Eternally Vernal, Chapter 7: A Fresh Coat Of Pain
Story by cge0361 on SoFurry
Imported from SF2 with no description.
Eternally Vernal, Chapter 7: A Fresh Coat Of Pain.
Fardeau bared his teeth and snarled. His breath today was far less objectionable than it was when he was found half-incapacitated with a bellyache born of broken shards of what was marketed as highly durable plastic and some of the fluffy foam that insulated the cooler he once savaged, but a mint would not go unnoticed. Francois bared his teeth and snarled right back. “You want to stay here, you want to wear that hat, you want to learn these signs. Now, you do another set." He pressed his terminal's touch screen to reshuffle its digital flash cards.
Fardeau began to rise from the task chair upon which he sat. Francois growled again and tried to shove the bear back down, to little effect except to encourage the bear to shove him, too. When Francois picked himself up from the floor and gathered up the scattered objects that had been upon his desk, including a now shattered award for whatever it was that he once did right, Freja approached him with a printed symbolic note pinched between her teeth. She hopped upon the stool while he read it and awaited his response.
“I know that. When I signed up, I thought it would be all camping out and chasing poachers and living a vacation, too. But that's not what it is. Hey, how does this even happen? Ninety-nine out of one hundred ursaring in this forest, not one of them would want to become a Ranger. Of those ninety-nine, even after getting helped when sick, ninety would run away and nine would try to eat me to show gratitude. This one…" Still upon the floor, he began attending to the mess. Freja entered new data, printed it, and passed it along. Francois read her second note and ran his fingers through his hair before looking up to reply to her. “I don't think I do."
She had already left the room.
“At least the orange vest covers up most of his pink parts."
Warden twisted his neck to face Carol. “My pink parts are my best parts."
Gates speared a plastic bottle and cast it into a particular garbage bag of the four that were hanging from a harness that Warden wore. “Caro—"
“Miss MacLeod to you, community service dude," she asserted.
“—please stop tricking my pokemon into saying strange things."
Warden twisted his neck back. “Are they not?"
Carol huffed. “It doesn't take much of a trick." She pointed out a tumbleweed napkin. “Don't miss that." Gates speared and deposited it.
Warden stepped forward, bringing his face quite near Gates'. “Œufweiß's neighbor complemented and complimented my pink parts."
Anthony placed the palm of his hand across Warden's snout and gently pushed his head downward and back a bit. “The gym leader's just teasing you." He looked for Carol and saw her many meters away. Raising his hands to his cheeks, he shouted, “Aren't you, Ca—Miss MacLeod, just teasing him?" She turned about but kept walking, backwards, and shrugged melodramatically.
Warden grunted at Gates. “Mentor. You are wise and I must learn. Teach me: how does acting stupid help us?"
“What do you mean by that, acting stupid?"
Warden's neck curled to bring his nose straight up above himself. His ears flicked about a few times. “Stab trash now, Mentor. The work king is coming back from lunch."
Gates swung his poker around, took a few steps, and took a few items from the grass. “I'd forgotten to notice his absence. How do you know he went to lunch?"
Warden trotted up to present to his mentor the bag appropriate for the kind of trash he had stabbed. “The wind blows at me. I can smell chili on him. I mean saying to Mistress MacLeod that she is teasing me when her hate for my color is known, understood, and true."
Gates fiddled with his spear, to which a bit of trash with packing tape on it had self-affixed. “I thought she might be hurting your feelings, and—"
The roadside cleanup foreman came by riding in something like a golf cart and chided them, “You brought a pokemon, that means you're supposed to get twice as much cleaning done, not to split half of a job between ya. Catch up with the team on the other side!"
“Sure thing," Gates assured him, adding, “you lousy bastard," when the lousy bastard was safely distant. “Anyway, hurting your feelings, and I kinda, I hoped she might turn it around or, I dunno. I don't like her making fun of you."
“She makes fun of my pink parts; not of me."
“Yeah. It's just hair. And just because you popped backwards out of summer green doesn't mean you won't shift rightly for fall or winter."
