Fairy 6.14: The Healing Arts
Sitrus
The lucario and lycanroc packs on the eastern edge got into another tussle. It feels like they're always fighting for territory. It's pointless, too: the boundary line never goes more than a hundred yards in either direction. The lycanroc have the canyon edge and a small patch of land at the top. The lucario hold the remainder of the plateau and the edge of the grove beneath it. The lucario have never pushed the lycanroc into the canyon for more than a week and have never been pushed off the plateau in turn. You swear they're just doing it for fun. Personally, you cannot fathom the joy in being injured at least once a month. Even if they know you'll do your rounds eventually.
None of them are worth today's egg. The worst injury is a broken leg that you could set and provide berries for. His packmates can bring him food and he'll be healed in a few days. Maybe this will teach him to think twice before picking stupid fights.
"There are young humans in the canyon again," one of the less injured dogs tells you. "Saw them yesterday. Fought us off."
"Are there? I thought they had stopped."
It's not entirely true. There has still been a slow stream. Just not as many as you would expect. You're a month past peak season and you had two groups come through. The darkness must have scared off a lot of them. Good. You never understood the point. The canyon is dangerous for them and Ironscales will defeat half, leaving them to go back the way they came with nothing at all.
"They had weird companions. There was a big white bird that just watched. I could tell she was scary, though."
"I could have taken her," the pack leader grumbles.
"And a dragon. Not a small dragon but not huge. Never seen or smelled anything like it. Had sharp teeth. Broke the rock on my leg. Do you want to see it?"
You doubt he means medically. You glance at it once you're done making sure the berries are rubbed against the wound you're treating. Oh my. Puncture wounds. Serrated. Fractures in the rock spanning out from it like an ariados's web. What could bite that hard while being small? A krokorok? Croconaw? No, they would know what those are. The flesh beneath it seems to have healed already with just a slight scar.
"It's really cool, right? Will the armor cracks heal? I hope they don't. I like it this way."
"The scar will get less noticeable and the hole will heal over. Give it about three weeks."
"What's a week?" he asks.
Right. Never lived with humans. "Seven days."
He perks up like that's the coolest thing he's ever been told. "Thank you, Sitrus!"
"Always my pleasure. I'll see you again in a few days."
And hopefully they won't have found another stupid way to injure themselves.
You walk away from the pack towards the canyon rim. Who do you visit next? The murkrow? They always find the most interesting things to show you. You can usually explain what it is, although it's just as fun to let them believe what they want. Sometimes even you're stumped. The mienshao? They don't get hurt that often. But maybe the humans would have injured them. Ironscales would have told you if the dragons needed something. Or Whisper. It's odd having a dragonite close by again. Not unpleasant. If she didn't live underwater you would talk to her more often. She can go anywhere in the world in a matter of days and always has stories to tell. You know she won't stay for long. Just until her kids mature.
Should you visit Brightness? Make sure the lucario are healed? No. Of course they are. You taught one of their elders how to heal and she taught her children and they taught theirs. And Brightness knows what she's doing. You taught her well. So well that she sees it as an insult when you come. Last time you tried to talk to her for half a day and she just stayed still, puffed up as tall as she could, silently ordering you to leave. And you did. It was heartwarming that she's come so far.
You still miss her. Deeply. Sometimes you think about having another child just to have someone close again. But there are never any good donors in your territory and now is a bad time. The humans are hunting wild pokémon even more than usual. You could hatch an egg and experience pure, overwhelming joy only for your baby to be stolen away in the night. You don't know what you would do. Probably something unbecoming of your kind.
You suppose you can visit the machoke. They're also idiots who constantly pick fights, but at least they're built for it. The only time you had to give an egg to them was when a machamp had just evolved and didn't quite know his own strength.
The tunnels are one of your favorite parts of the canyon. Out of the sun. Quiet. Easy walking. It used to be a lot rougher before the machoke smoothed things out for you. They felt you were owed after the machamp incident. It made things easier for them, too. Fewer trips, falls, and scrapes.
