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When Akari wakes from the deep sleep that only days of survey bring, it’s early enough that the others haven’t stirred, at least from what she’s heard.
No tell-tale rustling of warm sheets being shed and cold clothes being put on from the other tent, none of the clanging or crackling that comes with cooking. Just the breath of the breeze, the rustling conversations between the trees. Shff-shff. Shff-shff, to you, too.
It’ll be a Combeehive of movement, soon, once the lull of a finished survey sparks into a mess of dismantling tents and packing, of a tiresome long walk home (home, home) and days and days of sorting data in the professor’s office. She’s looking forward to that part, the peace of it.
But if no one’s up yet…
…A quick jaunt down Aspiration Hill to see the wildflowers wouldn’t hurt, would it?
She dresses slowly, quietly, as though breathing too hard will stir the hive, then goes for a satchel check, counting supplies off in her head as her fingers feel for each one: five potions, a roll of bandages, a pouch of dried berries, two smoke bombs, some sootfoot root, a stealth spray… Familiar shapes, familiar weight, until the edge of her hand brushes a stony slab, wrapped in cloth, against the edge.
The Legend Plate. The new weight in her satchel.
Her hand stays for a moment, then two, pinky pressed gently against the soft, cold cloth, until her fingers venture around its thick edge. Slowly, so slowly, she lifts the Plate from its spot, reverently unfolds its cloth. She turns it in her hands, runs a knuckle over its surface, ancient and rough—ageless, yet not immune to age. Like the other Plates, it seems like it was smooth, once. A gentle nook just wider than her thumb indents one of its worn edges, almost as if hands before hers have known it. Perhaps they have; after all, she is not Hisui’s first hero.
It’s been half a year since her last resort on the mountain, when Arceus charged her with a piece of itself, and it still feels strange to have, like the shard of a star is just sitting in her satchel with her smoke bombs, her sootfoot root, her stealth spray. Her fate is bound with this Plate, in so many ways.
And yet—and yet. It is so normal. After all, the Creator of All is a Pokémon; this Plate is its Poké Ball. Through this, it can manifest a projection of itself, and its hooves—are they hooves?—can get lost in swathes of tall grass, can splash through a muddy Mirelands bog. Its sacred tail stirs in the breeze like a Stantler’s. Arceus is a Pokémon, despite its omniscience, despite its godliness.
Good morning, it says.
Despite its speech.
The thing about Arceus’s voice is that it is not a voice at all: it is a feeling, like light itself spilling into her veins, weaving around her tendons, an ancient resonance that sings with the soul of its recipient. As if getting used to conversing with the universe’s creator wasn’t enough of a feat in itself.
Akari sucks in a breath, accustoms herself, ignores the chill bumps that sprout along her skin. “Good morning to you, too,” she whispers, the soft sounds slipping through her lips, as she has no quiet ancient resonance to exude. She waits for an answer, steels herself for the immortal thrum, but none comes.
Ah, well. Arceus is not much for small talk, after all. They only speak when she is properly alone, in her quarters or out on solo surveys, and even then, there is nothing about their talk that is small. Arceus inquires of all manner of things: why some Pokémon species roam in packs and why some are solitary, why there are so many different types of trees, and then, what the different leaves are specialized for; why the Starly are so horribly noisy, and how Akari always finds so many shapes in the clouds. It may have created the world—the universe—but its curiosity is as boundless as… Well. As boundless as the universe it shaped. There is a difference between creating something and knowing it, Akari figures, just as there is in making a Poké Ball and knowing how to use it (as her countless hours helping Rei with his aim have proven.)
Then, a spark of a thought: Arceus hasn’t seen Aspiration Hill yet, has it? How can that be? Well. Maybe she can nab two Chatot in one survey.
I would walk this world together with thee, it had declared above the mountain, its side of the bargain that would let Akari keep both of her homes. Show me how it appeareth in thine eyes.
And why not? Akari will walk this world for as long as she lives, now. She will get her other life back when this one is finished. But for now, she’s bound to show Arceus the Hisui she fell in love with. There are much worse bargains to strike.
