The frilly flowers of liatris tickled Poppy’s nose as the leafeon rooted about the marsh grasses. Musk lingered beneath their honeyed scent—nidoking, maybe—but it was old enough that it wasn’t worth worrying about. Lavender’s voice came from Poppy’s right, a kind of undulating cadence to it like a whistling thrush. “…while they had been fortunate enough to survive their last encounter, it was with heavy hearts that the old ones gathered their allies and told them the news—Oh, you’re not listening anymore, are you, Poppy?”
Poppy jolted a little and turned toward her addresser—a neatly groomed delcatty, and none other than her faithful partner. Lavender walked with a bubbly sort of spring in her step, jostling the exploration team pouch slung around her shoulder. “Er, sorry, I’m trying… I just noticed there were some interesting plants here.”
Lavender raised her eyebrows. “Mm hm, more interesting than your old pal Lavender. I see how it is.”
Poppy grimaced, but there was a smile behind that grimace. “Ah, jeez, I’m sorry. But uh, look.” She dashed to the right, bit off the stem of an herbaceous plant nearby, and presented it to Lavender. The leaves were egg-shaped with ridged edges and a hint of fuzz, and the claw-sized flowers looked like open mouths with lolling tongues. “I found some lemon balm. We can make tea out of it when we get home. You’d like that, right?”
Lavender’s gaze softened. “I would, yeah, though I worry there won’t be any cheri berries left for us at the gorge if we’re too slow. Just because we’re not on a mission…” She trailed off as she took another look at the plant in Poppy’s mouth. “Hm, that looks an awful lot like… mint, I think?”
Poppy nodded effusively, the green tuft at the crown of her head bobbing. “Right, same family, just a bit of a different taste. Good eye.”
Lavender chuckled with a little shake of her head. “It’s pretty amazing how you know all the plants, even all the way out here.”
“It’s just a matter of knowing what to expect, based on the environment. For the sake of practice, let me ask you: how would you describe this ecology?” She gave a sweeping gesture with her tail.
Lavender scrunched up her face the way she often did when she was thinking. “Hm… it’s definitely wet.” Lavender lifted her paw, which was mud-stained and matted with moisture.
“Right. And you may remember there’s a special term for places that are always wet.”
“Uh… Wetlands?”
Poppy nodded again. “Right. This one is particularly interesting; you can tell that glacial influence played a role in forming it.” She took in the landscape for a moment—the rocks that studded the ground as though they had rained down from above, the smooth ridges that encircled the marsh and the little pockets of snow that had accumulated in the depressions near the peaks. Poppy could visualize how the ancient ice must have flowed as it carved swaths out of the earth, and the chunks it left behind that had melted into glistening kettles. She took a moment to describe these things to Lavender, who listened carefully. “…So, knowing that this is a freshwater wetland, what kind of plants might we expect to find?”
“Um, I don’t know, like, ones that enjoy water?”
“Such as?”
Lavender drew back her head a little and made a desperate sort of noise. “Uhhhhhhh… I don’t know… Cattails, I guess?”
“Sure, there’s cattails. There’s also sweetflag, milkweed, fox sedge, boneset…”
Lavender laughed anxiously. “Okay, okay Poppy, I can’t remember all those at once. We’ll have to go over it sometime when I can actually write things down.”
“Oh, sorry, I might have come on a little strong there.” Poppy was quiet for a moment as she stepped around a puddle. “Anyway, you were talking about that book of yours—The One Whose Name Was Lost to Time?”
Lavender’s ears twitched. “Oh, that’s right! The old ones are finally preparing to confront the enemy of life, but the best they can hope for is to seal it away for a little while… It’s a bittersweet prospect. But what makes this part fascinating is the characterization of the antagonist…”
Lavender recounted her favorite parts of the myth at length, and Poppy was happy to listen; she liked the way her partner told stories. As Poppy gazed up at the sky, she imagined the clouds as titans engaged in an epic, turbulent battle.
The cheri trees were only a couple hundred meters away now; the flaky bark and long leaves made their species clear even before Poppy could see the small red fruits with curled stems. Her mouth watered a little; they were just as abundant as the other guild members had told them. They’d be worth two, maybe three times as much as a successful rescue.
