[Pokémon] Musings of the Flockless

Under advice of a dear friend of mine I am keeping a diary, though I find myself questioning whether or not I will keep it up. If I ever come back to read on my past thoughts, then I say to my future self this: "Keep looking forward. There are too many things chasing you for you to look back." I trust my memory to adequately recall the source of those words and thus warn myself off any whimsical trips down memory lane.

The words enclosed herein are, if my friend's claims are to be believed, meant to ease my heart and steady my thoughts as I go about my travels. Without him beside me from here on out, he and I both fear that my isolation will gnaw a hole in my head. In light of that possibility, then, these entries will fulfill for me what conversation with him no longer can. I am no great wordsmith and an even worse penman. Furthermore I am abysmal with keeping correspondence, and I would suppose that this habit of recording my thoughts will likely be very much like writing letters to peers. I will likely not do this in a daily fashion. I will not even bother dating these entries, given as they may end up months apart.

I find myself, then, wondering why I write this at all. Is this any different, in essence, than simply talking to myself? Certainly not, and if that is the case then this exercise does not prevent the onset of madness in the least. Even so, I do feel calmer now as I write this, and it will be beneficial in the long run to have this habit formed to fall back upon. There are few things static in my world, after all. With my friend gone, this may be all I have left.

I do not intend to read these pages. I do not intend to show these pages to anyone I meet. This means that these words are not meant to be read. If they are being read, it is very likely without my active consent.

I find it interesting to muse on the possibility, though. Who are you, then, dear reader? I have no family, and my one friend has left me. A mess of cluttered papers would be quite the curious thing for a pickpocket to snatch from me. If you are reading this it is most likely becase you have simply found these pages somewhere, perhaps next to an unkept corpse, maybe fresh, maybe skeletal. Maybe it has been so long you found no corpse at all, and only stumbled upon these magically-treated pages on the side of the road where I was accosted by brigands, or deep in a cave where I hurt myself and expired in the dark, or somewhere else I cannot even begin to fathom where I met my untimely demise. You probably only started reading this out of a disinterested curiosity and intend to sell this magical paper for some money so someone else can scribble their religious dribble all over it. Or perhaps you are genuinely curious as to what brought the mangled body you found this on to the strange place it fell.

One thing I am certain of: you are my grave robber. Do not grow offended! I mean nothing by it, I assure you. One has to make a living after all; there is nothing wrong with doing so by inconveniencing those who are quite visibly not making a living of their own anymore. Whether you are a dedicated corpse picker, a wandering adventurer, or even my killer who hoped I had something valuable on me (the stone on my neck is priceless, but don't expect anyone to realize it; I apologize I had nothing worth taking and I know I was probably very difficult to kill), I do not judge. Everyone has their story and their reasons. I cannot hate you without knowing yours. It is quite likely I cannot be hating anyone anymore by the time you read this. In lieu of passing judgement on you then, grave robber, I ask you to pass judgement on me. Consider it a dead mon's last wish. Regardless of what you do with these pages afterward, I ask you to read them. Pass your judgement on my actions, grave robber, and I can rest in peace, be it idolized or demonized.

I should start, I suppose, by introducing myself to you. My name is Piddle the Pidgey. I do not have any other parts to my name, nor any other suffixes, nor even a fancy surname like some mons do these days. I am in my 13th year as I start this, if that matters at all to you. I know some mons in modern times put a lot of emphasis on that, even though it hardly tells you anything about an individual's mental acuity. My friend procured these pages from a magician we met some years ago and then left them with me with several other things of his before he left into the Rift. I am writing with a standard ink pen, the sort humans make, modeled differently to make it easier to hold with my pinions. I bought it myself from a peddler who had just come from the all-bird Pokétown called Heaven's Nest (I have been there since, I will say, and although it is a perfectly nice place that name is blatant hyperbole). There is nothing special about the ink; you can soak these pages in alcohol to clear these words after you read them if you want to sell the paper. This is mage paper, after all, so it should be rather valuable. In the case that these words are discovered in such a different time that mage paper is no longer heard of, or else in the case you simply do not know, mage paper can withstand any damage barring shredding or burning. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, throw these pages into some acid to prove it to them.

Back to myself. I was hatched with about fifty or so other Pidgeys. Yes, I know the proper grammatical fashion is to use the species name as its own plural. Between you and me though, I do not give a Grimer's gall bladder because I have been saying it "Pidgeys" my whole life and I will be damned if I am going to change it for the sake of some grave robber! No offense meant, of course. Anyway, I was hatched by a very particular Murkrow who claimed to be The Omen as part of some operation to retrieve celestial shards. If you have never heard about Operation Feathery Flock then you can go dig up a history book on it. Long story short, almost all the other Pidgeys died, The Omen marked it down as a failure, and I ended up with a celestial shard (that is what the thing on my neck is, if my rotting body happens to be in eyeshot and no one has nabbed it yet).

