Chapter Text
YEAR 108
“Volo!”
The voice had come from across the courtyard, and following it was a scrabbling of footsteps as the owner bolted across the stone that made it up. It was not a particularly safe place to be running across, but the owner of the voice had never been someone whose list of qualities would include “graceful”, “elegant”, or even “careful”. At this point, none of the adults were paying any real attention to him; children were remarkably good at shaking off injuries, and this particular child had shaken off more than all of the other children in the community combined.
Sure enough, Volo watched as Augustine tripped over a divot in the stones and almost went flying, which would have been very bad, since he was carrying an enormous egg.
“Whoa,” said Volo as Augustine righted himself and closed the remaining distance between the two of them. “Imagine the breakfast you could make out of that.”
Out of breath, Augustine explained, “Not … for eating … found it … think there’s a … Pokemon inside.”
“Really?!” This immediately ignited Volo’s interest. He turned away from the Celestica alphabet he’d been practicing using a piece of charcoal and stretched out his arms. “Give it here.”
The egg was passed into his hands. Augustine crouched beside his friend, dark hair so shiny it was reflecting the noontime sunlight. He brought an arm up to his eyebrows to shield himself from it and said, “Whaddya think? It’s gotta be a Pokemon, right? You can feel it moving inside, can’t ya?”
Augustine was right, Volo marveled. As he pressed his hands all over the enormous eggshell, he could tell that there was something living inside of it. It was like a heartbeat, or a pulse. His own fingers seemed like magnets for the life essence inside the egg. He lowered his ear down to the shell; sure enough, there was the tiniest sound, like the Pokemon inside was thinking about possibly waking up sometime soon, but hadn’t quite made a decision either way.
It was fascinating.
“Where’d you find it?” Volo asked, his eyes glued to the blue and red triangles patterning the shell.
“Down by the spring. ‘cept it was really weird, ‘cause I didn’t see the parents anywhere around, and the egg was just out there in the open.” Augustine ran a hand through his hair and squinted at Volo. “I did the right thing, right? ‘cause what if it, like, got carried off by a big nasty Staraptor or something? Wait, do Staraptors eat other Pokemon eggs?” Apologetically, he added, “If anyone knew, it’d be you, Volo.”
Volo colored a bit and pressed his lips into a thin line. The adults got along with Pokemon mostly fine, but they didn’t have the natural curiosity that children did, and none of them had the curiosity about Pokemon quite like Volo did. He nodded. “It might, like, peck the shell apart and eat the baby Pokemon inside, if it was really hungry. ‘cause they don’t live in flocks anymore when they evolve from Staravia, so it’s kinda hard to find food sometimes. ‘specially in bad weather, you know?”
“Oh, gross.”
Volo agreed. But he said, “Don’t worry. We’ll keep this one safe. Uhm, can you go ask Mistress Cogita if she has an extra blanket? This little one’s gonna need all the warmth it can get.”
He watched as Augustine stood up and shot off like a rocket — once again tripping over the exact same divot in the stone that he had before. Volo shook his head and smiled. Well, at least Augustine’s eccentrics would distract the other adults and kids from the new arrival to their little community. He pushed himself up from the ground and made his way over to his own home; Augustine would know where he’d gone. Peeking inside the structure, he was relieved to see that his parents were still out gathering medicinal herbs. He couldn’t even imagine the reaction if they—
“Volo, sweetheart, you should tie your hair up! You’re going to catch heat stroke at this rate— what is that.”
He had metaphorically spoken too soon. He turned around in the entranceway to see his mother standing there, hands on her hips, and while any other day she would be the picture of beauty with her dark hair tumbling over one shoulder and her ocean-grey eyes popping like tiny embers, today she only made Volo’s stomach drop. Because it was very difficult to hide what you were doing when you had an egg practically half your size cradled in your arms.
“It’s … a Pokemon, I think.” Lying was not quite in Volo’s nature, especially not to his mother. He cast his eyes down at the shell, which suddenly seemed so thin it was in danger of breaking. “Augustine found it down by the spring, and—”
“And if Augustine jumped off a cliff, would you jump off of one, too?”
