---

Any Port, Part 1: Disorientation.

---

“Try it again.”

Slowing to a stop after one step, Lennon sighed, emitting a cloud of breath that quickly disguised itself amid gently falling snow. The lucario turned about and caught his mistress as she stepped forward behind him. He concentrated when the reaches of their auras crossed. “There is nothing to try. The device was destroyed. I discarded it.”

Rhiannon sighed, producing a similar puff. “Wasn’t there an emergency whistle built into the case? We could signal---”

Lennon tugged her gently to encourage her to follow him again. “I tried it.”

“I didn’t hear you try it.”

Together they trudged along a soggy path being cut through a blanket of snow by a vulpix. Her efforts were something of a trade-off, revealing a clear path and discovering any hazards that the snow might conceal, but also creating a trail of moisture and mud that would soon freeze again, turning their path and wet feet upon it to ice. Sasha’s extremities, small as they were, remained warm enough, but Lennon knew that the only thing worse than feeling frost forming on his toes was to stop feeling it.

Lennon concentrated on a message to both, but his mistress in particular. “I’m sorry, but we must stop. If I don’t warm my paws soon…”

“I’m the one who should be sorry,” Rhiannon admitted with a tone of dejection, “I got us into this and I shouldn’t have. I got too excited when he…”

Sasha wandered out of ear-shot of her mistress and teammate to investigate something tickling her senses that was not snowflakes. With a shift of the wind she was certain that she smelled smoke. Turning her head at an angle, she also thought that she might have heard something faint through the dense forest ahead. Dashing back to the others, she got Lennon’s attention and warmed his feet with an ember attack.

Lennon leapt and yelped, cursing the vulpix in his natural tongue.

Ignoring---and amused by---his insults, Sasha asked, “Can you smell the smoke?”

“That’s my fur,” Lennon grumbled to the vulpix, despite the assault having been insufficient to do more than melt away some frost.

“No, over there.” Sasha pitched another ember long and distant, almost reaching the tree line.

Rhiannon asked, “Whatever it is, can we go there?”

Lennon reluctantly failed to argue and took a step. Doing so hurt him badly enough that he could not suppress his reaction: Sasha’s ember warmed his feet just enough to feel how frozen they were.

“Len, I’m putting you in your ball,” Rhiannon warned her lead as her numbed fingers felt for a ball that was his.

The lucario coughed a protest while re-engaging his telepathy. “Madame, please. I’m fine, and you need---”

His mistress reached out to him and captured him in a loose hug. “You need to get out of this cold. Sasha will get me there.”

“What if you’re attacked? She can’t sense a pokemon about to strike, and---”

In a flash, Lennon was recalled.

Sasha smiled with pride: finally, her big chance to show off how useful she was without him upstaging her. “Let’s go fast! You can’t slip if you’re faster than the freezing!”

Once more trudging through a freshly-muddied path, Rhiannon did her best to keep up with the giggles of her vulpix as it melted its way through the forest toward a faint scent.

The forest’s density lessened when they approached an iced-over pond. Tracing around its circumference, the sound was long lost but the scent of smoke persisted. Rhiannon, unaware of her vulpix’s abrupt pause to check the air, accidentally kicked her. “Sasha?”

The vulpix huffed a flame that cleared snow from her face. “I stopped. I think it’s a house but it’s getting too dark to see far.”

“Thank God; I was afraid it would turn out to be an angry Fire-type causing trouble.”

Sasha swallowed a smart remark before leading onward into a clearing. As they neared the source of the smoke, Sasha heard the sound again. Rhiannon did, too. It was a voice, and a very fine one at that, working through a holiday standard.

“…brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel; when a poor man came in sight, gath’ring winter fuel…”

Rhiannon, despite a weakness of voice brought on first by the cold air and second by taking a deep breath of it, picked up the next verse. “Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know’st it, telling; yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?”

