CASSETTE TWO, SIDE A: THE LESSONS

The condition of all life is motion, and so we move: slithering and sliding, diving and descending, curling and whirling and twirling through the hurly-burly of the waves as they wax and wane with the arrhythmic fury of the night. Old Sky, that irascible eccentric, is a law unto themself. They hold the sun hostage, and so when the mood takes them to rain down blows and buffets upon their younger cousins, there's nothing to be done but roll with the onslaught.

So: the wind howls and we prowl, splashing the moon-silvered spume. Recording, of course. And ruminating. These marks along the walls and halls of the town: we pass our fronds across them and feel the regularity, but if they encode a language, it is keyed to the human mind, as far beyond us as the moon above. As the meaning of these innumerable black mirrors, some hinged, some flat. As that of the glittery discs skipping over the silt in the storefronts.

We've never been confronted with our limits before. It's exciting, in its way. It will be remembered, and so will Father Land's curious generosity in sending us one of his sons as ambassador. And Heaven Eyes of all people, strange inhabitant of this brave new world! We itch to see how that human brain of his interprets all these oddities.

As it happens, we find out sooner than expected. We've crammed ourselves into a room we take to be a sort of architectural attempt at creating a memoir, sifting through sodden papers in the hope of decrypting their communications, when all at once our aureole trembles. And rumbles. And grumbles. And then, in one swift shimmering shock―

WET GHOST LISTEN, says the signal, in weird, oblique half-language that just barely scans for us. SHIV SPEAK FOR PHOEBE PHOEBE TALK GHOST BUT PHOEBE FAR. The speaker pauses, though we still feel the transmission rippling through our aureole. Can this really be Dark Hand? It feels nothing like what we sensed from them earlier. Perhaps they've learned a thing or two from our stray memorate. HEY WET GHOST LISTEN?

O well, how are we to resist? This is all so curious, and memoir and memorate alike are nothing without our curiosity. Whatever happens here, it will be remembered.

Certainly we can hear you, Dark Hand, we say, wondering how they plan to hear us. Do they possess some long-distance receiver as well? We can't speak loudly enough to be heard much beyond the bay in which we've built our little lagoon. We're surprised to hear from you so soon. Is all well?

Their disdain curdles our aureole clear down to our fronds.

HAND THIS HAND THAT NAME SHIV, they say, cold and captious. NAME MATTER PHOEBE SHOW SHIV.

It is true that names are important. Though it seems that Dark Hand's ideas about that import have been knocked askew through their association with humans.

As you like, we say. You have a message for us?

MESSAGE! Their scorn fairly sears our strands. SHIV STREAM. WET GHOST LISTEN.

We have but a brief moment to consider what 'stream' might mean in this context before the transmission shivers, shakes and shows us – well, we're not sure. Our aureole is still where it was; we see the salt and silt around us. And yet at the same time we hang motionless in a dense, damp dark.

Heaven Eyes. We feel him now, a jumbled presence like a knot of seaweed, hanging half out of reach. If we could untangle him, we are sure we could feed the strands of him into ourselves, record every second he's ever lived to our strands, but when we reach out he recedes into the gloomy grip of Dark Hand's psionics.

SHIV SAY MESSAGE NOT EAT, they snap. RUDE!

And there is something to that, we must admit. Besides, we've given him one of ourselves, and it would be a terrible shame for a memoir to lose one of her memorates to such short-sighted folly. We feel her now, as it happens. Dimly, at one remove, as when we peel a new memorate from her corpse and slip her slumbering soul into our coils. It makes no sense, and then, O! It makes complete sense and we see for the first time the true potential of Dark Hand's power. The memorate awaits only our presence to connect to us; we await only hers. Dark Hand's strange signal cannot close the gap, but it can bridge it. And so, we suspect, link us to―

Um, hi?

―Heaven Eyes himself.

The memorate stirs, discomfited at our choice of name, but we ignore her. We knew she'd take on aspects of Heaven Eyes himself, now that she's part of him; there is no profit in arguing until she's reintegrated.

Hello, Heaven Eyes, we say.

His dark clumps and crinkles in confusion.

