---

Any Port, Part 3: Adrift.

---

Radio static hissed in competition with the atmosphere. Lennon tried to find an orientation that would give them an update on the weather, just to hear confirmed what they suspected. The way down was faster and easier, although the tricky spots were tricky both ways. Their path up was still visible, as not enough snow had fallen to fill in Sasha’s gorge. There were other prints in the snow. They seemed light and confident. Whatever creature left them most often stayed on the trail, but it abandoned it and detoured every few dozen meters. What the prints belonged to, Lennon could not tell. The eevee asked a question.

“He wants to know if Sasha’s still okay.”

Rhiannon could barely speak, her lips cold and chapped and her jaw threatening to chatter like a particular novelty toy. “She should be stable inside her ball. As long as the button doesn’t pop off, she’ll be okay.”

The eevee pulled ahead a little, less worried but no less concerned. They continued for a while, each thinking of but not speaking of a desire to stop. At a moment when all three were about to come to a wordless agreement, the radio cleared up to veto the motion. “…continue to intensify throughout the night. All trainers near the Azom Heights, Dithio, and Sulmepride districts are advised to seek shelter as a precautionary measure. N2HWX. Ocimene Region Pokemon League Weather Station service.” A click and a gap of static came for a moment, then, a slightly musical electronic tone followed by, “N1WWV. Four. Six. Three. One. Niner. 0000 hours, mark. N1WWV.” The tone played again, backwards. They did not stay tuned to listen for a repeat of the weather report; it had to be all downhill henceforth.

With the radio off, another gentle whisper became audible and grew louder as they descended. The river came into view, and near it, some thing, or things. Dark, and ill-defined, what they were was not apparent beneath the moonlight, but Lennon detected at least one small, weak aura moving about near the river’s shore. Avoiding the scene they knew was the wise move, but without means to cross, they needed to follow along its path to find a way, and Ford did advise that they needed to trace it westward.

Although three forms came into view, one quite large and two rather small, Lennon counted only one aura. It was disturbed, distracted, and disorganized. It almost did not notice their approach. When it did, it turned about and extended its claws, brandishing them wildly, tracing arcs beneath the moonlight as they contrasted against the creature itself, almost invisible like a blot of ink on the snow. Only its head---indicated by two spots of red; one of amber; and one of magenta, off-center favoring its left---could be distinguished.

Lennon expected it to pose no threat if he were in condition to fight, but he was not prepared to battle one-handed, especially with his sling being an obvious vulnerability. They kept their distance as they passed by, until Lennon noticed the footprints scattered all about. “Were you following us?” he asked.

The creature kept its claws extended. “Yes.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Need good trainer. Need help.” He turned to face halfway toward the other two bodies. “Got sick.”

Rhiannon asked what they were talking about. Lennon explained in summary. She took one step forward, “Let us try to help.” She took another, “I don’t have any poti---”

“No!” the creature shouted, in a word she could understand. “Bad trainer. I see; you hurt sad ghost.”

The eevee approached the sneasel slowly and said something to it in a gentle tone. Rhiannon voiced a word of caution, and Lennon ordered him to retreat, but instead, when the sneasel replied, “Bad trainer; make you say lies,” he leapt forward and tackled the black cat. Both rolled in the snow. The sneasel managed a few scratches, but even an almost untrained eevee three-tenths its size outperformed it by virtue of nourishment alone.

When the sneasel cried its submission and began to struggle not to fight back but to escape, the eevee stopped attacking it. It pulled itself out of a depression of snow halfway, too weak to withdraw further. The eevee began breathing heavily, panting and shuddering. The sneasel covered its eyes partially, too terrified to look but too terrified to look away as the victor stood tall above it; and taller; and taller still until it became of greater stature.

“Len, what---did my eevee just---” Rhiannon stopped when she heard her eevee’s call, deeper and stronger, and almost fell over when he gently hopped up against her. She reached downward and captured the rear side of his head in her palms. Instantly she felt her forearms become wrapped with a ribbon each. They gripped gently and felt impossibly silky and smooth. “You’re not a glaceon. And, you’re not an umbreon. Eevee-boy, what did you turn into?” The pokemon she held made another sound and nuzzled her slowly.

Lennon projected, “I don’t know.” His mistress did not know if that was translation or his own statement. He walked to the sneasel and crouched beside it, slowly and carefully to avoid aggravating his injuries. “What caused all of this,” he asked telepathically.

“I ate the last berry. Papa bear and sister were angry. Went to find food, none for me. They found meat. They ate. None for me. Sister got sick. Went to river to drink. Didn’t come back. Papa bear looked, found her. She was more sick. Papa got thirsty too. Drank. She slept. He started to spit wet snow. He slept. They sleep all day and night.”