Warden noticed a plastic cup lid that his mentor overlooked. “Not just hair. I have other pink parts," he said before picking the lid up with his teeth and contorting to deposit it into the correct bag.
Gates paused, reconsidered responding, and stabbed a plastic sac. “Let's talk about Tizzy."
Warden shook his head to dislodge a large fly that landed near his left eye. “I don't know her pink parts."
“About what she wants to do. We'd be homeless and camping if Max Syfax hadn't covered the rent to taunt me, and little miss prissy pussycat telekinesised me out of bed the last two mornings because I can't find that special food she wants and I don't have a crystal goblet to put it in. Vel said she seemed down to earth, but she's turned as snooty as her old mistress damn quick. If she didn't come with her own trust fund or whatever that cash card came from—" Gates noticed the golf cart coming his way, and glancing across the road showed that he was still trailing by an increasing margin. “Here comes another spiel."
Warden sniffed the air again when the wind shifted favorably. “He is going away for now."
“What makes you say—" the foreman zipped past them at the greatest speed his cart could muster, “—that?"
“Chili. Friend Velasquez did not stop me from eating some while you were in jail. I learned then what Work King learned today." The foreman suddenly turned the wheel to steer his cart toward undeveloped land just off of the roadside, almost overturning the carriage en route. Warden, Anthony, and a few other members of the clean up crew watched him rush into the woods. Warden continued, “Chili in, chili out, chili everywhere. There are no mirrors in the forest," he brought his face near Gates' again, “how will he check?"
A honchkrow squatted behind a bush and hoped that he would not be heard. Listening carefully, himself, he awaited the approach of something pressing gently through weeds and branches. When a gardevoir ignorantly passed him by, he pecked a small device clipped to his wing. That, she noticed. The gardevoir rose from the ground by a dozen centimeters and rotated; could she have turned any paler than her alabaster flesh already was—
Hemmy stood and brushed his crest with a wingtip as he spoke to her. “Though you can't read my mind, I know you know why I am here." Sunny tensed and slowly shook her head, denying. He took a couple of steps forward, transfixing her with his gaze. “You know that your daughter is different, in a way prized by some humans. I know you know because you would not protect her as you do if you didn't. You're wrong to."
The gardevoir scowled and raised her left arm. A strange red fog formed around it.
With a dismissive but demure gesture of his wing, Hemmy besought her patience. “I do not intend to fight with you, so I will take that will-o-wisp as a personal insult." Sunny flicked her arm aside, casting off the fog before it coalesced into anything substantial. “Thank you for reconsidering, Ma'am. I was ordered to watch over you, and now, to give you a chance to solve our problems peacefully."
She instinctively tried to read him, but all she felt for trying was the Dark-type's amusement at her futile effort. “Our problems?" she softly spoke, “We have no problems, except for being spied on."
“So you have told yourself. And, so you believe, except when she sleeps deeply enough that you can step away and un-bottle your emotions. When you weep for her, for him, and for yourself." With a flash of fury afflicting her facial expression, Sunny spat an aghast accusation at Hemmy that he interrupted: “Every moment that I haven't been given an overriding duty, I've been watching. Don't pretend to be surprised, you know that your daughter's condition is particular enough. Speaking of, where is she, now?"
The red fog began forming again. “I will never let you take her!" Sunny snarled.
Again, he signaled a yield. “Understand, please, that I ask from concern for her safety."
“I don't sense anyone nearing h—" She caught herself and her eyes flashed. “But you're not the only one hunting us."
Hemmy stepped forward again, draping a wing over her arm and drawing it downward, dispelling a second half-baked will-o-wisp. “Fortunately for us, the most competent poachers are on our retainer, but the rumor we heard has not stopped circulating and it whets the appetites of amateurs. We are fortunate that a trainer with a tin-foil hat and a sneasel haven't yet decided to have a go at getting a shiny ralts this weekend. You are elusive, but someday chance will ruin you." He whispered against her gills. “You know she will come to no harm. You know she will live a charmed life. You know you can give her everything you wished for yourself."