Hi? Can you hear me?

Evidently he cannot understand us. We'll need to resume use of our recordings.

Hi. Can. Hear. You.

Oh! Great. Movement. Mumbling. Sorry, this is weird, I should explain – this is a trick me and Shiv have. I'm lucid dreaming, she's boosting it and broadcasting it to you. I didn't know if you'd be able to talk back but it looks like you can, maybe 'cause you got a bit of yourself in me.

Yes, we reply. What. Do you. Want. To ask.

Not really ask, but kind of – well, actually, yes, I'm gonna ask you something too. But the main thing is I, um, bumped into Rika earlier and she let me know what she's got planned. The wet dark of his flesh brain pops briefly with psionic sparks; our stray memorate whispers quietly about the mating season. We understand, after a fashion: most of our mass was dulse before it died, and dulse too must mate to survive. But animals are so much stranger about it. We hope this will not sway Heaven Eyes from our cause. She and Kofu – that's the guy who came yesterday, the one with the eyebrows – they're going to start pushing back the floodwater tomorrow.

Pushing back the floodwater.

We mean it as a question, though our attempt to pitch up the end of the sentence as a human would does not work as we would like. Do they even possess such powers? They certainly had their attendant beasts, but we doubt Bone Crawler or Square Shoulder's hakes have the strength to impose their will on our mother.

Yeah, says Heaven Eyes. I don't know exactly how it works, but they're both experts. I wouldn't count them out. He pauses. I wouldn't count you out, either. I can't always understand the bit of you in me, but she seems sure you'd retaliate by making the flood worse. So, um … please don't do that? Like people will get hurt, or more people, and I'd like to avoid that. And also if you do more damage, the League will send more people. You're strong, but I dunno if you're strong enough to take all of them at once.

We are where our mother has placed us. From where Father Land has not yet pushed her back. We can only assume that, no matter what these Paldea League Land-sons do, we are where the Great Ones intended us to be.

They can. Try, we say. This is. What. Great. One. S. Rewind, retry. Great. Ones. Will.

Great Ones …? We sense a quiver, a shiver, some inscrutable movement of his inscrutable body. What can our stray memorate possibly make of all this? We can hardly wait to find out. Are you talking about―? no, wait, there's no time for that, Shiv can't keep this up. Just – please. I'm going to get you what you want, you just … have to be patient.

Patience? Humans hardly know the meaning of the word. A season or two on their father's shoulders and they're gone, like the thronging multitude of fish that never make it through their first few fortnights.

Still, he's persistent. And he carries one of us. And we think, to our surprise, that we rather like him. So many of his kind are silent, stupid, spiritually ungifted; he has a kind of fire in him that we take to be Father Land's answer to Mother Sea's riptide. It is something to savour, even if he hasn't the raw strength to back it up. And it will be remembered.

If. They. Come and get. Us. They'll. See. How it works.

I really hope that doesn't mean 'I'll tangle them up in seaweed and suck out their souls'.

It means. We. Will. Answer. Them. We pause. Consider. Press on: Without. Anyone getting hurt.

Oh. The dark dances to some tremolo tone that we assume is as close as Heaven Eyes' spirit can get to a sigh. Okay. Okay, thank you. I'll – oh, hell, Shiv? Shiv? Um, right, sorry – out of time, I'll come see you tomor―

And then the water. Then nothing but this chamber full of waterlogged paper. Then Mother Sea, enmeshed in Father Land's innards.

O, Heaven Eyes. You still do not see, do you? and neither do the others, these people of the Paldea League. But no matter. We can show them. And now, perhaps, we can show you.

o|-)

Pause.

Here is something we learned a few hundred years ago, when we trailed a ship of stitched teak through the tropics and heard one Land-son talking to another as they sewed up torn sailcloth. A long time before then (for a human, which is to say a mere strandful of centuries), a Land-son called Peaceful had in his service two humans who came to him in some distress. In the course of their business in the city, they had bumped against the Ancient, who frees the living from their flesh when their time is done. It wore the mask of a human, but they knew it by its eyes, and passing it they could not help but mark the menace in its mien.

