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Drifting
Dancing
Flit here, flit there
Wind and breeze and gust
Mist and vapor and cloud
Sky
Open Sky
Endless open Sky
...substance
Something- else
Something... more?
More
Neither air nor liquid- solid
Beings, solid and liquid and more
Flit here, flit there, but inside
Flicker of- thought
Flicker of- emotion
Follow
Follow follow follow
Down, and down, and down
Sky, no longer endless
More liquid, more solid
More- water, and stone
Energy coalesces
Gains thought, and emotion, and form
Something old yet new
Something different
It lingers in the between-spaces
It watches, and grows, and tries to mimic what it observes
Creatures, sometimes, but mostly people
It likes to watch the people
It would like- to become
Crafting one shape after another, trying them on, trying to make them perfect
It wants to belong, belong to something more than the endless open Sky from which it came
It wants-
To be
The first time it deems one of the shapes good enough to try approaching, it simply walks around the edges of the settlement, gleeful in how well it blends in. A few people look, and their faces twist, but there’s no outward demand of ‘who are you?’ Which is good, because it is still trying to figure out how to adjust the inside of the shape to make words come out.
At one point it stumbles across a shape in the forest which has been altered, thought and emotion gone, only sagging skin and rotting muscles left behind. A prize, to be sure: an opportunity to cut open the shape and properly look inside, to see how a person, a body, is supposed to function. And there are so many intricate little parts, and half of them are broken or withered beyond use, but still- so much more knowledge than it had before.
The joy does not last.
All too soon, it is noticed, paid attention to, but it isn’t ready. A child comes toddling closer, kicking a little ball, making noises that mean ‘come play, come play with me’. And it wants to, it wants, but the shape it’s wearing isn’t very good for kicking little balls, so it changes to a different one, smaller and matching.
The child screams.
So the adults nearby.
GLOAMGLOZER, they shout, MONSTER, and some run away, but others run closer, and it can’t make the right sounds yet for words, it can only try to convey an apology, to express confusion- and then a flame is thrust forward, and it can only scream, and scream, and scream-
It hides
Deep in the forest, it hides
Trapped in pain and misery, it wishes it never left the Open Sky
(But it cannot go back now- too much time spent upon the Stone, too much particle has bonded, and it cannot return to the pure energy of its former state, cannot flit aimlessly and blissfully through the air-)
Sounds
Steps
“Oh, dear, you look to be in a right state.”
It keens, curling smaller, shoving deeper into the hole.
“Shh, shh now, don’t fret, I’m not going to hurt you - look here, see? See this?” Wary, afraid, but still tugged onward by that need to look and to know, it turns just enough to peek at the person crouching outside its hole. Tall and lanky, long limbs folded into an awkward position that must hurt, and yet- smiling. And holding out a little round disk, painted with a white cross, threaded onto a stiff cord. “This medallion means I am a doctor, little one. Do you know what that is?”
No words, yet, but it understands the acts of nodding and shaking one’s head. It does the latter.
“A doctor is a healer, who is sworn to help others, no matter who they are, or where they come from, or what they may or may not have done.” ...oh. “So, would you like to come out here, where I may help you? I have a salve that will do wonders in soothing those burns, and they really should be wrapped up, to avoid a risk of infection.”
It- has not heard some of those words before. But there is a kindness in the voice, and the constant curiosity that has driven it this far drives it a little further.
So. It reaches out.
The doctor’s hand reaches back.
Doctor Hiriluk is wonderful.
He explains. He teaches. He sketches out diagrams to better convey his words, he provides advice for assuming different shapes and spends long hours coaching how to speak and he- he-
Every doctor needs a name, he says, which is how a curious little monster becomes- “Tony-Tony Chopper! Come look at this!”
“Coming!” He chirps, hopping out of the tall canvas tent, and hurrying over to where Doctor Hiriluk kneels at the edge of the river where they’ve made their camp for the night. “What is-?”
“Shh,” his mentor shushes, grinning as he gestures to something on the opposite bank. “Look there!”
Chopper looks. It takes a moment, but then he registers movement, an indistinct shape of green and brown flickering through the trees. A large indistinct shape. Chopper grabs onto Doctor Hiriluk’s arm, and watches with wide eyes as a massive creature emerges from the trees, walking on four paws as it pads towards the water. Huge tusks just up from the lower jaw, tiny ears flutter delicately, the thick fur makes a soft shoosh-shoosh sound as it moves... “What is that, Doctor?”
“A banderbear,” Chopper’s mentor whispers, still grinning. “One of the rarest sights to be found in the Deepwoods. They are magnificent beings, large and fearsome, yet incredibly gentle when they need to be. They have a language all their own, too, but never recorded by anyone, as they are far too wary of others to ever share it.” The two of them continue to watch as the beast drinks deeply from the flowing water, likely aware of their presence but ignoring them. When it finishes, the banderbear turns and pads quietly back into the treeline, vanishing almost instantly thanks to the layer of moss mixed with its dark fur.
Doctor Hiriluk leans back with a sigh, his grin softening into a smaller smile. “Ahh, now that was a treat. It’s been many years since I last saw a banderbear - they tend to avoid the more settled regions of the Deepwoods, you know. This might be the last one to hold a territory east of the Great Ironwood Stands.”
Chopper hums, fixing the image of those powerful limbs and long curling claws in his mind. And then, he changes shape.