Zap flashed his jewels and caught behind the falling snow an outline of a young lady and a vulpix hopping about before her as it pounced and melted the snow that lay ahead. Surprised at his tune’s recognition, the ampharos upped the ante. “Ma’am he lives but three chain hence, south end of this clearing; just beyond a picket fence, his cabin is nearing.”

Sasha, now well out of ember, could barely continue clearing the way, merely breathing heavily and letting what flame may emerge melt a narrow trough ahead of herself.

Rhiannon started being careful about her footing, placing one before the other to avoid standing snow at the path’s sides. She also skipped a stanza. “Sire, the night is colder now and the wind blows stronger; lead me to your humble home, I can go no longer.”

Zap held a couple pieces of chopped wood from the pile he came to visit to her, and then asked her to carry them. As she took them up, Zap knelt and helped Sasha find better footing before returning to both the tune, and the trail of already-trod snow he cut when he came. “Mark my footsteps good, my page, tread thou in them quickly; every moment in this sleet lets the snow grow thickly.” He took up a couple more log fragments for himself and started away, beginning a tune that she did not recognize at all.

In the singer’s steps she trod, where the snow lay dented. The snow’s cold now seemed assuaged, as though it relented. Therefore Christian maids be sure, pokemon possessing, ye whose vulpix have fine nose shall yourselves find blessing.

---

Zap checked on some brewing coffee, glancing toward his master. “Even you couldn’t turn her back out with the storm like this, could you?”

Mortimer gripped his raggedy bedding and rolled over to face away from the room and those who stood in it. “No, no; but this ain’t no place for a pretty little thing like that.”

Sasha stole the compliment with a smile and dropped it with a command. “Ree! Come here! The fire’s so warm I just wanna jump in it.”

Rhiannon moved slowly toward Sasha and knelt nearby both her and the fireplace.

Zap filled a few mugs. “Go ahead and toss those in.”

The trainer found an empty space before herself and set the logs she bore there. “I’ll let you tend to the fire, if you don’t mind.”

“Okay,” Zap agreed dismissively, “but you’ll have to tend to this, instead.” He sat one mug beside her.

As Rhiannon reached near it, Sasha gave it a sniff and complained. “Coffee? Yucky! Make cocoa! Lenny’s gonna want cocoa.”

Sasha’s mistress scolded her. “You know you can’t talk to people like that. But, you’re right.” She raised her head and turned around somewhat. “Uh, is it okay if I let my other pokemon out? A couple need some help at least.”

Mortimer grumbled. Zap translated. “If they’re not too big. This place is pushing it at three. And, I’ll see about cocoa. There might be some instant somewhere.”

Rhiannon felt for Lennon’s ball and asked Sasha to pick a place to release him. She chose Zap’s bedding. Lennon fell as he reconstituted, bumping his head against the wall behind him. Sensible in seconds, his sensors splayed. He threw himself forward, found no footing, and found the cabin’s wooden floor with his ventral spike. Sasha laughed until Rhiannon shushed her.

“Len, it’s okay. These two men are letting us warm up.”

Lennon knelt beside his mistress, placing one of his paws near her hands and raising the other defensively, before establishing aural telepathy with her. “They deceive you. One man, one pokemon: ampharos. Wait, more than that, I sense something behind the door where you released me. A Psychic-type. It’s asleep but not unaware. I don’t like it. I can feel it synchronizing with us. And---” Lennon subtly glanced upward, “---we’re leaving.” He tried to pull Rhiannon to her feet, but she resisted.

“I wasn’t deceived,” she whispered, “just wrong. Are you sure they’re dangerous?”

Her lucario continued. “The human, very. His aura is disgusting. The ampharos is stained with treachery. The Psychic is sending me false information. I can’t see what---” A squeaky noise interrupted his transmission.

Slowly a closet door opened inward and a white wing with accentuating red, black---and a little bit of golden---feathers emerged first and the green bird that owned it soon after. “There are many things you can’t see in auras,” it warned, “learn to use your eyes and your reason, too, or you may as well be blind.” Vera walked around the stranger and her dogs to flop down in Mortimer’s recliner using a very distinct technique.

