A/N: Nothing earth-shattering (aka. Needing explanations) revealed in this chapter I think. If you have any questions, feel free to put them in a review and I'll try and answer them.

Sedimentation
Chapter 2

'How is it you don't feel the cold?' the larvitar wondered of his zubat friend, the one that always came to him for food. The zubat was a constant visitor to his little niche, where the frost was hard-pressed to dig its razor sharp teeth into him. But the cold still manages. The cracks in his hide grow more and deeper by the day. Deeper than the last winter too. Some of the other larvitar have wondered if this means the winter is worse as well.

'We do feel the cold,' the zubat replied. 'If we stop flying, our tiny flesh bodies freeze and we fall, to be buried in the snow outside and forgotten. Or we fall in the darkness here like a bit of ice that's come loose. Or into the freezing water to be fished out and eaten with the algae.'

The larvitar considered that. 'That's a depressing thought,' he remarked. 'Is that all there is to life? Keep on moving until you die?'

He looked at himself: the curled form that lay awake in the dark caves, listening to the wings of the zubat as they came and left: their only connection to the howling wind and storms of ice and rain outside. He'd barely moved from his little space since the winter had set in. Last year, he'd been young enough to still fit into his mother's pouch. This year he wasn't. This year his mother sat in another space of the cave, far away.

'Does that mean I'm going to die?' the larvitar asked, his voice dry and scratchy in a throat that longed for the warmth of summer again. But summer was a cruel month as well. It dried up all the water outside, leaving only the pools in the inner caves to soothe their thirst. And the water pokemon were ferocious, defending that might. Sometimes they would goad them into attacking with their water guns and hydro pumps, just so they could collect the scraps of water that remained from them.

Sometimes, it cost them a few of their own to do it. The zubat were too small to hold their ground against such highly pressurised attacks, so the larvitar had to. Or the stones they could milk of the cavern walls and ground and build in front of them as a shield. The zubat were the snipers instead, the ones undercover that used their sonar waves in the midst of the battle to confuse the enemy, and then sneak past to steal a bit of that precious commodity every creature needed in order to survive.

But the larvitar were active then. Not like the winter where their joints locked up in the cold and they stayed in their caves, hunched and dependent entirely on the zubat. Not moving, slowly dying in the cold…

'Some do die.' The zubat looked sad. 'Usually the young ones, or the old ones.'

The larvitar tilted his head, wincing internally at the grating sound of stone against stone and the pain that shot through his skull. 'I'm young, aren't I?'

The zubat hummed a little to herself, a quiet sonic the larvitar could not fully hear, let alone understand. 'Young enough,' she said eventually. 'But not everyone dies.'

'I don't want to die,' the larvitar admitted. 'I've barely seen the world.'

'There's not much to see,' the zubat said sadly. 'In zubat terms, I'm quite old. The age lots of zubat can't fly in this cold anymore and fall from the sky.'

'So we both might die this year,' the larvitar surmised. 'But…I want to see the world still. Even if there's nothing there. At least I'll have seen it then.'

'There isn't much to see,' the zubat repeated. 'And it's painful for you to move, isn't it?'

'Is it painful for you to fly?' the larvitar asked.

'Me?' The zubat was a little surprised at the question. Her wings flapped quickly, producing a sound the other zubat could hear, and note. 'No, they don't.'

They hurt when she woke up after having not used them all night long, but once she'd gotten them into a rhythm they didn't hurt unless injured or burnt.

'Can I fly?' the larvitar asked.

'I have never seen anyone from your family fly,' the zubat replied. 'And not even the crobat, if there were any, could carry you. I've been told they're not much bigger than the golbat'

'I've never seen a crobat,' larvitar said. 'Are they in the higher levels of the cave?'

'Not that I know.' The zubat shook her head. 'I have never seen a crobat either. And very few golbat.'

'I don't think I've seen one of those either.'

The zubat rose a little. 'They live in the higher levels,' she confessed. 'Some of them gain pride when they evolve to that point, thinking they can survive on their own.'

Evolution was such a rare thing in their world that perhaps that pride was well founded.

'Are you still in pain?' the zubat asked, flying closer.

'No,' the larvitar said. He wished he could shake his head, but it would probably hurt then. 'The food has made it go away.' The food the zubat had brought for him, that he'd devoured and let digest as they'd talked. 'But it'll come back. I don't want to wait for it.'

'Don't you want to see spring again?' the zubat asked.

'Spring when the ursaring roar and scratch in the tunnels?' Larvitar shivered at the memory. He remembered that: his one and only spring. He'd been too young to go outside: his stone hide still too soft. But those echoes had been even more frightening than the needles of pain that shot through his body in the winter and the recovery thereafter.

'You were too young to go out,' the zubat surmised. 'The world looks a little more beautiful at the end of spring. Some years, flowers grow. But they haven't grown for a while now.'

'Flowers…' The larvitar had only heard of those through stories.

'Maybe they still grow at the top of the mountain,' the zubat mused. 'High up where the sun can coax it out without it being crushed by the wild pokemon who wake and need their sustenance.'

'Can we go there?' the larvitar asked.

'Hush, little one,' was the zubat's reply. 'It gets colder the higher we go.'

'But if we keep moving, we'll be fine, right?' The larvitar forces its eyes open. Cells of stone slide atop one another. 'We can get there.'

The zubat was fairly sure she could, in the deep winter when most of her predators were asleep or confined to the waters, but she didn't think the larvitar would be able to. He would be too slow, too stiff. And that was assuming she could be able to cater for his food and drink.

But the larvitar's eyes were like the eyes of another larvitar, a few years back. Another larvitar who hadn't wanted to lie curled and wait for his fate. A larvitar who, likewise, had wanted to see a little more of the world before he died. He wasn't content with just the stories the zubat carried, from generation to generation of little bat pokemon who covered behind the strong larvitar in the summer time and became their feeders in the winter.

'We can try,' she said, finally. 'But it will be a difficult journey.'

In truth, she wouldn't mind dying up there, at the top of the mountain. When she'd been in her youth, it had seemed like the best place to die. The place where the sun was just caressing the tips of snow-covered tops – even in the deep winter that left the rest of the world blind to the sun.