The sun was relentless.
Orange stone and thick leaves shone in the light, making the skies unpleasant for any aerial travelers. The ground wasn’t much better, but it offered the one thing the world above desperately lacked—shade. Plentiful, well-maintained shade, with groves of tall, wide-leafed trees carefully spaced apart to give some mercy to the creatures wandering underneath, without choking out other plant life. They were hardly the only careful adaptation to the brutal, tropical heat. Meticulously guided streams cooled the surrounding air while ensuring nobody was at risk of dehydration; air currents were directed to minimize any stagnant areas; the berry bushes scattered throughout the woodland were as hydrating as possible.
The island was no less carefully engineered than the monumental metal cities on the other side of the world. It just used different materials and was built by different craftsmen over much, much longer spans of time. Craftsmen who rarely even considered themselves such. This wasn’t a grand project for them; it was simply something as ordinary as how livable their home was. Little more than housekeeping, really.
It was only with the benefit of immortal hindsight that the scale of their achievement could be seen and appreciated in full. Hindsight, which two of the beings gathered in the small clearing were capable of.
The shaded meadow was modest, for it didn’t need to be any larger. Even as its members changed from generation to generation, the group that gathered there rarely numbered more than four or five. All they needed was enough space to sit in a semicircle, an exposed stone wall for them to draw on if needed, and a nearby stream to fuel their long debates.
In the middle of writing yet another poem, one of the group’s members noticed they hadn’t cleared said wall after their last session. She sighed inwardly, grabbing the nearby fan with her white furred leg to clean the remaining drawings—before being stopped.
“You need not do that, Kuene,” a sacred voice spoke. “We’ll still be making use of this map.”
The Oranguru nodded and spared the source of the words a brief glance, before returning to her poems. Her deity found the action amusing in how casual it was. Hardly the boldest out of all the advisors she’d had over the millennia, but certainly up there.
She contrasted with the only other advisor in many ways, but eye-catchy-ness was not one of them. What the fairy that had flown into the clearing soon after lacked in size, he certainly made up for with the vibrancy of the flowers that followed him. His green hair gave way to bright yellow blooms, then tiny orange ones, then the rest of the rainbow, carrying shades and healing aromas from across the entire archipelago. It was unlike the rainbow in the sky, starting at green and ending at cyan, but a rainbow all the same.
“Ack! I apologize for my tardiness; an errant gust knocked me off course!” The Comfey’s words drew only fleeting attention from the rest of his group, and an amused one at that. His deity gestured for him to settle, and so he did, carefully landing on the soft grass beside his fellow advisor. “I see we haven’t started yet?”
“^How could we have without you, Lā’au?^” Kuene responded flatly.
“How could you have indeed~,” the Comfey giggled to himself. “Are we waiting for anyone else? Or was I the last one remaining, Lady of Waves?”
“^Lele’s daughter is on her way here.^” The Oranguru’s answer was matter-of-fact, but she knew what kind of reaction it tended to get from her deity. She suppressed a faint smirk as she kept her eyes trained on the massive leaf laying across her lap, and on a piece of flint she wrote on the leaf with.
Said deity briefly considered speaking up about her advisor’s choice of words, before deciding against it. She straightened out in her purple shell before looking skyward, hoping the aforementioned scout would get here without any further troubles. She then looked away from her advisors towards the other end of the small clearing. Thankfully, her sister either didn’t hear, or didn’t acknowledge Kuene’s remark. Her pink, curly hair danced gently in the breeze as she stared at nothing, losing herself in the enrapturing spectacle of life all around her.
It helped pass the time until her daughter got back here.
Even with Lā’au’s arrival, the clearing remained in a morose, almost asleep state. Discussing the topics concerning the outside world was never a pleasant matter. And while the Lady of Waves treated it with as much importance as it deserved, it was hard to deny that it was a very boring task. Some could even say pointless.