“What is that?” Rhiannon asked Lennon politely.

“Xatu,” Lennon answered, “my Fighting-type attacks will be resisted. Your other pokemon must protect you against her.”

Vera hummed, “I do not foresee combat in my immediate future. You may pretend that I’m not here if that helps.”

“You’d like that,” Rhiannon overheard Lennon consider as an unspoken reply.

Zap came near the recliner. “Did we wake you up?”

She brushed his chin with her left wing. “No, I started expecting this to happen before sunrise this morning.”

Lennon’s ears lowered, remembering what happened before sunrise that morning.

Rhiannon bade Lennon to sit, found his feet, and took them in her hands. “You’re still too cold. This doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“A little, but not too much,” he admitted with slight understatement.

Mortimer leaned up a little, noticing the girl and her two pokemon beside the fire and Zap approaching with a mug. “Stepped in a bit of frostbite out there? Don’t get those tootsies too hot with the fire or it’ll get even worse. Holdin’ ’em like that ain’t a bad idea, though.”

Zap suggested that Lennon bundle in his comforter for the time being and turned on Mortimer’s radio to a low volume.

Rhiannon motioned toward her ball clip. “I’m going to let my other pokemon out, now, okay?”

“There are a few wound-treatment sprays on the bookshelf,” Vera interjected, “and try to keep your eevee away from Mortimer’s chest.”

Standing carefully, Lennon hobbled to the bookshelf and found two potion sprays while Rhiannon found Adrina’s pokeball. The altaria whistled weakly. Lennon bit off the locking tab of a spray and doused Adrina’s wing. They shared a brief conversation about their situation while Zap ventured to pry a little.

“Ree, was it?”

“Rhiannon, but that’s okay.”

“Do you live near here?”

“No. I’m from Hollingsmoth Island.”

Zap tried to settle in beside her, but Lennon’s snarl changed his mind. He instead went to his cot and Lennon took the position Zap intended. “That’s a long way to wander in a snow storm.”

“Yeah, but it’s Christmas.” She reached to her ball clip and released an eevee. “I wanted to give this little guy an evolution. He met a glaceon owned by a vacationer one day and fell in love with ice. Started getting in trouble because of it, too. Anyway, I heard if you find an iced-over rock in a place that’s cold enough and train your eevee there, it will evolve that way, so I decided to bring him to the Azom Heights and see what would happen.”

“You travel light,” Zap noted.

“We got into some trouble.”

The eevee squirmed free of Rhiannon’s arms and started checking out the cabin. Sasha followed behind him.

Zap looked downward. “We reside light. You’re welcome to stay and have some drinks---”

Mortimer piped up, “Just who do ya’ think owns this place? You let a sheep use your address for a music of the month club and this is the respect you get.”

“---but we don’t have much for supplies to spare.”

Lennon barked something across the room to Sasha, who, with the eevee, was investigating a chest with a rope and pulley attached to its lid. Ignored, Lennon barked again.

Sasha jumped. “Oh, he says we don’t want your… is that like, ‘gifts?’ ”

Lennon clarified.

“Ah, new words! Uh, your---cherry tree!” Sasha beamed.

Mortimer rolled over again. “If you don’t want my cherry tree, there’s a front door and a back door. Take your pick.”

Rhiannon pulled her lucario into a hug and said nothing.

---

Zap touched the radio’s antenna with one of his horns to improve reception. “…will continue until well after daybreak tomorrow. All residents of Nybomy Fields, Fenchone Plantation, Allylidene Forest, Yureido Cove, Mount Buchu, Azom Heights, Dithio; and until 0300 hours, Sulmepride are advised to remain sheltered. Pending further developments, we now resume our regular programming. The time is 19:04. You are listening to Fenchone’s Forgotten Favorites on FM-73.8, N6XFP.”

“Gonna need more wood,” Mortimer contributed.