I know it looks like some old rock, if an admittedly very shiny and black rock, but it is much more than that. It has the ability to manipulate ambient magical currents and detect soul force. In the case that that means absolutely nothing to you, I will put it differently: it does some very interesting things in certain scenarios. Do not expect to get any money for it, as I am rather certain that it is officially recorded that none of them exist anymore. If you ever get three together you can "make a wish," which translates more directly to "ask Arceus to do something." Unlike the other manners of asking Arceus to do things, I will add, using cosmic shards will actually force Him to comply. Luckily for myself, no one seems to know that, or else they just don't recognize a cosmic shard on sight. If in whatever unforeseeable time period you are in as you read this cosmic shards happen to be highly sought after, then it is my professional opinion that you should take it and throw it in a volcano. A tad Tolkienian, I know, but you cannot just bury it or throw it in the ocean. Too many moles and fish poking around, after all. If you decide to keep it, I sincerely wish you luck with your ambitions, whatever they may be. Just please do not stick my skull with it. Neither of us will like what happens.

Damn! It is difficult to remain focused on one subject. I did not realize how much like actual conversation this is really like: I have already gone off on tangents!

I was dismissed into the wild after Operation Feathery Flock and shortly met a Grotle who would become my dearest and only friend. For my whole life he and I traveled this great world, looking for a place to call our home. He had just lost his Trainer, and I was as much a support for his grieving soul as he was for my directionless apathy. After all, I had no purpose in my own life. If it had not been for that Slowking I would not even know how to talk.

Ah! How could I forget to mention the Slowking! This diary thing is much more difficult than I thought it would be.

The Omen, in all his appearances, is accompanied by seven Psychic Pokémon, and they were present with him at Operation Feathery Flock. One of them, a Slowking, seemed to deeply disagree with how the operation was being handled. He knew that The Omen was losing faith in him, so he followed me after I was dismissed and transfered his intelligence into me before returning to the other six in time to be assassinated. This is how I gained the linguistic and historical knowledge I used to guide my Grotle friend around the world. It was some sort of magic spell, some variation of Transer Self I suppose, but I have a very clear sense of my own self. I do not consider myself a Slowking nor have any memory of being one, so I am sorry to say I do not totally understand what it was he did to me. He is the one that referred to me as "Piddle." The Omen did not care enough to name any of us.

Right, that is all the time I will waste on my own personal history. Suffice it to say my whole life up until this point was spent wandering about the globe with Orxinopheles the Grotle. Well, Orxinopheles the Torterra as of about a week ago. He has followed a Gallade into the Rift on a personal mission for reasons I will not disclose here. That is his story, and not mine. I did not follow him because for the last four or five years I have been very careful not to enter the Rift any more often than I already have. In case you are of one of those religions that refers to the realm differently, or in case the term has itself become archaic somehow, the Rift is, in general terms, the realm of Giratina. More specifically, it is an umbrella term for all the paraverses contained within this universe, including but not limited to the Reverse World, Ultra Space, Hell, and the Dream World. I could go all day (or, I suppose, "all sheaf") on versal terminology, but that is yet another of a growing number of tangents. In any case, I am hesitant to enter the Rift now (especially the Multiversal Junction, where my friend was heading), so we said our dry-eyed goodbyes (dry-eyed in my case anyway, my friend was quite emotional).

Time can pass very differently in certain parts of the Rift. There is every possibility that by the time my friend comes back out I will be nothing but a pile of dust with a rock and a bunch of papers. I decided I could not wait for him, then. When he and I first started traveling together, it was to find a place we could call our home. He has gone to pursue something very important to him, and in his absence I will continue to search for a place to call my own home. Without him, however, nowhere will ever be my home. I will wander forever, and die unmourned and unmissed.

So, my grave robber, my dearest reader, I implore you to read on, such that I, at the very least, do not also die unknown.

Perhaps this is not very much of a diary or journal if I only ever drone on about my past and who I am and what I did. Worry not, dear reader, for I am not nearly so egomaniacal as to suppose you have any interest in such things. No, I have decided to use this as a means of recording events more than a means of self-reflection. Perhaps that way you may find some practical knowledge in these pages, as opposed to the meaningless hopes and dreams of some faceless stranger.

You may have wondered by now where I was when I wrote this preliminary part of my recount. Put your mind at ease: I have not neglected to provide you information. Rather, there is none to provide as of yet. Not really. I am en route to a Pokétown called Witchpyre through a most nondescript evergreen forest. I am most likely the only mon in the area right now: Witchpyre is not a place that sees many travelers, and Pokémon of the Old Way give it a wide berth.

