Three broken ribs, a fractured left forearm, two dislocated fingers, a fist-sized gouge in his shin, a "half dislocated ankle", frostbite, and innumerable lacerations and scrapes. On top of that was severe dehydration, extreme sleep deprivation, three separate infections, blood loss, and lactic acidosis.
Aidinza's body had been shattered by his experience in Caġaṡakehaƞska Caƞtaƞka. The honoured healer had told him that it was baffling that he was still breathing, much less walking.
In another time, there might have been nothing that they could do. He would have been out of commission for months at minimum; even pokémon healing would have meant a brutal and imprecise recovery.
But modernity came with miracles, apparently. The same advances that bottled sprays capable of closing pokémon wounds in moments had helped human medicine leap forward to the point that Aidinza's wounds were…
Inconvenience was the wrong word, but there was a distinct feeling that the moment he crossed the threshold of the hospital, his recovered health was an eventuality.
So with the strange feeling of foreign flesh slowly becoming indistinguishable from his normal flesh, a barrage of different pills and drinks slipped down his throat, and after minutes of attention from a specially trained Audino, Aidizna was told to rest.
If there was any evidence needed to say Aidinza was still delirious, the fact that he was sitting on the hospital's roof, instead of following the honoured healer's words as stringently as he could manage, should be the final say.
In his defence, the smell of the meal that Jha'y'zéča-den bought was irresistible. With all respect to the healers of the hospital, the pill they had massaged down his throat might have given him all he needed to recover from three days of starvation, but it was far from a filling meal.
The burger that was nearly so thick that he could not hold it in two hands, however, was as filling a meal as he had ever had.
Aidinza takes another bite, and juice drips down his face as he hums appreciatively. The crunch of the bun, the explosion of flavour, the texture…
Tsesei forgive him, but he had never eaten something so virulently addictive.
"I never thought about how dangerous it could be." The voice reminds Aidinza that he was, in fact, sitting here with company, and as he wipes up the sauce from his mouth, he glances over to Jha'y'zéča-den. "Sometimes the Elders talk about what happened with Iris, but…."
He shrugs and looks out over the edge of the roof.
"It was dangerous because I was unprepared and unwary. I'm Ya'an-ah; my home is the sands, not blasted ice forests." Aidinza offered his sauce-coated fingers to Sandile, where he was splayed out over Aidinza's lap, occasionally snapping up whatever fell from his trainer's burger.
The words cause Jha'y'zéča-den's gaze over the city to grow melancholic, and Aidinza caught his eyes, tracing the city streets in the dim light. Aidinza could guess the thoughts in his head.
"You'd be the same in my home; the desert sands would chew a forest dweller like you up and spit you out in hours" Aidinza scratched along Sandile's spine as the reptile shifted in his lap, wincing slightly as the ground type's tight grip on his hospital robes pricked at his skin.
"Heh, you reckon?" Jha'y'zéča-den looks away from the city and then gives Aidinza a smirk, just bold enough to hide away the insecurity for a moment.
"The mother desert has no time for pale forest dwellers. You wouldn't even know what dune you were standing on past the first step." Aidinza hides a mocking grin behind a bite of his burger but does nothing to mask the taunt in his eyes.
The Pheyan'atho boy, for his part, just shook his head and waved Aidinza off dismissively.
A moment passed, and Aidinza snorted, sending both boys into a fit of giggles. The smile that crossed Aidinza's face when he stopped was far from mocking; it had been a long time since he had someone he could just laugh over stupid, barely funny things with.
Companionable silence descended on the roof, and Aidinza continued demolishing his burger as he watched Astazhei slowly circle the roof, enjoying the freedom from the hospital now that Aidinza was back. That enjoyment of his freedom would soon turn into a lust for a good fight soon enough if Aidinza had to wager a guess, and he would be bothering the others spread around the roof.
He glances over to where Naazin was de- he pauses, taken aback for a moment. The clauncher was not asleep; instead, he was sitting on the roof's edge, watching Aidinza. He gives the crustacean a smile and points up at Astazhei. Naazin's eyes flick to the flying bird, and his antenna bob in what Aidinza hoped was acknowledgement.
"So, who's Iris?" Aidinza asks, turning back to the other human on the roof. Jha'y'zéča-den looks startled for a moment, pausing mid-bite of his own burger.