She sucks in a sharp breath, dousing the immensity of it all before it can swallow her.
“What do you say?” she whispers, tapping her satchel with the fragment of Arceus that rests in it.
Say to what? The non-voice plucks strangely pluck at the air.
Ah, right. Arceus either cannot, or does not, read her mind. “A morning walk,” she answers.
Well, of course, says Arceus, Creator of All, what better have I to do?
“Fair enough.” She rewraps the Plate and sets it back in its spot in her satchel, clasps the latch. Arceus in her satchel.
The first breath of early morning air is crisp against her face as she opens the tent flap. Chill bumps stipple her skin, and she stands, stretches, shakes the last threads of deep sleep that only days of survey bring. The sun has hardly peaked the horizon, the sky above it still dull with too-earliness.
Still no stirring around camp. Only Shinjiro, the new night sentry, is up, lounging lazily around the low flames of the campfire. By his feet is his little Growlithe, watching the little flames as a Glameow would watch a Starly in a too-tall tree, and his fluffy tail swishes around in bursts of barely-contained mischief. What contrast between Trainer and Pokémon, Akari thinks. She waves them off, tells them she’ll be back soon to help dismantle camp.
“Better be,” he says through the slight crack of a smile, so lax for being the new guy. Growlithe yips a little, earning himself a soft round of shushing and many placating pets from its Trainer. Akari gives it one, too, its fluff all rough in her fingers, and with a final wave she’s off.
As she crests the hill, she wonders, briefly, if she should get Rei, send her new Shellos into his tent to go in and slug him (ha, ha), but then Arceus would Clamperl up, and that’d defeat the whole purpose. Besides, she and Rei have got a lifetime of walks together ahead of them, now.
She peaks the hill’s crest, and the Fieldlands roll out like a great canvas, soft brushstrokes of grass and paint-spatters of wildflowers. Deertrack Heights rises only a ways away, and, at the Fieldlands’ farthest edges, hills and mountains gather like great bolts of bunched-up fabric. A copse of pines lines Aspiration Hill’s descent, and make the breeze sing.
What name has this place been given? Arceus’s non-voice weaves with the breeze. Akari startles. A little warning would be nice, she thinks, but there’s no way for it to warn besides… speaking. What strange conundrums carrying around a deity bring.
She gathers herself, takes a few more steps from camp, away from Shinjiro and his Growlithe’s keen ears, and her words come on whispers. “This slope, and most of the stretch of field you can see from here, is called Aspiration Hill.” Aspiration Hill. The words tug at her. Professor Laventon, in all his poetic exuberance, once described it as the place where aspirations crest and spill out into the wider world. These words stuck with her, even before she and Hisui belonged to each other.
Aspiration Hill, Arceus repeats, spilling more light into the syllables. The names humans choose to mark these lands does not cease to fascinate me.
“Me too.” Akari hops over a divot dug in the dirt by a Bidoof, pauses for a moment to observe the scrabbling of paw-pattern in the dirt, then goes on. “Hisui has lots of lovely names, like Crossing Slope in the Coastlands, and the Golden Lowlands in the Mirelands. You’ve seen both of those, remember?”
I do.
“Aspiration Hill’s my favorite name out of all of them. This is where I did my trial to become a member of the Survey Corps.”
So this place is dear to thee, then?
“Dear” does not begin to describe it. Akari may have woken on Prelude, but Aspiration Hill is where everything began. The place where aspirations crest and spill out into the wider world. “It is,” she says, “yeah.” Even if it took time for it to become dear, because, at the beginning, nothing here could be dear to her.