You can hear the fights before you get there. In the summer they stockpile food and retreat into their cool caverns during the day. Machoke being machoke, the moment they're stuck inside they get bored and start fighting each other. You stay to watch at the edge. One of the younger machop – still nameless, per tradition – is sparring against her elder sister, Crystal. You watch. It ends bloodlessly with Crystal giving tips to her sister. She doesn't resent being corrected. Actually seems eager to learn. You always liked that about them. Few injuries and fewer hurt feelings.
Their leader steps forward when the combatants part. "Sitrus."
"Tremor." Your eyes are drawn to a set of scabbed-over puncture wounds that weren't there last time you saw him. What could even do that around here. "How did you get hurt?"
He grunts. "Strange bug. Stranger human. Started out with a challenge, then backed down and warned us that the humans were going to try and capture us. Let them. We'll fight."
"They might not fight fair," you warn him. You remember The Old Land and the migration. The humans wanted your kind to live everywhere and didn't really care what you wanted. Some of you went willingly. Some didn't.
"The human showed that. Her bug, big, armor, you know of it?"
"What color was the armor?" You're pretty sure machoke can see in color. But in all your years you don't think any have ever confirmed it.
"White."
"Golisopod. Sea bugs. Big claws? Fast when they want to be?"
"Yes. He lunged and retreated before climbing over me and almost eating my eye."
A shudder wracks your body. They'll do that. In The Old Land your territory was on the coast. You met a gyarados once who had his tongue eaten and replaced by a wimpod. The bug was evicted but there wasn't much you could do. The stump had already scarred over. Never liked sea bugs after that. You heal them. Of course you do. But you've never wanted to socialize with one.
"How many humans were there?"
"Just one."
"How old?"
He pauses. "Don't know how to tell. She was small. Does that help?"
Maybe. Some females can be short. The humans catching lots of pokémon they don't want to keep are mostly young. Challengers. You've rarely known challengers to come through the canyon alone. She probably had friends she left behind.
Wait. What did the machoke say? "How did she warn you? I know you don't speak human."
"I don't. I understood her. Don't know how. Don't care."
How typical. They're very curious about things that matter in a fight. Oblivious to everything else.
"Do you want help getting to the high rock?" Tremor asks.
How long has it been? Two months? Three? You visited after the darkness lifted to make sure that it was still there. You know it will be the same. No one will be there. Nothing will have changed. You will make yourself sad for nothing.
"…yes."
But your judgment was always at its worst when The Captain was involved.
Tremor has to carry you up the side of the canyon in his arms while walking up the steep incline without looking down. If I was anyone else you would be fearing for your life and his. You did the first twenty times. But the leader of the machoke has made sure their successor could do this for three generations. They know what they're doing. He sets you down on the ledge in front of the high rock. It's a slab of basalt standing upright at the end of a ledge one hundred yards above the canyon floor. You can see everything from end to end here. He adored it. You did, too. And it was so simple to get up here when Capricorn was alive. The words on the slab are too far weathered for anyone to read. It's getting harder and harder to tell that there's supposed to be anything written on it at all. But you know what it says. You were there when they were written.
"Cpt. Ernest Sephton, 1815-1905, Twenty-Sixth Kahuna of Poni Isle"
Lightning had always been fascinated by humans. Every time the dragonite came home to visit he would tell you about massive structures of metal and stone that were being built across the seas. Wars on scales you could never imagine. Equipment to seal giant creatures in devices smaller than your egg. It sounded terrible. You preferred the humans here. Clever enough to be worth visiting for a story and trade. Not so ambitious that they drove away all the pokémon around them or killed each other by the thousand. It was better that the humans who did arrive did so on lapras-back, any grand ideas they brought with them failing in the face of the harsh climate they found themselves in.
You have always loved your land. But, more than the tales of the humans, you've always loved the stories of the land the dragonite brought back. Deserts larger and hotter than the ones you knew. Fields of grass as far as the eye could see filled with hunters and prey larger than what you knew. Wide rivers surrounded by dense forests where the air itself felt like you were underwater. A vast island made of ice.
