It took a whole week to catch-up on the chores around the ranch and settling in for a cold winter. Sinnoh was notoriously cold in the winter and fairly moderate in the summer. After harvesting his small farm, planting the new seeds, and even starting out a small orchard section for some fruit trees for the spring, Ethan began chopping wood to create a stockpile.

  If there was one major downside to being poor, as he was, it was the inability to buy proper electric tools and having to settle for manual labor. Many people would assume that you used an axe to chop down trees. While you could, it wasn’t very optimal. He had an axe and a foldable saw, and the saw was much better. Chopping and sawing down a singular tree this deep in Eterna Forest was a long, tiring, and arduous process. Unlike the trees closer to the main route, which were smaller and were trimmed occasionally by Pokemon Rangers, the ones surrounding his ranch were thick and hardy, hundreds of years old maybe—he wasn’t really an expert on the local tree lifespans.

  Whether it was luck, or his sponging of information from YouTube, Ethan knew generally how to fell a tree, and have it fall in a direction he wanted. With a few videos on the pokemon equivalent, he got all the information he needed as a refresher. So far, he’d only managed to cut one down. It was a smaller one just for a test run, but it went smoothly. The next tree was going to be more than enough wood to have him splitting for days.

  It was a biggin’.

  After a final thwack, a mighty shove, and the creaking snap of groaning wood, the second tree finally fell, smacking the ground with a thunderous thrum right in between his home and the meadow.

  As he began the process of ridding the trees of its limbs with his saw, Ethan glanced at the small window that looked out over the patio from the kitchen of his home, finding his new Litten perched lazily on the windowsill. His little fire-cat’s tail swished lazily as he watched from the warmth of his home, unwilling to step outside into the chill.

  It took another two hours to saw and chop away the offending branches and create a large pile of burnable wood. When finished, he decided to take a break for dinner before sawing the trunk into splittable chunks.

  As his feet crunched tiny twigs, leaves, and the beginning hints of powdered snow as he walked towards his home, the lumbering frame of Ursaring pushed herself out of the forest. Litten’s paws patted the window at the sight of his mother, and Ethan gave his big bear a tired smile. Ursaring didn’t even stop to blink as she strode towards him with her hunt in hand. She dumped off three dead Magikarp onto the nearby patio and then walked over to him with a grunt of disapproval. She passed him… a dead Starly. In his discomfort, Ethan nearly dropped the remains of the local pokemon, but Ursaring’s squinted glare had him hold the corpse awkwardly.

  “Uh…” Ethan started, not knowing what to say.

  Ursaring, ever since he’d known her, had always hunted for her and her children's food but kept him out of the process because she obviously knew he didn’t like the sights. Now that he was taking care of her latest child, she hunted Magikarp from the nearby shallow stream for him to give to Litten.

  Ursaring spoke some loud words that he couldn’t understand, looking up to the roof of his home. Not soon after, Chatot trilled and peaked over the ledge.

  “? Chatooot! ?”

  After some back and forth, Chatot fluttered down to land on her spot on his shoulder as Ethan himself sat down on the steps of his patio to rest. After thirty or so seconds of poke-speak, Chatot spoke for Ursaring. “You need meat. Working hard. You are small.” Chatot looked to the dead Starly, then turned back to him to poke him in the temple with her beak. “Gone already. Don’t waste life.”

  Ethan spared a glance at both of his pokemon then the corpse. His feelings must have betrayed him because Chatot knocked on his head again. “I am not a Starly. I am me.” She lifted a wing to pat him on the head in an attempt to comfort him. “Eat.”

  Ever since being found by Pokemon Ranger Elise, Ethan had… always been very lean, to put it politely. While not emaciated anymore, he definitely wasn’t putting on the pounds. A berry, vegetables, and fruit diet would do that to someone. His only source of protein was the small amounts of oats he had growing.

  He’d ‘kill’ to eat some peanut butter again.

  “Alright,’ Ethan gingerly grabbed his freshly hunted meal. “Thank you, Ursaring. If you ever want me to cook your food for you, just let me know.”

  Ursaring waved him off, but leaned over and gave him a quick bone creaking one armed hug and an exasperated huff of air to the top of his head. She didn’t need him to take care of her.

  As he stood, Chatot flew off to her nest, where her old metronome was clicking to and fro. Ursaring passed him by and opened his patio door to let her son out, who she scooped up with love. Ethan went inside as Ursaring sat down on the patio to eat the Magikarp with Litten.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  It took about five seconds of Ethan moving around pots, pans, and trays for Munchlax to peek into the kitchen to see what he was cooking, drool starting to pool on his licked lips. “Munchlax, will you go and get Jessie and James? Oh, and Joyce if she’s not busy?”

  Munchlax gave his chest a mighty thump, as in saying ‘You can trust me!’ then ran for the door to go about his new mission. Ethan ran his hand along the smooth feathers of the Starly and gave a sigh. When Jessie, James, and Joyce—The J’s—arrived fifteen minutes later, Ethan had finished plucking the bird and had gotten rid of its inedible parts.

  Jessie and James gave a little shake as they settled into the nearby dinner table’s chairs, glad to be out of the cold, while Joyce gave him a knowing, concerned frown. “Need some help?”