Sunny cringed, hissed, and astounded Hemmy with a sidestep and a fist to the side of his head. “Everything I wished for myself was based on a lie. That lie the humans tell all of us. The lie they tell themselves and believe truly so we can't hear their deception in their voices and, for my kind, their thoughts. You won't fool us again, not if you're trying to trick me or if you really believe it."
The bird shook his head as though some loose parts needed to be shaken back into place. “I am sorry. I know you know you think you are helping her, but until you give her a home, your tears will fall every night, and she is the one drowning in them."
The gardevoir lowered her gaze. “When I was with that man, I learned a few of their expressions. For you—" she strained her voice to pronounce the correct sounds, “Burn in Hell!" Following through on her third attempt, she cast will-o-wisp upon Hemmy and as he squawked in pain as he suffered being enveloped by a faintly-glowing crimson cloud that burned his body through and through, she used her powers to momentarily counteract gravity and leapt up through a break in the canopy, high enough to see where she needed to go—once she collected her daughter from where she had hidden her—and to flee again. Before she teleported, she rotated around once and looked over the county. West, away from the cities and the mountain; toward scarcer food and wilder pokemon, but also fewer people; few, but one in particular.
Sunny found her daughter sleeping where she had been left, nestled in the mouth of an abandoned burrow behind a felled tree. The ralts awoke and read from her mother that they were about to travel far away again. Asking why as a form of complaint, Sunny struggled to fabricate an excuse, resorting to editing a select few of Hemmy's words and projecting them as though they were her own. The ralts wondered what her mother wished for herself, but when she probed, Sunny shut her out.
That evening, Hemmy perched in a tree, watching over Sunny as she carried herself and her charge beneath him. When the device on his wing chimed, he jumped with surprise, flapped his wings to stay aloft, and flew eastward to instead stand upon a stony outcropping. The device chimed again en route and once more as he prepared to activate it.
Ivana's natural voice was difficult to understand through the device's tiny speaker. “Simon is anxious for your update. Tracking shows that you stopped during your patrol."
Hemmy's throat clenched before he lied. “No contact. I found some berries and did a nap."
“Simon will be disappointed. He doesn't want her to be hurt, but—"
“I'll do everything I can."
Ivana squawked, “You haven't been?"
“How long before he gives up on me?"
Ivana cooed and thought, “Not long. Gates and Velasquez are both ready for a signal, though Gates may not show. The employee said he was being fussy."
“I'll do everything I can." Hemmy turned off his communicator.
Ivana preened herself and thought about the ralts that she fostered for a short time. Approaching a mirror in her lavatory, she stared at herself and the phony forest habitat behind. “Everything won't be enough."
“Mentor!" Warden shouted, assuming that Gates' stopping in his doorway meant that he was threatened by something within. His instinct was to stand beside his mentor to create a broader defense, but thrusting himself through the narrow gap to Gates' right between the man and the door without making contact with both was physically impossible. Warden took in his surroundings: The flat smelled repulsive, its contents had been arranged chaotically, and in the moment between his head entering the doorway and his tail leaving it behind some brute had ambushed Gates, knocking him to the floor and into one of the two stools at his kitchenette bar. Warden grunted deeply and brandished his pink-flowered antlers.
Anthony flailed an arm, clearing a stool from his line of sight. “The fuck, Warden?"
“Where is the fuck, Mentor? I will defend our territory from it!" He pounced forward, near the couch, and then hunkered down to peek behind it and see if that was where the villainous fuck hid after assaulting Anthony.
“Stand down, idiot, before you break something!"
Accepting Gates' evaluation that there were no hidden ninjas, Warden attended to his mentor, lowering his head and pressing his nose into Gates' chest. “Old mentor told me of certain dangerous pokemon, that can move and attack almost too fast to be seen. The attack is not powerful but, I thought maybe you—"
“Warden, just, don't be worried like that." Gates reached across Warden's neck with both arms. “Lift me up."
The sawsbuck lifted its master effortlessly to his feet.
“Do you even know you're the one who hit me?"
Warden stared into Gates' eyes for what felt like a very long time. “The one of what?" he finally asked.
“Rule: If I'm standing in your way, don't plough through me."