You would like to see it someday. Even if you know deep down that you'll never get on a canoe or a lapras and seek it out.
The humans come, anyway. A little to the north. In Oran's territory. It's significant that your daughter even came to visit you, even though it had been many years after she had left your side.
"I saw one try to catch a trapfleur in a net," she tells you. "He ended up being the one snared."
There are dozens of them, almost all male, arriving on the largest canoe anyone had ever seen. After a few too many bites and a tussle with the local kangaskhan they pack up and leave, taking a few local creatures with them. Sandstone, your second-cousin-once-removed, goes missing around that time and is never seen again. You all figure she went with the humans and go along with your lives. Surely one of them was damaged enough to be worth attending to.
It's four years before the humans come back. This time they land far to the south. There are far more of them. Curiously, you hear that the ship leaves them behind. Like they were simply left there to figure things out. The local blissey, one whom you've never met and do not know your relation to, is caring for them. If they're like the first group then they will need it.
These humans stick around. More ships arrive and drop more humans off. In time it becomes normal enough that the birds stop commenting on it and it fades to the back of your mind. Then more humans show up to the north. And the southwest. Rumors spread that they have claimed the entire island and all of its creatures for themselves.
You hear a fearful whisper that they see even the other humans as nothing more than creatures to be rounded up and used.
In time a ship drops off humans to the south. Your sister's territory. After a year or so you walk into the edge of her territory just to make sure she's still doing okay. She never comes to kick you out. Even after you start healing her old ward. You do your utmost to avoid the humans after that, even warning Oran not to engage with them, either. She doesn't appreciate being mothered when she's a mother herself to an adorable little happiny. At least she indulges you long enough to play with her child and hear your full warning. It's almost half a day before she puffs up and stops talking, her child doing her best to do the same.
A pelipper flies to meet you one morning. His flight is even. Color normal. Hard to tell what's wrong with him. He lands in front of you and bows low. Odd. His kind doesn't beg. "Sitrus, please, there is a plague we need help with."
That happens sometimes with the seabirds. They travel far and wide and bring all sorts of infections back with them. "Just the young and old? Or also healthy adults? Does it make breathing hard? Flight?"
"I do not know," he says. "It is not the birds. It is the humans."
You immediately lose interest. "Let them figure it out."
"Please," he begs. "My trainer. He is dying. I do not know what I would do without him."
You give him a firmer look. He's young. It's possible he was born in the human settlement and never left. No survival instincts. A pity. And he radiates hurt and worry so strongly that it makes your own stomach turn.
"Fine. Show me."
The settlement hardly looks like the wonders Lightning has told you of. It's almost all wooden frames bolted together, individual shelters scattered about with no apparent order. Open metal streams carry fecal matter and water. You scrunch up your nose and walk faster. You're going to guess that's why they're sick. For such 'intelligent' creatures they really should know better.
The pelipper leads you into one of the larger shelters. There's a young male in a raised bed, glancing through a bound collection of white leaves. Paper. Books. Lightning told you about this. One of the few human things you found to be of interest. He sets the book down onto his chest. "Echo," he breathes out. "You came."
He seems surprised. Did he not expect you to come? You step forward as the two talk. His breathing is more erratic than it should be. The skin is particularly troubling. A mix of scales and blisters. Not normal for humans. Not even normally abnormal: you have no idea at all what this is or how to treat it. The only thing you can do is give him an egg and find water. Clean water. You desperately hope they are not drinking out of the metal streams.
"Find me water. Good water. In a container," you tell the bird. He looks at you in shock as if he forgot you were there before bowing and waddling out to find something. You turn back to the human and produce your egg. "Eat," you tell him, knowing he can't hear.
He takes it with shaky hands and looks it over from all angles. He gives it a tentative sniff and a lick before biting into it. He mutters something between bites. You don't understand the words, just the tone. Curiosity. Gratitude. You'll have to wait until the pelipper comes back to have a deeper conversation. He finishes the egg quickly enough, but not so quickly that you're worried about vomiting. Not that it's common with eggs. They seem to suppress the urge in most species. Haven't tested enough humans yet to know how strong it is with them.