Now humans, being live, fear death above all, as we did before we left our lives to become memorates. And so, being human, being live, they pleaded with Peaceful for the loan of his horses, to speed away to another city too far away for the Ancient to follow. Peaceful, moved by their plight, conceded, and off they went. But walking through the city that afternoon, he too met the Ancient, and so asked why it had glared so threateningly at his servants.

"I have made no threat," it replied. "I was merely surprised to see them here, when I have an appointment with them tonight in the other city."

We are not the Ancient, though we all know it well. And yet, to these Land-sons, who believe fate bends to mere force, we may as well be. Mother Sea has come here. Father Land has bade her stay. And if Longshanks and Square Shoulder think they can change that, we will have to teach them the truth of the lesson the sailor tried to give his friend: do as you like, strive as you will, but you and we and all of us will never escape the wave washing us onto the hard black rocks of our fate.

o|-)

Play.

Old Sky's fury doesn't linger. By dawn, they have relented; the gales are gone, and they stroke the waves and hills with their long, roseate fingers. We spread out over the surface, enjoying the warmth. The sun can't feed us the way it did when we lived, but the memory unspools within us of clear light and cold water, of days when life flowed from sky to strand and our minds were little more than slim chemical cycles of appetite and satisfaction.

O, happy days. But happier still to be memorates, to be a memoir. To be ever-hungry for new horizons. To sense, on a bright summer's morning, the ocean shift, and to know that somewhere out there humans are launching the first sally of their senseless offensive.

We stretch through the streets, moving below the surface to stymie their sharp flesh eyes. It's good that we do. They are watching, from their perches all around the shoreline; they even have birds circling above to call at the first sign of danger. We stay low, push our aureole out through the thinnest of our fronds, and see – well, we don't know what. Magic of some kind, perhaps. Long-legged machines and taciturn Land-sons with flapping papers and fluorescent jackets. And all around them, the beasts of the water: razor-hakes patrolling the shallows, the changeling land crabs that only return to the sea to spawn, even a great pale pelican that perches and preens like an icon of Old Sky's cruel vanity. Square Shoulder watches over one cluster, near where the water laps the tumbled rocks below the cliff; at the far end of the bay, Longshanks himself oversees another, eyes hooded and hands pocketed as if to conceal the furious motion of his aureole.

"Dead sure there's something here," he says, with a casualness we know he does not feel. "Grumo's pretty short on brains, but he's got a good gut sense for this kinda thing. Maybe shift the theodolites over there a bit?"

It's quite fascinating. Like watching the creeping creatures of the benthic swarming over whale fall, biting and bustling and breaking some huge, intractable immensity down into its constituents. For some time we linger, taking it in, pulling back every time a razor-hake comes close enough that it might sense us, and then at last we realise: they are feeling for the leverage points. All this work, all this bustle, these machines, the beasts scurrying and scuttling and speaking their several tongues at companions who only half understand – all of this, to find the lines along which the power of earth and water flow. Places where one might push or pull, and have Mother Sea accede and ply her tide.

We grasp these lines as easily as humans do breath. The creatures accompanying them doubtless have the same facility. But it seems humans cannot simply reach for the elements and find them waiting; and still, here they are, reaching. What the Great Ones did not see fit to give, they have yet found a way to take, through their muscular ingenuity and the complex machinations of their magic.

O, make no mistake, it is terribly thrilling. And it will be remembered. And, of course, none of it will matter one iota in the face of a memoir united.

o|-)

They work on through the morning, the humans and their companions. Their conversation is technical and precise; they name the length and breadth of their magic, their lidar and theodolites and thaumatographs. We watch, and we wonder, and we winnow out new riches from their speech to stock our treasure-house of words.

And then, as Old Sky begins to blaze their searing midday symphony, they pack up and head further up the hill, to regroup under some sort of temporary building too far from our aureole to be properly made out. Hiding until the heat wanes, we suppose. We too once knew such dangers.

One who does not, it seems, is Heaven Eyes. He floats down the slope in Dark Hand's arms, invisible and inviolable to human eyes, and wriggles free only when he has rounded the corner and secreted himself away in the shadow of the cliff.

