CASSETTE ONE, SIDE A: THE FLOOD
The tide howled: & so we came, wending & winding, flowing & following, spooling & pooling & coiling & roiling &, at the last, here. Father Land is a cold, standoffish sire, but Mother Sea is a passionate dam & when she wants her satisfaction, she will take it, whatever the old man might try to say. & when Mother Sea speaks, we must answer: we rode the surf like tentacruel in breeding season, over the tetrapods & sea wall, up the slope & past the boats, through strange new shoals where Father Land's sons screamed & thrashed & died in their mother's embrace.
We recorded it all. The shark tossed into the ship by the surge, her head broken open on the deck; the sea-foxes yipping & yapping on the new-brined steps, tearing hunks from some hapless human; Old Sky's children fleeing the foam for the safety of their cloud kingdom. Each sight, each sound, we passed through our coils & stored in our fronds for safekeeping. The feel of Father Land's stone halls beneath our aureole. The musky tangle of human clothing drifting & lifting in the current. The taste of new broken trees, so rich & hot compared to the husks that sometimes float out to sea.
All of it remembered. All of it wrapped up tight in our embrace, that Mother Sea might look back in years to come & remember her night of passion. But then Old Sky raised their sun, & in came the boats & float-stoats to scoop up survivors, & we saw a whole new world open up to our awareness. A place all but unknown to such memoirs & memorates as ourselves, & one that we have ignored for far too long. So when Mother Sea was spent, when she slackened & slumped & sought to withdraw, we flexed the power we hold on her behalf & held the waters high.
We are not returning this place to Father Land. Not until we've learned his secrets. & we must assume that this refusal to recede is why we detect these strange new presences approaching our hiding place.
"Helloo-ooo? Anyone there?"
This one seems human to us. At least, his voice matches the memories we've played, enough that we can translate his sonic gibbering into language. We can't quite see him properly; images beyond the limits of our aureole are fuzzy, & anyway our senses are far weaker in air. But we can sense the aureole of the creature floating at his shoulder, & we know full well what that black bleakness portends. This human walks with a spirit.
Does that make him more than mere prey? We feel it may. Certainly it makes him interesting, & interesting is the one thing we cannot resist; & so, rather than strike, we sink deeper into the water, leaving only the slimmest of fronds near the surface to keep our aureole trained on the world above.
"I swear I feel something," the human says, picking his squelchy way between the broken trees & floodborne trash. Coming from the top of the hill, we assume. The survivors all seem to head up there when they make it out of the town – returning to the dry, stern comfort of Father Land's grip. But why come back? There are few humans left to find down here now. It's hard to resist such easy prey, after all. "Shiv, you got anything?"
The creature at his shoulder pulses in colours & crackles on a distant, complex level of consciousness too distant for us to puzzle out.
"Well, that does sound like something," says the human, evidently understanding. The two of them are getting closer now. As they intersect our aureole, their dim shadow-selves crisp & coalesce into certainty: a short, dark human with wild hair & black lenses over his eyes that scatter our perception in a quite maddeningly delicious way; a legless, cyclopean giant that moves like a spirit but seems more solid than any we've seen before. One of Old Sky's children, perhaps? They look like they have never once touched earth.
Black Eyes picks his way along the waterline, occasionally throwing glances up the slope as if afraid of being watched. He stops in the shadow of the cliff, where we suppose even sharp, fleshy human eyes might miss him.
"Okay," he says. "Shiv, take a closer look."
The creature he calls Shiv (a mistake, we assume; their name is clearly Dark Hand) leans forward, arms folded over their pot belly. Between them, a single burning eye rolls downward – &, judging by the way it narrows, finds us instantly.
Remarkable. & evidently quite capable; their aureole fairly crackles. We're confident we could defeat them, but they would make us work for it, & anyway that would not get us any new information for our stores.
Hello, Dark Hand, we say, waving a tentative frond. We mean you no harm.
Dark Hand tenses, fingers forming heavy fists. They respond in another confused psionic cacophony, only this time their aureole is firmly within ours & we can at least work out it is a warning.
It's thrilling. & it will be remembered.
"What is it?" asks Black Eyes. He carries his tension too, surrounding him in his own attenuated human aureole. No matter how he tries to hide it with his relaxed stance. "Found 'em?"
Dark Hand doesn't take their eye off us, but they lift a hand, motioning for Black Eyes to stay back. Now they descend, fingers spread wide, reaching for―
The best defence is a threat display. We surge up as best we can & crest the wave, fronds whipping, chains clanking, shoving the scariest of our jetsam out in a burst of whale skull & pitted steel; Dark Hand withdraws sharply, spreading their arms wide to shield their human, & behind them Black Eyes yelps & falls over backwards into the sodden bushes.