The pelipper comes back with two humans carrying a cask of water. You inspect it. Seems to have come from the river. Hard to tell if the bad smell comes from the water or the refuse outside. "Do the humans put their dung into the river upstream or downstream of this?" you ask the bird.
"Downstream."
They know the very basics of sanitation. Surprising given everything you've seen.
"Good." You gesture towards the human. "Drink."
He does. And he already looks better. "Now, I need to speak to whichever human is in charge."
The pelipper raises a wing towards his human. "In charge of you or the other humans?"
"Both."
Awfully young for that.
"Find me a translator."
The go-between is a giant bird. Like a magthree but far larger and coated in metal feathers. His eyes glint with predatory intelligence. Magthree are often unkind but they know to respect the basic rules about attacking your kind. Does he? What language does he speak? One of the avian tongues you know? Something else entirely?
"Good afternoon. What is your name?" you ask.
"Cancer," he responds. In a very human tone. How interesting.
"I'm Sitrus. Now, we need to talk about sanitation around here."
The human is very receptive to your ideas and increasingly animated as the conversation goes on. He sketches diagrams in his book, calls other humans in and orders them out, and asks many follow-up questions.
"What if the pipes were underground?" he asks. "They would not smell so much."
"Would they get into the underground waters?"
He blinks. "Like the ones beneath the wells?" Cancer translates.
It takes a few more questions to establish that the humans dig down to find the water like the crocomire do in the dry season.
"I do not know," you have to admit. "I have never built something like that." You'll have to ask Lightning about it. Maybe he's seen something in his travels. Eventually he has to go asleep. He still implores you to come back the next day. Even if you can't heal more than one person you can help with his ideas for water movement and treating the ill.
You learn Captain Sephton's language in time. Learn more about him as a person. He is young, exceedingly so for his rank, but he proved himself back home as an exceptional trainer of pokémon and used his connections to get himself a ship and a colony. He wanted to explore the world. Understand it. Perhaps, someday, improve it.
Together you move the sick into more organized care. Stop taking their blood with leeches. First close the pipes and move them underground, away from different pipes carrying water. Some of the other men sneer about him taking advice from a pokémon be he waves them away. Even tries to get you a human title that you repeatedly decline. You still care little for humans. But you have a duty to help the poor creatures when they're hopelessly ignorant of the healing arts. Lightning says they have an unmatched ability to learn and innovate. Hopefully if you help then others of your kind won't have to waste their time.
And there are visitors to see how his humans are doing things. First from across your land, then the surrounding islands, and finally from his home. He gets recalled shortly after to fix his homeland in person.
You don't like Galar. It's everything Melbourne was but far worse. Crowded, smelly, suffocating, unnatural. In Melbourne the residents at least looked at you with respect. Almost like a proper ward. The visitors always directed questions to The Captain, looking at you like you were either beneath their notice or a factory of miraculous eggs rather than a person like them. The Captain always apologized afterwards, stroking your fur and apologizing for his species. He was a confident man. Arrogant, even. Thought he could change the entire world, or at least his kind, for the better. Somehow, he could make you believe it.
Galar is full of men who look at The Captain like they look at you. He wasn't born noble. He had to prove his power to the world until it could no longer ignore him. They responded by letting him rule a rock two oceans away. Even though they were the ones to call him back, even though they asked him to build the water system, they still looked at him like a fool. Changed his plans behind his back. Spoke to each other like he wasn't there during meetings. He had always been fond of books and boxing. Now he punched with anger rather than joy and read like he thought he had to.
Things were worse for you. When the pompous men found out what you could do they tried to steal you away at least once a fortnight. Those that did not try to seize you still demanded your eggs, setting schedules for distribution like it was their decision and you would meekly oblige. No, The Captain would meekly oblige and you would unquestioningly follow his orders.
