at me! Those teeth marks in your leg are mine."
"No," the quilava repeated. "I woke up. I was in my bed. Did I fall back to sleep?"
Doggy turned to Daté. "Is… the water addled his brains, didn't it? Did I save him just for him to live out his days all crazy?"
Daté put a hand on Doggy's shoulder. "I encountered this same situation in my youth. Mercy is another oft-confused idea. You can tell that this quilava wants to live."
The quilava growled, which devolved into a whine. "I do want to live… as a human. This is not me!" He yelled, prompting Doggy to take a step back.
Something happened that Doggy never believed he would witness: Daté, inching towards the panicked pokémon, seemed at a loss. In fact, anger overwrote his features. The cabin became silent.
"Doggy, you had some chores to do." Daté said. "Take care of them."
"Did he just refer to himself as human? This is worse than we thought."
"There is one too many pokémon here. Leave."
"Come on... Da-"
"Go!" Daté snapped.
Doggy turned tail and rushed out the door, to the sound of the quilava muttering the same phrase, over and over again:
"Please wake up."
"Stupid!" Doggy shouted. With a cry he sent a branch flying into a tree trunk. Branches, leaves and dirt exploded into the air as the growlithe went along on his rampage.
"How can he say that my life isn't adventurous, then kick me out?" Doggy asked a nearby tree. Its skinny trunk didn't answer. "I didn't even get to learn the name of the pokémon I saved. I didn't get to learn how he got smack-dab in the middle of that pond. And by the time I get back… I bet my ears… he'll be gone!"
Crack. Doggy picked up a branch and threw it. The next one he hefted up, flailing it around to hurt the low-hanging vestige until it caught against a tree, ripping away from him.
The pain in his jaw fueled the fire in his belly. With a shout he attempted to cut that sycamore down with his right forepaw. The sturdy wood caught his toe-claws and almost tore those away too. He tumbled down, hastily inspecting his forepaw for wounds.
Wet sycamores had bark easy to tear away. But when Doggy matched against a dry tree, it just spelled out the inadequacy. This was why Grain had chosen him as her victim, not for the mystery surrounding him, but for the fact that anyone could see he lived a sheltered life.
Grace kept him safe. Everything in life was wet sycamores and protection from bullies.
A word came up from the back of his mind. A special one that brought him comfort in stormy nights or when the Territorial Floodplains spilled over the forest, so he and Grace had to take refuge from the rapids on their roof.
"Deathseeker," Doggy said to the trees. "It means that I don't run from death until it corners me. I chase death, helping those who are in its grasp. Letting things come to you… is hardly adventurous. I don't want a cozy life."
His mood changed from angry to thoughtful. Quilava shared the same fire properties as him, and thus hated water just as much. They had stubby arms, so maybe they hated water more.
What if he is human? He wondered.
"Hey, punk," a voice called. "What the heck is a deathseeker?"
Doggy shot up to all fours. He recognized the voice. Grain skulked forward, appearing from behind a tree.
"What are you doing here Grain… and Liv?"
A linoone peeked from behind the same tree. He almost never left the ground, and despite Doggy being on all fours like him, Liv had to look up to see more than the growlithe's legs.
"H-Hi," Liv said. "All that death seeking stuff is scary. I told you he does scary stuff when he's alone."
Grain hoisted a paw, grooming its top with gentle licks. "Doggy won't hurt a fly. Or a tree, attacking like that."
Doggy let the comment slide. "There is no way your parents let you play this far from the village."
"When you attack a hard object," Grain said, ignoring him, "you don't thrust your claws into it. You slash across, adding small cuts, weakening your opponent until you can… attack… their weak spots!"
She lunged forward, prodding the growlithe. He skittered away with a yelp. But he found it impressive, not scary.
"Sheesh," she mewled. "Don't ogle me. Y'see, Liv and I are done with school."