Hurriedly he chews his mouthful, swallowing heavily. "Ahh, a cousin of mine… I think? Another… a member of the Pheyan'atho. Was meant to be the second coming of Drayden."
"Was meant to be?" A flutter of wings interrupts Jha'y'zéča-den for a moment as Shandíín lands on Aidinza's shoulder, nearly toppling the nomad. He swats at the bird as it chortles and takes off again. That was the third time the fire type had done that since he had returned from the forest.
"Don't tell him I told you this, but every morning he would check the entire village for you. He missed you." Shandíín pauses in his ascent and lets out an offended crow before diving at Jha'y'zéča-den, passing over mere centimetres from the boy's head. Aidinza just snorts and gives a wiry grin. "Maybe meant to be is the wrong word; it's just…."
He shrugs, furrowing his brow as he considers what to say next.
"She was the last person to have her three days of Haŋhépitúwe." He side-eyes Aidinza for a moment, and a wiry grin crosses his face. "Was being key there. Don't know too much about it, but… that was two years ago, and I haven't seen her since."
Something complex flashes over his face, but he covers it up behind his burger after a moment. Aidinza studied him as the Jha'y'zéča-den's shoulders hunched slightly.
There was a long story there. But it was not one that the Pheyan'atho boy was willing to tell.
"What about other cousins?" He asks instead, as he polishes off the last of his burger. Jha'y'zéča-den perks up for a moment, and then he pauses.
"A few, I think, no uncle or aunties, but I could probably trace my blood to some relation to everyone in the tribe..." For a moment, he looked lost, and it came as a surprise when he spoke up some time later. "How often do you see all of your tribe?" Aidinza leaned back and cast an obvious glance around the tall concrete buildings of Opelucid. He only lasted as far as the other native rolling his eyes before he cracked up laughing, nearly startling Sandile from his lap. "Yeah yeah, you know what I mean."
Aidinza calms down and lets his face grow serious as he runs his fingers across Sandile's scales. "The Naisho'h… there is only the tribe. Before I came on this journey…." The young nomad's mirth shifts into something maudlin and homesick. "It would be a strange day that I had not seen all my people, my family, my tribe by noon."
He pauses, letting his mind wander through memories of toiling with his people, of playing with the children and learning at the feet of the elders. And of dumping sand in Kayeena's tent to wake him up before the Sun peaked in the sky.
"While the Ya'an-ah… it could be weeks or it could be months before we would see another tribe. But we always made sure it was something to remember." The mother desert was cruel in her love and had long since taught the Ya'an-ah to make every memory as precious as they could. "The times when all the tribes would meet…." Aidinza's smile turns proud as he slips into what may well be his earliest memory. One of a thousand riotous colours and a celebration that lasted weeks. "It's something unforgettable."
He glances back over to Jha'y'zéča-den, who, in stark contrast to Aidinza's halcyon recollection, looked deeply troubled. The Pheyan'atho notices Aidinza's attention, unsettled brown eyes meeting nostalgic green. He takes a moment, visibly looking for the words to say. "Unkethila rises an hour before the sun each morning and walks nearly two hours to reach Opelucid."
Aidinza felt his lips tighten at the mention of the elder, but even if Jha'y'zéča-den was staring right at him, the boy was consumed in his own thoughts. "He's eighty-seven. I always thought that was incredible; I love the Pheyan'atho I have ever since I left the Orphanage… but I was always content with seeing the others once every few weeks or months or years. I asked him why once, and he just told me he hoped that I didn't understand when I was his age."
The northerner fell silent, but Aidinza did not need the rest of his words to understand what he was trying to say. "Let it only ever be spoken, but if the Naisho'h ever scattered to the winds, I would walk the breadth and width of the world to see them. I'm not sure… I'm not sure I'd be able to handle anything else."
The words almost seemed to physically strike the air from Jha'y'zéča-den's lungs as he let out a sharp breath. His eyes cleared as the confusion unsettling him was torn away by a deep want.
"Dra'khíza-ide'en won't let you win. You know that, right?" Aidinza just nodded. He had no doubts in his heart that he was going to lose his upcoming gym battle. Brycen had told him as much, and he had done little to garner sympathy from the Ah-na-ghai of the Pheyan'atho. "He's going to try to humiliate you. You've challenged him. He's going to make an example of you; it's what the Pheyan'atho do."