"I think we got away with that," he says, glancing back up the slope. "Thank the gods for siesta time." He turns toward the water, searching for our strands beneath the spume. "What's the betting she just pops up outta nowhere right now? She's gotta know we're here."

Hello.

We do not pop up; the razor-hakes are still on patrol, and though we're more than capable of addling their psionics with our shadow we would rather not draw attention and scare off the humans before we've learned all we can from them. Still, even this one word is enough to set Dark Hand on edge. They mutter mutinously and drift forward, screening Heaven Eyes with their bulk.

"Shiv, c'mon." He puts a hand on their arm and pulls them back. "Hi. Um, how's it going?"

It's going well, we say, testing out a new recording acquired from the League Land-sons. Has our. Self―

He steps forward, and something dances between us, like a spark between two chinchou lures. Our words die; the world dims; we are here, riding at anchor in the shallows, and we are there, looking out through jellied glass at an ocean cut with more colour than we've ever seen before―

And then not. Then we recoil, and he stumbles, and our aureoles fizzle confusedly against one another.

"O-oh," he gasps, catching himself against Dark Hand. "Um, that … uh."

We think he knows, even if his body is not quite up to framing the words. It seems whatever porthole Dark Hand forced open hasn't quite closed – perhaps can't, not while one of us lies entombed beneath bone and brawn.

Our. Self, we say, by way of explanation. Your. Broadcast. Boosting. Bit of. Our. Self.

"Y-yeah." Heaven Eyes smooths his hair with one hand, though it springs back immediately. A nervous tic, from the pink prickling his aureole. "Feedback loop. Just wasn't expecting it, not after such a light possession. We've been getting on pretty well, actually."

We detect – something else, we cannot quite define it. The flutter of a fin against a fish trap, so soft it's hardly even there. An affirmation, perhaps. Certainly our stray memorate seems at ease.

Good, we say. The closer she cleaves to her target, the clearer her recordings will be. What. Do you. Want. From us.

"Huh?" Heaven Eyes' head pulls back in a sudden startled twitch. "Don't you want her back?"

Not yet. Not. Enough. Knowing in.

"Oh. Really? I mean, I brought her to a bar and then we went all around town this morning." He is trying hard not to look anxious, but there is no lying to us. "Did the whole tourist thing."

Sights and sounds, tastes and tones, all grist to the mill of our project. But we need deeper truths than that. If we are to properly catalogue the Land-sons, we must drink them to the dregs.

Not that. We. Need to get. Human. Knowing.

PHOEBE DONE ENOUGH, says Dark Hand suspiciously. WET GHOST TAKE TAKE GET GET.

"Shiv." Heaven Eyes brushes a hand harmlessly over their chest in cryptic reprimand. "What d'you mean by 'human knowing'?"

Knowing. Of. Human. Kind.

He scratches his head.

"Like human nature? That kind of thing?"

Yes.

"Okay."

We wait, but he does not continue. After a moment, he sighs and seats himself on a slick knuckle of stone, careless of the damp soaking into his skirt.

"Guess I should've known," he says. "I used to be a pokémon trainer, specialised in ghost types. Grew up near a graveyard, you know? Played with the duskull, got possessed a few times, fell in love with how smart and adaptable ghosts are. There really aren't―"

What is. A pokémon trainer.

"Huh. I mean it makes sense you wouldn't know, I guess. You know how a lot of pokémon get attached to people? Partner with them for company?" At his side, Dark Hand flexes their fingers, which we take to be an obscure display of dominance. "Some of them come to us because they see a path to strength. So we help them get stronger. That's what a trainer does. Not a lot of people do it with ghosts, 'cause you're smart and scary and that makes you dangerous, but like I did, so I know how curious you all are. That's my point. And you're bigger and smarter than any ghost I've ever met" (here, Dark Hand bristles with outrage) "so of course you're gonna want to go deeper."

To go deeper. A curiously oceanic metaphor for so resolutely landborne a creature. Perhaps Mother Sea's depths look more alien to those trapped on the tatty little tumuli that are all the territory Father Land can offer his children. More to the point – what does he mean, he used to be a trainer? Judged against his own description, he appears to be a match.

