Normal 1.2: Firemane
Pixie
They’re talking about you again.
You don’t understand many of the words, but you know the tone. Talking more in breath than sound, trying to sound quieter than they really are. The same fake concern they take on the moment they turn away from your table, like you aren’t still in the room.
But you don’t care. You don’t really care about anything anymore, except maybe for Avalanche. You wonder if she’s thought of you in the last few… days? Moons? Between the ball and the trailer you haven’t had many chances to be outside and count the changing skies and you aren’t sure how often the humans leave and make it dark.
No, as much as you’d like to believe it you can’t imagine Avalanche cares about you anymore. The nine-tails only keep two vulpix to train. It lets them keep the territories intact. When the unchosen become three-tails they set off on their own. Your body and mind and comfort are your problems now, not hers.
And, because you don’t care, those things are now the problems of the people in white falsefur.
They keep you alive. They try to coax you into eating things that help with the bruises and scars. You won’t because it’s your mouth and you eat what you want. Which is nothing. They took you ball out once and you bit them. After that they’ve let you sleep on the table instead of in a cage like the others, and you’ve learned to sleep in the dark while the humans are away and rest on the table in daylight, keeping an eye open for more balls.
There’s a new human today. Young and female. Like you. You catch a glimpse of her mane when she walks in. Thick, curly and went a little past her shoulder-blades. Light-yellowish, like the fire-tails in the stories Avalanche told you. It has leaves in it, some dirt. Even from a distance it smells unclean, although humans seemed to have a higher tolerance for that. It would be pretty if cared for and you want to run your paws and tongue through it to clean it up like you would for your own coat. Like Avalanche did for you.
You suppose you still care that you look like a fox should. But presentation is sort of like breathing, so you aren’t sure that counts.
New human approaches you again, with the other humans behind her. She walks up to your table, looking away like this isn’t premeditated, and stops at the edge. You cast her the sort of wary, frigid look that only an ice-type can manage.
“Hey,” she says. “Can I pet you?”
You don’t understand the words, but she offers her paw, keeping it head-length away from your snout. She doesn’t smell nervous. Is this how humans offer scent exchange? You hadn’t thought they marked each other at all.
It takes you a few seconds to decide, but you eventually do move to push your face against their paw, rubbing your scent glands against it. Her paw is warm, but not unpleasantly so. You sneeze and a burst of cold air radiates from your body. The human pulls away for a second, probably on reflex, but puts her paw back up to your head when you look at her expectantly.
*
She’s back the next day.
This time she opens up the door and looks at you.
“You want to go outside?”
The words are mostly unfamiliar, but you think you know the meaning. Yes, you decide, wind and flower smell would be nice. Rising on your paws is painful as you feel the muscles and skin ripple around your scars and bruises, but nothing tears. One of the humans picks you up gently and cradles you in his arms, like Avalanche would in her jaws when you were a kit. Insulting. The humans are not nine-tails. They have no right to handle you like that.
They set you down in the grass outside. The sun and air are much warmer near the sea, but your body quickly begins cooling itself to adjust. You can still feel the sunlight striking your fur. And you can smell the plants. There are different flowers here than you have on the mountain and there are far more of them. You absent-mindedly walk up to one and wrap your jaws around it to get a better feel for its taste and texture. The young human pulls you away.
“If you want food, they have more vulpix-friendly stuff in there.”
Her tone is cheerful, but you recognize the pleading edge and the ‘food’ sound. You turn away and walk closer to the big black human-trail, puffing up your tails behind you in a show of defiance. Before you reach it, a much larger pokemon cuts you off. He’s quadrupedal, red-and-black-colored and you can feel radiated heat enter your personal blizzard. Fire-type. Big fire-type.
He notes your reaction and adjusts quickly, holding his tail still and lowering himself to the ground before rolling on to his side.
“Didn’t mean to scare you. Just want to play.”
It’s a feline dialect. Close enough to your native vulpine to understand, even if you aren’t sure you got all the meaning.
You tilt your head. “Play?”