She wonders: was it like that for Arceus, too, before it made the universe? Is that why it made it: to give itself something dear? Is the universe dear to it in the same way Hisui is for Akari, in the same way anything is to anyone on earth? With Arceus in her satchel, these big questions tug at Akari now and then, but they don’t come with courage enough to ask. She’s known many deities, too many: Dialga, who still bothers her for Jubilife muffins; Palkia, who prefers its dimension, its own space, but still returns for the occasional visit (and those muffins it's heard tell of); Giratina, living its days out in self-imposed solitude over in Turnback Spring; Mesprit, Uxie, Azelf, the Lake Guardians who tug at her mind and body and soul, somehow, and Regigigas, who is said to have towed the continents forever and ever ago, and Cresselia of dreams and Darkrai of nightmares and Thundurus-Tornadus-Landorus-Enamorous-Heatran-Shaymin, Jirachi in Hoenn, and Celebi in Johto—
Arceus in her satchel.
By the gods, she knows a lot of gods.
But—and she recognizes the twisting irony in this—she does not want to know too much about the universe, its creation, the mistakes or miracles of the gods upon it. She already knows more than she would like. The beginning of the universe or the reason for its creation doesn’t seem like something she, or any mortal, was meant to know. Perhaps that is part of why Arceus chose to be by her side: because it knew she wouldn’t ask questions.
Well… Someday. Maybe. But for now, she only cares for the minutiae: the Pokémon and their interweaving ecology, Hisui’s hills and mountains that give the horizon its texture; the Fieldlands’ tall grass speckled with wildflowers, its woods and winding streams; the Mirelands’ bogs and cottonsedge alike; the curling and unfurling of the Coastlands sea; the Highlands’ hidden springs and its valleys carved into the earth; the Icelands and its blinding-white landscape, the crunch of snow beneath her boots that she can never get enough of.
(She does not regret her decision one bit.)
She turns from thoughts of the universe’s beginning and speaks of her own beginning, instead.
“That’s where I made my first proper catch here.” She points toward the patch of tall grass, nestled almost artistically between a stand of four trees. “A Bidoof. He still lives in the Pastures. I have to go out and help Marie fix the fence every week or so, cause he keeps gnawing on one of the posts. Only that specific one, even when we replace the wood. It’s really weird. Oh, and, there,” she points about halfway down the hill, “that’s where I got Staraptor, when he was still a Starly.”
Starly, with the infernal noises?
“Yep.”
Why, in all the heavens and on all the earth, would thou catch a Starly?
“Because it was part of my trial,” she says. “I had to do it if I wanted to live.”
What cruelty, to be made to choose between life and Starly!
“Hey!” A reproachful word, and yet an incongruous laugh tears from her, too loud for the hour. “I’m putting you back in my quarters if you keep that talk up.”
So long as it is not a Starly’s nest.
“Don’t give me any ideas.” She’ll have to change its mind on Starly someday, but for now, they are at the foot of the hill (where aspirations spill). And there: the tree Rei had waited for her beneath after sending her off to complete her first research tasks as a member of the Survey Corps. Their names are carved into the base of the branches, high enough to keep away from a hungry Bidoof.
She feels rather like Warden Ingo as she sets about pointing, pointing, pointing out the major areas of the Fieldlands: there, the bridge leading to Deertrack Heights and the Heartwood and the Grandtree beyond; and past Horseshoe Plains over there is the Grueling Grotto, with some of the best honey in Hisui, and you can’t see it from here, but Floaro Gardens is tucked in over there, then further down and by the bank we’ve got Sandgem Flats—and she wonders, suddenly, if it is possible to set Arceus’s head spinning, because she must have by now. There’s just so much! “And you see that big outcropping of rock, that-a-way?” A word she plucked from Rei.
“That’s Lake Valor.” Her hand drifts back to her side, tentative, and she keeps her gaze towards the Lake that prods at her so. No, she doesn’t care to know about the universe’s beginning, the workings of the gods. But. “You… you know Mesprit, don’t you?” She forms the words carefully, yet casually. “I mean, you know Mesprit.”
I do, indeed, Arceus answers, perhaps because it is an answer she already knows. Tempestuous, that one.
“Really? It doesn’t seem that way to me.”