Torn in between respect for his mother and the sheer ridiculousness of her hypothetical, Volo had to resist rolling his eyes. “Mom, it was all alone. Its parents weren’t anywhere nearby! It wasn’t even in a nest or anything … or in the grass … it was just sitting out there, for any Pokemon to come along and take! Or,” he said, “to die of heat stroke.”
Which didn’t really make sense, because the Pokemon wasn’t even born yet, but still.
A long, nonverbal battle passed between Volo and his mother. It was a Pokemon, and they didn’t know what kind — Pokemon weren’t always dangerous, and who said this one wouldn’t help out around the tribe — it was already so much work caring for the people they did have here — what if the Pokemon could provide resources and it took some of the strain off of them — but Volo — but Mommm.
Finally, Kosta heaved a sigh, which was how Volo knew he had won. He tried not to whoop in delight as she said, “Fine. But. You’re to be responsible for it, do you hear me? If it misbehaves once it’s hatched, then you’re going to need to set it free and let it fend for itself. Do you hear me, Volo?” Because she knew her son, and she knew that he was inwardly rejoicing and only hearing half of the words she had said. But in the end, even that was something she didn’t have the energy to fight. Arceus alive, this day was scorching. Were they allowed to make days this hot?
As she crossed the living room to the kitchen to unload her finds for the day, she called back over her shoulder, “And where is Augustine now? Did he just drop that egg off with you and run away?”
It was safe to say Kosta was not very fond of Augustine. This was a sentiment shared by quite a few members of their tribe.
“No, not really,” said Volo, already sitting himself down in the living room of the tent and wrapping his body around the egg. “He went to get a blanket for it. ‘cause incubation, and all.”
“Oh? And who’s going to give him that without asking any questions?”
“Well, she’s definitely going to ask questions, but I sent him to savta.”
Kosta closed her eyes and exhaled very long and very deeply through her nose. It was a full minute before she said, “Volo. Motek. You know Cogita … well, she doesn’t like us very much.”
“Because we don’t like Arceus?”
His mother didn’t respond, but from the forceful way she was shoving things into cabinets he could guess at the answer.
“Well,” said Volo, “I think that’s stupid. It’s not like Arceus has done anything nice for us in a really long time. Aren’t gods supposed to take care of their people?” He rested his forehead against the egg and spoke into its shell. Probably, this was going to end up being a bad influence on whatever hatched out of it, but he didn’t particularly mind if he hatched a Pokemon that cared as little for Arceus as quite a few of the Celestica did nowadays. “At least Dialga and Palkia have vessels, sometimes. Not to speak to us or anything. But at least they speak to the people they do watch over. You said the last time Arceus spoke to us was way before I was even born.”
A hundred years was a long time to go without hearing from the god that supposedly watched over you. And that was just the minimum.
“Oh, fuck Arceus,” said a new voice from the tent’s entrance.
Kosta looked sharply at the new arrival. “Ianthe, not in front of—”
“He’s right, Kosta.” Coming into the tent now was a woman just as beautiful as Kosta, but in a quite different way — she had the same flaxen-gold hair as Volo, which also had a habit of sweeping across her face to cover one emerald green eye. Even if she hadn’t opened her mouth to share her thoughts, it was difficult to see her as anything besides a fire-spirited girl who spoke her mind without so much as a semblance of filter. She shone lightly with a layer of sweat and heaved her own catch of herbs and food into the tent. “I don’t care if it makes me the most unpopular Celestica on earth. I’m not going to brainwash our son into thinking Arceus is the answer to all of our prayers when it hasn’t so much as breathed in our direction in centuries. Did you hear, just last week, those new arrivals from across the ocean took Alexi and Stavros? Just because they were Celestica, no less. Thought they were ‘exotic’ or some shit like that.” It was very clear what Ianthe was thinking of doing to the people who had taken her fellow tribe members if they were in the same room together. Even Volo was a little astonished by the ferocity she spoke with.
