The Forager headed up to his front door, put his key inside the lock and let himself in.
"How's the kid?"
"AAAAH!" And the Forager jumped as high as he could and bonked straight into the ceiling from the sudden unexpected voice that came from his living room.
The response from the stranger was a laugh. "Jumpy, aren't we, mister fox?"
The ninetales slowly got up and peeked into the living room where the absol from earlier was lounging on his couch as the fireplace crackled as the flames touched sap.
"Wha-wha-what are you doing in my house? How did you get inside my house?!"
The absol sighed as she rolled over. "I walked in. But you should thank me. I locked the door and kept your house safe from burglars." She made a smug smile. "Even prepared the fireplace."
The Forager looked baffled at the absol as he recapped his mad dash to save the human in his mind. "... Still."
"Oh, don't be like that, mister fox." Still with that smug look. "In fact, I'd say you owe me."
"For what, exactly?"
The absol slid off the couch and in a fluent motion started walking towards the Forager. "By getting you to the human in time."
The Forager backed up. "Wait…" Gears were put into place. "You weirded me out on purpose to get me to… How did you know all of that?!"
The absol chuckled as she stopped. "I explained it to you in town."
And the Forager squinted. "You cannot convince me you're some sort of prophet." He looked up and down the absol. "Also, could you please step back?"
The absol blinked, giving a similar glance back. "I'm not that close."
"Please?"
The absol shook her head. "Is it because of what I did earlier?"
"You kind of weird me out, yes." the Forager said, feeling trapped up against a wall.
"Well," She turned around and hopped back onto the couch. "That will make it easier to get you where I want you."
"Hey! I'm not a pawn for you to abuse!" the Forager barked back.
A snicker from the Absol. "I would beg to differ, mushroom guy."
The Forager sighed. "I won't stand for this. While I appreciate you guarding my house, please leave."
The absol shook her head. "Actually, I would like to pay in that favor you owe me."
The Forager frowned.
"Could I borrow your sofa as a bed for tonight?"
That took the Forager by surprise. "Just… that? Sleeping on my couch?"
"Mhm." She got comfortable. "Call me cheap, but I would rather turn in a favor than pay for a room somewhere."
"A cheapskate?" He chuckled. "Never expected an oracle to be broke."
"I never said I was broke!" The absol hissed back.
"You are definitely broke." the ninetales replied.
The absol was about to make a rebuttal but resigned. "So, can I get the couch for the night?"
"You can have the bed in the spare room, if that would be better." the Forager replied as he slumped in front of the fireplace.
"You have an extra bed?" The absol was genuinely surprised. "Didn't see that."
"And you call yourself an oracle." the ninetales grumbled.
"You're the one calling me that." She paused. "Why do you call me that?"
"Well, that's how we do things around here." the Forager said as he stretched out in front of the flames. "The medical expert is the Doctor, the pub owner is the Barkeep, the inn owner is Innkeeper. The store owner is the Merchant, and I'm the Forager." He yawned. "And since you seem happy looking into the future, so you're the Oracle."
The absol purred in amusement. "So I'm now part of your little community?"
"Find the Wanderer and ask him if he feels the same."
The absol went quiet and yawned. "So, spare bed?"
The Forager got up. "Follow me."
And the Oracle would do just that.
The Luminous Caves were glowing, as always. And unlike the more tame and rather mundane mushrooms, the entities within these walls. They were something different.
"And you're saying that none of these are edible?" Oracle asked as they wandered through the tunnel.
"Hmmm." The Forager thought of an appropriate answer. "I would like to think that they are edible exactly once."
"Basically the same." the absol huffed as they slowly went deeper. "So, why are we here?"
"At this time of year, the mushrooms have released their spores which have been blown through the entire system to reform into more giant glowing fungus." He took a turn at a crossroad without even thinking. "So in a very strict time period, there is access to this place while the mushrooms themselves haven't died out."
Oracle sighed. "You told me why you could only go at this time, but I mean why are we here?"
"Medicine." The Forager replied bluntly, pulling out an axe and chopped down a glowing pink one. "Pink is what we're usually after. Yellows would be incredible, but I still have some leftovers. Red and blue is a no touch. As far as I know, they make absolutely nothing."