The deity of passage hadn’t even noticed Kuene leave her seat to get some fresh water and food from the surrounding woods. For her deities, for the exhausted scout that was due to arrive any minute now, for her coworker and friend, and most importantly, for herself. She wished she was half as good at dissociation and meditation as her sister. “How has your Moon been, Lā’au?” she spoke up to fill in the silence.
The Comfey levitated off the ground, letting his chain of flowers float freely behind him as he gesticulated. “Oh, it has been indescribably exhausting, Lady of Waves. I have let my students off the vine, so to say, merely monitoring them in their practice now.”
“And the tension of having to observe and assess grinds you down more than education by itself could ever have?” his deity asked. Her emotions weren’t easy to gleam without a mouth, but Lā’au knew enough to perceive a slight smile with his mind where his eyes failed.
“An immaculate way to word that, Lady of Waves. Truthfully, I had almost forgotten just how bad it was the previous time.”
“Is this round of students any more rowdy?”
“I would not say so! If anything, I would imagine it is just me that has grown older—”
*boink!*
The Comfey yelped as he was launched forwards, only barely dodging the rubber ball that struck him after it had bounced off the nearby tree. He shook the dull ache out of the back of his head, watching the ball come to a stop in the grass. And then came the excited footsteps, racing towards the bouncy toy they’d launched moments prior.
A flurry of green petals, brown fur, white feathers and numerous shades of chitin sprinted into the clearing, triumphantly retrieving the ball. Excited as the kids were, though, they still had enough awareness to realize they had to apologize. The little Yungoos at the head of the pack took the initiative, approaching the mildly dazzled Comfey and mumbling out, “We’re very sorry, Uncle Comfey!” The rest of their group followed in kind, skillfully keeping the intonation and tempo as different as possible for maximum noisiness.
Lā’au already had a hard time feeling anger, and the array of apologetic kids made it even harder. “Oh, you are all forgiven, younglings. I ask you, however, to take greater care in your play! The last thing we want is for anyone to suffer any severe injuries from those rubber balls of yours,” he beamed, rubbing the aching spot on the back of his body.
The chorus of “okay” that followed didn’t help with everyone’s amusement, but the flash of piercing cold shock that lit the clearing soon after certainly did. Once the toothy quadruped at the front turned around to get back to their play, they froze, and the rest of their group followed. They hardly ever as much as glimpsed the deities of their islands, and finding one of them hovering silently behind them was how many scary campfire stories began. And yet, here she was, her visage instilling reverence and fear.
Said deity wished it wouldn’t, at least not as much. Suppressing her disappointment at being just a boogeyman yet again, she shifted her position off to the side and gestured for the group of kids to get going. The Yungoos at the front managed to force out a “Th-thank you, Lady of Waves”, but not their entire group was successful at following them before they scattered into the woods. Lady of Waves wondered what their reaction would have been if they’d noticed her sister just a few feet away.
“Ah, kids!” Lā’au giggled to himself, meticulously going over the rainbow-colored trail of blooms behind him and straightening every bent or unruly petal.
“Ah kids, indeed. I suppose they are only what their parents carve them out to be.”
The Comfey hadn’t noticed his deity’s downturn in mood until she’d spoken up, but didn’t have the time to comment on it before his coworker was back. A half-dozen hollowed gourds full of spring water trailed behind her, marching to an inaudible tune dictated by her psychics, its glow the same shade as her knee-long cape. Ripe, juicy berries followed the gourds in the culinary procession. Mellow Orans for a light snack, sour Aspears and cloying Salacs for their scout once she’d gotten there, and just for their deity, a single modest Wiki.
“Thank you, Kuene,” Lady of Waves remarked, grasping the fruit’s spiky shell with her thin, dark limbs—and stopped. “She’s here.”
A faint gust swept through the clearing, obscuring the latest arrival until she’d consciously stopped disguising herself. The deity and her advisors watched as barely perceptible shimmers first gave way to an elongated shape, then the red and white down that comprised it, and last, golden, tired eyes. The newcomer descended in an increasingly slower spiral until finally touching down on the soft grasses and ferns between the deity and her advisors. Once she did, though, it was as if all her remaining strength left her; tense muscles forcibly relaxed as she tried to remain awake just long enough to debrief.