“Gonna need more wool,” Zap refined. “I wish I still had what I had when I was little. Although I wouldn’t be able to carry the firewood very well if I had to trade my arms for it.” Zap, passing through the wash room, worked his hooves into loosely knitted booties, and draped a very poorly fitting jacket over himself. A chill rushed in while he rushed out through the rear exit. The last sound heard from him was not the shutting of the door or the whistles of the wind but the first verse of another song.

“He’s been in bed this whole time, hasn’t he?” Rhiannon asked of her guardian with a whisper.

Lennon grunted faintly. “I sense in him an intention to move.”

A moment later, Mortimer shrugged off his raggedy covers and stood with a groan to cross his cabin and also depart.

“Now would be a good time to leave,” Lennon suggested to Rhiannon.

“Why aren’t you telling me everything, Len?” she asked him, “This isn’t like you.”

“Because he can smell the past, yet what he senses cannot explain it,” Vera interjected.

Rhiannon faced Vera’s direction when she spoke. “Can you explain it?”

The recliner groaned a little as Vera adjusted her posture. “Yes.”

Silence dominated for as long as Sasha’s patience held out. “Well?”

Vera leaned over the chair’s right arm-rest and spoke directly to the vulpix in a very quiet voice. “Sometimes it’s impolite to tell other people’s stories for them.” She straightened out again. “If I may address you by your given name”---Vera paused, until receiving an affirmative response---“Rhiannon, it is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Vera---”

“A lie!” Lennon both barked in his natural tongue and projected for his mistress’s benefit. “A small one, but still,” he added, sensing a cooling of the room that was not due to the weather.

Vera trilled scoldingly and responded, “A rose by any other name. You don’t object to your partner’s eight letters being reduced to three. Please, look upon my four with mercy; I started with fifteen.”

“That is a lot, I guess,” Rhiannon replied.

“I sometimes wonder if those unown give everything a unique name just to keep all of themselves employed. As I was saying, you may call me ‘Vera,’ as that is how my League registration reads, no matter what the symbol pokemon named me.”

“I’m happy to meet you, too. I’ve never met a xatu before. Uh, if you don’t mind and it’s okay with you, I’d---”

“You may, but mind the little table beside the chair. Mortimer would become grumpy if something happened to the photo he keeps on it.”

Rhiannon left the fire’s side and walked slowly to the recliner. She took up Vera’s wing and felt along its length. “It feels totally different than Adrina’s.” Her altaria un-nestled her head from her wings at the sound of her name and chirped lightly. Rhiannon extended the liberty she took as far as Vera’s beak.

Interrupted by a faint noise, Rhiannon asked, “What are you two getting into?”

“Nothing,” although Sasha intimated otherwise with her inflection. Lennon crossed the room and pulled the eevee away from the suspended rope he was tugging on.

Mortimer returned, flocked and shivering. “The outhouse is vacant if you need it.” He shooed three canid pokemon away from his chest and returned to his repose.

Zap returned shortly thereafter with as much wood as he could carry. “That should be enough to last us through the night.” He looked around. Lennon had his blanket, an altaria took his cushion. “Are you hungry?” he asked, and the reactions of all but his roommates answered him. “I can make some noodles, Ma’am, but you’ll have to share it lightly, unless some of your pokemon are satisfied with berries.”

Rhiannon returned to a place near the fire, and as she knelt, near Lennon. “We will appreciate that. Thank you.”

Vera suddenly sprang from the recliner, returned to the closet, and shut the door behind herself. Lennon stood in a defensive posture as she passed by, and was slow to settle again.

“May I sit in the recliner?” With approval, Rhiannon returned to the chair and settled into it. It reeked of cigar smoke, but its comfort could not be denied. Lennon sat cross-legged beside it, while Sasha and the eevee climbed atop and settled in. She placed a hand upon each. Better than a blanket.