Thou hast known Mesprit for less than a fraction of its existence. There is a pinch to Arceus’s voice that she has not heard before. I made it, flesh and fiery spirit, eons ago. Tell me, what authority hast thou on its character?
Akari swallows; a slight shadow has slipped into the light of its non-voice. “N-none,” she stammers. “I’m sorry. I just—it’s only ever been kind with me.”
Because it chooses to be.
“Ah,” drops from her mouth. But the weight of the statement is hardly given a second to settle before: Wurmple.
Wurmple? Akari blinks, the hour far too early for the quick-shifting tide of Arceus. Did it just call her a—
Wurmple, confirms the soul-thrumming resonance entirely incongruous with the word. To thine left.
Oh. Not her. Akari looks to the left, and—ah, there, just a small ways away. Little pink horn peeking out amidst a patch of lighter pink wildflowers. Almost camouflaged, but not quite. And very, very cute.
What is it doing?
Alright. Shelving the mysteries of Mesprit, for now.
“Camouflaging,” Akari answers with a shrug. “I think.”
Thou art uncertain, Arceus observes, unhelpfully. Art thou not a decorated member of the Survey Corps?
The mischief escapes before she can catch it. “Art thou not the creator of the universe and everything in it?”
A moment, then another, just enough for Akari to fear she’s overstepped before Arceus speaks again. Thy wit will ensnare thy path with brambles, if thou art not careful.
Its tone is light—well, as light as it can be—and that is how Akari knows she is not being genuinely cursed, or smote, or something. She is learning how to read its tides. “Sorry, sorry,” she says with a smile, and she crouches down, wrists on her knees, to better watch the Wurmple from a comfortable distance. More for the Wurmple than for herself, if it is indeed camouflaging. No need to alert the hungry Starly right at breakfasttime. “I can’t promise what it’s up to now… But I can tell you everything I’ve learned about Wurmple, if you’d like.”
That, I would.
“Well,” Akari begins, feeling rather like the professor, ready to spout off a fount of knowledge, “they like to eat leaves.”
Of what sort?
“Monkshood leaves are their favorite,” she answers. “Though the ones I’ve caught seem to really like Pecha berries, too. If this one here weren’t likely camouflaging, I’d show you. They’re pretty friendly in the wild. They just wriggle right up to you. Rei says they’ve got no sense of self-preservation, but, you know, he just says things like that.”
And what is this one camouflaging from?
“Well, their main predator is Starly, but, you see those spikes all over its body? Those are poisonous. Wurmple use them to fend off predators. In the Hoenn region, Taillow and Swellow are their main predators.”
I see, Arceus says.
“There are definitely more Wurmple out and about, if you wanna see one in action. Aspiration Hill’s always crawling with them.”
Then let us be off.
“To find a Wurmple?”
Or anything else that may cross thy path.
Akari checks the sun, making sure it’s still comfortably low on the mountainous horizon. Satisfied, she stands, but stops herself from springing up, to avoid startling the Wurmple or letting any Starly know it’s there (or letting Arceus know there are any Starly near—she really needs to do something about all that).
The Fieldlands are fresh with the morning light and, right now, possibility. There’s Horseshoe Plains with its new herd of Ponyta foals prancing about; nearer by, there are the Buizel babies playing along the riverbank and learning what fun having a built-in flotation sac is, though their parents don’t take kindly to visitors. Still, it might be nice to watch them from a distance, see the little water spouts their tiny twin tails shoot up into the air. Or: there’s Floaro Gardens, fresh-bloomed with spring, tucked away in its little alcove. So much to love, in all the cracks and crevices, in all the little things.
Art thou well?
The non-voice breaks her reverie. “Yes,” she says, “I art quite well.”
If thine aim is to tease at least do it correctly. Come, now; the sun will not linger forever.
“Sorry, sorry,” Akari concedes, and, after a few more moments, makes her decision, makes for Horseshoe Plains, for the foals and their early-morning prancing and dancing (for Arceus is a sort of horse-Pokémon, right?) and the Wurmple along the way. There will be time aplenty—a lifetime’s worth—for everything else.