Don't you. Still. Do it.

He sighs and shakes his head.

"Nah. I quit all that back in the spring. I was gonna go pro – uh, I mean, make it my job, like what I dedicate my life to – only I … well, something more important came up and I had to choose." His mouth hesitates its way toward a half-smile, then gives up and lies still. "But I just can't seem to forget it."

His aureole is bright, brindled, brittle. We do not know precisely what he is trying to tell us, but we are quite sure that his spiritual sensibility is too powerful to be smothered by mere effort of will.

Of course you. Can't. Forget it, we tell him. It's. In your. Nature.

He pauses, halfway through taking one of his paper rolls from behind his ear.

"Oh. Um. What? Really?"

Dark Hand touches his arm.

WET GHOST FINALLY TALK SENSIBLE, they say. PHOEBE MEANT FOR GHOST GHOST MEANT FOR PHOEBE.

Heaven Eyes gives a small, strained smile that looks mere seconds away from snapping.

"Thanks," he says, though he does not seem grateful at all. "Anyway. We probably have about forty-five minutes till we need to sneak back out again. I can tell you some things if you like."

O, Heaven Eyes, you curious little creature. How do you not see it? So keen and so quick, and yet you fail to grasp what hangs right before your face.

Oh, we say, testing out this circumscribed human O. You. Already. Are.

And the look on his face – why, what else? It will, of course, be remembered.

o|-)

Old Sky turns in their ceaseless course; the day dims by slow degrees to dusk; and Longshanks, he who cloaks his cunning in carelessness, finally shows the strength of his arm.

"Kofu?" he says, leaning up against a tree while his subordinates and beasts look on. "We're about ready to go over here."

He has a piece of far-speaking magic pressed to his cheek, the air around it humming with harmonies that sing in languages known only to stranger spirits than we. We can't stretch our aureole far enough across the flooded town to hear Square Shoulder at the other end of its spell, but we don't need to. It's plain to all those with an atom of awareness to their name that Longshanks is the leader of his pod, and Square Shoulder will fall in line behind him.

"Uh huh," he says, which is a longer way of expressing confirmation that humans use when 'yes' would be too easy. "Okay. Yeah, we've got a good angle on the fault line. Grumo's on the point already, and I've put the estuarine whiscash and veluza in the shallows as backup. You go with the clawitzer or the pelipper in the end?" He listens for a moment. A little way away, where the scrubland gives way to sucking mud and sodden debris, Bone Crawler slaps his tail idly against the ground. His aureole is thin, but it gleams with the endless patience of cold earth on lonely shores. "Uh huh. Sounds like a plan." He moves the magic from his face and covers it with his free hand. "Efrén? Flare on my signal. Veva, Rita, Noé, watch for Grumo to start and take my lead. Any questions?"

We are pleased to note that there are none; we want the humans to start already, to show us what power their stolen spells can summon. They shake their heads and the one Longshanks calls Efrén, with the magnificent black mane and bright buttons, settles a large and luxuriantly furred rodent in his arms.

"Ready when you are, Rika."

Longshanks nods and returns the magic to his face.

"Yeah, we're good. Watch for our signal." The magic's harmonies die, and he slips it into his pocket. "Grumo?"

Bone Crawler looks up with eyes as empty as Old Sky's heart.

"Atta boy. EQ, narrow, deep."

This cryptic command makes no sense to us, but Bone Crawler sets to it with a will: he digs his toes into the dirt and drives his power deep into the earth. And O, we feel it! Father Land loves him dearly; Bone Crawler asks, and he gives, and gives, and gives, the ley lines fraying and fracturing under the force of his will.

Black Mane's rodent sends a flash of light high into the sky, and we feel more power being bent across the bay, as when a seabird raises their song and their siblings answer the call. Square Shoulder too, then, and his beasts, and the fish in the shallows flipping their fins and filliping the silt – all of them, pouring out their power and making their argument. Mother, Father, hear us, and push.

The ground trembles. Stones bounce down the hillside; trash topples from the piles along the shoreline. And, bit by bit, as Father Land groans and Mother Sea moans, as Bone Crawler's flanks tremble and Longshanks leans in, the water begins to recede.