It has only now occurred to me that you, dear reader, may be a human. I doubt in the extreme that a human would ever happen across such a place as would see me to my grave, and doubt as well any human's capacity to read the Smearglescript I am writing this in. Doubt though I may, however, time can make fools of us all. Who am I to claim that uncountable years after I write this humans will not have totally spread across all the land? How do I know humans will never bother to translate or even use for themselves Smearglescript? In light of that possibility, I find I will have to explain more about my words than I otherwise would. I do not mind greatly: I rather enjoy lecturing. If, dear reader, you are not human at all and know perfectly all the terms I use or reference, I ask you be patient in reading this, since I will have to explain things just in case.

To start: Pokétowns. At least in my time period it is widely understood that humanity as a whole does not believe Pokétowns exist. They may have small Pokémon communities within their borders that I suppose meet the criteria of the definition, but they hardly understand them to be self-sufficient communities. Outside of human lands, in what are called in most circles the "Outlands," Pokémon reign supreme. Human governments lay claim to and keep track of roughly a third of the planet's land, and a largely insignificant portion of the planet's oceans, and outside of these areas their laws are unenforced. If you are human, reader, you no doubt, in your silly human way, are objecting to the possibility of self-sustained Pokémon communities in the Outlands. "They would show up on our satellites," you might say. "We would see them with air traffic," you might argue. At the risk of sounding dismissive, I assure you we have ways around such things.

"Pokétown" is a general name for any Pokémon community. Pokémon have lived alongside humanity since we were all made on this planet in the earliest times. Humans think highly of Pokémon, of their power and versatility. I assure you, the feeling is mutual. Pokémon have always been quite taken with human cultures and art. So it is that some Pokémon decide to emulate humanity, and this manner of living is considered the "New Way," as opposed to the "Old Way" of living like noble, intelligent animals, as most Pokémon in human lands do. Personally, I feel both lifestyles have their place in the world, and their faults. In any case, Pokétowns are formed when a group of mons comes together with the shared goal of entering the New Way of life.

Pokémon migrate very often. Pokémon will enter human lands to benefit from the protection of human laws, to live closer to humans, and sometimes to expose themselves to capture. They leave when humanity weighs on them too heavily, either because they had a run-in with some of humanity's less-enviable traits (we have always killed each other for food, but humans historically kill each other over such silly things as dogmas) or because they lost a Trainer and they were too grieved to remain among humans. Cases of both bring with them their knowledge of human culture into the Outlands, and this can lead to a new Pokétown forming. Due to the nature through which Outlander Pokémon hear of human cultures, Pokétowns come in many different shapes and sizes, most often emulating an ideal more than an actual human settlement. There are Pokétowns that are little more than barbarian camps, ones that feel as if they were plucked from the pages of a human history book and populated with Pokémon, and ones that have no real resemblance to anything humans have made (adapting things for unique body types can lead to a lot of change, as with the Heaven's Nest Pokétown I mentioned earlier). We have managed to reverse-engineer human technologies up to color television, although microchips seem to be giving us an inordinate amount of trouble, so there are some Pokétowns that really are carbon copies of older human settlements.

That is all I will say on the subject for the moment. If you are not human, dear reader, I apologize for having gone into such detail.

I have been writing in these pages these last few days to calm my nerves. I am en route to Witchpyre, as I said, and there is a good reason so few mons come and go there. This will be the first time I will visit without my friend, and I am steeling myself for it. Our last few passes through Witchpyre were not very smooth. Even if you are not human, dear reader, you may be interested in knowing something about Witchpyre. The Outlands are, after all, bound only by the laws of whomsoever you happen to be closest to at the moment. Every Pokétown is its own jurisdiction, very nearly, and given the size of this great world there is every possibility you may have never heard of it. If you have any real grasp of the dialect I use, you may have realized that "Witchpyre" is a dreadful thing to call a place. I happen to know a little about its founding, courtesy of my patron Slowking, and will share it to keep me from sitting here and worrying about how things will go when I arrive there.

Witchpyre was founded by one Boldo Smith the Zoroark here on the western continent during the colonial period (the late 1600s A.D. if you are using one of those caledars). Boldo was a Trained mon and had lived much of his young life within the first areas marked out as human lands on the western continent (before the eastern continent humans came here there was no such distinction between human lands and Outlands on the western continent). Unlike most mons, who follow Arceusism (the One Truth, by the by), Boldo was a Christian under his Trainer. In those times it was common for mons to share the religions of their Trainers, although in modernity I know most mons privately hold on to Arceusism even when Trained. In any case Boldo's time period was one for which this continent was rife with witch hunts (the frequency of which, by the way, are to blame for the extreme scarcity of human magicians even this far down the line).