“Yes. Chase each other around or—” He stops short and rises to his paws before slowly walking towards you, head down. You allow him to brush his face against yours. “You’re sick?” He asks. “You should get that fixed.”
You slowly lay down and show him your stomach. “How do you heal this?”
His eyes narrow. “Do you have a ball? Or have they tried potions? Those look old and improperly healed. You’ll need to get those looked at before we can play. And eat. You look underfed. Are they feeding you?”
You tuck your tails between your legs, turn around and head back inside. You don’t want to talk about it. What happened. What happened after. Why you don’t care. He seems well-meaning, and he shouts after you that he’ll be back to play later, but there are things that a healthy fire cat with a gentle human mother can’t understand.
Still. The human seems to like you, and she at least takes care of her cat. She’s not like… like they were. You wonder why she came back, why she cares about you, and you realize that maybe she wants to put you on your team. You’d leave the room. She’d stuff you in a ball, sometimes.
But it’s something to hope for. And you’ll take it.
*
You eat that night. The food is dry and bland, but you get some down your throat before your stomach gets upset. Then you let them spray things on you (which sting and hurt) and put you into another capsule. They keep you in it until it’s bright out again.
You stretch out with your front paws and feel your belly react. It hurts less than it did when you went into the ball. You roll onto your side and move to scout out the area with your tongue, but you’re met with a spray of water when you do so. You uncurl, climb to your paws and hiss blindly in the water’s direction, kicking up a frozen mist around you in the process.
A human forepaw reaches down to your arched back and you bite the air around it before even seeing whose it is. It’s the young female human. Firemane. You’ll call her Firemane. She seems a bit startled, but not angry. You calm down a bit and let her stroke your back, but you won’t warm up the air for her while she does it.
After a few strokes she reaches down to pick you up, doing so by wrapping her arms around your side and hugging you to her chest. Won’t touch your underside. But she’s less gentle when she drops you down on the table. You still land, perfectly of course.
“She’s doing much better,” one of the humans says. “We’re very thankful for your help in this.”
Firemane’s voice sings and rumbles. Humans do that sometimes when they bare their teeth. You know that sound well enough, but it doesn’t seem to be threatening. The last times you heard it were followed by violence. This one is only followed by a chunk of delicious smelling food the size of your head being dumped in front of you.
“Not all at once,” Firemane says. You can guess the meaning, and it’s unnecessary. You couldn’t eat this much if you wanted to.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
You end up getting much closer than you would have thought, but half of it’s still left. That goes to the cat, who devours in three bites what took you dozens. Firemane talks to the other humans for a bit while the fire cat tries to make conversation with you. But he’s very large and his voice is always approximating a growl, even when he seems to be happy.
Firemane leaves you a while later with a thorough head scratching.
*
They aren’t back the next day. Or the next week. Or the next month. You let them spray you with nasty liquids and put you in a capsule and cut you open (while you’re asleep, but still) but Firemane never comes back.
And with every day you sit on a table doing nothing, watching the humans care for sicker creatures until they leave you start to feel a little bit more like you did before you were healed.
Eventually your stomach is fine. They let you lick it again and you can only feel the scar if you really press your tongue down and weave it between all the tufts of fur. You still don’t know what comes next but that’s fine.
You don’t care.
*
Many moons later…
You wake up to the sound of your kennel being unlocked. Odd. You’re usually awake by walk time. Without opening your eyes, you stretch out and fluff up your six-and-a-half tails. When you look up you reflexively freeze the air around you. The woman staring at you is the matriarch of the facility, the one that all of the other humans submit to. She almost never comes down. Why is she here? Why is she here for you?
Matriarch steps back and waves her paw. “Come on, Pixie. We have things to discuss.”
You gracefully leap from the kennel to the ground and trail after her as she walks. She opens the door to the visiting room and you follow, leaping onto the table as she sits down.
You immediately puff your fur up and hiss. There’s another fox here. A short-furred, hideous pink fox with one good tail and a pathetic growth of a second. Eevee. You don’t know what gimmick this one has, but they’re all just eevee to you.
“Pixie, play nice,” Matriarch scolds. Even though that disgraceful asshole is on your table.