But he agreed. Terrible things had happened time and time again to them, and Arceus had done nothing but to watch — if it was even doing that.
“Well, anyway,” said Volo, “it’s not Augustine savta doesn’t like, so as long as he doesn’t mention the blanket’s for me, it should be fine.”
Augustine chose that moment to barrel past Ianthe into the tent. “I went to Mistress Cogita’s, but she wouldn’t give me the blanket, ‘cause I mentioned it was for you.”
Volo tipped his head back and groaned.
“It’s okay,” said the other boy, holding up a blanket that had seen better days, but was probably good enough to get the job done. “I got one from my place. You can borrow it ‘til the egg’s hatched.”
“The egg—” Somehow Ianthe had missed this new development. She stared with wide eyes at the egg in Volo’s arms. “Hell’s bells, what type of Pokemon laid that?”
“He’s got no idea,” Kosta said from the kitchen.
For someone like Ianthe, who was always poking her nose into places she shouldn’t be, this was a paradisiacal statement. She nearly threw her haul into the kitchen (Kosta gave her wife a very annoyed glance that went unseen) and tossed herself next to Volo, thrusting her hands out to receive the egg. A little hesitantly, Volo handed it over to her and watched with concern as she went through all the same motions he had: touching her fingers to all different parts of the egg, pressing her ear against the shell to listen for signs of life, and so on. After about twenty seconds the novelty had worn off and Volo was already beginning to get a little anxious about not having the egg in his possession, even though he trusted his mom with it near-completely.
Augustine knelt on the floor and looked it over from a safe distance (which Volo appreciated). “Wonder if those colonist people from across the sea brought it with them,” he said. “They sure have a lot of weird Pokemon.”
Volo couldn’t take it anymore — he motioned for Ianthe to give the egg back. She did, and he instantly wrapped himself around it again, this time with the blanket swirled snugly around it. Instantly, the anxiety left him. Ianthe said, “You shouldn’t go spying on the colonists, Augustine. They’re not good people. Besides, I don’t think your father would like it very much.”
“Ain’t like he’s around much anymore anyway,” said Augustine, rolling his eyes.
Ianthe and Kosta shared a sympathetic glance. Though Kosta wasn’t Augustine’s number-one fan, he was still a child, and only a hundred years old at that. He deserved parents who cared for him. “Well,” said Ianthe, sensing the need to fill the space with something, “we’d care if something happened to you, Augustine. So be careful, alright?”
“I’d care, too,” said Volo. “You’re my best friend.”
“Aw.” Augustine reached over and mussed Volo’s hair, sending it into long sections that fell across his face. “Love you too, Volo. Even if you won’t let Delphinia cut your hair.”
Volo said, indignantly, “I like it this long.”
“Hey, I like it, too. It’s pretty. Just, you’re gonna get heat stroke, you know?”
Kosta made a triumphant sound from the kitchen.
That night, Volo lay next to the egg, wrapped up in both Augustine’s blanket and his own, and watched it shake every so often in the moonlight that came in through the line of the tent’s entrance. It wasn’t going to hatch today, or tomorrow, or in a week, probably, but he wouldn’t discount three weeks or even two. He was going to have to ask around the tribe to see if anyone had experience with Pokemon eggs and what else he could be doing to help it hatch safely. Except, no, he couldn’t actually do that, because then they’d wonder why he was asking about Pokemon eggs, and Volo was a very bad liar , so he’d be keeping the secret for about four seconds before they found him out.
He traced his fingers over the shell, feeling the life essence inside again. There was something different about this Pokemon, different than any of the ones any of his people had ever seen before. All Pokemon had special abilities — that was what made them Pokemon. But no one had ever seen one like this. He could feel it. When it hatched, it was going to be …
A miracle.
Yeah, that sounded right. A miracle. Maybe it would even help drive off those colonists. They hadn’t come up to the Highlands yet, but Volo knew it was only a matter of time.