"Done?" Doggy asked. "But we still have next year. We'll learn how to tend the fields and repair tools. Or I can do blacksmithing because I'll someday be able to make fire. Oh, and foraging. I might become a forager myself." As long as Grace allowed it, foraging would lead him away from the same old spots.
"How did you say all that without yawning?" She asked. "Let me inform you, shut-in: those are vocational years. Apprenticeships around the village."
"Grace..." Doggy remembered: he wasn't to speak her name to anyone besides Daté. "Gracefully… put."
The response forced a chortle out of the shinx. "Pah, what?"
"That's not what I hear," Doggy said, his cheeks heating up. "Next year is required." Grace had said so herself.
Liv scooted forward. "O-Or you can go to Pathen," he said, "and become an adventurer. None of our parents ever told us, either."
"No." I sound like that quilava, Doggy thought.
Grain smiled. "The old heatmor that runs the smithy spilled the beans. We're out here collecting firewood to pay for our passage to Pathen."
"I am holding all the wood," Liv said. The basket strung around his back was filled to the brim with dry branches. He glanced at Grain, hope in his eyes.
"Right. And Liv is holding all the wood." She shot a glance back. "He has to get brawnier somehow."
"Linoone are supple by nature," he muttered.
Grain shook her head. "Tsk, tsk. Some pokémon will say anything to shirk their work. What about you, Doggy? Are you upset?"
The question slapped Doggy across the face. "Huh?"
"That green shadow protects you, right? Well, protect against this: I get to see Pathen, become an adventurer, and live out my days having adventures Outside. You get to stick around here and help that doofus heatmor run his shack. Who's going to be wondering about who everyday now, mutt? My name's Mutt," she mocked, marching around the growlithe. "I seek death. Watch out, villager, you spade is broken! Without a spade you cannot irrigate, without irrigation you cannot provide water to the crop, no water, no food, no food, no order—ding! Ding! Ding!" She imitated a hammer, pounding her thick paws into the dirt. "The spade is fixed; Mutt saves the Territory again!"
"S-Shut up, you..." Doggy fervently wished for word for cats like "mutt." He felt himself deflating. This was the worst part about Grain's routine. The words. The insults never ceased, before Daté or after him.
Grain slapped Doggy's shoulders with her tail. "Repeat that over and over for sixty years, and you've got your life, deathseeker."
"Stop it..."
"Liv, let's ditch this fool. Before he sics his bodyguard on us-"
"I met a human!" Doggy shouted. "I… I saved him from a pond, he turned into a quilava."
Grain stopped in her tracks. She refused to look back.
"I'll believe you," she said. "If you at least tell me your real name."
Doggy's mouth opened, then closed. "D-Doggy is my name."
"...Goodbye, fool."
And the two children left. As they did, Liv wondered out loud: "why was he all wet?" Then they were gone.
Doggy wasn't in the mood to rampage anymore. He started to pick up branches for the fire he would need tonight.
Like he thought: the quilava, and any evidence of him, was gone. Grace scrubbed his scent away while Doggy was busy with chores. The gardevoir worked to get rid of the last evidence, the wet pile of hay, while the growlithe sat in the corner. In hours, the most exciting moment in his life had become another memory, and it became harder by the moment to deny that he would regret any future involving the cabin.
Grace spun. She handled the wet, muddy hay yet didn't dirty herself. Her every movement flowed into the next, no delays, no guessing what came next in her routine. Often, Doggy liked knowing when she was about to speak, or scratch his head. Today it was just frustrating.
"Sorry, child," she said. "I am afraid we have no hay left."
"I want to talk about the quilava," he told her. It bordered on being a command.
Grace smiled. "Sweet child..."
It wasn't a no. He decided to risk it all. "I want to talk to the quilava."
"Have patience. Daté must see if he has family in the area. You cannot simply steal pokémon from their families and call them friends, silly growlithe."
"He has no family here. He was a human." In the hours it took to collect the wood, he convinced himself of this. The word "human" was ancient legend, a far cry from the lore of folktales told around the Territory. Doggy himself learned of the humans after cornering Grace after a slip-up. So for a quilava his age to throw it out there had to be more than chance.