We could kill their beasts and end this now. They're easy prey, distracted; we need only reach out and drain them. But – we did say we wouldn't hurt anyone. And in truth, we do not have to. We are a memoir. Our enemies may make all the argument they like; we will always have an answer.

A snap, a swirl, a switching of our substance: we roar up to the surface like a message from the Great Ones, an emblem of our mother's will that puts the razor-hakes to rout in an instant. They break along the shoreline, one even jumping clear out of the sea in her eagerness to escape; she twists breathlessly in the surf before her human fumbles her back into her magic.

"Wondered when you'd show up," says Longshanks, leaning in. The casual pose is beginning to crack; there is real fire in those crimson eyes. "Rita, Noé, get those veluza back in position or get the hell outta here!"

Here they come, fish flashing from their fingertips, but it's all for nothing. Few indeed of Mother Sea's daughters will face a memoir; if those dullard catfish weren't too near-sighted to notice us, we suspect they'd turn tail too. The hakes break, and again, and as their efforts dissolve into disarray we take our moment and push back.

O, there is resistance! Bone Crawler hisses; something across the bay lets loose a lugubrious honk; the waterline dithers, dances, even ducks a moment. But we are strong, and we are loved, and when we whip the waves they flee forward up the shore.

"There's no way the veluza can hold!" shouts the heavyset one Longshanks calls Noé, wrestling a razor-hake who thrashes and flashes in her mad psionic panic. "I've never seen 'em this scared before!"

"Then get 'em out and go all in on the whiscash." Longshanks is smiling now, a slim, hard grin like the gape of flesh splitting over bone. "You didn't think Tall, Dark and Spooky out there would take this lyin' down, did you? Grumo! Deeper, acute!"

He hears, but has no strength to spare on confirmation: all of it is pumping his will into the soil. And Father Land feels the bruise, of that there can be no doubt. He smarts and stings and splutters up out of his cold slumber, dislodging stony spatters from the cliff face and shaking the shoreline all across the bay.

For a moment we wonder if we were mistaken. Do the Great Ones want us here or not? But we are too old to hesitate. We bury our anchor in the seabed, driving the steel though sand and stone to bite deep into the ley line, and as our will meets the world's we feel the tide shift in an instant. Father Land groans and gives way; Mother Sea howls and heads for shore, hungry new waves spilling upward and spoiling for a fight, yapping and snapping like rabid sea-foxes in their eagerness to drown the distance between the tideline and the humans falling back―

"Gonna make us sweat for this, huh?" asks Longshanks, pulling something from his pocket. "Well, I'm game if you are. Efrén! Signal Kofu again!"

Another flash from the rodent, Lodestar. And another from Longshanks' hand: something like sunlight on water, or fire gleaming through crystal. Something about it sets Longshanks' aureole blazing with a horrid cold flame like the witchfire that presages a lightning strike out on the open sea – and then, quite suddenly, Bone Crawler explodes.

It is like nothing we have ever experienced: a single pure jolt of Father Land's jewelled power, surging through his skin and boiling in his bones. He seems more than animal, and less, a living statue in cut crystal and glittering glass, and when he sends his next tremor through the ley line Mother Sea stops dead, mid-stride.

We hold on, trying to ride this storm out as we have all others – but then we detect a second crystalline explosion across the bay, and the two combined thresh and thrash and catapult our anchor clear out of the seabed.

"You got it!" cries one of the humans, as we tumble back through the turbid depths, grasping at the buildings for purchase. "I think the tide's―"

His voice cuts out as he crosses our limit – or, more accurately, as we move too far away, caught up on this rapidly draining tide. What is this? Father Land never fights back. Mother Sea takes, and Father Land concedes: this is the way of the world, as it always has been. Sometimes she gives him back the land she's taken, or rearranges it for him, but he's never struck her down before. Not like this.

O, this will be remembered – but it will not be borne. Not by us. Not from human magicians puffed with stolen power. Not – and we wrap our tendrils around the rooftops – like – and we heave ourselves forward – this.