He didn’t want to run. He was so tired of running.
i’m tired of running too
His fingers paused on the egg. His eyes went very, very wide. If Ianthe had woken up and looked over at his face she would with no trouble have been able to see the whites of them.
That had definitely been a voice. But it hadn’t been a voice he had heard out loud. He knew the difference. It had been a voice that had happened inside his mind, like someone had crawled into his ears and spoken it directly into his brain. For a moment, he watched the egg. Feeling very foolish, he whispered, “Was that you?”
No response.
So maybe he had just been hearing things. Except that he was pretty sure he hadn’t, because he had heard each of those words very clearly, and he was almost confident that when audio hallucinations started, they didn’t start this rapidly.
Careful not to wake his mothers, he pushed himself up off the floor and carefully wrapped the blanket around the egg even tighter to make up for his absence. Light as a feather — thank the universe he was only a hundred years old, because he wouldn’t have been able to sneak out if he was many more decades older than that — he tiptoed out of the tent and quietly closed the entrance behind him.
The clearing was quiet. Not a single light shone from inside any of the tents. Silhouetted against the sky were the statues that previous Celestica that had lived here had erected before Volo’s settlement had arrived, depicting the ancient god Pokemon Dialga and Palkia. Volo remembered one other, from a few migrations ago — he remembered being fascinated by the fact that it had stood alone, so far from the others of its kind. He had wondered what the story was behind its existence, and when he had asked he had merely been told that it had been disappeared away for reasons the elders could not quite manage to explain. He was still confused about that one. Wasn’t it awfully lonely, being so far away from anyone else?
yes
And just like that, he turned to face northeast.
He didn’t know how he knew that was where the voice was coming from, but he did. When he focused, he could see a wispy purple trail, so faint it nearly didn’t exist, leading further off into the highlands. What on Earth…?
Without quite knowing why, he followed it.
It was a very stupid idea. Volo was not formidable. He was a young child out alone at night in the wilderness. If the colonists didn’t get him, certainly the wild Pokemon that came out at night would. And he didn’t own a single Pokemon of his own — not surprising, since only adults were thought responsible enough to handle such dangerous creatures. He was following a voice that was not a voice, and he had not told anyone where it was he was going. Every single odd was stacked against him.
And yet…
He had to go. He had to.
He walked like in a trance for what must have been ten or fifteen full minutes. The grounds faded behind him; the trees stretched up above to turn the sky into a mosaic of navy blue and fading purple. Various bug Pokemon that would normally have skittered away from him stayed where they were, watching curiously as this human journeyed to something unknown even to himself. A Gastly phased into existence beside him, only inches from his face, but Volo didn’t acknowledge it. It was unlikely he even saw it. The Gastly, eyes large with astonishment, floated along with him for a moment or two before vanishing back into the air.
He knew when he had arrived, because he had a vision of himself here before, even though he certainly never had been.
It superimposed itself over reality. He saw himself — a version of himself that did not have an age, somehow, and he wasn’t sure how he was even able to process such a ridiculous notion — with his hands pressing against what looked like thin air. Except … it was splintering. Just slightly. He was trying his hardest to make that splinter even wider. He shoved at it, punched it, elbowed it, anything that would expand those cracks and allow whatever was on the other side to come across. And then—
The splinter had become a hole, and there was something climbing out of the hole, gasping for air, and—
He was back in reality again, and he was looking at what appeared to be a blooming black flower made out of shards of crystal.
It was massive — massive for a flower, anyway. Each misshapen shard that formed a “petal” had to be taller than he was. The petals were not soft like a regular flower; they were angry and solid and sharp. They glittered with golden flecks of light like someone had pulled down the stars to rest here among the earth. In the center, which glowed a deep, ominous red was—
A person.
Gasping for air, just like he’d seen in the vision.
They were…
“Wow,” Volo blurted, “you’re gorgeous.”