"He'll try." There was a quiet confidence in Aidinza's tone that spoke more than anything else he might have said. He might have known he would lose this coming battle, but he would not lose it easily.
Jha'y'zéča-den seemed to latch onto that confidence, the want in his eyes crystallising into a drive. "We'll need to do research. Read up on his rules, and watch his old battles. Come up with a strategy." He scrunches up his burger wrappings and stands up. He opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was cut off by a panicked cry.
A very familiar cry, one that resonated with the still-fresh memories of homely sand in Aidinza.
And called up even fresher memories of freezing cold and dark woods.
Aidinza snapped around to the source of the cry, eyes quickly finding where Nihanlo had been lying in front of a vent, enjoying the warm airstream.
The sight he saw invoked a potent mixture of relief, panic, and, if Aidinza was honest, absurdity. It was the lakeside ghost, smaller than the first time Aidinza had met it but solidly defined.
And frozen by its horn to Nihanlo's back.
He stares at the sight for a long moment as the lakeside ghost wiggles wildly in an attempt to get free, only managing to get itself more trapped by Nihanlo's insanely cold body. Nihanlo, for her part, seemed completely unconcerned with the ghost frozen to her body, just blinking as the pokémon’s struggles to levitate away hardly even budged the heavy ice-type. She turns to Aidinza and, seeing him paying her attention, bounds over to him.
He smiles down at the eager ice-type, resisting the urge to run his fingers across her frozen shell. Before, his attention flicks to the lakeside ghost, as it seemingly gives up and plays… dead.
There had to be some level of irony in that, Aidinza thinks as he watches the shadowy green pokémon limply bounce around as Nihanlo meanders around in front of him.
But before he could properly process that, the sound of a near hysteric fit of laughter, so loud that it spooked Sandile out of his lap, filled the air. He glances over to Jha'y'zéča-den as the Pheyan'atho absolutely loses it.
"A dreepy! It fits so well!" He crows as he doubles over, clutching at his midsection. Aidinza stares at the other boy, and after a few more seconds of laughing, Jha'y'zéča-den meets his stare.
Then doubles over again. "It shouldn't be so funny, but it is!"
Aidinza felt like he was missing out on a joke and was pretty sure that the joke was at his expense. So he turns away from the hysterical native and sets about awkwardly trying to free the lakeside ghost from Nihanlo's dangerous body.
Finally, after Jha'y'zéča-den had calmed down, the boy began to explain what he found so funny. "It's just… okay, so that's a dre-." He pauses and giggles again. "That's a dreepy." Aidinza glances over as he and Sandile finally manage to free the Lakeside ghost - the dreepy, he supposed.
"And what's so funny about dreepy?" The ghost in question rises in the air, its body trying to shiver off Nihanlo's cold. Aidinza reaches out, and moments later, the serpentine pokémon curls along his arm. He sits back down and pulls Sandile into his lap, letting the two pokémon study each other.
"Well, uh. Dreepy are pretty elusive. Because they're always with their caretaker, and they only… um, are said to come out for a certain kind of person." The two boys exchange looks, both uncertain in their own way. "And you are… that kind of person?"
"Haha?" Aidinza questions trying to put Jha'y'zéča-den out of his misery.
"It sounded funnier in my head." The young Ya'an-ah just nods, trying to give Jha'y'zéča-den an out to just stop talking. "So there's a legend that every Dreepy is the soul of a great man lost at sea. Someone burdened in life by great responsibility, and when it comes back to life, they seek out someone similar to them in life, and help them shoulder their own burden."
It was incredible that someone could look so uncomfortable yet try so hard to continue explaining something, Aidinza thought to himself as he watched Sandile yawn.
"And you always seem like you're thinking about something, and when the dreepy showed up, it was like 'duh what other dragon is he going to have' and… I'm going to stop now, okay?" Aidinza snorts and looks back up to Jha'y'zéča-den, the other boy as red as Aidinza's hair.
"You could have stopped several minutes ago. You should have stopped well over a minute ago." Jha'y'zéča-den grimaces slightly and awkwardly rubs at his shoulder. Aidinza gives him a cheeky smile before turning back to see a peculiar sight.
The dreepy with its head halfway into Sandile's mouth.
Both pokémon freeze as Aidinza lets out a panicked noise, Sandile's eyes going wide as he snaps around to look for threats. With the lakeside ghost still held limply in his mouth. The ghost let out an echoing squeal, its back half wiggling wildly.