You generously let it go with a single huff and look back at Matriarch.
“Good, now that you’re paying attention, let me be brief. I’m giving you your sixth and final second chance with a trainer. Are we clear?”
You blink. She’s threatening you. Can you growl at her? Or should you submit? You don’t want to submit in front of the imposter fox. Or to someone threatening you.
“I’ll take that as a no. What I’m saying is, your shit stops now. No more peeing on pillows, hiding pokéballs in the woods, freezing the ground your trainer is about to step on, letting all hell break loose when you see another eevee, or trying to hurt teammates. Again, are we clear?”
That is a very unfair assessment. You only did the first three things because your trainer was already going to abandon you and your window for revenge was very limited. And every eevee deserves it, with their tangled manes and their insufferable pleading eyes and their “look at me, I can pretend to be a guardian of the peaks or a firetails or a fish or anything I want” nonsense like that makes them better than you. It doesn’t. And you obviously weren’t trying to hurt that rabbit: you were trying to kill it.
Matriarch sighs and cradles her head in her forepaws. “Pixie. I like this one. I think you can help her and she can help you. She’s probably the best trainer you’re going to get. If you’re just incompatible, fine. I’ll sell you off to a zoo on the mainland. But if you hurt her, I will personally haul you back to Mt. Lanakila and see how long it takes for the weavile to get you.” With that she stands up and walks towards the exit, her eevee trailing behind her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. You had best prepare yourself to make a good impression.”
Then she shuts the door and leaves you alone. The gall she has. You never even did anything to her and she’s acting like you already killed her kit. Fine. If this goes downhill, she’s given you no incentive to hold back. She wants a fight, you’ll give her one.
When Matriarch reenters her foreleg is gently wrapped around another human’s. Other human has a strange white stick. A weapon? It wouldn’t be very effective against you. Foolish to even try. Matriarch walks the smaller human to a seat and gently helps her down before shooting you a wicked glare. She leaves you alone with your last-chance-trainer.
She’s very small. Her whole frame is delicate. Her skin tone is a little too in the middle. Humans are least hideous when they are very pale or very dark. She’s on the darker end, but not quite far enough to be visually pleasant. Her mane is green, which is a strange and somewhat disturbing color, but it is very shiny and well cared for. Her falsefur is white, which is the best color. Then her eyes… they’re only half moving. And something is off in them. Shimmers over the surface like a barely frozen pond.
The care that Matriarch took, the eye shimmers: she’s blind. What a cruel joke. Sticking you with a tiny, frail human who cannot even appreciate your majesty.
“Hello, Pixie,” she says. Her voice soft and kind of high pitched and it flows well. Like the sound of slow winds running along the mountain rocks. Except more human. Still not enough to make you like her. She extends a paw out for you to smell or rub or whatever but you don’t stand up to go to it and she eventually sticks it down flat on the table. “My name is Cuicatl Ichtaca. I’m from Anachuac. I hope you will be friends with me.”
Nope. You will not give Matriarch the satisfaction. The human does not get the obvious hint and keeps talking.
“I’ve haven’t met many ice-types before. My home was warm. There were mountains nearby with snow on top, but they were very dangerous so my father and sister rarely let me go.”
Her family sound terrible. if she is too weak to climb mountains you do not want to associate with her.
“I read about vulpix once. It was a long time ago so I forget some things. You’re nocturnal, right?”
Obviously. What creature would ever want to go outside in the sunlight?
“If you are, then you probably won’t want to be outside in the day when I go places. I am okay with that. I can get around well enough with my cane. We can play and train around dusk and dawn. But I usually try to sleep at night, so not then.”
It is a better offer than most trainers make. But no. Not for the blind kit of an eevee trainer.
“I don’t know what your other trainers taught you. But I have ideas for battle. You could be a really good arena controller and zoner. Using hail and frozen patches to make it harder to get to you, and then hit them with from far away. Or just put them to sleep or trap them and then set up. You’re probably fast enough to be a sweeper. Or will be fast enough when you evolve.”
You are fast enough now to ‘sweep’ anything, whatever that means.