And he wanted to bring the quilava to school to show up Grain.
Grace, often understanding, shut him down with a frown. "I am disappointed, Doggy." He winced; hearing his name from her meant nothing but trouble. "That quilava is suffering from a mental malady. Would I allow you to speak with him and solidify his delusions? I would do no such thing—I am appalled! If you were not sleeping on the floor already, I would take away your bed."
"I won't take it back," he growled.
"No dinner."
"Wha… come on!"
"I kid. Nonetheless, take care of how you treat others. No matter how you speak to someone, they may listen a different way. Have you bathed yet? You should have bathed before collecting wood, smelly growlithe."
When Grace described the humans, she used her likeness to put an image in Doggy's mind. Tall, dignified, able to reach and tinker. Humans might not be kind, or warm, but they had a chance if they looked like her. She leaned down, hugging him.
"I'm not a puppy anymore," Doggy said. "Don't say silly this, smelly that, please." He looked up at her. "Do you think I could be an adventurer?"
"You've been talking with the other children," Grace said. The hug ended. "And Daté put ideas into your head. That sneaky grov… pardon me." she curtsied jokingly.
"He did," Doggy admitted. His ears drooped down—at this point, he was better off dreaming of foraging.
"I wish for you to wait until conditions improve in the Territory. The Adventurer Initiative is not what you expect. Its flaws mark the Territory. I hoped you would never experience these flaws, ever since I first discovered you roaming this forest."
He hung his head. "I understand, Grace."
"But all things have their flaws, I suppose. Should you choose to leave after finishing school… I've saved money. Enough for the fare to Pathen, a month's stay in their inns, and even some for entertainment. After I came to know you, I assumed the Initiative would pull you away, so I struggled to find a way to prevent it from hurting you. There is none other than witnessing it."
The words made little sense to the growlithe. When they became clear, there was no stopping the grin that spread across Doggy's face.
"I—you mean me? I get to apply?!" He bucked up onto his hind legs. "So cool! T-Thank you! This is..."
Grace had taken a seat in the cabin's rickety chair. She smiled, yet it was bittersweet.
"I did it again." Doggy sighed and walked over to the chair. "You're trying to tell me I will be disappointed, and I am whooping for joy."
"What you see there will hurt you," Grace said. "It hurt me."
"You were an adventurer?!"
"Traveling Outside is dream come true. To return alive and successful, to not succumb to the wilds, it becomes an addiction. You try harder, you redouble your efforts, to make every adventure more successful than the last. Until in a fit of hubris, pokémon die due to your actions. I have a new addiction: helping pokémon like you. You don't need to be a part of some club to have stories told in your name."
Doggy shook his head clear of its cobwebs. "I guess… Grain was teasing me and it got to my head. Suddenly all I wanted to do was join, join, join. Sorry. I love you, Grace."
She chuckled. "I love you too, Doggy. One day, we will work together to make the Territory a better place."
The door to the cabin clicked open. He spun around, expecting to see Daté. Instead, the quilava stood in the doorway, the same confused look on his face, yet noticeably calmer. The newcomer waddled in, not putting his forepaws on the ground. Doggy was trapped between hiding his surprise and stifling his laughter.
"He's still here!" Doggy exclaimed. "Why wouldn't you tell me?"
"He asked for time alone," Grace said. "If I told you, you would have hounded him."
"Yeah, probably." He couldn't stop wagging his tail. For the first time ever, the cabin had two children under its roof.
The quilava stopped a few paces from the growlithe.
"Thank you for saving me from that pond," he said. "I have no recollection of how I got there."
"Maybe you fell from the sky," Doggy said. The allure of the mystery begged him to pursue this idea, but he remembered Grace's words. The quilava looked one wrong implication away from a meltdown. "And no problem. What did Daté do with you?" There weren't cuts or bruises, which excluded the worst possibility. All that had changed in the few hours was that the quilava's scent now included that of the forest's dirt, and the antiseptic on his leg stopped reeking.