And we move. We push, stealing a strand's length at a time, against the outward flow of water; we stretch and strain and strive until our strands crack and we feel the faded echo of the pain we once felt in life. We set our shoulder to the great glittering ram of terrestrial energy, and we strike.

One. Our first wave makes it halfway across the flooded market before dying on its fins. Two. The second rears up higher, a great curled claw that comes down hard on the landward row of houses, cracking tiles and crushing chimney pots. Three. The third―

―climbs―

―and climbs―

―and climbs―

―and swallows the Land-sons whole.

There are screams. We're close enough now; we hear it all, even half-see the shadows of humans struggling toward the high ground. Part of us wants to push on and kill them, but even if we hadn't told Heaven Eyes we wouldn't, we're not sure we have the strength. We can scarcely even see straight. The most we can say is that Father Land's wrath is spent. Whatever magic Longshanks and Square Shoulder brought to bear, it could not bind him for long, and there is no trace now of that bleak, crystalline flame.

It's been a long time since we were tired. Longer still since we came close to defeat. We would do well to remember this. The creatures who've cast their curses over our ocean may not have natural magic, but they've proven here that they don't need it. The machined stuff is a formidable substitute.

There. Movement, up the slope. Our aureole is dim and diffuse with fatigue, but we try to focus, and in its depths we see Longshanks pulling Black Mane from the water, Bone Crawler heaped and humped at his feet.

"Everyone okay?" he calls, flicking wet hair from his face and disappearing Bone Crawler in a flash of light. "Efrén, where's Mimi?"

"Recalled her." Black Mane coughs, cracks and crumples to the earth, spent. "The others?"

"Just comin' in now." We see them too, clinging to their catfish like remoras riding a whale's ribs. Sturdy creatures, to weather what we just threw their way. "Whiscash saved 'em."

"Kofu's gang?"

Longshanks shrugs.

"Phone's fucked. We'll have to see when we meet up." He thrusts his hands into his pockets with a sharp movement that seems the closest to distress we have yet observed in him. "What a mess. I actually think we've made the flood worse."

Black Mane rolls over. Something flashes at his hip, and then Lodestar is free and nosing anxiously at his face.

"'M okay, Mimi," he says. "Ugh. Look, we had nine pokémon, two terastallised, all pushing the water back – I don't think anyone was expecting this thing to beat that."

"Only five pokémon." Longshanks scowls faintly, his aureole crackling where it meets ours. "Our veluza broke the second they saw it. I'm guessin' Kofu's did the same. They knew. One look and they decided they'd rather jump out the water and suffocate than try to fight."

It would seem we have underestimated him. But, in fairness, he has also underestimated us. We do not think either of us will make the same mistake twice.

"Because it's fucking Cthulhu hours over there," says Black Mane, cradling Lodestar to his chest as he sniffs and snuffles and warms his master with his fur. "I'm just glad it didn't decide to finish the job and kill us all."

"Yeah, I wonder about that. It's killed at least ten people so far. Why stop now?"

"Don't know. Don't care, either." Black Mane sits up a little. "It's not, uh, still there, is it?"

"No, it's gone to ground," says Longshanks, a curious turn of phrase that does not seem a good description of our retreat into deeper water. "I've got a feelin' we made it sweat about as hard as it did us― hey, Noé! Over here!"

The rest of the humans stagger ashore, dragging their bodies with the leaden clumsiness of beached whales. Longshanks claps hands, slaps shoulders, moves them away from the waterline. We see the relief ricochet and rebound between them all as they go, like seals lost to the exhilaration of escape from the orca.

All but one. Longshanks pauses, just for a moment, and looks back. We cannot make out his face, but we sense his aureole, and within it the aquiline intensity of his attention.

"Next time, Andrew Eldritch," he says, and he turns to guide his comrades home.

Next time indeed. We set out to teach him, and yet it seems we were the ones who were tested. We must give this careful consideration before Longshanks makes his second sortie. But right now our strands hang limp and lifeless and our jetsam floats dejected, and it is time to find something to kill.

The sooner, the better. Longshanks will come back. And whatever marvels and miracles he work, however admiringly we record his exploits, he can count on this: in the end, Mother Sea will always get her way.