Boldo was as devout a Christian as any mon ever was. When his Trainer started acting suspiciously, Boldo did not hesitate to alert the authorities. I am afraid I cannot tell you what denomination of Christianity he ascribed to (I admit I am rather ineffectual at telling them apart), but it must have been quite the harsh one to have him call his own Trainer out on witchcraft. Boldo did it regardless, and even called his Trainer's one other Pokémon out on it as well. The Trainer and the other mon were executed and Boldo was set loose. I have always found it interesting that Pokémon still had certain rights even back then: the Trainer might be guilty but that didn't automatically mark Boldo out for execution. And yet they still burned a man alive for dancing in the woods or some such. Humans. No offense meant, of course. Boldo left human lands after being cut loose, having decided to spread the gospel to the Outland Pokémon. Enough of them converted that they joined him in founding Witchpyre.

Now, I do not claim to know the first thing about modern Christianity, but whatever they have in Witchpyre is quite decidedly not modern Christianity. It is little more than ignorance-driven xenophobia, and I am sorry to have to say such a thing about the lifestyle of Pokémon whose stories I do not know. Suffice it to say Witchpyre is very aptly named. Pokémon travelers, like myself, tend not to linger there. Magicians know better than to come within fifty miles of the place. Boldo's backwards dogma is alive and kicking in that place, even in modern times, and they've almost tarred and plucked me for having this rock on me. I was able to convice them it's just a rock, nothing special, but it still makes me nervous. Witchpyre is one of those places where all the mons wear clothes, so my being a little naked bird has always drawn some eyes.

I am hoping to be able to pass through and pick up supplies by feigning innocent ignorance. Witchpyre mons may be quick with a torch and pitchfork, but they are just as quick to thump a Bible in your beak if you pretend the slightest interest. Hopefully the prospect of a potential convert who can carry their religion to the rest of the barbaric world is enough to counter any inclination they may feel to tie me to a ducking line. With my sort of luck, it will probably be the one time I actually float.

It has only just now occurred to me that you, dear reader, may actually be a citizen of Witchpyre reading through my personal effects after my untimely demise for having floated in the aforementioned trial by water. If that is the case, I apologize if I have offended you with my words, but I do not take them back. Know you killed a mon who had not the slightest magical ability outside of the rock you probably kept with the rest of my things. Know also that if you ever do provoke an actual magician you might not like what happens.

In the event that I did not burn at the stake, dear reader, then you may read on. I will surely come to the circumstances of my demise eventually.

This was a rather uneventful day after all. I have always been told I worry too much. Perhaps it is simply that my travels have so recently become more lonely, and that my nerves were getting the best of me.

I came into Witchpyre some short time before the lunch hour, so most mons were in their homes to dine. The border watch (which seemed rather understaffed, but I suppose they know no one ever comes here anyway) gave me only a brief glance before touching their buckled hats and turning their attentions elsewhere. I suppose there is no cause for even polite attention when the foreigner is a naked foot-tall bird. The stiff necks these townsfolk used to give me in the past must have been due mostly to my old traveling companion. One cannot argue that a Grotle has much more presence than a lowly Pidgey. I find I already miss him. And not only because he made a convenient walking chair, mind you.

My friend's increased size also let us move many more items than I currently can in my little satchel. Luckily, I only have very little to keep track of. Besides these papers and some foodstuffs I only have perhaps a dozen other small objects my friend left with me that he thought might come in handy down the line (lenses, safety goggles, an escape rope, a butane lighter I can't use, and some other things). I have also been carrying a number of nugs on me. Most places on the western continent will take nugs as currency, these being little beads of gold. I find they are the best currency to carry, as anywhere advanced enough for paper money will convert them and anywhere that would still take Berries will generally be bartered with with other items. Of course one has to improvise a touch when one comes to one of those underground places that take gems or if one happens to wind up on one of those islands that takes beans, but I digress.

Witchpyre is a rather self-contained community. It does not have a bazaar district or a market street for travelers to come to. Every one of their shops is its own building, and as far as I have ever been able to tell there is no real basis for their position in the town proper. They are largely mixed in with the residential areas, and I believe most of them double as homes for the shopkeepers. I suppose most of them are rather close to the center of town, where stands a truly magnificent church, complete with old bell and straight steeple. I have heard it said that the building has stood since Witchpyre's founding, although I do not know what exactly that entails, as I would imagine it has had a fair number of revisions to remain as stalwart as it does today. I must admit also that it is actually a rather inspiring piece of architecture when seen on such a clear, bright day. I believe every other time I have seen it, it was pointing its black steeple to a cloud-filled, dim sky.