"Sandile, do not eat that!" The desert reptile craned his neck back towards his trainer, visibility confused, his eyes wide. "Open your mouth." Aidinza firmly pointed at Sandile with as much authority as he could manage.
Sandile, still visibly bemused, let his powerful jaw drop open, releasing a saliva-coated dreepy. Who, rather than looking terrified, instead looked inordinately pleased with itself, and held in its tiny forearms, was a small piece of half-rotten meat.
Aidizna, for lack of anything else to do, glanced up at Jha'y'zéča-den. Wondering why Sandile's teeth had not been cleaned properly.
"Dreepy are really into helping out other pokémon; I hear over in Galar they call them the caretaker pokémon." Not exactly the question that he was thinking of, but useful information, he supposed.
"You know a lot about dreepy," Aidinza commented idly, watching as the dreepy placed the rotten meat off to the side and began scratching at Sandile's scales.
"I am Pheyan'atho! We know our dragons." There was no mistaking the pride in his tone, almost deep enough to cover up the wistful longing shading his words. "Actually, that reminds me."
Jha'y'zéča-den stood up and, with long strides, approached Sandile and the dreepy. He squats down and lightly grasps the lakeside ghost's tail. The ghost stiffened for a moment before glancing back at the Pheyan'atho. The boy smiled and mouthed something Aidinza did not catch. But the ghost relaxed as he did so.
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Then Jha'y'zéča-den stood up, spun the ghost by the tail over his head, and threw it off the roof.
It took Aidinza a very long moment to process that.
“Jha'y'zéča-den?” He questions, his voice dangerously neutral.
"Okay, I know what that looked like." The boy held his hand up, his face a strange mixture of delight and panic.
"It looked like you threw that pokémon, a pokémon that saved my life, off a roof." Aidinza straightens up to his full height as Sandile's low growl fills the roof.
"It did look like I threw her off the roof, but…." He trails off and glances over his shoulder towards where he had tossed the dreepy.
"Jha'y'zéča-den, if there is not a good explanation, I will throw you off the roof." He liked the Pheyan'atho boy, but saving his life ran far deeper than the quick bond they had formed.
Fortunately for Jha'y'zéča-den, that was the moment that dreepy barreled back onto the roof, its entire body vibrating in excitement.
"But dreepy like being thrown." He says with a flourish, a childish look of glee crossing his face. "You should try it."
Aidinza's attention lingers on the boy for a moment, a bizarre moment of uncertainty as he grapples with the idea of intentionally throwing a pokémon off a roof. Then he feels Sandile bump into his calf, and he glances at the ghost as the tight line of his shoulders relaxes.
The dreepy perked up, eagerly floating forward and presenting its long tail to Aidinza. It was still for a moment before beginning to excitedly wag side to side.
Aidinza would have to be heartless to reject that, so he grabs the dreepy tail and steps up to the edge of the roof. For a moment, he eyed the streets below; it was… a long way down. The dreepy twists around to look up at Aidinza, its thin mouth parting as it pants in excitement.
He supposed that heights like this were not much when it came to flying. Besides, Astazhei and Shandíín were in the air, and he could interrupt their fight to go rescue the ghost.
So he spins the ghost once over his head, then twice, then three times. He steps forward as he reaches the apex of the final spin and yeetes the ghost with all his strength.
The tiny ghost arcs through the air like a softly glowing arrow with an incredible speed, quickly becoming little more than a dot against the soft glow of the city, then not even that.
"I've always wanted to do that. Ever since I first heard about dreepy." Jha'y'zéča-den leans down on the fencing at the edge of the hospital next to Aidinza. "Used to run around throwing rocks from a sling for hours. Drove Unktehila and Wacis'a-mƞi crazy."
"Always wanted a dreepy, then?" Aidinza's eyes carefully trace the streets, concerned as he fails to spot the lakeside ghost again.
"Always wanted a Dragon." He corrects the other boy, leaning back slightly to watch the intricate fight above. "It's… I am Pheyan'atho; Dragons are… what we are."
Silence falls between the two for a moment as Aidinza's eyes finally find a soft glow racing back towards the hospital. He stares at it for a long moment, a part of him, deeply steeped in generosity and something else he was too scared to name, almost spoke up. Almost offered the lakeside ghost before a phantom freezing chill ran up his spine, and his bones shivered at the echo of a low growl.