Warden licked Anthony, from just above his neckline, along the left side of his face, and up to his brow. “You give me more rules than the dogs. That means I'm more important." Chuffed, Warden went to the couch, sat upon it, and after finding the remote, turned on the television.
Gates straightened the stools and examined how badly the woodwork was damaged. “It means you're more dangerous. Never thought I'd say that about game."
“I'm the gamiest!"
In his bedroom, upon his bed, in violation of the rules, Anthony found his dogs asleep. “Either of you two wanna tell me why you're making my sheets smell like ash while somebody was here redecorating?"
Cyrus and Seth awoke with starts and stumbled over each other during their simultaneous dismounts. Neither expecting body language to suffice, Cyrus suggested using Warden as translator and led his fellows back to the living room.
“Cat complained about how the big room looked, rented many people, they ruined the walls and cleaned the floors," said Warden, “dogs hid in the room not being ruined."
Gates looked around again. Everything had been moved away from the walls; the smells in the air—a mixture of ammonia, limonene, and acrylic paint. “All this and they don't open a window," he complained while doing just that. “Warden, let the dogs watch T.V., I'm washing you before the cat has us washed professionally." The dogs leapt upon the couch cushions that Warden vacated and input the one channel number that they had memorized. Warden bleated in tune with the theme song that the dogs began howling. After hearing a tune enough times, it's hard to resist.
For a moment, Carlos suspected that Gates' vehicular misfortunes had rubbed off and onto himself. That moment ended when he saw in his left side mirror an unfriendly face strolling up beside him.
“Chucky, you seem a little down. You should be happy. Were you dealing with one of my associates, instead of starting your truck might've blown up."
Carlos sat silently, and glanced across his other mirrors.
“Now that we've had our moment of camaraderie, time for tacks. Where's my money?"
“I paid you this month, India."
“I know. Like a good boy, you're responsible. You keep on top of things. That's why I tell my associates not to worry, but you know how they are, they come to me, they say I'm too soft, I remind them that I've always been a people person, yada-yada-yada, it'd send a good message if you paid a little more this month."
Carlos demurred, “Later, or next month, I can do a little more."
“I ain't asking, Chucky. How much you got?"
“Two thousand pounds."
India laughed, “Do you think this is Sunday collection?"
“I can do four."
“And I can visit you sometime when it ain't daylight full of people and their peepers witnessing things. Do harder."
“Alright, eight. And that leaves me nothing for next month, or to refill my gas tank."
India patted Carlos on his shoulder. “It's a good thing you've got friends in high places. Maybe Old Man Well will give you an advance to keep your hide inside-in long enough for you to earn your next payment. Just a tip, something that worked for the last guy to make your kind of mistake: if he offers you a job that'd get you to another region, take it, and have cash on hand when you get back. Speaking of." Carlos and India activated their trainer's devices and Carlos authorized transfer of all the funds that the grumpig arranged for his compensation, and for Anthony's. “One-point-nine in fucking League credit? You know that's only good for about six on what you owe."
Carlos drew a shallow breath. “I know it's only good for whatever you say it's good for. Wanna tell me how to fix my truck?"
“Chucky, I fix deadbeats, not dead trucks. Be cool, my man, and don't let me down." India strutted away and smirked again when he heard a brief toot as Carlos let his head droop and bump his truck's horn.
“Tammy Tellovie, junior-class ranger, reporting for duty!" Her announcement of her arrival was met only with a loud growl and some words that sounded like they must be expletives coming from the private area of Ranger Station 5. “Hello?"
Francois appeared, partially emerging from a short, narrow hallway for a moment. “Yeah, great, just in time. Since you're here, I'm not. You can do the paperwork with the senior ranger when she gets back."
Tammy stepped around the corner and glanced down the hallway, becoming immediately impressed and nervous. Impressed, as she knew that some of the rangers were known for being tough, but wrestling with a bear was beyond her expectation—yet there, that she saw. Nervous, as she feared the same mettle may be required of her to perform in this ranger's stead. “Where is—excuse me?"