“Welcome back, Mana’olana.”
The Latias perked up at her name, limiting herself to a gentle bow of her head in response as the two advisors passed water and fruit her way. She dropped even the pretense of elegance, messily chomping at the spiky, green berry in between sips of fresh water. “^Hello everyone! I’m sorry, it’s been... such a long flight, goodness...^”
“I can only imagine—’Johto’ is almost on the other side of the world, is it not?” the Lady of Waves asked, still struggling somewhat with the human name, and Mana’olana firmly nodded in return. “Gather your bearings for as long as you have to, we are in no rush.”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“^Oh, I’m all good, Tapu Fini!^” the Latias reassured. “^And it’s not like much happened while I was there. Another anti-League demonstration on the news, a bigger one than usual! Some people were even outwardly anti-trainer, can’t remember seeing something this bold before in their media. That’s really it, though, nothing impactful for us beyond that.^”
Kuene and Lā’au took the news in intently, but their understanding was limited as always. It was one thing for the globe-trotting dragon to try explaining how the Human world worked with their feats of artifice and engineering, something she had the privilege of seeing for herself, but it was another for them to truly get it. They didn’t, they couldn’t; it was like trying to reconstruct a gourmet meal from a one sentence description of how it tasted at an eight-Sun before dawn. Even the limited conversations they’ve had with the few still-alive Human castaways revealed little. Their world had changed immensely within just a few decades. And yet, the advisors did their best, anything to get a better understanding of what they were dealing with.
Anything to understand their enemy better.
Or at least, that’s how the Oranguru thought of it. Her deity pushed back against that label, an effort the Psychic-type couldn’t understand the motivation behind. Still, she didn’t argue. Too much.
“That is progress, however small. Another grain of dirt eroded from the Human mountain.” As the Lady of Waves swirled the implications of that development in her shell, she felt another disturbance in the surrounding area, another welcome one at that. She spared her sister a fleeting glimpse, catching her stretching her body and hair, before resuming her pondering.
“Mana’olana!” the Lady of Flowers gasped, her voice dreamy. The dragon’s body was carefully, yet firmly, surrounded in a brilliant pink sheen before being pulled closer to the freshly awoken deity, the gesture appreciated by both sides. Mana’olana let go the remaining tension from her body, only barely keeping herself awake at the combined comforts of a full belly and her mom’s mentor’s affection. “Rest, rest, you have witnessed and spied plenty.”
“^I will soon, once we’re done here,^” the dragon reassured.
A few meters away from them, Kuene was far less appreciative of the news than her deity had been. It was an ignorable annoyance on its own, but it was stacked on top of just enough other ignorable annoyances to make her speak up this time, picking up her fur-adorned grass fan just to flick it dismissively. “And yet, it remains a mountain,” she muttered, looking up at the Lady of Waves. “You don’t destroy a mountain by brushing grains of dirt off its top.”
Her fellow advisor knew just what to say, hovering closer with the rainbow flowers trailing behind him. “No, but that is how you reveal the bedrock that does destroy the mountain when struck.”
The Oranguru gave his coworker a flat look. “Oh, what amazing progress. Truly.”
“It is not amazing,” the Lady of Waves murmured, annoyance clear in her divine voice. “I have not claimed, or even implied, that.”
Kuene had been around her deity for too long to be chilled by her displeasure, though still decided to not beat the drum any further. Especially since Lā’au’s thoughts veered closer to her conclusion after he’d given it a moment to chew through. “I’d be untruthful if I claimed our dear Kuene does not have a point, Lady of Waves. Were we to intervene, or even take part in that act of dirt brushing, we could contribute to speeding that process up.” The Comfey was cheerful about his point, but had a feeling that the followup would not go over as well. Even still, he went for it. “Especially if we, as people, were to make use of you and your siblings’ divine gifts for that purpose.”