As the years moved on and the project inched slowly closer to completion, you started to see more and more of your kind in the clinics. The clinics! Oh, the clinics! Full of useless humans who insisted they knew more than you on account of a few years training and a sheet of paper. More than one refused to work with you when you insisted they wash their bloody hands. A few of them later got blissey. You don't know if they changed their procedures or if the poor abducted creatures simply could not make demands. None of them would talk to you. They knew who had shown the Galarians the healing eggs. They knew why they were locked in a building in a noxious city rather than roaming free with their ward in clean air.
You had scarcely seen The Captain so happy as when he was hauled in front of a panel of self-important men in powdered wigs and fancy seats and told he would no longer be tolerated.
"Alola," he announced to you and the birds. "I should like to go to Alola. The sailors speak of beautiful weather and leaders who know how to build a nation without breaking its land."
It sounded lovely. And you had long sense moved on from caring for the humans as a whole to caring for a ward of one. You wanted to see what this strange human would do.
You were all much happier in Alola. He would fly off to new places every day, often bringing you along. He would draw rocks or pokémon. You and Capricorn (Cancer having long since passed) translated other species' languages to learn of their habits and resolve the odd conflict. The Galarians briefly made him their ambassador to the kingdom before dismissing him when they decided the land was too important to leave Galarian interests in the hands of a man who sympathized with the locals. To the great consternation of the new ambassador, The Captain still dined at the palace far more than the nobleman who had replaced him.
In time you all settled down in the interior of the smallest Tapu Island and The Captain devoted himself to the study of the canyon in its center. He was insatiably curious, always asking questions of the pokémon he found. On one occasion you and a team of three translators had to speak for days with a gigalith just to get a basic question answered. The answer revolutionized the field of geology, but only decades after The Captain had passed. During his life not a single scientists in Galar would accept it.
You became the go-betweens for all conflicts on the island, between the inland tribes and the seafolk, the tribes and the king, different species of pokémon, the tribes and the pokémon. The pokémon saw you as their representative and the humans saw The Captain as theirs. Officially becoming Kahuna changed very little about what he actually did.
Poni was always removed from the other islands. Few humans lived there. A handful of ranchers, a secluded clan of warriors, the ever-moving seafolk. One of the trials never even had a proper captain, the dragons being too proud to accept one. A human kept the hearth at the end of the canyon. The totem fought. You healed any injuries. After all that was over The Captain would escort his challengers to the great dais for the entertainment of the slumbering sun and moon. You swore that the light waxed and waned with the pace of the match. The gods indeed looked on.
Your trips to Hau'oli were infrequent. You noticed a difference every time. More people, but fewer native Alolans. The shops were nicer and had entire Galarian and American clients. Even the queen's court became swarmed with light brown men when it had previously only been The Captain and an ambassador or two.
Eventually a man comes to visit you on Poni. He has short yellow hair and blue eyes that somehow look as if staring into them too long could cut you. Those eyes wander around your dwelling, lingering on the unpainted dried mud walls and the small, unkempt beds. The Captain pretends not to notice. "Now, what can I do for you, uh, sir?"
"Elisha Gage," he says drily. "My secretary should have sent you a letter. Not that I trust the postmen here to deliver."
"I got it. Kind of skimmed. The machamp and mienshao were causing a ruckus and needed a referee. Hardly got any sleep that week."
The visitor purses his lips. "How unpleasant."
"No, not at all. Everything got worked out in the end. Just had to let the tournament play out and adjust some boundaries." The Captain laughs it off. You disliked the whole thing. It was dangerous and unnecessary, even if the parties seemed more amused than upset about the whole thing. You're half convinced the casus belli was a simple excuse to have an organized brawl.
"Good to hear. Did you at least read the core of the proposal?"
"You wanted me to challenge Her Majesty, right? I'm humbled you think me capable, but I'd much rather manage this isle than the whole kingdom. Wild pokémon can be reasoned with. Men? Not so much."