"I… I see." Oracle said as she started cutting in another pink mushroom with her horn.
"But why did you decide to follow me, Oracle?" The Forager was now chopping the mushroom into smaller bits that fit in his baskets.
"A feeling. You know the drill." she replied with a nonchalant shrug. "And I have a proper name."
The Forager turned around giving her a fake smile. "Then please do tell."
And Oracle frowned. "On second thought, today doesn't seem to be the day."
"Boo!" Mushroom properly sized down.
And Oracle was almost finished with hers. "Uh, can it just be mixed together or do they need to be split?"
"All can go in the same basket. They're easy enough to sort back home." the Forager replied as he dusted a piece off and placed it in one basket. "So, you're saying your future seeing stuff required you to follow me down here for some grander purpose?"
The absol tilted her head. "I… suppose we can go with that."
"You are a strange woman."
And Oracle stood fully up and struck a heroic pose with a grand smile. "That I am!"
The Forager looked at the dark type before closing his mouth which he had subconsciously opened with how flabbergasted he got from the odd behavior. "I suppose the extra help is appreciated."
"Call it an extra favor building up that I will cash in later."
"And there it is…" The Forager sighed as the rest of the mushroom bits from the two got placed in a basket. He looked down the path and then dropped his jaw again. "And there it is!" He was basically jumping with joy.
"What is where?" The absol was confused.
And the Forager hopped to a small blue bulb with white flakes on it. "Behold! The blue hacksack! Its weaker cousin, the green hacksack was what poisoned the human back then."
Oracle tilted her head. "Weaker cousin? Meaning what?"
"It means, that what takes a green hacksack a few hours to kill, the blue can do in minutes! Wonderful, wonderful find! Extremely rare. Only found underground."
And Oracle was now extra confused. "Wait, why are you happy about finding something so deadly?"
"Because the blue hacksack also contains extremely potent healing and curing attributes if you know how to handle them."
"Like you do, I assume."
And the Forager laughed. "Me? Knowing how? Hah!" He shook his head as he pulled out a glass bottle from his satchel. "This one is beyond me. For now." He cuts the stock of the hacksacks and drops them in the bottle. "Reminds me I need to go to the city one of these days and actually learn how to extract the good stuff from them."
"I will recommend going to Redvale instead." Oracle said with little hesitation.
The Forager looked oddly at her.
And the absol sighed. "Long story short, I know someone there who is also all about… whatever you call this. And the Redvale laboratories are leaders in potion and medicine making."
The ninetales blinked at her as he Ice Beamed into the bottle, freezing the mushrooms within, putting the bottle in his satchel again. "Really? And where is this Redvale?"
Late autumn had really taken over these days, and the Forager came home with baskets filled to the brim with all kinds of berries. Some for potion and medicine crafting, some for selling and trading, most for eating.
He shook himself as he placed the basket in the corner of the entrance to his house and quickly headed into the living room to light a fire. "I'm really a sad excuse for an ice type…" he mumbled as the flames got going.
After a moment of getting warmed up and letting the fire consume whatever wood was thrown in, he returned to the entrance and picked up his baskets, taking them to the kitchen to do the almighty sorting on his foraging table, praying himself lucky as the sound of a rainstorm beat on his roof and windows.
And as he was mindlessly sorting, with berries dropped in one bowl after another, a knock on the door.
"I feel sorry for whatever poor soul is out there." He got up and headed to the entrance, seeing a soaked absol as he opened the door. He sighed. "I should not have been surprised…"
"Glad to see you too. Can I borrow your flames?" She entered, looking like a sorry mess.
"Go ahead. I'm planning to make food in an hour if you're hungry." He closed the door and followed the Oracle into the living room. "And I'll prepare the extra bed. You're not going back out until that weather is gone."
The Oracle sneezed and dropped herself in front of the fireplace. "Thanks. Appreciate it. It's absolutely freezing out there."
"That's what friends do, right?" the Forager asked as he threw in another piece of wood.
Oracle chuckled. "Friends, huh?"
"Take it or leave it."
The absol hummed for a moment. "I'll take it."
The ninetales smiled as he headed back towards the kitchen.
"Oh, and Forager?" the absol piped up.
"Yes?"