As quaint as the buildings are, the mons inside them are still rather headstrong about their faith. I had three different mons approach me and attempt to convert me on my way to the grocer! What is perhaps most surprising is that they took my refusal of their advances quite calmly. It was not until I was conversing with the grocer over my purchase of Berries and bread that I fully realized how different Witchpyre seemed. She told me that a new preacher had come to the church under the advice of a traveler. From what I could gather, the preachers for Witchpyre had traditionally been the first sons of Boldo Smith's own bloodline, ever since Boldo Smith himself taught the word of his God back in Witchpyre's first days. Evidently, the late Father Zeltstar Smith the Braixen (the Smith Zoroarks married into a Delphox family or some such) never married and was an only child. With him died the last of Boldo's bloodline. Witchpyre had been on the verge of collapsing, as reliant as it is on its church, when a traveler passing through at the time offered a solution.

Now, Witchpyre would never accept an outsider into such a position, but this traveler, a Toucannon, had a most notable gift with charisma and managed to make her voice heard to the village council. She made a very sound argument that Witchpyre was a relic, and that it was doomed to blow away in Dialga's roar if it did not do something to cement itself in the world. As something other than an infamous pit that executed travelers, of course. I must give credit to the village council for having enough sense to see the truth in such an argument: they decided to find the most amicable mon in Witchpyre and make him or her the new preacher. This ended up being Hunfury Simonson the Mienshao, one of the border watchmons. Hunfury, under advice of the interloping traveler, began to preach a friendlier sort of the gospel. Witchpyre did away with the ducking lines and the witch hunts and the nasty habit of looking down on outsiders.

I expressed surprise that so much could change in only the year-and-a-half it had been since I had last been in Witchpyre and the grocer laughed. Actually laughed! I remember my old traveling companion once seriously asked me if laughing was illegal in Witchpyre. The grocer mistook the reason for my shocked expression and apologized, assuring me she was not belittling me. She was laughing because of the remark I had made: Witchpyre had changed so much not in a year-and-a-half, but in only a couple of months! According to her, Hunfury had only been preaching for ten or eleven weeks! The traveling mon who had inspired this new, friendly community was evidently still in town at the hostel.

I excused myself shortly with my refreshed rations. Glancing about, I was unable to readily see any convenient benches. I decided to take my lunch on the roof of the building across the unpaved street. This was no whimsical decision (perching in Pokétowns can be considered equivalent to shouting in a restaurant sometimes). There was a local perched on the building as well, and the only bird I have seen in Witchpyre garb. He was a Tranquill, evident under his wide buckled hat and buckled cape (I admit I do not often see buckled capes, but it was quite comely on him, if a bit narrow to keep out of his wings). He also had white spats on his legs that complimented his black outfit. I must say that although Witchpyre's fashion can be rather somber, it can also be really quite quaint.

I had thought he had been eating, but he had actually been grooming his faux mustache with his pinions. He gave me a rather unfriendly look as I landed next to him and it was only then that I noticed the watch's mark on his cape buckle. The watch-bird looked me up and down a moment but did not protest my staying. I introduced myself and he gave his name as Conkoo. His icy disposition melted readily when I offered to share some of my lunch with him. He had forgotten to bring something to snack upon for his through-lunch shift and did not want to leave his post to go get something.

Conversation with Conkoo told me that most of Witchpyre's mons took a shift on watch duty in the week, with only the dedicated guards taking multiple shifts in the same week. Conkoo was one such guard along with his wife, who had the night shift on account of her being a Noctowl. They had evidently only come into Witchpyre in the last month under the more welcoming hand of the new preacher, along with a handful of other mons that had managed to stretch the local morphological standard away from solely bipedal mammals. A wider range of resident body types can help a Pokétown feel more welcoming. More influence from this mysterious traveler the grocer had described, surely.

I felt that "Conkoo" seemed very different from the sorts of names other Witchpyre mons had and said as much. "They didn't have you change it to something more appropriate?" I asked.

"They gave me the option," Conkoo explained, "but I opted to keep it since I've been answering to it my whole life." He did, however, accept a surname from the preacher after he and his mate entered into proper marriage at the church. "Michaels. Father Hunfury says there's an angel in the Bible named Michael. I can't really remember much else about it though, I'm still learning to read." My passing knowledge on such things was enough to tell me that Hunfury may have a knack for flowery exaggeration, but I kept it to myself. If Conkoo Michaels's family ends up being a line of aerial watchmons, I suppose the name fits, to a point.

We talked for another hour or so. He explained to me the particulars of a romantic relationship with a nocturnal mon as a diurnal one and I shared an anecdote recounting the last time I had been in Witchpyre with my friend (sans the rough encounter with the night watch at the end). Afterward I said my farewells and flew to the hostel. On the way I was stopped by two more mons who tried to convert me, but I now understood that it was more an invitation to stay in the town and convert gradually than one to convert immediately and then move on. Perhaps one might consider the locals' willingness to completely change tact just because their preacher said to to be a bad thing, a certain weakness of mind, but I find I commend their openness to change after having been bound to their old ways for so very long.