"Don't," Jha'y'zéča-den spoke up, breaking him away from the warring emotions inside him. "That's your Dragon." Aidizna glances over to him, meeting profoundly certain brown eyes. "Don't even think about offering it."
Aidinza looked away, feeling strangely guilty. But whether it was for almost offering the lakeside ghost - who he had yet to even catch, he scoffs to himself - or for having something that seemed to mean so much to the other boy… he found he could not tell.
A few moments pass and the two boys watch as the dreepy floats up the walls of the hospital. Immediately it beelined for Aidizna, shivering with excitement. Every so often, it would glance back to Aidinza, a pleading look in its eyes. But it was too excited to stay still, flittering around in the air like an excited child.
Jha'y'zéča-den claps the older boy on the shoulder once and straightens up. "That's your dragon." He repeats before he walks off, only pausing a moment to give Nihanlo attention before disappearing through the roof door.
The dreepy trills and begins twirling through the air above Aidinza's hand. He reaches up and catches its tail; the ghost - dragon, as well, he supposed - goes stiff, its little limbs jittering in the air.
He lifts the ghost up to his face and studies it for a moment. Doubt begins flickering in his stomach as he stares at its tiny, tiny form. It seemed so fragile, and Aidinza could swear he could feel the ill-feeling of the ghost's… something distorting away from the thin boundary of its body.
Had the ghost been coming to see him when that pack of pokémon began hunting it? Did it blame him for what happened? Did it-
The dreepy starts to hum with an almost musical keen, and Aidinza finds himself joining it, the notes pulled from some ancient part of his mind.
Like some old, nostalgic lullaby.
As the notes rumbled low in his throat, Aidinza felt bubbling doubt and panic drown away. The dreepy stops humming, and the two of their eyes meet.
"You know I'm going to catch you, right?" Maybe in another circumstance, that would have been a choice Aidinza was giving the dreepy. Maybe in another time, there would have been an out inherent to his words. Every other one of his pokémon, save perhaps Mawile, had the opportunity to not come with him.
Then the dreepy eagerly nodded, and with a flash of red,
"Dreepy, female captured! Six Pokémon carry limit exceeded! Transferred to Route Five Pokémon Habitat Research Centre."
Carefully he breathes out through his nose, as the pokéball disappears in a flash, and then leans down against the edge of the thick walls fencing off the roof. A small squeak catches his attention, and he glances to the side to see Naazin's antenna softly waving in the light wind. The water-type studies his trainer for a moment, something inscrutable in the slant of his eyes.
Aidinza purses his lips for a moment and looks out to the horizon. Slowly he breathes out as Sandile slumps over the top of his shoe, compelled under those studious eyes to say something, yet not knowing what. Carefully he closes his fingers to trace along the barely perceptible difference of new flesh.
He meets Naazin's studious gaze once more. "The hea- the honoured healer said to get some rest." The clauncher's antenna twitches just far enough for the slightest of squeaks. Aidinza straightens up, takes one last look at the horizon, and leaves the roof.
-
The table buckles as Jha'y'zéča-den drops a box onto it with a grunt of exertion. Aidinza glances up from where he was carefully tapping, one key at a time, at the pokécentre's keyboard. For a moment, his attention lingers on the other native as he struggles to regain his breath before Aidinza looks at the heavy box. "That's… more than I was expecting." Aidinza was not sure what he had been expecting when Jha'y'zéča-den said that all of Drayden's battles were taped, mostly out of an ignorance of what a tape was. But a box nearly half the size of Jha'y'zéča-den seemed excessive.
He stands up from the computer, fumbling around in the dimlight of early morning to open the box and squinting at the tightly packed cases inside.
Then again, Drayden was old, reigning as the pinnacle of Unova's Gym Leaders for well over forty years, if the article he was reading was to be believed. Doubtlessly he had hundreds, if not thousands of battles in that position.
Honestly, when Aidinza put it like that in his head, a box that size almost seemed reasonable. He wipes a thumb down the back of one case, brushing aside dust and muck.
‘Dra'khíza-ide'en Versus Agatha 09/10/2466 (Victory)’
He blinks for a moment; he would have expected that battles from Drayden's early career as a gym leader would have been at the bottom of the box. Surely whoever was keeping the records was not pulling out all the old tapes to put the new ones on the bottom every time.
He brushes the dust from the next one.