Finally stripping from Fardeau's grip his ball, Francois recalled the beast and clicked locked its ring as soon as it closed, lest the other 'ring re-appear. “Senior ranger Wintergreen will be back in about twenty minutes. See this wall of awards? All hers. You'll get used to her idiosyncrasies, or you'll get used to frostbite."
“Frostbite, Sir?"
“They didn't tell you about her?" Francois donned his replacement hat and gathered a few things for his trip to the Ranger Service's pokemon-aide boot camp. “Forgive me for leaving you in the dark, but I'd hate to spoil the surprise. Oh, by the way, there's a glaceon that comes around, usually a little before the pre-lunch beat. Just shoo it away. It's harmless but persistent; thinks it belongs inside for some reason."
“Yes, Sir!"
Ranger Lacroix left with a skip in his step, hopped into his vehicle, and headed southward, imagining ways that he could make the most of his vacation to civilization.
“I think that's a doubled rib." Still thankful that the ball managed to put Humpty Dumpty together again, its reduplication of bits made for as much a game as a physical examination as Gates washed, rinsed, and repeated his fine example. “You're lucky that for the extras you haven't come up missing anything."
“I am missing things." Warden said, softly.
With sharp wrist flicks, Gates re-soaped Warden's right side and began working it into his soaked pelt, bringing up a lather. “You miss the forest, don't you?"
“I miss my… old mentor. I don't mean that you aren't—." Warden lowered his head till his nose nearly touched the grass between his fore-hooves.
Gates kept on lathering and lathering until his sawsbuck looked like a mutated altaria. “I'd give him back to you if I could. But… I don't think I could give you back to him." Gates glanced around the rear yard of his building to ensure that nobody was making their audience before dutifully yet without any lingering working up suds around Warden's rear and tail and getting straight to his left side. “I'm glad you didn't let me get away."
With a quarter twist, Warden came about, drove his forehead into Gates' chest, and, having knocked him flat on the grass, reared up above him. Plunging his fore-hooves deeply into the moistened soil just inches beneath Gates' armpits, Warden thrust his muzzle against Mentor's face. “Were he still alive, I would have now killed you and honored us." Face to face, Gates speechless and Warden without anything more to say, they both remained motionless save for breathing each other's breaths.
“Hey," called a voice from a window across the yard, “you're wasting water and ruining my lawn. You wanna see it added to your rent? Quit playing with your llama and either rinse it off or put up my hose." Missus Murphy re-shut her window.
“Uh, Warden?" Gates asked with a faltering voice.
“This channel is boring." Warden raised his head and glanced around. “Where's the controller?"
Gates rose as Warden walked away, looking for a remote that was not among the blades of grass. “How about you let me rinse you off, brush your coat out, and then we'll worry about the… television?"
With a quarter twist, Warden came about, charged at Gates, and halted one pace before him, slathering the man with a neck-and-face-long lick. “The dogs' show should be coming on soon. You could get on the couch first, then I can lay across you and the dogs will have to sit on the floor."
Gates resumed rinsing. “Warden… I don't know if I should mention it… do you remember what we were talking about a minute ago?"
Warden was looking up at the sky. “Is it getting morning or night?"
“Night, Warden."
“Night. Then, we were talking about spare ribs."
“Yeah. We were. Warden, for what it's worth, I'm sorry about what's happened to you." Gates toweled off Warden enough that he would not leave a dripping trail through the building and together they returned to Gates' apartment. Inside, Warden shut the door behind himself and approached Gates, who was addressing his dogs and musing that the paint must now be dry enough to put back his furniture.
Warden nudged Gates from behind, and when Gates turned, pressed his forehead against his mentor's. “Never apologize to me for what you did. If you were mistaken, then I have no reason to accept you as my mentor. I don't want to miss you, too." Warden gave him another massive lick and, as though he had immediately forgotten Gates was there, walked past to park himself before the television.