Because they were. They were quite different from him in every way possible: where his skin was pale, theirs was a smooth brown; where his hair was blond and a bit past shoulder-length, theirs was a mass of deep black waves; where his pajamas were white, as was usually the case for the Celestica, their ofurisode was the deepest black, even deeper than he thought black could be, and their obi was splashed with something that looked quite like (but couldn’t be … could it?) blood. Stamped underneath their left eye was a heart and a star, though the longer he looked the longer he thought maybe they weren’t really stamps at all.
At his compliment, their eyes — black and red and yellow all at once, like a black hole killing a star — shone more brightly than anything around the two of them, despite the fact they were currently on their back, half-sprawled out, looking like they’d just fallen from the sky. “Oh, that’s so sweet, little boy. Kickass, I’m here for five minutes and I’m already getting hit on.”
Their voice.
Volo startled out of whatever reverie he had been in up to this point and said, “You were in my head.”
“Nah, kid, the line is ‘you’ve been running through my mind all day’, but good effort. I’ll give you a kiss on the cheek for that one. C’mere, so I can get a better look at you.”
“No,” said Volo, alarmed at himself that he was only saying it because he meant something different and not because come a little closer was an invitation to getting your head bitten off by a terrifying and deceitful monster, “no, I meant … your words. They were in my head. You said you were tired of running, too. And then, when I was thinking about the statue…”
He looked past them. There, in the distance, was precisely the statue he had been thinking about. The monument to the third legendary Pokemon, sibling of Dialga and Palkia.
His heart hammered in his chest, because suddenly, he knew exactly who this being was. “You’re— That’s you! You’re that Pokemon! You’re…” Oh, why couldn’t he remember the name? How embarrassing.
“Wha…” The person, with quite a bit of difficulty, looked over their shoulder at the statue in the distance. “Oh, fuck me. That is not a flattering angle.”
It was only then that Volo saw the golden ichor staining the back of their head. It was so bright that he could partially see it through their hair. Below them, the ichor stained the crater they were lying in. It was a lot of blood. Too much for him to be entirely comfortable with. “Uhm … are you okay? Are you … hurt?” Which was a stupid question, because of course they were.
“Huh?” They turned back around and caught sight of the blood draining out of them. Apparently, Volo hadn’t been wrong to be uncomfortable, because their face went quite pale. “Right. Uh. Hm. Well, that’s concerning.” They blinked up at him. “Listen, kid, can you— oh, for fuck’s sake. You’re one of my dad’s. Typico. I finally manage to get out of that fucking hellhole and fall practically right into the lap of one of my dad’s kids. Well, whatever. Report me to it. See if I care. I’ll just lay here and try to stop bleeding while you do that.”
They lay there and tried to stop bleeding while he did that.
Except of course Volo didn’t actually do that. “You mean Arceus?” he asked.
The person’s eyes were closed now, and their head rested against one of the shards, but they responded, “Arceus, Lord of all Lords, great God of Pokemon, the Original One. Whatever everyone is calling it nowadays. Let me guess, you guys have festivals celebrating it and it comes and dances around the fucking may pole and frolics about and BLAH BLAH BLAH.”
“Not really,” said Volo, wondering what on earth a may pole was. “Actually, it hasn’t talked to us in centuries.”
They opened one eye. “No shit? Interesting.”
“Uh-huh. My moms don’t like it very much, and neither do I. ‘cause awful things have been happening to us and it seems like Arceus doesn’t care at all. It just lets all that stuff happen even though we’ve been worshiping it our whole lives. Ianthe said that some people from our settlement are getting kidnapped by the colonists that just arrived from across the sea. ‘cause we look different from everyone else and we do different things from everyone else.”
“Yup, that’s my dad, alright. Jeeze, kid, I’m sorry. That’s not fair.”
“That’s what I said!” Volo was suddenly filled with passion he hadn’t known was within him. His fingernails were pressing half-moons into his palms. “We’re just trying to live our lives like everyone else, and Arceus is supposed to protect us. But it doesn’t! Even though we observe the holy days and do good things and take care of each other and we built statues and temples and everything. But when the kohanim ask Arceus why it keeps letting us get hurt or kidnapped or killed, or why we have to move all the time so that the foreigners don’t burn our camps to the ground, it just … it never answers…”
He felt very silly, doing this in front of the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, but tiny dewdrops of tears were beginning to gather in the corners of his eyes and slip down his face one after the other. He turned away.