I entered the hostel and bought myself a room, but found myself stopping in the common area, where a Toucannon was perched on a chair near a window. She was covered quite thoroughly in bright, colorful plumes and crests on her wings and legs, quite different from the somber black-and-white garb of the locals, and had an extremely exotic headdress that stretched over her beak, and her beak had a vaguely piscine motif carved into its sides. She was eating some Berries idly out of a bowl, reading out of some book, which l recognized to be a Bible. Not surprising of course. I supposed that this was the traveler the grocer had spoken of. Rather obvious perhaps, but still. Still.

I introduced myself to her, expressing my wonderment at her having managed to impact Witchpyre's community. Especially dressed like a pagan rain-dancer (I did not say as much to her face, of course). She gave her name as what sounded to me like "Sarimanok," although she used it as if it was a title more than a name. I do not remember properly, but I think the word means something is some mythology somewhere. Alas! When one knows so much it grows hard to remember particulars. In any case she gave the impression of being much older than myself, and did not seem nearly as amiable as I felt the grocer had implied. Toucannons always have a sort of posture that gives the impression that you are wasting their precious time with your silly trivialities, but I am rather sure that that is only because of the way their eyes naturally set. With that in mind, I forged ahead in the conversation despite the way she was looking at me.

We discussed Witchpyre's history and old traditions, topics she did not seem as versed in as I would have supposed. I found myself asking her why she should have taken an interest in Witchpyre at all, as it was evident she had not known much about it outside of its unflattering reputation. "Are you Christian yourself?"

She made a rude noise and rolled her eyes. I felt that I might be wasting her precious time with my silly trivialities. "I will leave dogmatic misdirection to the humans, as we all should," she told me.

"Then why are you reading a Bible?" I asked her.

"So that I can more properly convince these mons in a language they know," she answered me. She explained that she was more interested in the Pokétown's willingness to accept others than in the particulars of its spirituality. "I've been reading this thing for a few days now and it is certainly very interesting. Problem with it is that it's old. Older than good sense."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, unsure of if I was following her point.

"Well it's an old story, and as with most old stories it's open for interpretation. That can be problematic then if some mons read this and think it's telling them to kill the nonbelievers, or some such. Faith is a shield, never a sword, and these mons just needed a little help to see that." She said something to that effect, anyway, I find I cannot quite remember word-for-word everything she said. She had a strange inflection on a lot of her words such that I feel I missed a few words here and there when she talked.

"No offense," I said, "but what should it matter to a traveler if Witchpyre is throwing out ducking lines?"

"The world matters to me, traveler or no," she answered (again, paraphrasing). "We are animals, and that means we should all be together in nature. Just because these animals want to play human doesn't mean they aren't still animals. As long as they can be brought around to the proper way of thinking, they need to join the rest of Mew's children in unity. Otherwise …"

Here she just sort of chuckled and shook her head before abruptly dismissing herself to bed. She insisted on banging her beak against mine in farewell (some Toucannon thing, although I've never had one press it on a non-Toucannon) and took her things up to her own room. There was still some light left in the window, so I sat down to recount the day in writing. I ended up having to ask for a candle: it grew dark about an hour ago.

I suppose I was only nervous, to have worried so much. Truly Witchpyre is moving into a new era. It has made me feel easier about my own "new era" of traveling alone. In the morning I will breakfast here and then set out into the wilderness once more. I think I will go to the eastern coast and make the sea crossing before the winter sets in. I am still some distance from there, however. I believe my next destination in the short term, then, will be Evereeze. I could discuss it further here, but it is late now, and I grow tired. I will write more on it at another time.

Perhaps this whole solo traveling thing will not be so bad, after all.

I have been travelling through the woodlands southeast of Witchpyre for the last two or three days. There are some Old Way Pokémon about the trees and brush now. I have been flying below the canopy for company's sake: I was flying higher when I left Witchpyre and it felt so lonely among the clouds. There were not very many birds so close to Witchpyre and it made me more aware of my own solitude. When I was travelling with my friend I rode on his shell, so I am more used to being closer to the ground, despite my wings. The Old Way Pokémon are a tad shy, mostly smaller mons, but are friendly enough.

All in all, these woods are as uneventful as they are nameless. I am writing now not because something of note has happened but because I am grown so intolerably bored! Old Way mons are not much for conversation. That is no fault of theirs, mind, I am sure I would be unable to carry a conversation on multiversal particulars too if I had spent all my life wriggling about in the same eight-mile area nibbling at twigs. At least they are still civil. I suppose I could get into the matter of innate intelligence, as I am aware you may be a human and humans do not benefit from it and must be taught very nearly everything including language, but perhaps another time. I find I have other things on my mind.