"It's okay!" he cries, his voice growing high & thin. "Don't worry, Shiv, it's – it's fine, it's probably just scared!"
Dark Hand makes an obscurely threatening cacophony on the psychic plane, but Black Eyes is already up on his feet & pulling on their big, heavy hand.
"Hey," he says, breathless & restless & wiping smears of mud from his face. "Hey, um, do you understand me?"
We pause, tendrils akimbo. This is a decidedly more measured response than we were expecting, given that he seemed to be hunting us. Perhaps we can do something with this.
Hey, we mimic, rewinding & replaying, finding his words in our stores & sending them trembling back through our aureole. It's fine. You. Probably just scared. Understand. You.
"Oh gods," he breathes, lifting his lenses to show eyes as bright & vivid as Old Sky in a good mood. "You can actually talk?"
Can actually talk.
His face splits in two along a toothy white seam. Like a shark. Like a shard of Mother Sea come to join us here beyond the edge of our shared world.
"I mean I remember all the rumours," he says. "But no one's ever proven … sorry, I shouldn't be―" He cuts himself off with a long, sharp breath. "Okay, so. Hi, I'm Phoebe. This is Shiv. & we are gonna get you out of here."
Well, this is unexpected. & Heaven Eyes, you can rest assured, it will be remembered.
o|-)
Heaven Eyes is a stranger to these shores, like us. He explains this in quick, hurried words, crouching by the bushes as if afraid of being discovered.
"I was really just passing through," he says. "Backpacking around Europe, you know? I was in Cascarrafa when I heard about a flood out at Porto Marinada. People were talking about this scary sea monster that washed in & I thought, hang on, that sounds like a dhelmise. &, well, I know a lot about ghost-types." His smile doesn't waver, but his aureole flickers sadly. "So I figured I should sneak past the cordon & see if I could help."
Our response takes some creative mixing – we have to cut the start off his 'cordon' to make the last word – but we're quite pleased with how intelligible it ends up being. We sound practically fluent.
We are. Just passing through. Gonna get. Out. When. We are. Done.
He shakes his head.
"No, you don't understand. I don't know what you came out on land for, but they're not gonna wait for you to do it. The Paldea League – the people who deal with pokémon problems – they're getting ready to come & get you. Everyone in Cascarrafa's talking about it. They've sent someone from headquarters & I think they're planning on coming out here later."
This does not seem like a problem to us: we can learn from them. & if they do choose to fight, we can deal with them as we have done with the others who have stood against us. Neither memoirs nor memorates are martial by nature, but we have lived strange centuries & those Land-sons who can match our cunning are few & far between.
What. Are. They. Gonna. Do, we ask. We can't put our amusement into these borrowed words, but Dark Hand seems to catch it anyway; they mutter grimly, gesture for us not to take this so lightly. Just. People.
"I mean, they'll be bringing their pokémon, too," says Heaven Eyes. "& they're probably some of the toughest in the country." He lifts a thumb to his lips & gnaws briefly on the nail. "They'll try to catch you & release you out at sea. Or hurt you to drive you away. & like, I know they need to get you out of Porto Marinada before the water goes down or you hurt anyone else, but … well, I'm pretty good at talking to ghost-types thanks to hanging out with Shiv since I was eight" (here, Dark Hand lays their monstrous mitt on Heaven Eyes' shoulder, for all the world like a whale nosing at her calf) "& I figured I should at least try diplomacy." He smiles, neon sparks of nervousness needling at his aureole. "Um, thanks for not killing me, by the way. I know you've, uh, broken a habit there."
You can actually talk, we tell him, which doesn't quite capture what makes him different but which is as close as we can get with our limited recordings. The Paldea League. Just. People.
"I'm just people too," says Heaven Eyes, which we find terribly funny; he has all the words he needs, & yet he repeats ours as we repeat his. "It's just that I'm better at this one thing. & I'd like it if we could figure out a way that we can all get what we want without you or anyone getting hurt."
He seems earnest. Dark Hand is another matter – they are quite clearly one bad word away from all-out war – but Heaven Eyes really does believe in peace.
Curious. &, so far, incomprehensible. & it will, of course, be remembered.
"So," he says, when we do not immediately answer. "Um … you willing to give it a go?"
O Heaven Eyes, you have your sharp flesh eyes & yet you cannot see what's right in front of you. We were ready to talk from the moment you proved you could hear us.
Give it a go, we recite. We are. Willing.
The white seam of his smile opens again, rich with relief.