"He showed me the Territory. I..." he looked up the gardevoir. "I have some impairment to my memory. Seeing the Territory helped set things aright a little."
Memory problems. He seems unsettled, but okay, Doggy thought. When he woke up, he was about ready to call me a figment of his imagination, he claimed to be a human! In fact, the way he speaks is sort of stilted. Like Grace. Like a human, I bet. Doggy shook the thought away. No, I have to cut it out!
"Grace works miracles," Doggy said. "If anyone can bring your memory back, it's her."
The quilava sighed. "I'm sorry for ruining your bed, though I'm afraid I must ask for another."
Grace bent over and ran a hand down the sided of the quilava's head. He recoiled from the touch, a flash of frustration in his eyes. "Use my bed, child, as I will be out tonight," Grace said. "But come eat dinner first," Grace said.
The two children sat around a small table and enjoyed their dishes of oatmeal with burberries in peace. The disgusted expression of the newcomer as he lapped up the oatmeal, his subtle annoyance at how it dripped from his muzzle, made Doggy's curiosity insatiable.
Nighttime came swiftly, and Doggy found that his dive into the lake stole all of his energy. He wanted to stay awake to see Daté or Grace return to the cabin. He yawned and yawned, his will breaking down, until the growlithe laid snoring on the ground still dreaming of the grovyle. Still imagining the lake, and adventurers, and what the rest of his life would look like now that he knew the truth.
Wind beat down on the cabin. Its foundations shook, the creaking a lullaby for Doggy. Moonlight shone in through the windows. A gibbous moon was not enough to cast the room in a gray pale: it had to be full, and when it was, the entire room turned a vibrant shade of blue.
A squeaking joined the ranks of creaks. Doggy roused himself, eyes squinted from grogginess. He scanned the room. On Grace's bed—the sheets ruined now by loose fur—was the quilava, sobbing. Whenever a gust weaned a crackle out of the walls, he would duck under his paws and whimper his favorite word: no.
It's better if I let him be, Doggy concluded. Just because I grew up to these noises, doesn't mean they are harmless. He'll get used to it.
The quilava did not. An hour passed, Daté and Grace still out on their errand. Then another hour, of whimpering and howling and begging at nothing but the musty ceiling.
Finally, after a particularly large gust of wind caused the cabin to quake, and the quilava to shriek, Doggy's paws tensed up.
"I'm trying to sleep!" Doggy yelled.
The reply was a wail, tumbling into body-racking sobs.
Darn it, Doggy thought, starting to breath in shallow breaths. His crying is starting to scare me.
The growlithe rose to his feet and padded over to the bed. The quilava cried so intensely, Doggy could smell the tears and snot staining the sheets.
In his best, calmest voice, Doggy asked: "what's wrong?"
The quilava jolted, his entire body tensed up. He let out the tension with a rasping whine.
"I'm scared," he said. "The wind keeps howling. It's gonna knock the house down."
Plain and simple. The stilted creature who waltzed into the cabin this evening had disappeared.
"No, it won't," Doggy whispered. "I've lived here for ten years. Since I was tiny enough to fit on this bed with Grace. Not once, never-ever, has a single wood chip went fell off. You know, it helps me get to sleep."
"How?"
"I dunno. I guess the noises you grow up with just change. Your ears take them in differently." Doggy fumbled. He would never disrespect Grace again; helping others was hard. "Pretend… pretend you are me. And you've slept in this house all your life. And whenever the house creaks, it means safety."
"When I was in the water," the quilava said, not quite speaking to anyone, "The water got into my stomach. But in my head, everything was worse. This isn't my body. I thought this was a nightmare. Yet everything keeps getting realer, and realer… everything I was before today, has died. I can't just imagine myself as a another pokémon. I can hardly imagine this."
He's going off the hinges again! Doggy thought, alarmed.