Soon Zap set up a folded table that had two chairs and placed a frugal dinner upon it. Rhiannon recited grace while Mortimer dragged himself over for a share. The pokemon stuck to berries almost exclusively, although Sasha was gifted a little something from the table when Mortimer figured that nobody was looking.

---

The fire died down to almost nothing overnight. The cabin stood still and silent as all within slept a little late that morning. It was a calm that begged to be shattered. Lennon opened one eye; a hostile aura approached swiftly.

Thud! came a knock at the door that was more of a punch. Granted, if he who threw it actually put some effort into it, the door would have broken away. Mortimer grumbled and slid out of his bed, immediately cursing the warmth lost in so doing. He came around a half-wall beside his door and opened it enough to speak through.

“Whaddyu want?”

“To get on with my route,” Ford admitted coldly. “I don’t know how long this break in the winds will last.” The dragonite shoved a couple packages and a few letters against Mortimer’s chest and turned away, flexing his wings in preparation of take-off.

“Well, well; thanks for not scattering them all up and down the trail between here and the auto path.”

“I was tempted,” he growled before re-fastening the strap of his mail bag and departing.

Mortimer sat the packages before his bookshelf. Then, pulling a frayed rope and lifting the lid of his chest, he sifted through and withdrew two items. One, a pine-tree shaped air freshener, and two, a staple gun with which to tack it to the bookshelf’s wooden frame. “Ho, ho, ho,” he sarcastically commented before going to the wash room to make himself presentable.

“I guess we should get going,“ Rhiannon called across the cabin to Mortimer and Zap, although the latter was sound asleep, “thanks again for your hospitality.” She recalled Adrina and bade her other pokemon to her side.

Mortimer leaned through the doorway after he heard his front door open. “You ain’t gonna make your lucario walk through that snow are ya’?”

Lennon did not appreciate the insinuation of weakness, or being drawn back inside the cabin.

Mortimer continued, “Last thing you wanna do after gettin’ a frostbite warmed up is make it cold again. Especially since there ain’t any pokemon centers near here to get him taken care of right. There’s a vet in Yureido Cove with a machine, but if you got lost findin’ your way here, you better let me get you there so you don’t get any loster. I’ve gotta go there and resupply while there’s a chance of something still bein’ left on the shelves.”

Rhiannon, Sasha, Mortimer, and an eevee slowly worked their way along a narrow and obscure path to an equally obscure and un-designated route that delivered them to Yureido Cove. Although school was not officially canceled, since all the pupils lived near-enough-by that failure to attend was inexcusable even beneath a few decimeters of snow, the lesson being taught seemed to be the physics of solidified water packed into spheres and given parabolic trajectories. Sasha talked at Mortimer very nearly the whole way, although more for her own amusement and Rhiannon’s benefit than for any concern about what Mortimer might care to learn about.

Yureido’s small market was well-shopped but not yet bare. Despite Mortimer alerting Rhiannon to the market’s policy, after recalling Sasha and her eevee, she released Lennon and entered.

“Hey!” boomed the owner, “Can’t you read? No pokemon allowed in here, no exceptions!”

Filling a basket with non-perishables, Mortimer butted in, “The girl needs to use your phone if the lines are still up.”

“One exception,” Rhiannon advised as she followed Lennon toward the merchant’s counter. Her lucario scraped from within his fur a fine necklace and revealed a thin cylindrical white pendant with a red tip.

Defeated, the merchant stolidly responded to Mortimer’s comment. “The phone’s a crown to start and a bob for every minute.”

“My treat,” Mortimer dismissively muttered as he rounded an aisle’s obstructive display.

Rhiannon started dialing as soon as she received the telephone. “I’ll pay you back. You’ve been so kind, it’s the least I can do.”

Mortimer was not sure how that k-word got pinned to his lapel, but he made no immediate action to remove it.