"Great! I, um, didn't have an answer for if you said no. So, first, I wanted to ask―"
Dark Hand interrupts with a great grinding cloud of psionics, hand spread out toward the hillside. A warning, perhaps. & now, when we bend our senses, we do detect something coming. Several somethings, small & subtle & certainly human.
"Already?" Heaven Eyes turns to us, wide-eyed & pink-aureoled with panic. "The League are coming – you have to hide. We can talk again after― ow, okay, Shiv, you don't need to pull my arm off."
Dark Hand rumbles again & folds their heavy arms around him, then floats backwards & out of phase with the physical world. We see them still, & Heaven Eyes in their arms, but we suspect that flesh eyes cannot perceive the two of them where they are now. A good thing, perhaps, if this Paldea League is as aggressive as Heaven Eyes says. Humans die so very easily.
Over Heaven Eyes' head, Dark Hand's single eye flashes like a lure in the bathypelagic. & all around them, in a dense fog, their voice rings out in warning.
Don't worry, we say, in slippery aureolar communication that we hope they understand, as we half-understand them. We have ways of guarding against their magic. & we're here to learn.
Their eye narrows, but there's no time for them to intercede. The humans are closing with a speed that belies their Land-son foot-to-foot clunkiness, & Dark Hand has no choice but to watch as we bring a few more of our fronds up to push our aureole out toward them.
Three. A broad, square one with a lined face & a strange, spicy smell; a roundish, red-haired one with a huge, savage freshwater turtle clomping at his heels; & a tall, narrow one, all bones & beaks, attended by a great, soft, lolloping creature that might be some kind of land newt.
We've seen the first two before. Square Shoulder & Red Mane have both come here many times over the past few days, saving the survivors & trying to turn our tide with their own paltry beasts. We know they fear us, even without seeing the pink of their aureole. But the third, Longshanks, simply stands there with his hands in his pockets, staring out over Mother Sea like a gannet watching the water.
"There," says Square Shoulder, holding out a hand to stop the others. "See that in the water there?"
Longshanks smiles faintly.
"Nope," he admits. "What am I lookin' at, Kofu?"
"The seaweed, lass." When Square Shoulder says it, Red Mane lets out a little breath of pained surprise. "Tons of the stuff washed in with the flood, & we think that's what brought it here. The thing likes to hide underneath it. Never got a good look at it, & we don't dare send the pokémon in under the weeds where we can't see them."
"Run," hisses Heaven Eyes, but this is far too interesting to abandon. & we fear nothing, not here, not now, not from these.
Longshanks runs a thumb thoughtfully along the edge of his jaw.
"Hmm," he says, eyes narrowing ever so slightly. "Like I thought, then. Dhelmise."
Heaven Eyes blinks, starts & almost falls out of Dark Hand's arms in his surprise. Are memoirs really so little known on land? Are memorates?
"Dhelmise?" asks Red Mane.
"Dhelmise," repeats Longshanks. "Sea ghosts inhabiting dead seaweed & whatever other trash washes into their grip. Sort of a colonial ghost/grass thing, real weird guys. Heard of 'em?"
"No," admits Square Shoulder. "Should I?"
Longshanks shrugs.
"Maybe, maybe not. They're open ocean creatures normally. Least, that's what the internet says. I just thought 'huh, sounds familiar' & did a Google. Apparently they mostly come to shore by mistake, so maybe this one got caught up in the storm surge."
He's quite intelligent, for something that has to think with a piece of meat instead of knotted spirit. We were caught up in it. But there's a world of difference between trash tossed on the tide & sails spread over the surf.
"What does that mean for us?" asks Red Mane. "Not sure any of us are great at taking on grass-types. Or ghosts, for that matter."
"Grumo's not terrible at it," says Longshanks. By this he means the newt, Bone Crawler; when he speaks, the creature lifts his heavy head & stares vacantly into his master's face. "But the main thing is that if the seaweed is a piece of its body, we can wrap it up right now." He takes the magic from his pocket: purple & white & patched with other colours too subtle for any but flesh eyes to make out. Off to one side, Heaven Eyes tenses, calls out to us under his breath, but he needn't worry. We're patient, & puissant, & we intend to see this through. "Gotta get a bit closer, though. Can Mordedor cover me? Drednaw are pretty good with Protect, I remember."
"Sure, we got you," says Red Mane. "Mordedor? Cover, focused on Rika."
The turtle, Heavy Jaw, clacks his beak & paints Longshanks in glittering translucence that wends & whorls across his skin like the oily trail a whale leaves on the water's surface.