Lennon switched from translation to reply. “Did you eat the meat?”

The sneasel spoke awkwardly in human tongue as though it would improve communication, “None for me.”

The lucario spoke privately to his mistress. “This is the ursaring that attacked us. I think somebody put out poisoned meat to stop his raids. These two sneasels were the distraction that helped get us split up and off our guard.”

Rhiannon asked with a weary voice, “Sneasel, do you know where we can cross this river without getting our feet wet?” It did. “Lead us there, and maybe I can find you some food. Okay deal?”

The troupe followed the inky blot, half obscured by now densely falling snow. It stopped at a part of the river that was a little narrow and had large rocks scattered about it, just large and close enough together to be carefully crossed. Lennon carried Rhiannon on his back, much to the anguish of his wounded leg, to avoid risking her suffering a misstep and falling into the waters. This time it was her turn to protest against deaf ears. Once they found the southern shore, nothing seemed like a better idea than to make camp, but their guide asked, “Food?” and a quick check with the radio indicated the precaution to take shelter was now upgraded to an alert. They traced back along the river eastward until they found the ursaring and other sneasel’s corpses before turning south again, not wanting to miss Yureido and wind up in the more-densely pokemon-populated Allylidene Forest district. None of them had any fight left in them.

---

Legally it was trespassing, but when Doctor Baysleft found a tent in his office’s backyard, he chose not to put on his badge and press charges. Walking through the sideways-falling snow, he shouted, “Whoa!” and raised his hands when Lennon burst from the flap with glowing energy around his right palm. Lennon’s energy relaxed and dispelled, and with it went his constitution. His injured leg gave way, and only the snow’s virtue broke his fall.

Doctor Baysleft rushed to the lucario’s aid. “I think I can work you in first, today.” He knelt, got the lucario’s good arm over his shoulder, and lifted him up. “How are the others?”

The lucario’s reply did not come until they made it back inside the medical side of Baysleft’s office. “Vulpix, faint. Eevee, okay. Sneasel, hungry.”

Baysleft conducted a quick physical. “Nothing serious, but you’ll need a double pass. Can you get your ball?”

Lennon nodded.

“Good. Bring the vulpix, too; and your trainer if you think she’s had enough rest.”

Rhiannon came in out of the cold a little while after Lennon returned, led by her former eevee. “Hello? Doctor? I’m sorry about camping in your---Doctor?”

“Grab a chair. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

She found a place to sit and, feeling her new pokemon brushing against her legs, ran her palms all over its upper body, much to its delight, although nothing she felt helped to identify what it had become.

The doctor returned, straightening his coat, and moving directly to his computer. He did not even notice Rhiannon’s arrival until he finished exchanging Lennon’s ball for Sasha’s. “Oh, there you are.” He pulled up a task chair from his desk and rolled up beside her. He reached toward the former eevee and gave him some attention, too. “Here’s your lucario. His arm will be sore for a few weeks. Meds will help but only a little. Feed him plenty of berries; he needs minerals.” He rolled back to his terminal while Rhiannon released Lennon.

“As for your vulpix, physically she isn’t in bad shape. I’d guess she took a few hard Ice- and Rock-type hits, but her actual vitality is almost completely wiped out. It’s like she got hit by something strong enough to knock her out at least three times over. What happened to this girl?”

“I don’t know,” Rhiannon admitted. “There was a pokemon that Lennon couldn’t fight because it was shadowy. She challenged it so we could get my eevee to the rock, but---”

The terminal chimed and spat out a report card.

“I see. She was destiny-bonded by a ghost, I’d bet. Are you familiar with that?”

Rhiannon denied.

“It’s a kind of curse. A pokemon about to get knocked out can use it so its attacker suffers the same fate. If your vulpix used a powerful attack to finish that battle…”

“We gave her six X-specials. We couldn’t risk losing.”

The doctor gave Rhiannon Sasha’s ball. “If the other pokemon had been destroyed, she would have been lost, too.”

Rhiannon held Sasha’s ball close to her chest and rubbed an etched strip with her fingers. “I---I didn’t know…”

“Miss, in Yureido, pokemon aren’t used for battle and show. I can see from your record that you treat them with respect and battle them only for their own developmental benefit. A girl doesn’t get to your age with exactly one badge otherwise. But, if you’re going to go exploring like a serious trainer, you need to train them like a serious trainer would, and you need to know the dangers you are going to face. Understand?”

“I think I do, now.”

“Then that’s a start. Now, if your sylveon is in as fine shape as he appears to be in---”

“Sylveon?”