Many miles away from Guaiacol, in the forested lands east of Rennin, a great storm brewed blowing fierce winds that stripped limbs from trees and cast down sheets of rain between streaks of lightning. Certain that her pursuer must have taken shelter, Sunny decided to do likewise and hopefully escape immediate supervision once the storm passed. She carefully made for a small cabin, hidden well enough by overgrown canopy that even birds rarely visited it. Sunny did not knock, there was no sense in it. “Grandmother," Sunny projected as she came upon the cabin, “may we take shelter tonight?" A warm, but faint response bade her to enter. Teleporting herself and her daughter from outside to inside, Sunny sensed that the cabin's occupant was in bed. Something did not smell right. Knowing where to find an old oil lamp, Sunny cast will-o-wisp upon its wick, setting it to flame for the time being. Its glow shone through a layer of dust on its glass.
An old woman struggled visibly and audibly to push her body up against the head of her bed to sit somewhat upright. “Where's our little girl?" she asked, that question inflected as though it were rhetorical, but her body language suggested more. The ralts leapt up onto the bed with ease and soon felt the old woman's frail arm reach around that young pokemon's back. “Still a tiny thing." Granny sounded disappointed. “Don't you want to be tall and beautiful like your mother, someday?"
The ralts nodded and the mother projected, “Someday. But not until we find someplace safe."
Granny stroked the ralts' dome of a hair-do and complained, “You are someplace safe. You've always been someplace safe. Years, it's been, and nothing bad has happened except those years getting lost."
Sunny expressed a dull discomfort. “Safe because I've kept her safe. They've circled us, and soon they will descend on us. And it has not been that many years."
“Years enough that my cataracts have me more remembering what she looks like than seeing her right here in front of me."
“I can make more light," Sunny admitted, looking around for additional lamps.
Granny gestured for the ralts to lie beside her and cozy up. “It's night, leave the darkness be." Sunny got a read on what Granny was thinking—more light would not help, her vision was too far gone. “There will be a thunder flash here and there for us now and again tonight, I reckon."
For some time, they discussed the little things, mostly amounting to Granny dispensing little bits of motherly and grandmotherly wisdom to the gardevoir as though she were her own daughter but that hadn't run away at fourteen, and hadn't been… and she dispensed it with such emphasis and volume that once the ralts had long since fallen asleep, Sunny could not withhold her suspicions any longer. “You need me to take you to a city, to a hospital."
“Like hell!" Granny spat, her voice hoarse and her reaction to herself being to check that she had not awoken the little one. “Ain't no cure for the sands running through. Lis'n, I know about hard-headed girls, so I'm not going to spend all night telling you do to something I know you won't. But I am gonna tell you about something you're ignoring. Spring can't last forever. Just like you I tried to hold on to it and just like you will if you don't let go, I regretted it. I know you think she won't be like mine but sooner or later, she's got to have her own life. And, you're probably telling yourself that you need to be there for her, to be the best mother you can be, but really you ain't—you're being the worst because being her mommy is the only identity you've got left."
Sunny of course spoke no words to defend herself, but her fury made small objects in the cabin shake.
“When I started feelin' this in my bones, I figured I might make it a little while longer, long enough to—never mind. Do me a favor, Dear, and put a hole in my floorboard by the bed. Count, one, two, three boards away from it, and try to line it up with the north edge of this window." After Sunny used a combat technique to comply, the old woman continued, “Reach in there and feel around, there ought to be a safe in there." Through the hole, Sunny extracted such a box. “Twenty-two, twenty-seven, thirty-six. If you don't know what the numbers look like, I'll picture them in my mind for you." Within the safe, Sunny found mostly photographs and scattered jewelry. “I've heard that sometimes your kind can pick stuff up, like memories, off of things like those. Please, look at those pictures, hold my silver, and put what you see and feel into my mind."
Sunny closed her eyes and projected, “I can try, but I may not be able to control what comes through. It may be too much for—"
“So be it. God led you to me when you needed my help, and God leads you to me when I need yours. I heard His voice tonight, and I went deaf two months ago; He told me to be ready, and I am. Just, promise me one other thing, if you can: I'd like to look up at my garden, if you can do it without digging through it."