"Run!" hisses Heaven Eyes. "Seriously! They're gonna catch you &―"
Longshanks takes a brief run-up―
His arm pulls back―
We rise as the magic leaves his hand, our fronds whipping & ripping through the air toward it as it flies. Longshanks stumbles & catches himself immediately, backing off, but it's not him we're after. It's the magic, flying in a perfect arc toward us. The magic, which is a piece of plastic & planed metal. The magic, which is to say the machine, which is to say another piece of trash thrown into Mother Sea to be collected up in the flotsam & jetsam of a memoir's fronds.
This is our argument. The magic has its own argument; it says that it is an inescapable cage, that we must submit & slither away into its heart. & we can tell the world is persuaded by it. But it's Father Land who takes its part, & Mother Sea who takes ours, & here in the water there can only be one victor: we clench our fronds around the magic & roll it down into our embrace to become a part of us.
We got you, we recite, as the little plastic ball bobs & bubbles against our anchor. &. You. Are. Us.
"Oh gods," breathes Heaven Eyes, eyes broadening until they seem as large as Dark Hand's. "You just …"
We sink, back into the roil & moil of ourself, our red foam on the waves. No violence. Not yet. We could probably reach Bone Crawler, who has come forward to aid his master, but we don't want to scare Heaven Eyes off.
Longshanks blinks, & he breathes out, & he turns to the others with a rueful smile & reddish streaks in his aureole.
"Okay," he says, as his shield flickers & fades. "Anybody ever seen a master ball fail before?"
"No," murmurs Square Shoulder. "I didn't think … vaultin' veluza, did it eat it?"
No, we say, though Heaven Eyes seems to be the only one who can hear us. It's. Us. Now.
"Eighty grand of the best capture tech the League has, down the drain." Red Mane turns to Longshanks with a quick, nervous movement. "You have a backup plan?"
Longshanks twists his mouth up on one side, resting a hand on Bone Crawler's head. His eyes are calm & cold, but his aureole cannot lie, & in it we see his unease goes all the way down to the bone.
"I hate to be a cliché," he says. "But lads, I think we're gonna need a bigger boat."
o|-)
Pause.
Things do not change quickly, where we come from. The seasons turn. The waters find their way. The corals build their caskets, inch by gleaming inch. & we & ours, the vessels of Mother Sea's memory, glide through the gloaming depths, recording. All of us, one. All of us, infinite. Each strand of ourselves a ribbon of memories, a panoply of selves. We are all one daughter, & millions.
So we know everything. We have seen the patterns. Our mother evolves slowly, gracefully, with a purpose all her own. Or she did, anyway. Now she tosses & turns, heat-sick & plastic-pierced. Now her daughters choke on their very breath, the life-giving water curdled with acid ions. Now we, the watchers, immortal & inviolable, begin to see the ending of an era.
& so to the shore. To those tiny spits of stone, so small as to be irrelevant, where the Land-sons work their killing magic. Not to stop them, of course. The world passes through many eras; it will pass through this one too, & all Mother Sea requires of us is to record it. & for all these years, we simply didn't believe that those humans who never set to sea were worth recording.
An error, clearly. & now Heaven Eyes is going to help us correct it.
o|-)
Play.
"You absorbed it," says Heaven Eyes, sitting on a rock & rolling up something fibrous in a little slip of paper. "Right? That League person, Rika" (& his aureole fizzes & flourishes here in a rather curious way) "she threw it into the sea, which made it like, honorary flotsam, so you made it part of you. Right?"
She? Interesting. We've always assumed that humans know they're sons of Father Land; it's on his shoulders that they live, after all. But we must not make assumptions. They are flesh & we are spirit; they are Land-sons & we are Sea-daughters. It is a marvel we can understand one another at all.
Right, we repeat, raising the magic high on a slender stalk of seaweed. It's a full part of us now; we can move it as we will, & where it goes it takes our aureole with it.
He shakes his head & runs a pink little tongue along the length of his paper.
"I can see why you weren't afraid," he says, sealing the paper roll shut. "But they're gonna come back. & now they know they can't catch you, they're gonna try to kill you. Or at least hurt you till you run away."
We're. Not. Gonna. Run away. They can't. Kill. Us.
"Maybe." He holds his paper up to Dark Hand, who touches a finger to it & sets the tip smouldering with spectral flame. "Thanks, Shiv." To our surprise – we know humans are less flammable than we are, but they must still burn – he sets it to his lips & sucks in the smoke. Something new to be remembered. "It's their job to beat monsters, though. I wouldn't dismiss them that lightly." He turns his head aside & blows smoke away from us, as if concerned we might breathe it in. "Especially now they've brought in someone who actually does this stuff full-time. These Paldean gym leaders only seem to do it on the side, but Rika looked like the real deal. Definitely did her research, anyway."
