Sedimentation
Chapter 4

The larvitar tried not to squirm as the zubat tucked shreds of meat into his hide. It was still underdeveloped and therefore not as spacious or firm as the hides of the older Larvitar, and coupled with the bite of winter, it was a painful experience.

But the larvitar knew it would help him twice over in the long run. The soft meat between blades of stone would stop them from rubbing together…and it would be their sustenance when those edible creatures became few and difficult to catch in the deeper parts of the mountain. So he tried not to complain – and not to make too much sound, lest one of the elders turned towards him.

Nobody was paying them any mind for the time being. They were all busy being fed. The zubat were busy doing the feeding. The larvitar himself was chewing slowly on a strip of meat, tasting the light tang of poison that was still fresh within it. The zubat, he assumed, had already fed before coming to him.

He offered her some anyway.

'I already ate,' the zubat said, shaking her head as her claws gently scratched the larvitar's frail hide. She was being as careful as she could, just like, years ago, when she'd done the same with another larvitar just like this one, but it was difficult. Even though she was small and her claws thin and blunt compared to the younger, fitter zubat, the larvitar's underdeveloped hide was still more sensitive. 'There, all done.'

The larvitar shifted a little and winced with pain. Still, he could feel the buffering effect of the meat, feel the absence of that constant stone grinding against stone.

'You'll get used to it,' the zubat offered. 'But once the food starts getting to old or running now…'

'I'll be used to moving by then,' the larvitar finished. I hope… Because he felt slow, lethargic, as he got to his feet. The outer plates still clicked against each other and gave him shooting pains, but it was tolerable now, and he'd always moved a little even in the most unbearable times. He was too young to keep completely still; he just couldn't do it. Nor did he want to do it. He'd moved around, wandered the caves nearest to them, until he couldn't walk any more and the zubat had had to carry him back. And then he'd surrendered to the winter.

But now there was an opportunity to leave, to move around again.

'I've put a little more of my poison in the meat than usual,' the zubat continued to explain. 'It will numb the pain.'

It wasn't usually an advantage to survival, but to move when pain froze one it was. There was no real ice near them; only what the zubat carried with their gust. The rock pokemon lived in the driest parts of the caves because they could not risk being encased in prisons of ice. They would be dead long before they could move again otherwise.

'I can stand,' the larvitar said, and the zubat withdrew a little.

'Okay,' she agreed, looking at him from a bit of a distance. It was easier when she could see his entire frame to detect any shaking, or need for support. The larvitar held on to the cave wall – but that was okay. There would be no shortage of cave walls to hold on to. Only when they got to the more moist areas, they would be slippery with ice. But the floor would be slippery with ice as well. And the ceiling. And they would be surrounded by cold.

But beyond that was the sun. The sun she so wanted to see again. And she was sure the larvitar wanted it as well, beneath the want to move around, the thirst for an adventure…

'I'm ready.' The larvitar took a few steps towards her.

She hesitated. 'Aren't you going to say goodbye?' She wondered if she was right after all, taking a youngling away from his clan like this, even if it was what they wanted. But the other larvitar were silent: their eyes closed and only their mouths moving, slowly chewing their feed. By the time they realised the absence they would be long gone. And the other zubat…they would be quicker to see her absence but they were no stranger to sudden absences too.

'They'll tell me to stay if I do.' His voice was sad, and he knew the words he spoke were the truth. The other larvitar would tell him to stay. They would tell him to go on with life like they'd always done, but that would never soothe that restless spirit of his. They would want him to stay and survive this winter only to die later on, a stone collapsed in on itself or blasted apart by highly pressured water or bitten through by a steelix's strong jaws. But he didn't want that sort of life: to be shut in a world only to wait for death. 'I don't want to stay here and wait for death.'

'You are too young to think of death,' the zubat thought aloud, but in a world such as the one they lived in, it didn't matter at all. 'Then let us leave. Now or later, it doesn't really matter save the time that slips through out fingers.'

She flew ahead: smaller, faster and less restricted than the young larvitar that carefully moves, step by step, a hand on the wall all the while. There is no point in her staying too close; if he fell, she could not support him except with her gust, and that worked better from far away. But he did not fall. He walked carefully: small unhurried steps that would have made her impatient if she were a younger kind – but she was not. She was old and weary, and there was no such thing as the energy of the youth in the winter days.

She hovered at the entrance to the spacious and yet filled up cave and the larvitar met her there: slow, but getting steadier. She hoped he would get steadier and faster soon. It would be a safe passage for a while, but not forever. Deeper in the mountains were beasts that did not slumber with the winter. Some were beasts that moved free, unhindered by the biting cold that penetrated so deep. Beasts that would rip their hides before their poor eyes could make out the shadows of movement and life.

But that at least was a painless way to die, and it was a death they wouldn't have to wait, unmoving, for.