‘Dra'khíza-ide'en Versus Jurgen 09/10/2466 (Defeat)’
Two fights in one day? That had to be pretty rare; Aidinza deluded himself.
‘Dra'khíza-ide'en Versus Gwi'gie 09/10/2466 (Victory)’
Oh.
‘Dra'khíza-ide'en Versus Siegfried 09/10/2466 (Victory)’
‘Dra'khíza-ide'en Versus Lisa 09/10/2466 (Defeat)’
‘Dra'khíza-ide'en Versus Kanaye 10/10/2466 (Defeat)’
Aidinza slowly blinks and stares up at Jha'y'zéča-den wide-eyed.
"That's box one of two." The boy seemed as bewildered as Aidinza, weakly rubbing at his arm.
"Two boxes sound… manageable," Aidinza said weakly; that day had to have been a fluke then. The rest of them had to be one or two fights a day.
"Box one of two for Sixty Six." There was no mistaking the deep awe that suffused Jha'y'zéča-den's voice as he grappled with just how many battles Dra'khíza-ide'en had fought.
Aidinza could not help but feel the same stir in his own chest; even one battle a day could leave him feeling worn out and exhausted if it was particularly intense. He had read that Drayden has always, from the first day he had taken his mantle, had six on six battles, even if his victories were crushing, his defeats…
They would have to be gruelling fights.
"Please tell me that it was a busy year, and that's why you brought it first." Aidinza's voice was weak as he grappled with the realisation of the sheer depth of experience he was going up against.
Jha'y'zéča-den, rather than doing anything so reasonable as nodding, instead shook his head. "S-slow year, took the record keeper less time to organise."
Aidinza sits back down in his chair and leans back to stare at the ceiling.
"That's… that's so much." Even a quick six-on-six could take at least a quarter of an hour; a good six-on-six, one between the pinnacle of gym leaders and a trainer fit to fight him, would be a matter of hours of brutal back and forth. "Too much."
He had a day, a single day, to cobble together something, anything to step toe to toe with Drayden. A man who had, at a conservative estimate, fought tens of thousands of battles.
Aidinza could feel a low, sinking feeling in his stomach. He… this was not going to go well for him.
"We need more hands." Jha'y'zéča-den's voice broke him out of his burgeoning pessimism, and when Aidinza looked down from the ceiling, not even the dark of early morning could hide the sharp determination in his eyes.
"I'd need a small army." There was no mockery in Aidinza's tone, just an unadorned statement of fact. There was potentially years worth of footage on these tapes, and that was not a statement of period but of raw time.
Between Aidinza and Jha'y'zéča-den, it would literally take years to grind their way through it all.
"Yes." The sheer aplomb made Aidinza sit up, studying the traces of conviction warring with momentary hesitance across Jha'y'zéča-den's face.
"You… have an idea." The hesitation darkens the younger boy's eyes further, but it was a thin layer of paint to the growing confidence stitching into Jha'y'zéča-den's stature. "You don't think I'll like it… but you think it will work."
He slowly nodded before he turned towards the wide window that dominated the entrance of the pokécentre, watching as the glorious Sun softly prodded at the horizon. "Elder Unktehila will reach the city soon."
Aidinza felt distaste immediately flicker at his stomach as his hands found each other to trace along new flesh. The old Pheyan'atho had earned no kindness in Aidinza's heart, even if Drayden had managed to find himself as the focus of Aidinza's ire.
If it was up to him, he would have nothing to do with the Elder ever again. The cold that still lingered in his bones, surging and writhing whenever he turned his mind to that.. that time saw to that.
It was up to him if the uncertainty lingering in Jha'y'zéča-den were to be judged. But that look in his eye… that damn certainty. Utterly convinced by his own thoughts, tinged with the assumption of victory.
It was up to him…
But it really was not.
"Elder Unktehila will reach the city soon." Aidinza agreed, and that was that.
-
Unktehila had a split lip. A nasty gash that was the focal point of a large bruise that stretched into a purple swell of the entirety of his cheek. The end result of the kind of heavy punch that would put someone out like a light.
There was a small part of Aidinza that was sad that he did not put it there.
The injury on the Elder's face does not seem to bother the man, however, as he calmly sat in the living room of 'little Win'heta-ite' with a steaming cup of tea held lightly in his hands.