The Oranguru sighed and shifted her attention back to her poems as her psychics pulled another Oran berry closer. She knew what would happen next, the once-harrowing display worn down to a mere inconvenience in her mind. She didn’t look as a wave of uncomfortable shivering took over both of the deities at the clearing, with not a peep to accompany it. Or at the Lady of Waves, almost trying to hide in her shell as the Lady of Flowers had shifted from gently comforting the dragon leaning against her to clinging to her with an uncomfortable amount of force. They all knew getting a second chance was a miracle they wouldn’t dare risk for anyone.
There was a shadow in their pearlescent eyes, a shadow Kuene had resigned herself from ever knowing. The advisor before her never learned what had caused such reactions. Neither did the advisor before him, nor the one before them. If anyone other than the divine siblings had ever been graced with that knowledge, they’d taken it with themselves once their bodies rejoined the dirt below their feet. It made her deities look weak and demented, an impression they deliberately avoided disproving, only letting their mortal wards glimpse the extent of their strength during their most sacred ceremonies.
Lā’au had to admit defeat, too. He kicked himself over for bringing the topic up too abruptly, for being too expectant of the deities—though that emotion didn’t last for long. It wasn’t the first, or even the tenth time he’d witnessed that, and despite his and Kuene’s many attempts to talk to his deity about it, to discover just what horrible image was seared into the Tapu minds, they were all unsuccessful. As far as he knew, they didn’t even discuss that secret, horrible matter with each other. It was just there, embedded in their minds, it escaped even their most distant and revered oral records.
After an eternity of silence, finally came a response. “I would rather avoid resorting to that. I still maintain that humanity’s evil shall resolve itself without the need for our intervention,” the Lady of Waves firmly answered, voice weak as if struggling against nonexistent lungs. “Their rule of this world isn’t the first, after all. What reasons have we to think it will be the last?”
“None,” the other deity added. Her voice was distant, barely present, catching the concerned attention of both her sister’s advisors and the dragon trying to make her feel better through careful nuzzling. “But remember, Fini—the rule of the empires that came before them only ended when they slaughtered each other, with tens of thousands of our children perishing alongside them.”
Neither the advisors nor the dragon could add much of anything to the Lady of Flowers’s words. However sagely and experienced the former two were, they were still embarrassingly mortal. Their dozens of years were nothing compared to Mana’olana’s hundreds, which in turn was nothing compared to her mentor’s... nobody knew. The dragon just shuddered at the imagery described, her breath growing shallow as she attempted to comprehend such unimaginable bloodshed.
Her mom found it cute, in the most cruel way possible.
Lady of Waves wasn’t done yet, though. “And yet, there already is much more unrest after mere centuries of Human domination than there was after millennia of empires ruled by other creatures.” She kept herself from reacting at Kuene’s chuckle that followed, before turning towards her advisors and continuing. “I recognize how hard that might be to see, with your lives and the lives of two dozen generations before you only knowing the world gripped by Human hands. Believe me, however—their reign is truly nascent.”
She’d made her point alright, but couldn’t resist wrapping it up with a direct comment towards the Oranguru. “And aside from that—what reason have you to think that a direct intervention from us wouldn’t lead to the same catastrophic outcome?”
Kuene looked up from her poems, eyes narrowing. “What reason do you have to think it would, Tapu Fini?”
“Their conquest of each other has been swift and brutal, and that’s with them sharing a kin. The only reason they’ve left us alone is because of our nation being too small and our initial rebuke too fierce for them to justify the lives and resources they’d need to claim it. But, if we were to act boldly and draw attention to ourselves, I’m under no delusion that they would hesitate in destroying us to prove a point. We have fended off an exploratory force two centuries ago. We would not win a war of extermination.”
The Lady of Waves’s response was firm and left no room to argue. However numb the Oranguru thought herself to be, she still flinched at the verbal putdown, laying the piece of flint down before her as she fanned herself. Lā’au took little joy in witnessing that—though couldn’t deny feeling the most fleeting sense of smug satisfaction—and focused on non-violent ways of asserting themselves to the Human world. “Maybe, if we were to show our nationhood in a way humanity couldn’t deny, that would spark a shift within them? Let the people, not just the leaders, know of our presence without acting dramatically.”
