Sedimentation
Chapter 8

The zubat watched her companion pace in the clearing. The perimeter was covered in ice and the inner core sloped away, straight down into an abyss of yellow. The larvitar was small enough to safely walk it, but it was still unnerving to watch. But it couldn't be helped. It wasn't as cold as the moist ice haven they'd left behind, but they'd still freeze if they stopped moving for too long. And she was slow to recover. Even with the green orbs the larvitar produced for her. Even the water he managed to steal from the cavern they'd passed through – however he was carrying it back.

He turned and came back towards her – and then she saw how. Part of his stone hide had fallen away completely, leaving gaps. And the black had pierced through that gap, spreading like spider veins on his flesh. He walked hunched, trying to shield that part. Maybe because the cold was crueller to it than the hide. Maybe because her poison was not so effective on innervated flesh. Maybe because now it was just a matter of counting off the days.

She wondered if he understood that, or if he mistook it for moulting: the process where a pokemon with a stone hide like the larvitar shed their childhood skin and grew a new, adult one in its place. For survival reasons, such a process never happened in the winter months. The stone might crack and bring pain, but the vulnerable flesh that hid under that hide was even worse under the jaws of the cold.

As soon as she could summon a gust strong enough to carry him, they would be on their way again. The time was now on her shoulders; the larvitar had gotten them this far, not her. They had drifted so far off course it was a miracle they hadn't been turned around, they hadn't crashed into something else. It was a miracle they hadn't starved to death already – a miracle the larvitar had been able to master the one attack that would save them – and he had chosen that path himself, not knowing what would come out of it. She had not suggested it, because warmth was an important thing as well. In the end, it came down to which of the two the larvitar thought was more important – because she couldn't make that decision for him.

If her wing hadn't frozen, she could have done a better job directing the rock they'd used as a boat. If there was none of that dew from the hidden power now, she mightn't have been able to recover. But she was recovering. Recovering as the larvitar's hide crumbled under the weight of her poison and the effort he put his own body through, to keep himself from becoming immobile again.

Or she could have abandoned his starving, dying form and flown on to her destination and then waited for the spring to settle in before taking the easier journey back.

'I can carry you now,' she said, launching herself into the air.

The larvitar ceased his restless pacing and looked at her. 'Are you sure?' he asked, his voice more like gravel now than ever.

The zubat nodded. 'Come,' she said.

The larvitar looked at himself. 'My armour is crumbling.'

The zubat said nothing.

'Do I need it anymore?'

'No.' The black spreading under his flesh attested to that.

'I'll take it off then.' He stretched out his claws and scratched at the hide. The zubat winced at the sound, then again as pieces of stone fell off. And then the larvitar was before her, naked like the day he had hatched from his egg. No stone of protection: just brown flesh marked with the black of her poison through his veins. The rest of him was left on the floor, to be blown into the depths of the mountains when they took flight.

She stared at him a moment, then dug her claws deep into his shoulder and flapped her wings hard. He let out a choked sound of pain but she ignored it. She had made her decision; she would carry him with her, to the sung she longed to see. She would not lose him, not see him fall into the abyss after bringing her so far.

Her gust was just strong enough. They made many stops along the way, holding on to those little rocks that jotted out from the smooth surface. But they made it, eventually, and the zubat tumbled into the soft white snow.

She almost thought she hadn't, but she felt larvitar's claws around her, picking her up. 'Is this snow?' he asked in wonder. 'It's pretty.'

'It's cold.' Her teeth chattered. 'We need to climb those stairs.'

She didn't point; her body was shivering already in the snow. But there were only one set of stairs and the larvitar climbed them slowly. He didn't seem to feel the cold. His body didn't shake like hers did, and there was no hesitation in his footsteps. Had the poison spread so far, she wondered?

It didn't matter. They were almost there.

And then suddenly they were there, wrapped in a yellow light that bounced off the snow they stood upon and the surface of frozen water. The zubat tried to stretch her wings and fly, but she tumbled in the air and fell onto the larvitar again. She couldn't fly, not until she rested some more. He could still walk, but walking would not take them any closer to the sun above them.