Aidinza blew softly on his own tea, steadying the cup as Jha'y'zéča-den shifted next to him on the couch. "I'm sure you can understand the issue, Elder Unktehila. There is just… so much to get through, and we only have a day."
"Dra'khíza-ide'en was always relentless." It was impressive how much emotion could be expressed with four simple words. The simmering bitterness, the lingering resignation, and the deep exasperation. All wrapped around a heavy admiration. One worn and tattered but deep-rooted. "I can understand your issue, but I'm unsure what you think I can do about that. My old hands cannot turn years of work into hours."
That was something that Aidinza had also been wondering. Despite his own experiences with the old Pheyan'tho, he did understand Jha'y'zéča-den's respect for Unktehila. But he did not see how that translated into Unktehila being able to help them.
"W-well uh." Jha'y'zéča-den stumbles over his words. His attention flicks between Aidinza and Unktehila, mouthing though nervously silent words.
The door of the living room slams open, and a small figure rushes inside. "Uncle Urkel!" A childish voice cries out, jumping onto the couch and glomping on the elder in a hug.
"Wan'la-ite! You're getting so big!" Immediately the Elder lit up, delving into a salvo of answering from and asking questions of Wan'la-ite, a tiny girl of maybe nine.
Aidinza looks to Jha'y'zéča-den, the question that he should have asked nearly half an hour ago before being swept up in the other boy's conviction on his tongue. But the question died as that same flicker of assumed victory returned with force in Jha'y'zéča-den eyes as he stared at Unktehila and the youngest Pheyan'atho in the room.
"Call yourself old all you want, Unktehila, but it's… it's not your hands we need." The realisation of Jha'y'zéča-den's words was sudden and stark, and Aidinza leaned back at the sheer audacity of it.
Jha'y'zéča-den took Aidinza's words that he needed a small army literally.
"Who are you?" The youngest in the room asked as Unktehila and Aidinza grappled with his words.
“I’m Jha'y'zéča-den.” Wan'la-ite's eyes light up, leaning forward precariously on Unktehila's knee.
"You've got a funny name like me!" Jha'y'zéča-den beams at that, open and joyous. As if being told he had a funny name was the greatest thing to ever happen to him.
"We are Pheyan'atho. I'm your cousin, of sorts." The girl oohed at that, jumping off Unktehila's lap to approach Jha'y'zéča-den, studying him with keen brown eyes. Eyes that briefly turned suspicious.
"How come I didn't know your name then, huh?" She demands, voice impertinent and demanding.
"I don't know, but…." He trails off, but this time it is purposeful, as he looks up to meet Unktehila's eyes without even a tinge of nervous energy. "I'm going to change that."
"You already did!" She giggles, all traces of suspicion gone, and seemingly deciding that Jha'y'zéča-den was being truthful enough about being family, clambered up onto the couch to poke and prod at him curiously.
But Jha'y'zéča-den only lightly engaged with it, most of his attention still locked on the elder sitting opposite to him..
Unktehila is silent for a long, long moment. Just watching the two younger Pheyan'atho with the eyes of a man dying of thirst, hearing the soft flow of an Oasis in the distance.
"I think…" He slowly began, his face twisting in on himself with near physical pain, splitting open his lip further. The Elder takes a careful breath. "I think you might think that this… this would be more important than it will be."
His words were desperately raw, almost choked out of his throat, incapable of taking his eyes away from the sight in front of him.
"I think… that this can be as important as we want to make it. As important as it needs to be to bring us back together." The force of those words on the Old Elder would have made the punch that left such a harsh bruise swelling up half his face feel like the softest of caresses. He leaned back into his seat, mouth tracing through words soundlessly until finally.
"Wan'la-ite. Go get your mother."
-
It was incredible, the difference in perspective about one man. What Unktehila was to Aidinza was someone who gambled with his life, leading him by the nose to the worst three days of his existence. What Unktehila was for the hundreds of families that they met after that conversation, however, was a beloved grandfather, a pillar of unflinching support that had again and again given his everything for all of them.
So much so that the premise of him asking them to give up their entire day on no notice to do something as insane as helping a stranger prepare to fight their own gym leader… was just a favour. Hundreds of people contorting their day for something that should have been incoherent, just on his askance.
It was difficult to leverage the deep respect and love for the man against the man who almost got Aidinza killed.