The telephone connected through. “Hi, Mom! Wha---Yureido Cove. Yeah, about that snow…”

Visibly, Lennon ignored the shopkeeper and the shopkeeper ignored Lennon. In actuality, Lennon was paying careful attention to the other’s aura, and the other was paying careful attention to the lucario’s aura sensors. In a sense they were already intimate friends; they mutually understood each other’s dedication to the same goal: to ensure that nobody and nothing caused any trouble. If their personalities were ones that could be put at ease, that realization may have done so.

“…I’m not coming home until I get him up that mountain, Mom. Then I miss Christmas Day; it’s not like Dad’s going to be there. He always sends a card. I’ll surely be back before Three Kings’ so this way the tree will have company the whole way through. You can too believe it; you always said I inherited Dad’s hair and your gumption.”

Mortimer placed his basket of goods on the counter.

“There isn’t a pokemon center here. I’m at a store, but it isn’t a pokemart. That would be easier than going back to Dithio to get one from the center there; let me check.” Rhiannon set the telephone aside for a moment. “Pardon me, but can I buy a trainer’s device here?”

“I’ve got a used match reporter somewhere,” admitted the merchant. “The shell’s cracked and the screen’s a little glitchy, but I guess that’s not a big deal.”

“It’s his problem,” she said with a giggle as she playfully ran her fingertips around between her lucario’s ears. “I don’t have money with me, but if you can register it for me, I should have enough in my account to cover it, and this phone call. And supplies. Actually,” she returned to the phone, “I should be okay, but if you were going to give me any money for Christmas, it might be better in my League account than in my stocking…”

Mortimer finished his transaction with the merchant, who then started looking around in a silver-lined safe containing electronic gizmos and other valuables. “If she comes up short, put it on my tab. It ain’t like I won’t be taking it back outta ya’ next time we play poker.”

Rhiannon wrapped up her telephone call and turned toward Mortimer. “I said I should be paying you back, but thank you.”

“Don’t get all sappy. I’m just doin’ what I gotta to get you on your way and out of mine.”

The merchant tapped a reporter against the edge of his counter and it made a sound. “Alright, what’s your I.D.?”

“EW-31305.”

He placed it on the counter and slid it before her. “You’ll have to put in your PIN and deactivate your old device.”

Lennon handed it to his mistress and let her enter a code.

She handed it back for him to hold and whispered, “How much do I have?”

Lennon looked at the funds once, and then again after a faint chime. He concentrated on a message. “Your stocking is stuffed.”

---

Rhiannon looked the part of a mountain climber as she exited the store wearing much of her yuletide advance. Lennon tried to hurry her along, but she smelled something in the air not unlike a comfortably broken-down chair. “Mortimer?”

He cast a grouchy glance at the wooden Indian standing beside himself. “The vet’s on the other end of town. Since that ain’t too far, you might see if he’ll take your lucario as a limp-in. He won’t take battler cases unless it’s life-threatening, but since it’s just stupidity going up the Azoms in the dead of winter, he might have a little pity for ya’.”

“That’s good to know, but I was going to ask if it’d be alright if we stopped in on the way back down.”

Mortimer took a deep drag. “Well you know I haven’t the heart to turn you away if you do. Just don’t be tellin’ people about it. Having girls younger than the formula say comin’ ’round can’t be any good for my reputation; whatever’s left of it. And, make sure that you all do make it back down. There are a bunch of those rocks that ice over and can make an eevee evolve up there, but the sneasels got a thing for ’em, too. You got a pretty good setup with a Fighting and a Fire, but your eevee doesn’t look tough enough to hold ’em off and your altaria will get eaten up like cotton candy if you let it out of the ball.”

“I think we’ll be okay. Lennon can feel them coming. The ursaring only got the jump on us because I had---”

“Turned your back for a second. Even if you’ve got a ninetales with you, you turn your back on just one of those little shits and somebody comes home dead. Azom sneasels form packs and move by the dozen, Kiddo. Don’t treat it like you’re visiting a ski resort.”

With some effort, Lennon established a telepathic link to Mortimer. “I understand now. We’ll be careful. And, I apologize.”