I will not leave you in the dust though, reader, in the case you are human. A human would likely wonder as to what business a Pidgey, such as myself, has flying about at ground level in clear range of such nasties as Sevipers and Lickitungs and the other sorts of mons that generally can and will eat a small bird. Many Old Way Pokémon in human lands prey upon one another with what I personally find to be excessive frequency. Being as it is that most humans know only as much about Pokémon as can be ascertained by those within their borders, it would be natural for one to assume all mons act that way even in the Outlands. As my literacy and Witchpyre's community have certainly served to exemplify, however, this is not the case.

See, Pokémon of the Old Way live in the natural way, and that means living off the land in a fashion dictated by their morphological traits (where Pokémon of the New Way force a sustained living through human-acquired behaviors often independent of their species). So if one were to hatch as a Scyther, with blades for forelimbs and a propensity for fast flight, one would fly with other Scythers and hunt other mons. If one were to hatch as a Caterpie, with a weak body and small size, one would slink about the brush and climb in the trees munching on vegetation until finding a safe place to Evolve and then turtling out as a Metapod until one can Evolve again. As far as that goes, some species are better equipped to consume Plants (the capitalization here meaning I refer to such things as trees and flowers, and not plantish mons like Lilligants) and some are better equipped to feed upon other mons (such as the aforementioned Lilligants). While it is perhaps tempting to refer to examples of the second case as "carnivores," it should be noted that, technically speaking, a mon that feeds on Lilligants is not eating flesh and so is not a carnivore in that instance. For that reason, I will then refer to those mon species suited for consumption in whole or in part of other species as "predatory." All species fall into either the predator category or the "feeder" category that lives on Plants or else inorganic materials like rocks.

I would not wish to be quoted on the matter for fear of being disproven, but I believe roughly half of all species are predatory, and only perhaps a third of those are strictly predatory (as in they do not have the physiological or morphological means to live as feeders). Predatory behavior, from a strictly scientific perspective, is an incredibly inefficient manner of energy acquisition, as consuming the parts of another creature only provides the energy in those parts, which has been reduced through heat, density of unconsumable parts, and that creature's own expenditure of energy to avoid being consumed. Predatory species have adapted metabolisms and nutritional requirements to get the most out of predation, but they will still not manage the sort of energy intake many feeders can. This is also a trait that influences predator lifespans, which are generally shorter than those of feeders.

More than this though is the ethical standpoint. Pokémon are born with certain innate intelligences which I will not detail greatly here, but among those things is the ability to communicate with other mons through what is more akin to a language analog than true language. Again, I will not detail that as of yet. Back to the point, this means that a predator will very often have to deal with their intended meal begging for its life, cursing the predator's name, or worse yet trying to make friends. While it must be a few shades easier for humans to slaughter mons they cannot truly speak with, it is my understanding that even that can leave a guilty conscience if one does it too often (or else mental instability). Predators have historically been stoic traditionalists living among the other Old Way mons who were also stoic traditionalists. In the earliest times, the Caterpies accepted that most birds would kill and eat them on sight, and those birds understood that this was the way life was meant to be. There was no hate or guilt on either side. Truly, noble animals. Almost a religion in itself, really.

What changed matters was the increasing presence of the New Way of life. New Way Pokémon emulate human behavior and community, but also hold and interpret human ideologies and worldviews. Moreover, there are also those mons who take up adventuring (such as myself, I suppose) and who in doing so carry those ideologies through Old Way regions. Old Way mons are not stupid beasts, and they are not deaf to outside thoughts. Over time, human moral values bled even into the Old Way Pokémon. The Caterpies began to dream bigger (which, as an aside, eventually led to the international Butterfree migrations realizing those dreams of seeing more of the world). The birds began to feel the blood on their beaks. It is one thing to be animals when being regarded as animals (as is still the case in most of human lands), and another entirely when there is another animal wearing clothes shaking its head as it watches. In human lands, most mons are Old Way mons and have their animalish lifestyles reinforced by the ever-present humans that regard them as such. In the Outlands, a Scyther might look up from eating a Stantler to see another Scyther wearing clothes and regarding it with judging pity.

It was different for feeders to suddenly start having dreams and hopes. At the end of the day, they still spend their time foraging and avoiding predators. For predators, though, having dreams meant learning what nightmares were as the feeders began being less accepting of their fate. Predator species found the human notions of murder and sin coloring their lifestyles quite unfavorably. Predators were now aware that they weren't just eating other mons, they were killing them. In response to this, predators have in modern times largely defaulted to one of three workarounds to live in a manner that does not put other mons on the plate.