Something rustled up ahead. Poppy turned her head—a group of three pokemon were talking to one another a little farther off. Shinx, raichu, and servine. They didn’t have badges, and their leather pouches were rugged, like they had been crafted by hand. They turned toward Poppy and Lavender with faces darkened by ashen markings. Poppy thought to pick up her pace, to greet them, but their sharp expressions made her hesitate.
The raichu turned to the side and shouted something which sounded like a foreign language; someone called out a response from behind a hill to the left. Then his group prowled toward Poppy and Lavender. Jagged yellow bolts flashed around the pokemons’ heads, accompanied by the mounting hiss of static.
Poppy took a step back. “I hate to say this after we just got here, but we should leave.”
Lavender nodded, face tense. “After you.”
By this late in the day, mud smeared the guild headquarters’ floor in whispy trails like cirri. The marble walls were lined with fraying tapestries that depicted explorers from a time long since passed. The pokemon gathered around the main room tapped their feet or leaned over to look out the main door at the sky; they were eager to get home after a long day of walking, and Poppy didn’t blame them. But there she stood, delivering her message regardless.
“…To keep it short, we’re not the first team to have encountered tribal pokemon in that area, but as far as we know we’re the first to have been threatened. Therefore, I felt it important to let everyone know as soon as possible.”
From across the room the guildmaster, a purugly, shrugged through a layer of fat as thick as winter snow. “Very well,” he said in a stuffy voice. “I will be sure to inform those that were not here so that they will know to exercise caution in their harvests.”
“Best if we cut it out altogether. That’s what’s got them so bothered, don’t you think? They probably see those trees as theirs.”
“I don’t suppose it matters. Either way, it would be a stain on our legacy to bend to the will of ferals.”
Poppy bristled a little. “Hold on, ferals? With bags and body markings and language?” She shook her head. “Never mind, that’s not even the issue. We don’t even know how many pokemon we’re stepping on here. Do you want this to become a war? We need to stay out of there, or get ourselves a mediator. I know the language barrier is an issue, but—”
The guildmaster wrinkled his nose. “That’s enough, Poppy. Unless you have any new information to add, I think we can conclude this announcement.”
Poppy snarled. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Let’s limit ourselves to productive comments now, yes?”
Poppy shoved her way past a mienshao and bibarel as she stormed out of the headquarters. She was greeted by a view of the city below, its glowing windows and smoggy haze from distant smokestacks, and shortly after heard Lavender’s voice behind her.
“Hey! Poppy!”
Poppy stopped, and she waited for Lavender to catch up before proceeding briskly down the steep path to the left.
“I know that didn’t go so well—” Lavender began.
“I’m going to write the Alta Civil Rights Union. I doubt they’ll take my side, but… the only way to get that jerk to listen is if someone threatens him with legal action.”
“Poppy—”
Poppy grimaced. “Lavender, I swear, if you’re about to tell me I’m overreacting—”
Lavender shook her head vigorously. “No no no, it’s not that, I just wanted to remind you that we don’t have any paper left at home, so if you want to write the union, we need to get more.”
Poppy gave a growling sigh and looked over at the sun, which wasn’t even two paws above the horizon. “Of course.”
Lavender frowned. “Sorry. You were hoping to visit the crew today, weren’t you?”
Poppy nodded. “Not going to have time to at this rate…”
“Listen, I’m fine with going out and doing some shopping for you if it helps. I can make sure we have all the stationary we need to write a letter tomorrow while you go out and check up on everyone.”
Poppy’s expression softened, and she looked into Lavender’s eyes. “Really? You wouldn’t mind doing that?”
Lavender laughed. “Not at all! I know you get really busy sometimes, so I’m happy to help out a little. It’s really the least I can do. It’s late in the day to be doing this, though, so make sure you get back home before dark, okay?”
Poppy smiled a little and briefly brushed her cheek against Lavender’s. “Thank you. I’ll be sure to hurry.” Then she turned around and trotted downhill as fast as she safely could.
By the time Poppy arrived, the sunlight had already taken on a tangerine hue. Still coughing from the city’s pollution, Poppy followed the river nearby, looking as far ahead as she could. Just when she was beginning to think everyone had gone home for the day, a familiar peal of laughter rang out up ahead. Her anger began to fade away as she picked up her pace.