“Oh!” His mentor jumps, startled by the sudden shift; but then Doctor Hiriluk begins to laugh, deep and joyous, as he beholds the banderbear Chopper has made of himself. “Oh, my boy! Is there anything so wondrous as you in all the Edge?”
Embarrassed, Chopped squirms, awkwardly grinning around his new mouthful of tusks and teeth. But he holds still as Doctor Hiriluk examines him from ear to toe, and it feels good, to give his mentor a gift such as this.
The joy does not last.
The two of them wander along one path after another through the vast Deepwoods, worn into the ground by countless feet over countless years, seeking out villages where Doctor Hiriluk can help the injured, and especially the sick. That said- it did not take Chopper long to realize that sometimes his mentor made things worse instead of better, in his efforts to craft cures for dire diseases, and often the two of them have to leave those villages quite quickly. It’s after one such rapid departure that a messenger seeks them out: sent from a place called Drumwood, where Doctor Hiriluk was born, by a leader named Wapol, who desperately needs his help with an illness that has taken out all other healers in the region.
Of course, they go.
Chopper knows all too well his mentor’s compassion is second to none.
(But looking back, he wishes, oh how he wishes, that the messenger never found them, or that Doctor Hiriluk decided to ignore the request. Even if they were chased by angry villagers every day forever and ever in exchange, Chopper wishes that they’d never have gone.)
A trap awaits, because Wapol sought to control the citizens of his town, and decided controlling their access to medical treatment best served that desire. Sometimes allowing it, sometimes withholding it, but for that, he needed to maintain a tight grip on all trained healers in the area, and even a single wandering doctor who never lingered in one place for long seemed an unacceptable threat.
Wapol offers a choice: serve him, or die.
Doctor Hiriluk chooses.
And Chopper howls.
The little ghostwaif form he’d chosen to wear falls apart, exploding into a conglomerate of fearsome creatures: banderbear, brogtroll, cloddertrog and more, big and tough and strong, strong enough to charge at Wapol and his retainers, and send them screaming for the trees. But Chopper doesn’t want to stop there, he wants to tear them apart, to make them bring Doctor Hiriluk back-
“Monster!”
“Run! Run for your lives!”
“Gloamglozer! It’s the Gloamglozer, Sky save us-!”
That word again
Gloamglozer
Doctor Hiriluk never used it. Never brought it up - only answered Chopper’s question once, after much hesitation, on a cloudless day in broad daylight. The Gloamglozer is a shapeshifter, an ancient demon from the days before life upon the Edge, when the world was nothing but howling winds upon barren rock. It is said to be a deceiver, who takes normal forms in an effort to trick lonely folk, and lead them to their deaths. But that isn’t you, little one - you’re clever and curious, certainly, but you’re also good, and there isn’t a deceptive bone in any of your bodies.
He saw a picture, once, scrawled in a barkscroll that Chopper unearthed at the back of a little bookshop during one of their stops. A terrifying, twisted face, two uneven horns spiraling away in different directions, taloned hands the only feature to emerge from a tattered, floating cloak. Maybe that Gloamglozer was like him, once: a flitter of living energy from Open Sky, drawn to whispers of thought and emotion, but who didn’t have a Doctor Hiriluk to offer better anatomy lessons than tearing into dead bodies.
Rather than smash his way through the line of guardsmen scrambling to attack him, Chopper changes shape once more, copying what he remembers from that illustration, filling in the details with knowledge from his medical education. The guards before him scream; several cower back. One tall goblin in a fancier uniform tries to rally his fellows, but Chopper ignores him, calling upon memories of flitting along gusts and gales to lift him into the air, and soar after the fleeing Wapol.
The ruler of Drumwood is told in no uncertain terms to release the healers he’s already taken into ‘service’, and never again trap another. “If you do, I’ll know,” Chopper says, growling and wheezing and shrieking all at once, with vocal chords warped to the furthest boundary of use. “And then I’ll come back!”
It proves to be a pointless warning. So overcome with fright, Wapol falls to the ground then and there, his heart stopped between one breath and the next.
“So do you have a name, or should I just call you Hiriluk’s Monster?”
It’s been three days since anyone’s spoken to Chopper. He needs a moment to register the words, to understand their meaning, before uncurling enough from his pathetic huddle to peer up at the person who’s spoken. An old fourthling woman stands atop one of the roots of the luffwood tree where Chopper has made himself a refuge, digging down into the soil beneath the trunk. She watches him intently, frowning, but- not angry. Not hostile.
She wears a medical medallion, like Doctor Hiriluk does- did.
“...Chopper,” he finally croaks, after adjusting his form internally, to a voice less painful to hear. “My name is Tony-Tony Chopper.”
The woman grunts. “I’m Doctor Kureha. Heard what you said to Wapol, before he died - about not going after any more healers.”
He sniffles. “So?”
“So, I think between that and knowing you traveled with that quack Hiriluk, you’re more than just a storybook monster.” She crouches down, and for an aching moment Chopper is reminded of when he first met his mentor. “You were his student, right?” When he tentatively nods, Kureha grins, wide and bright and not quite kind, but not remotely cruel, either. “I could use a new assistant, now that I don’t have to worry about Wapol scaring off the best candidates anymore. Job’s yours, if you want it.”
...yes.
That is rather the whole point of him, after all.
Chopper wants.