Sunny looked at a few of the photographs. Granny, in her long past youth with somebody strikingly handsome (for a human); a few photographs down, a newspaper clipping that featured a photograph of the man and some ripples in the paper's fibers. Photographs of her with her baby, but never again with the fellow. Sunny picked up a locket among the jewelry and put it on. “Forgive me," Sunny projected to Granny before concentrating on connecting with the locket.
“He will. He always does."
When the ralts awoke at daybreak, she found herself lying on a quilt folded upon itself three times to make a small futon. Immediately beside her lay her mother, and glancing up at the bed, she found nobody else within the cabin. Awakening her mother with a projection, the gardevoir curled herself away from the floorboards, her dorsal antenna emerging from a hole therein. Sunny rubbed her face and chuckled, remembering the last time she slept lying flat like that for a moment before dismissing the thought, for fear her daughter might tune into it. Floating herself a short way to orient her body vertically, Sunny quickly surveyed the cabin's contents, filled a fabric bag with the ready food she found and some potable water, and prepared to depart.
When the ralts asked what happened to Granny, Sunny replied shortly and specifically, “She traveled away to meet with her daughter."
Crawling back into bed gently, Gates drew up his bed-sheets, over himself and partially over his oversized deerling, up to where he draped his left arm over that creature's body. They lay at an angle awkward but requisite, and strangely quickly increasingly sensible in Anthony's opinion. Nearly asleep, his eyes opened when he heard a question.
“Mentor, where did he go?"
“Who?" Gates asked, afraid that he knew the answer already.
“Old Mentor. His body stopped because you demanded it. I thought that he was dead." Gates hummed an agreement. “All of the fish and birds and berries that I eat when I live in the forest, they die so I will not be hungry and become weak and die or be eaten. Old Mentor taught me this, that our strength is falling out of us like how water falls off of us when we are under rain or leave a lake or river. It goes into the water and into the plants and into the animals, and each bigger animal must hold more or it gets weak and dies, no matter if it is eaten by another first."
Gates complained, “I want to listen to you but I'm very sleepy. Can you go to the end, or ask me in the morning."
“When you use my ball, my strength and my body goes in, and stays together and doesn't fall out. When I disappointed you in the cave by losing my fight with—"
“No, Warden. You disappointed me because you didn't love me enough to come back when I told you to, and—" a great tremor shook the bed. An effort to rise and investigate by Gates was thwarted as the entire bed turned vertically, dumping him off beside it as the mattress fell over and made like a cave, or a cave-in, nearly trapping him but for a bed-stand and a now broken lamp upon it keeping the collapse mostly above him. Through its padding, he heard a braying: a complicated, coded message repeating sloppily and interrupted periodically by deep inward breaths. With much effort, Gates squirmed free at about the same time that an angry fist began pounding on his door. Carefully exiting, he sidestepped around the form of Warden—still screaming at the mattress with his eyes clenched shut—and left his bedroom. The landlord and Missus Murphy had just let themselves in, demanding explanation. “Well, my pokemon… he's upset about something." They demanded he be recalled and did not buy Gates' explanation that he could not because Warden's ball had malfunctioned, even after showing them the ball. Tizzy, reluctantly departing a fancy and properly-sized bed all her own and sliding a silk sleep mask up her forehead carefully to ensure that its elastic band did not unfold her ears, approached the landlord couple and her current owner with a stretch of her arms to get their attention and a yawn to soon depress their argument. Then she went into the darkened bedroom and attended to her translator.
Jumping straight up into the air and clapping her paws, the three humans awoke, albeit groggily, and tried to remember what they were doing and why. The Missus was first to remember that it had something to do with noise. Her husband agreed with her and asked of Gates not to let whatever had happened happen again. Gates easily assured him that it wouldn't, not knowing why he felt like he could promise such about whatever. Yawning again, the owners let themselves out. Thudding against un-carpeted flooring, Warden's hooves carried him into the kitchen and into the space where his master stood; Gates stepped back until he struck the counter near the sink and onward Warden pressed albeit slowly now, his antlers the purest of white—akin to much of his fur—and between them his forehead crossed by a bleeding line just above his bloodshot eyes. They did not blink until his face so neared Anthony's that each felt the other's bodily warmth. Gazing into them, they seemed deep, they seemed dull, they seamed dead. Something within Gates snapped.