All he could do was tilt his head up and look at the smiling yellow face towards him. 'Is that how the sun looks in winter?' he said, his voice clouded in wonder. 'It seems so much more…dull.'

That was true. In the summer it was a bitter, burning thing. But in the winter it was pale, welcome and beautiful. The snow and ice covered the rest of the beauty: those sparse plants that had grown the last time they were there: the spring paradise while the rest of the world was flung under the snow of winter.

The lake hadn't been frozen over the last time she had been there either. It had been water then. Pure fresh water the likes of which she had never tasted before, and reflecting pools of darkness and secrets beneath. She'd never gone deeper; she was a flyer after all. She couldn't swim. But something had told her a swimmer would find little caves and places of save haven in there.

Not anymore. The lake was frozen over, and she could see the shadows of pokemon beneath it. Drowned when the surface locked them in. Dead.

The larvitar wasn't looking at those things, but at the sun. The black had covered almost all of him, she saw. It hadn't looked like that until the sun exposed them both. It would take hours, maybe minutes, maybe a day – and then the poison would touch his heart and that would be the end of him.

She looked down. That wasn't the end she wished to watch. And her own strength was weak. Her grip slack – and the cold was biting again. Now she was the one immobilised by cold and pain, unable to find relief. And there would be no relief except death. It didn't look like she would get another chance to fly, high enough to touch that sun. But that was okay. She could lie in the snow and ice and watch it until she died, and that would be enough. And if she didn't look, she would have company all that while as well.

And they wouldn't look at the death that drifted under them, from the winter that had reached so high and destroyed even the ones who'd thought they'd been safe, in the sun.

'What is that?'

She looked after all. The larvitar's insatiable curiosity, even though he was lying on his side now, looking at both the sky and the frozen lake. 'I have never seen a pokemon that shape.'

Nor had she. It looked like the body had been preserved in ice for some reason, not just frozen over like the rest of the lake. It drifted under the water: things she couldn't describe, and a few she could. Hair that was brown. Eyes that were closed. Hands that were covered in something, made without claws. Something that wasn't a hide or skin covering the body. Something red and blue and black. Something that looked like a sphere, half red and half white, with the frozen form.

'I don't know,' the zubat said, finally turning away. 'Let's not look; see, the sun is smiling at us.'

The larvitar rolled so his back was against the ice and he could see the sun as well: that yellow orb that would steal away his final breaths.

Legends had long since died by that time. So had humankind. So it was that neither of them, nor any other living soul on the planet, had heard the legend of a boy who'd once lived in the mountains with his pokemon friends: with a beast who kept the lake water pure, healing and like a spring of eternal youth. And another who flew higher than any other pokemon in the world and brought the sun as close as he could manage, so the rest of the world might have a little peek when winter spread its wasteland. And a heart of fire that burned deep within the mountain, providing a little warmth and life, so that the mountain could revive itself in the spring. A cycle of three – no, four, because that human's role could not be forgotten as well: the will to keep this world alive, keep spring and a future still in reach.

But winter had bested him, and without his undying will to support them, the other three had fallen as well. The bird could bring the sun a little less close each year, until it wasn't enough to drive away the snow, to keep a future still there. The beast of the water could no longer keep that water alive, flowing with life, and the pokemon that had sheltered there had died. And the heart of the mountain weakened as well, so the ice spread further and further until it stole away all hope.

And as two more bodies sunk into the snow, the sun fell back, that bird that had once commanded it unable to keep it close. It might be enough, for the world to see another spring. It might not. It might last another winter after that. It might not. There was no will driving it now, just three pokemon who wanted to fulfil the last wishes of their master and dearest friend: a friend the world had long since forgotten about.

They would not forget, all that time they'd spent with their dear friend. But that wouldn't keep the world alive. That wouldn't keep them alive either, now that there was no will, not even the will to keep on striving towards something, not even life, remained.