"Redvale. How was it?"
The ninetales nodded. "It went incredible. The way they explained how to deal with blue hacksacks made it easy to convert into practice." He chuckled. "And got a pretty penny for selling a couple bottles."
The absol blinked. "Wait, how many blue ones did you have?"
"Did? I still have a ton. Started stockpiling and freezing them when I learned how useful they could be."
The Oracle mumbled something to herself then her attention got back to the Forager. "Didn't you say they were rare?"
"I mean… You still get a lot when you have a few years to save them up."
"Ah. That explains it." The Oracle laid her head down. "Hope you don't mind that I'll take a nap."
"I will only mind the burned fur." the ice type replied as he walked back into the kitchen.
"Oh, and one more thing." the Oracle said as she closed her eyes.
"What is it this time?" The Forager poked his head back in through the doorway.
"The Wanderer told me to tell you to jump into a nettle bush and jump off a cliff."
"Yeah…" He sighed. "That's the Wanderer, alright."
The Forager entered the Doctor's clinic. "Hey, Doc? Are you in?"
The doctor appeared from his office. "Ah, Forager, convenient timing. We were just talking about you."
"We?" The Forager already had a feeling that Miss black and white was behind the office door.
"The absol that comes by every now and then. The Oracle. She was looking for antibiotics." the Doctor entered his office.
"Really now?" the Forager said with a deadpan tone. "How convenient." And he followed.
"To be fair, mister fox, I'm only still around because the Doctor told me to wait until you dropped by." the Oracle stood up. "I'm in a bit of a hurry and just needed to restock on a few things. Antibiotics is the last thing."
"Lucky you," the Forager started to rummage through his satchel and pulled out a few vials. "Got them right here."
Oracle nodded. "I'll take one vial. Doc can confirm my payment of his regular rate. How you split it is up to you."
The Forager looked at the gallade.
And the Doctor nodded back to the ninetales.
And so the ninetales handed over the vials to the Oracle.
"Thanks. I'll be out of your hair now. As I said, really busy." And with that, she was gone.
The Doctor scratched his chin. "Really must be. Usually she sticks around until tea time."
"Or breaks into my house and steals my spare bed." the Forager said with a chuckle.
The Doctor laughed in return. "She is a quirky pokemon. Always going from one place to another, doing who knows what."
"Considering what happened when I met her a couple months back, probably helping the human save the world."
The Doctor stopped whatever he was doing and looked at the Forager. "... Human? What human?"
And the ninetales looked oddly at the Doctor. "The, uhm… The machop that had mild hacksack poisoning that came in two months ago?"
And the Doctor paled. "Wait… That kid… Is a human? I've treated him three times over these past two months and I never figured it out?!"
The Forager blinked. "Huh. They really took that 'don't mention the human thing until he's rested' to heart."
"Definitely. I think I'm the second person in town to know." The gallade walked over to his desk and pulled out a pouch clanging from the coins within. "Forty five for antibiotics, so forty five for you."
The Forager blinked. "Wait, you sell them for forty five? Which is what you buy it for."
"It's life saving medicine, Forager. I'm not going to profit off of it. I have the potions and my profession to earn money from."
The Forager frowned. "Now I feel bad for selling them to you for a profit."
"Don't be." The Doctor waved his hand. "Your earnings are low despite the vital role you have in this town, with making medicine, potions and selling the food you gather from the forest. Of all of us, you're probably one of the hardest working pokemon."
"Harder working than Lombre at least."'
And the Doctor burst out laughing. "Oh, most definitely." He composed himself. "I'll head to the pub after I close down for today for a few drinks. Care to join?"
"It's late autumn, I don't have anything better to do." the Forager replied with a shrug. "So sure."
Mushroom Notes.
Blue Hacksacks, like their green counterpart, aren't real.
As far as I know, there aren't any glowing mushrooms or giant mushrooms. Why are both so common in fiction? And those parts combined? Have you seen mushrooms? They look rather alien to begin with. Make them giant or glowy makes them feel more alien and mystical.
AN: Yes, the true heroes of this world are running around the area every now and then. But that's offscreen things that the Forager doesn't get to experience. And I hope I've made it clear that there's a decent amount of time skipping happening.