While Comfey’s deity saw little use in that approach, her sister found the idea endearing enough to at least inquire into it further. “Mana’olana, sweetie. You spend so much time around Humans, meddling with their heads for your research and scouting, and so I ask you—does that sound possible? Can humans be swayed away from their cruelty?”
The earlier moment had firmly denied Mana’olana even a hope of rest; she was as alert as she would get. Attempts to relax went nowhere, but at the very least she had an answer to her mom’s mentor’s question, however unsatisfactory. “^Some can, for sure. Some already have! Some never will. But, taken all together, I... I think I’m optimistic, actually. For all the unsavory humans I had to talk to, there were thrice as many kind souls that wouldn’t have flinched before helping me out, even if I hadn’t manipulated them to do so.^”
The Comfey enjoyed having his idea be validated, but that didn’t last long. “^I doubt revealing ourselves would work well, though,^” the Latias continued. “^Their empathy is a potent force, even despite the attempts of everyone in their seats of power to snuff it out, but so is their fear. Still, I wish I could contribute to our freedom beyond just scouting and spying on them. I don’t just want to look at the dirt, I want to swipe it myself, when it is safe to do so. I want to do something to free our people from this limbo we’re in.^” She might’ve been a surprisingly mighty creature despite her outward meekness, but it was that meekness that made her pleading eyes even more effective.
“I see!” Lā’au nodded, Mana’olana’s pleading only widening his smile. “And however small in scope, any interaction, any effort in brushing that dirt, would be much better than what we have right now.”
Kuene didn’t care for the pleading, or even for the feeble fact of brushing dirt from a mountain, but wasn’t opposed to anything that made them anything more than idle observers. “Not wrong. Still, I find it terribly hard to imagine the Human reign ending without any intervention on our end.”
“All reigns end,” the Lady of Flowers flatly added. “Some do in words, others in bloodshed, some yet in a flash that leaves more dead than there are grains of sand on the beach. We can only hope that when it comes time for Humans to abandon their throne, it will happen in the former way.”
“That would indeed be an ideal arrangement, should it come to pass.” The Oranguru lied, despite meaning what she’d just said. On a rational level, it would be the best possible ending to everything humanity had caused, but even just thinking about it left her mind heating in anger. She thought she was better than this, but that was just a polite lie—she’d merely gotten better at avoiding the upsetting topics.
The half-eaten Oran berry suddenly crunching and breaking in her psychic grasp left little room for imagination with her mood, but the rest of the clearing still waited until she put words to those feelings. And soon after, she did, her tone as calm as resentment could be. “And yet, it still feels... unsatisfactory to think about, doesn’t it?” It didn’t for anyone else around, but Kuene neither noticed nor honestly cared about that. “It feels like we’d be letting them off far, far too easily for subjecting an uncountable number of souls to misery.”
She looked her deity in the eye and continued. “I’m very aware this is a personal, downright irrational grievance, hardly anything to act upon in itself, but I have to ask, Fini—what is your limit? At what point do Humans become beyond redemption for everything they've done, all the suffering they’ve inflicted?”
The clearing went silent as Tapu Fini closed her eyes. She didn’t care about being addressed disrespectfully; the far more concerning point was the resentment underlining her advisor’s question. The most understandable emotion in the world, one everyone on their islands, from hatchlings to deities, had to contend and duel with. She dug into her thoughts, clashing against that anger at their situation, at their sacred home being turned into little more than a gilded cage through Human presence, at their people being kidnapped, up to and , at the uncountable souls being subjected to torment at human hands.
It was enough to plunge any mind into a red-hot rage that permitted no mercy, a drug like no other. Just like all the times before, though, the deity of tides, seafoam and passage to the world of the dead won in her fight against it. Because, at the end of the day, there was only one answer to Kuene’s question.
“Never.”
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From the Vast! and
a tragedy so ancient it escaped even their most distant and revered oral records.