“Yeah, it’s nothing. Now, get out of my head and get her and that pup up the mountain. I’m already havin’ to put up with the bird going in there; my brain ain’t got room for two.”

---

“…which puts you,” Doctor Baysleft rolled the eevee over and started tickling his belly, making it squirm, “in the bottom of the eighth with three runners on. Now,” he lifted the pokemon from his exam table and placed it on the floor, “why don’t you go out and have some fun in the snow with your friend?” He opened a door that led to a fenced backyard, and Sasha went out behind him. “Your other two are in worse condition, I understand?”

Lennon stepped forward and climbed upon the table to be examined.

Rhiannon found a seat nearby. “I think we got him out of the cold in time, but his feet are still bothering him.”

The doctor began his examination there, but gave the lucario a complete once-over. “Okay, recall him. He needs a rejuvenation pass for his feet, and I want to see the report.”

For once, Lennon did not feel a need to protest. Either this doctor was completely trustworthy or his aura sensors were on the blink.

While Lennon got processed, Rhiannon released Adrina. “I used a medical spray on her wing after Lennon drove the ursaring off, and again that night, but she’s still hurting.”

The altaria’s examination was very brief. “Multiple dislocations in her right wing. I suggest we send her over the network to Coumarin. There’s a specialist there; he’ll get her flying faster than anybody else in the region can.”

Rhiannon stood and called her altaria’s name and received a strained reply. “Maybe I can bring you back in the summer. I know you wanted to enjoy the view from the top,” she said as she approached the examination table with an extended hand. Adrina craned her neck into her trainer’s palm and brushed her arm with a fluffy and still functional wing. “Doctor, do you think I can have her back in time for Christmas?”

“I think you can have her back for Christmas carols, but she won’t be fit to fly.”

Carefully pulling the dragon against herself, Rhiannon hugged her with a sigh. “You get better for me, okay?”

Adrina sang softly as her owner recalled her and handed her over to the doctor for transference.

Lennon’s treatment concluded. Baysleft examined the report while Lennon tested out his toes. “I understand it’s part of his duty, but he really needs more down-time. Like sleep-deprivation, if he keeps using active aura skills all the time, his health is going to deteriorate and his life-span will be shortened; drastically if you don’t act now.”

“I know. I’ve told him so many times that I never want to replace him. He doesn’t listen to me.”

Lennon suddenly hugged her. “I listened to you. Then, an ursaring came for you. I cannot let that---”

Unable to hear him, Baysleft interrupted Lennon’s communique. “I can’t prescribe anything for disobedience. But, I’d like to, because I hate seeing a lucario go to waste. I can, however, suggest you get him some booties. There’s an old lady here in town who makes them. Usually, to order, but maybe she’ll have something close enough ready-made.”

“It seems like everybody knows somebody in town who can solve a problem whenever one comes up,” she mused.

“That’s how folk are around these parts. Everyone’s got something unique that they do.”

Soon, Rhiannon called an end to Sasha and the eevee’s play and recalling the latter, they left the village doctor and sought the village cobbler.

---

Vera puffed on her pipe once for every puff Mortimer pulled from his cigar. She made it look meaningful, but she did it to annoy him. Presently, his thoughts were too distracting for him to notice her mocking gesture. When his radio went to commercial, Vera broke her silence. “Even if that did happen, it would not be your fault.”

“But, will it happen?”

Vera stood silently.

“Come on! It’s your big chance to do something useful around here.”

Vera puffed a ring.

Zap chuckled. “Vince used to say things like that when he was frustrated with her, too.”

Mortimer grunted. “This isn’t asking which little league team to put your lunch money on.”

Breaking her silence, Vera commented, “If you feel so strongly, then do something about it. Otherwise, don’t. I am here for your emotional benefit, not to make your choices for you.”

Zap brought Mortimer a drink and whispered something into his ear. Mortimer took two sips before realizing what the ampharos meant, turning on his radio, and relaxing.

---