“I hope that doesn’t disappoint you, since you took him up to become a glaceon, but he seems not to mind any.”

The sylveon whistled, put his fore-paws upon Rhiannon’s thigh and licked her cheek.

She giggled and patted his cheek, “Thank you. If he’s fine with it, then I am, too. But, there was another pokemon that was a little hurt.”

“Your lucario mentioned a sneasel. Is that it?”

“I think so.”

“I mean,” the doctor pointed through the backyard door’s window, directing Lennon and the sylveon’s gaze, “Is that it?”

A small, dark figure with a tall magenta feather stood on a snow covered tree stump, staring northward. The sylveon trotted to the door, tugged at its handle with a ribbon, and went out, kicking the door shut behind himself.

“I promised it a meal, but I don’t think there’s anything left in my backpack that isn’t ruined. Is there any way…”

The sylveon startled the sneasel, causing it to take a defensive stance.

Wind and snow blew the sylveon’s ears, bows, and ribbons strongly to one side. “Come in. It’s warm, still. Maybe food.”

The sneasel glared suspiciously. “You feed me lies.”

“You can come inside. Or, you can go home.”

“Home died.”

“You can come inside.” The sylveon turned around, leaving the sneasel standing on the stump to look at the mountain, at the morning sun struggling to shine through snow and clouds, and at the faint glow of artificial light inside the doctor’s office.

---

Zap opened the closet and stated the obvious. “Vera’s gone?”

Mortimer pulled a sock over his right foot, and then another. “Someday this old man needs to buy new delicates. Wearin’ two of everything just ain’t getting things done in this weather. Yeah, she’s gone again. Probably went to cause me more trouble, but I guess I can hope she’s got somebody else to bother on the side. Lord knows there’s plenty of her to share.”

“Vera’s Vera,” Zap reminisced.

Mortimer tried to find two left socks that had holes in different places, so together they would make a fortified defense. “Kinda goes to support that old saying, you know?”

Zap shook his head.

The hiker smirked as he turned to face his roommate. “Women: can’t live with ’em; pour me a beer.”

The goat went out the back, where a more convenient wood pile formed during the break in the weather, and where a few six-packs lay in the snowbank. Mortimer turned his radio on and relaxed. Or at least, tried to. His gaze slowly shifted from the glow of his fire to a small shelf. Two pokeballs stood upon it. One on a stand and garnished with aged masking tape. The other adorned by the ink of a permanent marker. With a groan, Mortimer got upon his feet as Zap returned with a brown bottle. He took the marked ball in hand and rolled onto his bed. Zap heard the noise of a rickety bed sound more loudly than the music of the radio or the snap of the bottle’s cap.

“Did you want this or was that part of the saying?”

Mortimer’s eyes were closed. “Go ahead and start on it yourself. I’ll finish it off if you don’t.”

Zap took a sip and settled upon his own bedding. “How long has it been?”

“Seventy-six days.”

“Feels longer.” Zap took another sip.

“Seventy-eight for you.”

“What?”

“Phil. I mean, you didn’t find out ’til after the fact, but that’s when it was.”

Zap poured a fraction of the beer into himself.

“I shouldn’t have said that stuff like that then. You remember. I didn’t even think there was a chance my friend would be next to go.”

Crossing the cabin, Zap took one last sip. “Any more and I’ll start sparking. Here, you need it more than I do right now.”

Mortimer sat up and took the bottle. Plugging its mouth with one finger, he overturned it for a moment. Removing the digit with a drop of beer clinging to the tip, Mortimer touched it to the button stem of the pokeball he held. “Cheers, boy.”

Zap did not notice that gesture, his attention focused beyond the southern window. “She’s back, coming up the front way this time.”

Mortimer scoffed. “How considerate. I wonder how many of our rations she’s gonna be after.”

Zap did not wonder. “She’s bringing some stuff.” The ram opened the front door and stepped out as Rhiannon’s party approached.

“Is there room at the inn?” she asked.

“We’ll make it.”

---

Mortimer held his tongue. On one count, because he was finding himself compelled to hold his tongue in his own home. On a second, because while there was nothing special about what she brought---it was the best she could scrounge of what remained on the market’s shelves---it was a meal. On a third, because of what she brought in with her. At least he was able to release a little of the pressure with reason and excuse, when the sneasel admitted through action that it was not housebroken. Alas, it having inherited speech, and being intellectual enough to comprehend “poop outside” in one lesson, and to apologize for his transgression, Mortimer’s rant seemed like an overreaction in retrospect. Working on a second beer helped to put that in his past. It also affected his decision-making.