“Do you know roar?” she asks.
You do, just to show her how good your roaring is and maybe make her run away. She smiles, which is not the proper reaction. The proper reaction is terror and awe. Worse, she giggles.
“Sorry. I’m not laughing at you. You’re just really cute.”
You bark to scold her. It’s very annoying that she can’t just understand your glares and know when to shut up and fall in line. The bark does silence her and she stops baring her teeth for just a second. Good.
“Oh. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” You fluff up your tails. Her? Hurt you? Impossible. The most she could do is annoy you. “I think that I went at this wrong. Can we start over?”
…what?
“Hello, Pixie. My name is Cuicatl Ichtaca. I want you to be my friend. If you don’t want to, that’s fine. You can stay here. But if there’s anything I can help you with…”
You hiss and sit down. What could she possibly help you with?
“I don’t know, Pixie. I was hoping you could tell me.” What? “I want friends. And money. And I thought you could help. But if there’s nothing I can do for you, then you should stay here. Maybe someone else will be able to help you later.”
You growl softly and menacingly and the human’s half-smile is just her baring her teeth because she is very afraid of your wrath. You aren’t actually sure about everything Matriarch said with her nonsense “zoo,” but it was still clearly a threat. No one will help you later and she knows that. So now this human is also threatening you.
“Oh. A zoo is a place where you’d have a big outdoor cage and humans would come to look at you.”
Your tails flex out reflexively in shock—in a temporary blip in your perfect composure. You bark-hiss, “You really understand me?”
“Yes, but it’s much easier if you vocalize somehow.” As you think about that, she continues, “Why did she threaten to send you to one?”
You flick a tail down and growl, “No reason at all. I am a very good fox. She is a very bad human with a worse fox.”
The human bares a little more of her teeth at the injustice. “The horror.”
“Exactly!” This one may be much smarter than the average human.
“I can take you if you want. And then either keep you, give you to another trainer, or release you to the wild. Whatever you want. Or I can leave you to the zoo.”
You flick a tail down on the table. This was not a set of options you were expecting. You weren’t really expecting options at all.
“What do you want, Pixie? What kinds of things make you happy?”
“Cold. Prey. Grooming. Toys. Proper respect.”
“Hmm. The wild would probably have cold and prey. No one else would groom you and there wouldn’t be toys. Don’t know about respect. The zoo would have grooming and toys. Maybe cold. No prey, definitely not respect. I could give you grooming and toys. I’d try to give you respect and you can tell me if I’m not. No cold, though, sorry. Other trainers couldn’t talk to you but if you don’t like me they could give you the toys and grooming.”
Many words. Good breakdown of options. You were going to just pick the one that sounded best, and probably will, but she is good at thinking. Rare in her species.
“What do you mean by respect, anyway?”
This is not an easy concept to express. It’s just respect. Every vulpix understands it. You aren’t even sure how much she understands of your language, but you try to express it.
“I am prettier and stronger and smarter than everyone else and they should recognize it and submit to me.”
“I’m sure you’re very pretty, strong, and smart,” she correctly says. “I would try to help you. Give you food and love and try to make you even stronger. But I can’t promise I’ll do everything you say. You would have to help me sometimes. And sometimes that help would be taking ‘no’ for an answer.”
“I do not need help,” you say.
“Then you’re best off alone.”
Alone.
A shiver wracks your body.
You are not afraid of alone.
The human sighs. “Do you want love?”
You bark, yes, of course, you deserve love.
“I can give you that.” You stare into her awful, foggy eyes. There’s brown somewhere in them. The dullest, worst color. “Do you want me to hold you?”
Your legs rise up and move towards her and you hate your limbs for it. She extends her forelegs, slowly at first, and then she flips you over and moves you towards her chest all at once. It’s not unpleasant, just unexpected. You yip in surprise and she whispers an apology. Then you’re cradled in her forelegs, pressed against her body. She’s warm. Not too warm, though. And it’s nice to feel a heartbeat.
She is a trickster with clever words and whatever she says, someday, maybe even today, she will hate you and leave you like Firemane and all the others.
But for now, Skysong is yours.