"That is disappointing to hear. I had hoped you would be amenable to my cause. This island has potential. The weather is fair and the land fertile. The restrictions on it are simply too onerous. Large tracts are only available for taro, a crop with no market value whatsoever. The luxury goods, pinaps and silk, those are exorbitantly taxed. The kingdom is incompetent. Shouldn't be surprising when its members have no financial or industrial instincts."
"I think they know what they are doing," The Captain replies. His voice is no longer so easy. The words carefully selected. "They've been working this land long enough."
The two stare each other down with narrow eyes. "Perhaps. If there is nothing further to discuss I shall be on my way."
The Captain sighs and turns to you when he's gone. "We're going to have to tell Her Majesty about this. He won't stop here."
"Who is he?" You don't make a point of knowing individual humans. Especially the ones who live off of this island.
"Some American businessman. He farms ariados. No, that is not quite right. He owns rents land on which other people farm ariados. Then he sells the silk."
Farming spiders like wooloo. How far the humans have come.
"However far we run from Europe, she always seems to find us. Not bloody well abandoning this place, though. Just have to make sure we don't end up as Galar or America's next meal."
"Your majesty, you cannot—"
"We can. We must. We will."
The Captain takes a deep breath. "He will not fight fairly."
"No. He has not."
Past tense? Has there already been a conflict.
The Queen gestures towards a ship in the distant harbor. "We are not fighting him. Not just him, anyway. He has every intention to seize this land by any means available. This way there are rules. Witnesses. If he cheats, we will voice our objections. Should we fail at least the people of the kingdom will not pay the price."
"And if he fairly wins?"
She continues to gaze out at the water. "Win or lose, we are in the last days of the kingdom. The Tapu refuse to act. The Americans and Galarians will not let us continue. Our cities are in range of their gunships. This way the kingdom ends in honor."
The Captain takes a deep breath. "The Fallen Army—"
"No." The Queen steadies herself and turns to glare at your trainer. "Where did you learn of this?"
"I read. I ask questions. Sometimes I find answers. On the best days I find more questions."
"It should not be so easy to learn. Some things are too dangerous to let fall into enemy hands."
"Why can we not try it? You have royal blood, I would provide a willing sacrifice." Your heart almost stops and you grab onto him. He shakes you off. You grab again. "We only—"
"We only need the blood of a skychild," she finishes. "We have searched. It cannot be found. Even if we could produce it, we would rather risk Gage's ire than the help of the dead."
Captain Sephton leans into your touch and shifts to look out at the sea. For a time the three of you stand in silence and watch the waves roll in and out as the stars shine overhead.
"If we fall, we need you to continue watching over Poni. Salvage whatever you can."
"I will. I promise."
You (gently) slam Ernest into a wall when The Queen leaves. "What were you thinking?" you hiss. "I have not spent decades of my life saving you just for you to throw your life away."
He closes his eyes and tilts his head down. "I am not immortal like you," he says. "I will meet my end someday. Might as well be for a cause I believe in."
"No. You are not going to die. Promise me."
There's a great sadness in his eyes as he slowly shakes his head.
You don't know for sure how old you are. It's not normal for your kind to count. The last few decades have been the most eventful of your adult life. That makes them feel longer. Yet at the same time, you're sure that it's not the majority of your life.
Centuries. Maybe millennia. Time doesn't matter much to you. Your attachments have always been more to species than individuals. That's not how it works for humans.
You can treat all of The Captain's injuries. You can make sure that he stays in good health. Even as wrinkles overtake his face. Even as he hunches more. Even when he rarely enters the canyon. Even when enough of his pokémon have passed on or left to lead their own lives that he steps down as Kahuna.
You and Capricorn are all that are left in the end. And even Capricorn is looking more and more like his father did at the end.
A morning comes where you bring The Captain his egg as always. He gets all of yours now. He used to insist they go to the injured. That changed with time. That morning he puts a hand on yours and gently pushes you away. "No," he whispers. "It's time for a new adventure."
He takes you and Capricorn up to his favorite viewing place. Meets the totem there. Visits Tapu Fini and the seafolk. For a few days he's as active and alive as ever. And then he's no more.