“It ain’t blasting wind and snow like it was. Why don’t you take your critters out there and let ’em horse around in the snow. I can see they’re getting a little restless lying around a boring old cabin all day long.” He noticed Rhiannon’s reluctance before she spoke. “I still got a few berries and potions around if they get carried away.”

Rhiannon and her pokemon exited through the back door.

Zap turned away from the sink when he heard the creaking noise of Mortimer’s storage chest being opened. “You’re going to give it to her?”

Mortimer withdrew a box wrapped with plain brown paper and an old shoelace for a bow. “Yeah. I ain’t ever gonna replace him. Seems silly to have it lying around. And, I did bother to make it up all nice.” He placed the box beneath an air freshener stapled to a bookshelf. He then stepped out the back and walked up beside Rhiannon and Lennon, the former sitting on a small stack of firewood and the latter standing behind her with his paws on her shoulders and his sensors splayed. Mortimer commented, “That vulpix’s sure got a lot of fire in her.” Sasha darted around a now well-melted circular area, pitching embers at the sneasel, who was quickly learning how to dodge them. After a few minutes the weather began to threaten again and they all returned inside, but not before, flying high overhead, he saw them. He saw a sneasel being chased and attacked by a Fire-type.

---

The sylveon did not pay it much mind, but Sasha noticed the new box and become disheartened when it had no indication of ‘to’, or ‘from’ for that matter, written upon it. Rhiannon and the pokemon settled in on the open floor and started after Christmas songs with varied degrees of competency. Mortimer had had enough of them being mixed into his radio and once again found himself holding his tongue and taking refuge in his bed. He almost fell asleep, even, before a thud shook the cabin, causing it to shed a little snow.

“Get your fat ass out here so I can kill you!”

Mortimer groaned and slowly got out of his bed.

Another strike. “You know I can break this door down!”

Lennon broadcast to the whole room his confusing perception. “The mail carrier?”

Mortimer slipped on some fuzzy slippers. “Quit your posturing! You can wait ten seconds to raise Cain.”

Zap stood and started to build a charge, but Mortimer waved him off. “Looks like the place’s gonna be all yours.”

Mortimer threw open his front door and Ford threw Mortimer across much of the front lawn.

“You found another sneasel to torture. That’s what you thought I ought to come see?” Ford jumped from the porch and landed one-third the way to where Mortimer stopped rolling across the snow.

“I ain’t found nothing, and I sure as hell’ve got nothing I thought you ought to come see.” He slowly got back into a standing position, and raised his fists as though he stood a chance.

Ford looked on the verge of outrage, but something was not adding up. “Then why did you let one of your trophies go to have it tell me to come here?”

Mortimer lowered his dukes. “Why’d I---what the hell are you talking about you---”

Ford reached into his otherwise empty mail bag and withdrew a sheet of paper. He quickly walked up to Mortimer and shoved it in his face. He read it aloud, words that Ford already paraphrased.

“I didn’t write this. I didn’t send this. And, after however long it’s been since we’ve been civil, I sure as hell wouldn’t---” He broke his stare away from the fury in the dragonite’s eyes and toward the dark spot approaching quickly from his doorway. It halted once it got between Mortimer and Ford and seized the former by his right arm.

“Come in. Fun stopped when you left.” The sneasel tugged him off-balance to encourage his compliance. Then, it noticed the dragon. “Papa bear said cats like me said, ‘Use Ice!’ ” The sneasel quickly un-gripped Mortimer’s arm with one claw, scooped up a load of snow, flung it into the dragonite’s face, and resumed dragging Mortimer back inside.

Ford stood in the front yard for a full minute, looking through the cabin’s southern window. Some of the snow slid and fell from his muzzle. More snow, from the sky, settled on it as replacement. He turned away when he heard a bird humming an unusual tune. It was the trophy that, earlier, mutely gave him an invitation. The bird’s feathers were fluffed in defiance of the weather.

“I didn’t miss anything interesting, did I?” Vera asked nonchalantly as she passed, continuing to the porch.

Ford followed behind her. “I thought he hated sneasels. When I put the gossip together and confronted him, he told me what he had done…” Ford paused as he saw the sneasel climb up on top of Mortimer soon after he fell into his recliner chair.

“…and yet, now look at what he is doing.”

Ford approached the window. Rhiannon held steady a box wrapped in paper while Sasha bit one of the shoelace’s ends and pulled it away. Then they traded roles, Sasha holding the box fast by standing on it with her paws while Rhiannon peeled away the tape. As much for excitement as the challenge being four-legged posed, Sasha clumsily separated the box from its lid and jumped backward when she saw what it contained.