The quilava, nose crusty with snot, hung his head over the side of the bed. He looked up at the growlithe, pleading.
"I was not always a quilava. Grace bullied me into saying I have memory problems. I am—was—human."
Doggy stared straight out the window at the full moon. The wind paused. If anything woke him up, it was the periods of silence. It was being left alone to think about things like adventuring, Grain, the Territory. Now this.
"Grain doesn't bully pokémon," he said once the creaking restarted. Then, under his breath, he added:
"What was being human like?"
"I don't remember," the quilava whined.
Doggy exhaled through his nose. "So you do have memory problems. Just not the ones Grace told you to have..." he couldn't bring himself to do it: admit he believed that Grace pushed this creature into a lie. After his talk with her in the evening, a part of him learned something about the gardevoir, toxic enough for him to forget it right away. Grace was biased. Against the Adventurers Initiative, and against humans. How she obtained a hang-up on humans was baffling. Nonetheless, it was there. A fear of humans plopping outside her cabin.
"When she bullied you," Doggy said, "it wasn't to hurt you. I have no idea why being a human is dangerous, but she thinks so. This is how she protects others. How she defends me."
"By making you lie to yourself," The quilava whispered, as if she might be outside the door. "By frightening you, right?"
Doggy gaped and, not able to stop himself but able to curb his anger, cuffed the bed. His paw bounced off the soft padding, leaving a few holes. Grain's advice on clawing, to swipe, came and went in a furious moment.
"She doesn't take it that far!" Doggy shouted. "I am free to make any decision I want, so watch your mouth! Just shut up!"
The quilava started crying again.
"Daté told me," he said between the sobs, "the Initiative might help me return home, b-by finding something in the place he called Outside. And she, a-and she said I would die gruesomely if I ever went to Pathen."
"She didn't say gruesomely."
"She said my bones would be licked clean by ferals if I ever set foot Outside. She told me I had a choice, even showed me the money for the trip, but should I choose to go to Pathen..." he covered his eyes. "I will die alone and in more pain than I've ever felt before. Worse than drowning in the yucky pond-water!"
Doggy sat tall, rearing his head back. "No." It was his turn to use that safe word. "No. None of that is true. You're lying."
"Please, I'm not. I-Imagine you are me. And you have never met her, and she has never taken care of you. Can you believe it?"
What does Grace do on the nights she isn't here? Doggy asked himself. He couldn't staunch the flow of thoughts:
How did her time as an adventurer fall apart?
If this is a lie, then why does Grace's actions towards the quilava mirror those towards me?
Am I easier to convince than a crybaby? All it took was a bit of disappointment.
And love, lots of love.
Who is she?
Is her story of finding me alone… is that a lie to protect me, too?
...Who am I?
Doggy came slamming back into the real world. His eyes widened: somehow, he had gotten into Grace's chest at the end of the bed. In it was the lump of money she waved in front of them.
The quilava sat up on the bed. He wiped away his tears, watching Doggy pull out the bag with his trembling teeth.
"What are you doing?" He whispered, recognizing the bag.
"I'm not sure if you can call me well-suited to adventuring," Doggy said. He felt steps away from a fit of his own, held back by a thin thread, somehow strong enough to hold fear back. "But I know a single gambit. If you seek death, you get to fight it on your own terms. I won't wait for it in this cabin anymore." The shack creaked its disapproval. The wind howled, louder than ever, knocking away part of the outside windowsill.
The quilava blinked. "D-Do you mean..."
Doggy nodded. If it wasn't for the quilava, he would have been content to stand by. This was his second and last chance. It was now or never.
"Want to be an adventurer with me?" He asked.
A/N: well, I'm rebooting New Adventure as something with hopefully more focused plotlines, less characters (I say, as I introduce six in one chapter, so I should say a more robust cast of characters), and real stakes for both the world and the characters. I also shifted from the human's PoV to the companion, for now. I cannot say with absolute certainty how this story will work out, but I would appreciate any sort of review providing insight.
Thank you,
MisterBland1