The Captain did not leave a child. Even if he had you aren't sure you would have followed them. For a long time you stay put. In denial. Making sure an unoccupied house is tidy. Then you have a child, desperate for someone to cling to. She leaves you in time. Capricorn's children are all skarmory. You care for them and their children, even when they cannot remember why. You don't bother explaining. Too painful. In time your ward expands to all of the pokémon of the canyon and the humans who visit. The nurses can't remember why you do that, either. Try to bring in one of their own. You stare them down and they eventually leave. This was his home. This is your duty.
You have nothing else left.
The beacon at your side rings. You're needed at the trial site. Probably the humans you've been hearing about. It will take you a few days to reach it. You take a path on the rim. It's a little shorter. You'll just have to convince someone to help you down. Maybe Whisper? The dragonite usually comes within an hour when you whistle and she's more than strong enough to carry you.
She does take you down in the end. And apologizes. This is probably his fault. A human tried to catch her son and she retaliated. Just stunned her. Got loud. She forgot that even that could be dangerous to humans.
"Did they have a strange dragon?" you ask. You're curious what the lycanroc were talking about.
"I didn't get a good look. Don't know what it was. Nothing I've seen."
She's a dragonite. They've seen everything. Curiouser and curiouser.
You great Emily in the Center. No humans here yet. She confirms that one of the humans is partially deaf. Looks up their records for you. Some interesting pokémon between them. The odd dragon must be a tyrunt. A long-extinct creature the humans revived. You can't figure out how to feel about that. It was done by humans. You assume they did it horribly wrong. But it's a nice thought, isn't it? That even the dead can be healed.
The human's other pokémon are also interesting. A golisopod, an alien, and a keokeo. Your eye is drawn towards one of the other humans. The one not on the challenge. Her hair. Her eyes. Her face. You've seen it before. The American King. She's one of his. And she's the one injured. You swallow your anger and pride. She has done nothing to you, yet. It would be wrong to withhold your healing because of something her ancestor did. Yet you cannot promise to provide it if you see the same cutting cruelty in her eyes and hear the same callous disregard in her voice.
You don't see her ancestor in her. The physical resemblance is there. Yet she spends most of the session apologizing for being stupid and getting hurt. Insists that she's getting better. That she could maybe recover on her own. It's impossible to imagine The American King doing anything but demanding an egg for whatever ailed him. You give her one. Humans are fragile. Best not to risk further degradation.
The humans with her are mostly fine. One is emotionally distressed but not to the point you would intervene on all but the slowest of days. The other is. Well, she's a mess. Probably blind from her eyes lack of tracking. She doesn't seem in immediate distress so that must not be new. Not much you can do there. Or want to do there. Chronically injured humans can be oddly fond of their injuries. Another maddening thing about them. She's a little underweight but otherwise fine, physically. Emotionally she's a mess of issues. Maybe even psionic damage. Another of your kind gave her an egg a few months ago. You can understand why. Humans have their own drugs for fixing emotional problems these days. Not someone you would waste more than an egg or two on.
You check all of their pokémon as a matter of course. Most are… fine. A few injuries typical of the canyon. Some distress typical of captive pokémon. Except the dragon. Aside from a few superficial injuries she doesn't even want treated she's completely fine. Well adjusted, even. You have no idea how a human pulled that off with a long-extinct dragon and you're curious to know.
Then there's the keokeo.
You pity the keokeo. Almost every one you've met on the surface was profoundly disturbed. The majority of exceptions were born at the surface and see their deprivation as simply the normal condition of their kind. This one is worse in some ways. Grievous injuries that have only partially healed. Better in others. An existential dread looming over her rather than the unshakable confidence of the rest of her kind. That signals the possibility of accepting the ninetales' curse as others have before. Perhaps even without the crushing guilt of the fallen voice.
You should visit him some time. He was always one of your favorite conversation partners on Melemele. The only one you ever spoke to about your role in the exile of your kind. The only one who looked at you like you did not bare the slightest shred of guilt. Perhaps you do not in comparison to his sins. Although you would scarcely have known how to do better in his position.