And as the day progressed, Aidinza found himself ravenously gripped by the need to find out the why. What drove that dichotomy? How can a man Aidinza found so repulsive, be genuinely beloved by so many.
As the Sun crept towards its zenith, Aidinza got his chance. A moment alone with the Elder, a break between his own study of Dra'khíza-ide'en and Unktehila's endless march around the city.
"What did you expect would happen when I entered Caġaṡakehaƞska Caƞtaƞka?" The question was as mild as Aidinza's distaste for the other man would allow as they stood at the entrance of one of the many old Pheyan'atho buildings dotting Opelucid. One of the many they were quickly converting into some kind of mass internet cafe.
"Are you asking if I thought it would be dangerous or what I thought would happen afterwards?" The reply was not quite practiced but obviously well considered, it had been on his tongue for a while.
"The first to start, others to follow." Aidinza's hand carefully traces along the new flesh of his hand, the shiver of freezing cold that the cave had left him creeping up his spine.
"It had been years since the last Haŋhépitúwe, and many more the one before that. Her Haŋhépitúwe-."
"Iris's." Aidinza interrupts, remembering the conversation last night, and the elder just nods.
"It did not go well. She came back empty-handed and…." He trails off, the carefully neutral look disappearing under some old, terrible memory.
"His heart beats, his lungs rattle in his ribs," Aidinza mumbles, mostly to himself. An echo of the same words Unktehila spoke to Drayden.
"Hers did not. Not… not when we found her, with ice coiling across her body. Iris was Pheyan'atho; her blood is the blood of the land, just like your blood is the blood of your desert." And if it had done that to someone with such a deep connection to it… "I had hoped you would live, but I knew there was a reason I would have to hope."
Aidinza's eyes closed, and he carefully breathed. There it was. The confirmation of what he had thought when he had first seen Unktehila at dawn yesterday. He had expected to either find Aidinza dead or in the state he had been.
That just left two more questions.
"You said that the only answers were earned. Did you…" Aidinza paused, unsure how to word his question, unsure how much he wished to reveal to this man.
"I don't know what you were looking for. What questions are so important to you, are important to you. Maybe they could have been found in Caġaṡakehaƞska Caƞtaƞka… that was not my concern." Aidinza ran a hand through his hair as bitter self-recrimination took over his mind. He really did let himself get led around by the nose.
"What a terrible idiot I am, then." His hand covers his eye for a moment before a violent impulse takes him, and he drives his palm into his forehead.
Before he could do it again, a firm grip took his forearm, and when he looked up, it was to see Unktehila staring down at him, guilt bubbling in his eyes.
"The sweetest lies are the ones we are already telling ourselves." The old man's words were careful, tainted with regret and uncertainty. "But no matter how you sweeten them, it takes a Vespiqueen to make honey."
"I should have-"
"I lied to you, Aidinza. I manipulated you. It is an act I am not proud of, and it is one you should not blame yourself for. You could have noticed, yes, but I knew." It was a terrible thing to have someone you hate try to comfort you, and it was an act that left Aidinza adrift in a dizzy confusion.
"Why." Was all the words left to him, a single word for enough questions to last hours.
"I love my people, Aidinza. My entire life has been dedicated to the Pheyan'atho. During the golden ages and terrible, terrible times. I would give anything for them. I would give anything to make sure they continue." The words were… old and terrible. Each carries the hidden weight of decades of joy and misery, carried by a face carved from stone. "I will not let them slip into the pages of history. You wanted to know what I expected to happen after your Haŋhépitúwe? I expected just a chink in Drayden's armour. The slightest edge I could leverage, no matter how minor, to pull my people out of his terrible strangle. That was what your potential death was worth to me."
The grip on Aidinza's forearm weakens, and the Ya'an-ah boy stumbles back. Staring at the Elder, trying to make any sense of the man’s controlled countenance, of his indifferent eyes.
"They love you?" It was a condemnation, an accusation, and an uncertain question all in one as he tried to grapple with the idea of hundreds of people willing to drop everything they were doing for a man like…
Like this.
The question shattered Unktehila's mask, and out came shame and guilt and self-loathing in equal terrible measure. The old man's shoulders slumped, and he turned from Aidinza.
"My only hope, Aidinza. Is that I hold my people together for long enough that they realise that they should hate me." With that, the man simply walks away. Leaving the entrance, back to gathering the people he hoped would one day hate him.
Leaving behind a man who wondered if he could.