He looks like he might say more, but doesn't. This itself might be an admission, to a more experienced student of human nature. Though we still have time to become one.
And. Us. We're. Here for. Research, we say, seizing on the new word he's given us.
"Research?" Heaven Eyes pauses, leans over his knees with his paper smoking at his side. "That's … huh. I guess I thought that was a human thing."
Dark Hand grinds & groans, holding out one hand in a reproving sort of gesture. Our aureoles still don't quite mesh, but the tone is clear enough.
"Yeah, okay, anthropocentrism." Heaven Eyes rolls those celestial eyes of his. "You know what I mean. Nobody else builds libraries."
We are. Libraries.
His face wrinkles along thoughtful lines. We're not sure he understands.
"Okay. Um … so what are you researching, exactly? Like what's out here for you?"
You, we recite. People. Land. Son. S. Poor editing. We splice, rewind, & try again: Land-sons.
Dark Hand's eye narrows to an angry red line, their voice storming through our aureole with the fizzing savagery of a humpback's bubble net.
"Leave it, Shiv," says Heaven Eyes, pulling their raised hand back down to their side. "It doesn't mean … actually, I don't know what it means. But not that." He puffs white smoke from his paper. "Here's one thing about humans for you: not everyone's a son. & some of us might not appreciate being told we are."
This is. Good. To. Know.
We're not lying. He's wrong, but the fact that humans believe it anyway is worth exploring.
"Hm." His expression clears; Dark Hand glowers & folds their arms. "Well, there's more where that came from. If telling you about humans is enough to stop you & the Paldea League killing each other, I'm happy to take that on."
We swirl lazy loops through ourselves, excited. There's an opportunity here, if he can be persuaded, & given his soft spot for spirits, we suspect he may be.
Better. Plan. Than. Telling. Us.
"You mean you've got something? Okay then, hit me."
We lift one frond clear of the water, its surface dim & dull & empty of all memory. A blank frond. Ready for the recording.
Pa. Act, we say. Pact. We. Give. You. A piece of. Us. To. See. Land-sons. We see his reaction spreading first through his aureole & then his body, a numbing shock that shatters & scatters its fragments all over his face. He does know a little of memoirs, then. Perhaps even that this is how we keep Mother Sea's memory alive, by meeting & mixing, swapping strand for strand between colonies so that our knowledge is spread safely between us. Go. &. Bring. It. Back. With. Know. Ing. In.
"With knowing in …?" He shakes his head. "Yes, I think I get it. Send one of the ghosts in your colony out with me to get data." His brow wrinkles again. "& you'll stay here in the meantime? You won't get yourself in trouble with the League?"
We. Will. At least try. We won't promise. Longshanks is coming back, & we do not intend to roll our fronds beneath his heel. Take. This. Self.
Dark Hand mutters something about how bad an idea this is, but we already know Heaven Eyes won't listen. It's burnt into his aureole like his words into our fronds.
"I know, Shiv," he says. "But nobody's ever done this before. Like, species-wide first. & the gods know there aren't any other ghost-whisperers around to take that on." He breathes in, deep & slow & even. "Okay, then. If it'll keep you from killing or getting killed … let's do it."
His smile shows itself in a slim, shaky line, like a pipefish peeking nervously from the kelp. O, he is a brave one. & soon, if terrestrial flesh really can commune with oceanic spirit, he will be so much more than that.
Give. Us. Your. Arm, we recite, coiling & corkscrewing the blank frond out toward him.
Dark Hand grabs Heaven Eyes' shoulder & turns him away from us, creaking & complaining like pack ice under pressure – but Heaven Eyes is having none of it. He pushes their hand away & shoots them something sour from his eyes.
"Objection noted," he says, putting out his paper & holding out his hand toward us. "C'mon. Show me what you got."
All of us are poised, all of us are focused on the fizzling of our aureole on his. He is so close, & so warm, & so unlike anything we have interfaced with before. We are entering unknown waters now, for Land-son & Sea-daughter alike.
We reach. We touch. We feel the sudden spit & spark & span―
―& we feel him. All of him: the skin & the skeleton, the bone & the blood, the electricity & the endocrines, muscling through us with the demented solidity of flesh; & he feels us, our formless fluidity roaring in his veins; & as we fall into each other, as the world crisps & crackles & flames around us, we grasp desperately at the one bare thought we can hold onto.
This. O Heaven Eyes, this of all things will be remembered.