  Ethan nodded, gesturing to the plucked bird. Joyce wordlessly came forward and looked over the piece of meat as Ethan collected the ‘scrap’ and got rid of it outside. When he returned, Joyce was staring at the meat with a conflicted face. “Starly?” She asked.

  “Yup. Ursaring brought it to me to eat. It was already gone when I got it, so…”

  “That’s alright, Ethan. It’s the way the world works. You have dietary needs just like your pokemon do.” Joyce cut him off, “Use as much as you can and respect what has been taken and given in return.”

  “Know any recipes? The only birds I know how to cook are chicken and turkey, and you obviously don’t have those here.”

  Hell, the only reason he knew how to pluck and process a bird was because of his grandparents. He’d had to behead and process a few chickens way back when. Some skills aren’t easily forgotten.

  “Not off the top of my head. We don’t have many Starly in Kanto.” Joyce turned to the two Rockets who were watching with mild interest. “Do you guys know a Starly recipe?”

  “Probably tastes the same as Pidgey?” Jessie remarked, but James gave her a scandalized look.

  “You can’t just treat every bird like they’re a Pidgey! You wouldn’t want a Far’Fetched prepared in the same way, would you?! I’ve never had one before. I don’t really cook either, so I couldn’t really help you out.”

  Ethan and Jessie connected the dots, but Joyce was left slightly bewildered. “James had… a different upbringing to most people.” He explained. “He probably knows lots of fancy meals, but nothing us plebeians would eat.”

  “Not true!” James droned on, but Jessie was already over it.

  “I’m the one who cooks for us James, drop it. Meowth cooks better than you.”

  Ethan brought out a large pot and threw it on the heat as he tuned out their now bickering argument over food. “Joyce, I’ll just make a stew. Do you all want to join me for dinner? I should have enough.”

  “That’d be wonderful.” Joyce smiled, “Want me to help?”

  “Sure,” Ethan grabbed a knife and began separating the bird into six parts, separating the thighs, wings, and halving the breasts. “I should have everything we need in my cellar. Go down and grab four potatoes, five or six carrots, two onions, two branches of celery, and a handful of garlic cloves. I got the herbs, salt, and pepper up here.”

  “Yes, Chef.” Joyce mocked, opening up his cellar door by the window to climb in.

  “Jessie, wanna help out? Need to dice up the veggies.”

  Jessie stood and threw a triumphant look towards her partner. “Sure! Don’t let James help. He’d ruin everything, like he always does.”

  “Fine! I’ll just go watch T.V.” James went off into the living room, where Munchlax, Pachrisu, Pikachu, and little Pichu were watching some movie—Well, Munchlax and Pachirisu were watching, as Pikachu played peeka-boo with Pichu.

  Time flew by as Ethan got to cooking with two extra sets of hands. The smell of searing meat, the sounds of chopping and dicing of vegetables, idle chatter, and asking for help…

  Life was good for a moment, worries fell away as the warmth, smell, and sounds of his home just… clicked into place.

  Ethan smiled as he saute’d the onions and garlic in the same pot the meat seared in. The meat was set aside, and after a few minutes, he threw in the slices of carrots, chunks of potatoes, chopped celery, and stirred them in the thick slurry of flavor left behind from the meat. Once his kitchen smelled divine, he added in a few cups of water, a light amount of flour to thicken, a pinch of salt and pepper, then a handful of various herbs grown in his garden, and put the meat back in.

  He brought his concoction to a boil, threw on the lid, and let it simmer.

  Over the next hour and a half, he stood in the kitchen and stirred their meal. Jessie and Joyce left for the living room to mingle with James and the pokemon had begun converging to the good vibes and smell of food.

  So lost he was in his mind and task, basking in a home that felt like home, that he didn’t detect the intruder by his side. “Kind one. I am glad to see you well.”

  Ethan’s hand twitched, clanking against the pot as he whipped around to face Ralts’ mother’s warm smile. He held a hand over his thumping heart as he let loose his unknowingly held breath. “Here to finally pick up your lost one?”

  “I knew where she went the second she left. Has she been a bother?”

  Ethan huffed and flicked her a knowing look. “She’s been her normal self.” As if that said enough. “She’s in the living room, I think. Actually, she might still be in my room with Smeargle painting.”

  Gardevoir tilted her head slightly, taking him in. “You didn’t catch her yet?”

  “Well, it’s not like I’m in the business of abducting children.” Ethan balked. “She ran away from home and we went on a little adventure to Floaroma Town. she’ll be happy to tell you all about it.”

  There was a moment of silence, where the only sound came from the gentle laughter from the living room beyond the kitchen. “She is too proud to ask you. Surely, you know this.”

  Ethan looked up to the ceiling, praying for it or something to give him strength. “I know. Doesn’t mean I was just going to catch her though. She’s your daughter.”

  “You have my blessing.” Gardevoir floated off through his home like she lived here, knowing exactly where to go. “I’ll speak with her first.”

  There was a slight commotion not three seconds later as everyone in the next room had a startle as an unknown Gardevoir just floated past.

  Ethan decided, with a smile and a nod, that they could figure her out for themselves.

  He continued to cook.

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