“Awh, no, kid…” And suddenly, they were standing in front of him, as if they had existed in both places at the same time and simply chose to appear in this second place. They were a lot taller than he’d thought, he saw as he blinked up at them through his tears. Easily taller than either of his mothers. Taller than Delphinia’s brother, who was so tall he seemed to sometimes block out the sun. They realized this and got down to their knees, gathering him up into their arms and holding him tightly.
He balled his fists into their ofurisode. “What are we doing wrong?”
“Nothing,” they said quickly. “You’re not doing anything wrong, you hear me? My dad’s a dick. It’s always been a dick, ever since I was born. It’s not anything any of you are doing that’s making it act this way. Oh, little one, I wish it had been me who was given the chance to protect you.”
“That’s so nice of you,” Volo sniffed. Miserably, he added, “I’m sorry — you’re so nice, but I don’t even remember your name.”
“Yeah,” they scoffed, not unkindly, “who fuckin’ does. It’s Giratina, little one.”
Giratina. When they said it, it seemed the most obvious thing in the world. Of course it had been Giratina. How had he forgotten it?
“What’s yours, tiny human?” they asked him.
“It’s Volo.”
“Volo…” Something in them stilled. They unwrapped themselves from him and held him at arm’s length, looking him over, head to toe, as if searching for something. Finally, their eyes settled on his eyes, and there was a sharp intake of breath as Giratina realized something.
But what it was would have to wait for another day. Giratina’s eyes fluttered closed and then only halfway open — their injury was getting the better of them. Volo helped them down onto the ground; they would have collapsed and hurt themselves otherwise. His heart ached. They looked so forlorn there in the grass, still dripping that golden ichor, which burned the grass it touched to a crisp upon contact. Aside from the inhumanity of their blood, they didn’t at all resemble a god.
“You should come to the settlement,” he told them, crouching beside them and pressing the back of his hand against their clammy forehead. “I’m sure I could get someone to help you. You’ve got a fever … my mom could take care of you, like she does when I have a fever—”
Giratina shook their head fervently. “No, little Volo. Can’t go … to the Celestica.”
Their breathing was hitching now. Volo’s own was not quite steady. “Are you going to be okay? You don’t look okay. What if I stayed here with you? I … I don’t want you to die.”
“I’m not going to die, Volo. I’ll be alright. Can I ask you a question, though?”
“Yeah.” He was trying not to think about how fitting it would be if Giratina’s last words were to tell him that they weren’t going to die.
“Will you … will you come back? Tomorrow night? To see me?”
Volo was thrilled, to be asked this. Immediately, he said, “Of course! Of course I’ll come back. As long as I can sneak out again. But my moms are really heavy sleepers, and I never sneak out, so probably they won’t even know.” He plucked a few blades of grass from the ground and let them settle among their siblings. “Is it okay if I ask you a question?”
Giratina’s eyes were closed. They looked ready to fall hard and fast into unconsciousness, but they managed to nod.
“There’s an egg my friend found and, uhm, it’s got red and blue triangles all over it. I’ve never seen an egg like that before. I’ve been taking care of it, but do you know — do you know what Pokemon it is?”
Giratina’s lips quirked upward, and then they were giggling, and then they were chuckling, and then they were outright laughing. They said, after they had calmed themselves, “Here I thought you were going to ask me the secrets of the universe or some shit. That’s a Togepi egg, little Volo. Just keep it warm and safe and it’ll hatch just like any other Pokemon. Especially around a heart as kind as yours…”
They had fallen asleep mid-sentence. Volo stayed there for a few moments, making sure that they continued to breathe, and then leaned over and kissed their temple. And then, feeling unsure, but not knowing what else to do, he stood up and began the journey back home.