A lycanroc came into view, chasing something playfully in circles while the others—a dragonite, bayleef, and tranquill—looked on in amusement. The tranquill turned his head.
“Oh, hey guys! Poppy’s here!”
The lycanroc stopped his pursuit, and he and the others followed the tranquil’s gaze. Poppy slowed down a little as she drew near the group and smiled.
“Greetings.” Poppy saw a little blue streak as someone dashed behind the dragonite. The stranger peeked out from behind his guardian’s thick tail. The flipper on his head marked him clearly as a mudkip.
“Oh, who’s this?” asked Poppy.
The dragonite looked back and smiled reassuringly. “It was so cool, Poppy—we were setting up branches to catch the silt, and this little feral guy just joined in and started helping! Like he was part of the team all along!”
Poppy smiled. “Is that so?” She leaned over to get a better look at the mudkip, who was already getting over his initial surprise to eye Poppy curiously. “Well, I appreciate your support. Here.” She reached into the pouch slung around her shoulder, pulled out a pear, and left it on the ground in front of the mudkip. “It isn’t much, but here’s a small token of my appreciation. Even if you’re not hungry now, it’ll keep for a while. Come back tomorrow and I might have something better for you.”
The mudkip ventured out toward the pear and investigated it. Meanwhile Poppy addressed the dragonite again. “Anyway, that’s a pleasant surprise. Has everything else been going well?”
The dragonite nodded. “I’m surprised at how fast we were able to narrow the channel back there already—” He gestured behind Poppy, where they had laid out fallen conifer branches so that they stuck partway out into the water. In some places, they had already been partly buried by silt. “And we’ve made good progress around this general area too, so I expect we’ll see similar results again soon.”
“And we got a lot of the new transplants in the ground as well,” the bayleef added, nodding toward a line of young dogwoods and winterberry shrubs.
“Excellent,” Poppy said. “This stream will really benefit from the shade and organic matter. I know we’re not really monitoring, but at this rate we might start to see the fish come back soon…”
“I hope so,” said the lycanroc. “I think there’s more already, but it might just be my imagination. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to catch some…”
Poppy laughed. “I guess you’ll just have to hold off for a bit longer. Hopefully a good population gets established in a couple years. After what this place used to be, it makes me happy there’s anything at all…” She looked around at the area, which was still in an awkward adolescence between grassland and forest. The ground cover was thin and wispy, and the wild trees had hardly grown past 3 meters. But such things couldn’t be rushed.
“By the way, Poppy,” said the tranquill, snapping her out of her reverie. “If your estimate is correct, and we finish up by the end of next month… Do you have any plans in place to keep this area protected? I mean, I know we have the deed and all, but…”
Poppy’s expression grew sober. “Right. So that should protect us from anything like… last time. But I was thinking it would be a good idea to enlist a couple pokemon from the crew to serve as rangers once we’re done. Prevent any unscrupulous activity. But we only have enough money left in the fund to pay a few pokemon, so if anyone in the crew is really eager to sign up, let me know.”
Everyone nodded.
“Good then. Anyway, I don’t mean to hold you all up, especially after everyone else has already gone home.” She bowed. “Thank you all for another hard day’s work.”
The four pokemon smiled and said their goodbyes to Poppy and the mudkip. Poppy smiled bittersweetly as she watched the little feral follow them for a ways.
Poppy’s exhaustion hit her like a weighted net now that her day was properly done. She slumped to the ground and took a few deep breaths. It probably wouldn’t be wise to rest here for too long, but she wasn’t eager to head back to the city. She preferred to watch the feathery grass sway, to listen to the chorus of cicadas and crickets like a thousand spectral bells scattered across the sanctuary. As the sun dipped below the mountains, and the orange sky turned to murky blue, she began to forget how small this little plot of hers was. The call of eagle-owls seemed to reverberate into infinity, and she could no longer tell where, exactly, the trees ended and the vast starry sky began.
Insects visited Poppy from time-to-time. She tried to guess their species without looking. That one on her shoulder felt big, maybe a blowfly? But it flew away too quietly. A couple of smaller ones too, here and there, ticklish, barely perceptible. Maybe some kind of gnat. She closed her eyes and imagined they were checking up on her. Like old friends.