The first of these is learning to diet solely on preythings. I use the term "preything," but other terms are "prey," "foodbeasts," "naturebots," and "macrobacteria" (the last of these is perhaps the most accurate, which I may explain another time, but the term "macrobacteria" is decidedly uncommon in conversation, I find). In such a case that you, dear reader, do not recognize any of those terms, I will explain it. Preythings are those smaller creatures that exist in nature but that are not Pokémon. The vast majority of preythings are arthropodal or piscine, but there are examples of avian and amphibious preythings here and there. Preythings qualify as lifeforms but do not have souls like how other lifeforms do. I may be assuming too much of you, dear reader, to reference such things as souls, but even if you do not "believe" souls exist it is still generally held that preythings are beneath Pokémon. They do not exhibit any intelligent behavior that cannot be chalked up to raw instinct and do not employ language or language analogs. Preythings do not beg for their lives or even put up very much of a fight. This makes them a suitable alternative to Pokémon for predator species to feed upon, although a lot of them do taste very much the same and the diet can be rather bland.

Some predators will take this a step further by leaving to join the New Way of life. As I have stated before, Pokétowns (New Way communities) vary widely in their moral structures and laws, but one thing that they all have (or all I know of) is a law against killing other mons for any reason besides self-defense or preventative measure. In many places, eating the mon one has killed is considered an even higher crime and punished more severely. Pokétowns most often have some manner of sustainable food source for its populace, and where that populace includes predator species the food source will similarly include some manner of farmed preything. While it is not so easy to tell unless one is looking, predator species make up a larger portion of New Way Pokémon than do feeder species. Where feeders can still take time off to perhaps paint or pursue a hobby even in Old Way lifestyles, Old Way predators need to spend most of their time eating if they mean to live off preythings. Having access to a ready supply of preythings in a Pokétown is one of the only ways a predator species can similarly pursue its personal ambitions.

Where preythings are scarce or unpalatable (as well as in those cases where a predator species does not have the physiological capability to subsist on bugs or some such), Berries might stand in. I capitalize the word here to separate it from the more general term. "Berries" here refers to the fruit of species of Berry tree, where "berries" in the more general sense are a sort of fruit that most commonly grows on bushes and not trees at all. The old creation legends effectively equate Berry trees to Legendaries in a way. Without going into specifics, one could say that "Ho-oh" is to "Pidgey" as "Oran tree" is to "pine tree." Whether or not you, dear reader, believe such things, Berry trees are indeed unique among Plants. As for the particulars of the trees themselves, I will not discuss it at the moment. It is sufficient for now to know that Berries are a special sort of fruit edible for any species of Pokémon. Even mouthless Pokémon and those that do not take solid food can intake Berries through a special process the Berry is capable of triggering. More than simply being edible, Berries are also nutritious enough to sustain a Pokémon by themselves (as opposed to Pokébeans, which though edible in a similar fashion by most species are not enough to live on). The Outlands have more established Berry forests than do human lands (as certain aspects of humanity can inhibit the trees) and so predator species can still live the Old Way without being predators.

Such is the case in the forest I am in now. There is a Sitrus grove some distance to the west of my current position that manages along with the plentiful preythings in the area to make this a region of predationless Old Way living. Trust me, dear reader, if the predators here were not so placcid I would have kept aloft in the clouds and swallowed the isolation happily. My friend was a Grotle, and not many species will eat one of those, so in the past I did not have to worry about such things. That does not mean, however, that I am complacent enough to think of myself as anything other than a flying appetizer in these places. If I happen to catch wind of a more Berry-starved predator in the area, I will move to avoid it, and am more than capable of defending myself besides. Oh, the stories I could tell you of my old travels, dear reader! You would likely not believe it! But as I said before I do not intend this journal to tell my story, as I do not consider it to be a very good one.

I have only just realized a rather unpleasant possibility.

Dear reader, perhaps you are reading this over my corpse, up to your jowls in my blood? Goodness me, that is a disturbing thought. It is nevertheless a possibility. Whether you ambushed me in my sleep, fought me down fair and square, or have simply happened upon my dead body and decided eating me would be better than letting me rot, I want you to know I do not despise you for eating me. The world is full of hardship and misery, and I know you probably do not take joy in eating other thinking, feeling individuals who have dreams and names. Necessity has made as many monsters as it has heroes, after all. If it is not too late to make the request, dear reader, if you have eaten me, might you bury my bones? It is a human notion, of burying the dead, and I do not often think very much of human notions, but I rather feel I would like to be buried. Perhaps I simply find something dignified in it.

So, dear reader, if you have buried my carcass you have my thanks. Perhaps in reading this you may feel the urge to enter the New Way and leave behind your need for predation. If you do, take my things with you. It is not much, but it is something to start with. At the very least you will have some money. I sincerely wish you well in pursuit of your dreams. We may be animals, dear reader, but you need not be a beast.

In the event that I have not been killed and eaten after writing this, I will continue onward with these entries. This exercise does not do much to organize my thoughts, as disorganized as they are, but it is comforting nonetheless.