“What is this… this THING in front of me? Destroying my bed, knocking me down when I'm washing it, disrespecting me," he brought his head down, butted it against Warden's, and pushed. Two hundred pounds of venison grunted and slid back a few inches before resisting. “You're not my Warden. My Warden wanted to stand beside me, not on top of me. He wanted to prove himself worthy of my trust, not of my fear," he pushed harder, but Warden did not budge, “He was brave if not fearless; he wouldn't lose his nerve and freak out because of a daunting challenge or because he made a mistake," pushing with greater effort, Warden slipped back two inches, “He'd never give up what he had for what could have been," another inch, “and he would earn the respect of anyone who stood against him. Anyone, including me!" Gates gripped Warden's antlers and pushed with all of his might. Warden's hooves scratched furrows into the vinyl until it ran out. Catching on the metal that protected the edge of the carpet, Warden's rear legs folded and the whole beast fell onto its left side, revealing a chaos of pink fur lines and patches amid the white.
When it rose, lightning arced up and down its antlers. Again it slowly approached Gates, but the man refused to retreat deeper into the kitchen. Instead of body heat, it was a stench of ozone that soon separated them. “I don't know who I am," the sawsbuck slowly spoke, “and I don't know who you are."
“I know who you can be, Warden," Gates whispered. “You can be my son, because I have adopted you, and I accept you unconditionally. And I can be your father, because no matter what mistakes you make, I know that you always want to do your best." Warden's shoulders shifted and he stepped back half of a pace. Dipping his head, the sparks intensified and he reared back, sending his antlers up and punching through the ceiling. He snorted and groaned, inhaled, and sneezed—violently enough to stagger him and force him to awkwardly sit.
His antlers were once more in fullest bloom, and Gates caught a glimpse of the shimmer that spread along Warden's coat as its white turned a temperate tan once again.
Not unlike the moment at the lake, Gates helped Warden to stand on his own again. Snorting a bit and accepting Gates' help in clearing his nostrils into a dishrag, Warden resumed, “—the pokemon there, my strength went into the ball and my body did, too, but they weren't together. I put my body back together; I was in my strength, I wasn't in my body but I needed it so I could put my strength in it and come out again. What am I, Father? When we say 'I,' what do we mean? Where did Old Mentor's I go? When I eat a fish, where does its I go? I take its body and its strength, but I don't get its I."
Gates led Warden to the sink. After rinsing the deer boogers off of it, he used the rag's dampness to clean crusty blood from fur around the cut across Warden's scalp. “I wish I knew, but it seems like nobody knows. I think the best we can do is try to keep our 'I' and our strength and our bodies together as much as we can; and in your case, appreciate that yours stitched together as well as it did—God bless the pink bits." Warden followed Gates to his bedroom, and asked what had happened to it. Gates hesitated, swallowed, and admitted honestly, “You happened to it."
Passing by Anthony, carefully, Warden examined the mess. “May I help you put it back, Father?"
Gates exhaled with relief, although he did not dare show it, and returned the bed's frame's feet to the floor. “Of course. It's your bed, too. Just, let's stick with 'Mentor'—people might get confused, even if we explain it."
Warden effortlessly pushed the mattress over and mostly into position. “You are forever my both," Warden said before licking Gates' face, flopping onto the bed, and stretching his limbs with a yawn. Gates put out the light, grabbed the nearest edge of the scattered sheets, and climbed in.
Watching unnoticed, Tizzy softly padded back down the hallway, unlocked the sleeping houndoom's balls, and released them onto the couch. Satisfied with their oblivious snoring, she pulled back down her sleep mask, and again curled into the comfortable bed she had rush-delivered that afternoon. Paint, check; bedding, check; remedial mental rewiring of the deer, check; food quality and place settings, pending; bathroom, to renovate; kitchen, pending; ceiling repairs, do it with the kitchen; being forced to wear fashion accessories that she didn't much like, never again. This place was shaping up quite nicely for a stag pad.