The other members of the green-haired human's team are all relatively well-adjusted. It seems even she has no idea what to do with this one.
"Where and when did you get your wounds?"
"…you speak canine?"
"I've learned a lot of languages. Now, tell me about your wounds."
"Another nine-tails. About a moon ago."
Recent, then. She did receive at least one egg around that time. Probably why she's still here.
"Why?"
She huffs out cold air and starts to tell you a story. A long one. It lasts well into the night.
It begins the same as every other keokeo story you've heard. A relatively happy childhood followed by an abrupt exile. Humans who mistreated her. Humans who tried to heal her. One who genuinely did, before she disappeared. Going between different humans. Finding them unworthy. Being found unworthy in turn. One final chance. A strange human. One who could speak to her, even if she did not truly understand.
A chance encounter with the fallen voice. She recognizes your recognition. You keep quiet. His secrets are his own to share. She seems to respect that.
An encounter with a ninetales you have met. One belonging to the man who changed the current league. You met her the first time as a nine-tailed keokeo when she passed through your canyon. How strange. That feels like yesterday. The ninetales wanted to make the vulpix her pup and did everything right except actually loving her. The exiled keokeo are almost universally bad at that. The ninetales on the mountain seldom show love until their offspring are exiled or otherwise reduced to two. It is painful to let go of something loved. Far easier to lose and lose and pretend that you never felt a thing. Perhaps in time the exiles learn how to give it, but they rarely learn to recognize it. To trust that someone cares. That they will not leave them. To know how to tell when someone should not be trusted.
An escalation. Doubts growing. An acceptance that she wanted more. That she deserved better. A confrontation with the support of others against her own kind. You are pleasantly surprised that her trainer took blows for her. It's something The Captain would have done without hesitation that you have scarcely seen since. It didn't matter in the end. They both would have died absent the intervention of another canine that shattered all of the keokeo's confidence in her kind's invulnerability in time with the shattering of the ninetales' bones.
Then, a return to a past pattern. His human, Skysong, Cuicatl, whichever you end up calling her, you get the feeling that she tries. She is still a child. A distressed child. Was it fair to expect her to be able to help her alone? Did she disregard that by making herself the fox's entire support network? Would she have had one without her? She seems capable of caring for other creatures. But the keokeo are beyond her. They can only help themselves and they must do it alone.
"Thank you for telling me this."
She huffs again. "Skysong has her human she tells things to. I can do that, too."
Ah. Simple jealousy. That's what she tells herself, at least. She seems to be breathing easier. Muscles relaxed. This was helpful even if she will deny it.
"Thank you nonetheless. You should get back to your human. I have more tasks to attend to." It is a lie. Unless thinking is counted as a task.
"No problem."
You find your way outside. Under the stars. They're not the same stars as your birthplace. At least you can see them. Under Galar's smog you could scarcely make anything out but the streetlamps. And under those stars live the same species living the same lives generation after generation. You tend to them, alone. Like The Captain would have wanted. While he got to move on to his next adventure. A final, monumental cruelty. You cannot bring yourself to hate him.
The fox will not get the help she needs. It is possible she finds her way to a satisfactory ending, but the vast weight of past evidence suggests otherwise. A single unraveling human is unlikely to do what even you might struggle to accomplish. You could stay here. Attend to your canyon. Do the same things ad infinitum like you did in the old land.
You could leave.
Go on your own adventure.
Help someone who will otherwise not receive it. Change your world rather than maintain it. Like The Captain would have done. The humans will find another blissey for the trial. Someday Brightness's daughter will enter the canyon and take it as her own.
Do you dare leave this place? Leave him? Go into a world that could be Alola or Galar, possibility or disappointment? Trust your care to a human you do not know? Against the backdrop of the stars you see a dragonite descend. They can travel the world. Why can you not see what these islands have become in The Captain's absence?
You will speak with Cuicatl before she leaves. Perhaps you will leave with her.