“It’s a fine show, but I can’t forgive him. What he did to that---”

Vera blinded him with one wing and gripped his chest with another. The next thing he saw was his mail office’s sorting room. Letters were strewn about, as was almost everything else that wasn’t nailed down. Ford knelt near the center; three dead sneasels lay like twisted dolls around him. A faint voice from the south-west corner cried out. “Dragon, are you hurt? Are we safe now?”

Ford, this time seeing with absolute sobriety, looked in the direction whence once came a weavile with an ice-encrusted fist. Vera stood there, now, motionless.

“You know intimately the sin of wrath. Was it a sense of justice that excused you?” She walked to one of the bodies. “Envies-Other’s-Prey would have killed her if he found her, so you protected her by killing him.” She walked to another dead sneasel. “Digs-For-Rodents would have killed her if he found her, so you protected her by killing him.” Vera walked to the last ruin. “Naps-In-Treetops would have killed her if she found her, so you protected her by killing this one, too.”

Ford stood and took in the scene for a moment. “Yes. They would have killed her. They would have killed me. Do you think I wanted to kill them?”

Vera removed her pipe from her purse and cast a tiny spell to ignite it. She approached Ford and exhaled some smoke in his face. “If you had been too late, if you came back in here and found them standing over her hewn remains, would you have killed them?”

Ford’s powerful muscles trembled for a few seconds.

“You now know how Mortimer felt. And, you also know that, putting all that he did do to her aside, he did not kill the one that slew his first best friend.”

Ford looked down at the blood-stained letters. He remembered delivering them on his next tour of the mountain range. “You’re telling me I’m no better than he is. Worse, even.”

“I’m telling you that if you can see the justice in your past, you can also see the penitence in his present and future.” Vera blew hard through her pipe and flapped part of her right wing, sending a plume of smoke and ashes against Ford’s face and causing him to recoil. Her conjured plane faded and collapsed.

Ford was again looking through the cabin’s southern window. A warm glow filled the room emanating from a vulpine form that slowly enlarged in the arms of a young woman.

Vera positioned her beak beside Ford’s head and whispered, “One step at a time. Right now, there is a black cat wearing a fuzzy red hat waiting for you to fly home before the storm kicks up again.”

Ford stepped down from the porch and spread his wings. He hesitated. “Xatu? How do you know what those three sneasels’ names were?”

“Maybe I made those names up. Maybe I didn’t. Don’t ask me what I know and how; ask yourself why their having names in your mind now matters to you. Hurry home, Ford. My weather forecasts are most reliable.” She vanished with a flash, teleporting into the cabin’s closet.

---

Sasha bathed in the attention she was receiving from her mistress and teammates. The eevee didn’t have much of an audience, and she grew a little bigger than he became, too. The only problem was he did not seem much to mind. He just sat and looked on as Rhiannon brushed out her newly-lightened fur. The brush was old, and already had hair like hers tangled in its bristles. Sasha excused herself and took a few steps forward.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked with a haughty tone in their own language.

The sylveon suddenly pressed his nose to hers, gently wrapped her neck with his ribbons, and brought his muzzle near her left ear to reply privately, “It’s squished, but I think we should share my third treat.”

When Rhiannon asked Lennon what just happened, he grinned slightly, for the first time inside that cabin, and told her, “Mortimer has a kecleon. He’s been sleeping on a rafter since we first entered here. The only thing that has changed is that he now has a bit of mock mistletoe made of green paper and a couple marshmallows coiled in his tail. Sasha and Sylveon just stood beneath it.”

Vera opened her door and stepped out and plucked a berry from Mortimer’s berry jar.

Rhiannon hummed. “Sasha and Sylveon. He’s got his evolution, it’s about time he got a name.”

“Zap knows many names,” Vera advised.

Rhiannon exuberantly asked, “Hey, Zap?”

The ram removed the ear-buds of his new music player.

“Why don’t you do the honors and give this guy a name?”

“Well, what kind of a name do you w---” Zap felt Vera’s influence, making him remember a moment from the past. Vincent was agonizing over the last entry of a crossword puzzle. Theodore carelessly tore a few pages while flipping through a large dictionary, but successfully found the word: Like a ribbon or an eight, ten letters… “Ian!” Zap blurted out.

It got the sylveon’s attention immediately; Sasha’s a second later.

“Me ’n Ian, eh?” she mused.

Vera crossed the cabin and squatted on the far side of Mortimer. She whispered something into his right ear. It took a moment to sink in.

“Wait, you mean now I’m gonna have to come up with another one?” he called out to her as she stepped back into the closet.

She laughed, yawned, and shut the door slowly, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

---