2024-05-10: Those Left Behind
- Log: Those Left Behind
- Cast: Sable Aomori, Timu Guado
- Where: Cinnabar Isle, Energy Nede
- Date: May 10, 2024 (506 PC Filgaian)
- Summary: Sable has a lot on her mind, and reaches ou to someone who she thinks might understand. As it happens, Timu understands more than Sable realized. But as they talk, a mysterious Pokemon gets their attention...
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
A night in Armlock gave Sable a little time to talk to her father, but she's still troubled. She has resolve set; she knows what she wants to do. But even so...
Maybe Timu would understand; Timu, who has known war. And Sable wants to get back to the places she used to go when she was troubled. So...
>timu will you come with me somewhere
>it's on cinnabar and it might be dangerous
>so i'm supposed to bring a friend
So, when Timu agreed, Sable arragned to meet her at the mountain. She is dressed not in her usual attire but in something more practical--her blue runic sneakers, but also cargo pants and a long-sleeved, breathable top in blue. It's climbing type gear, which she may need. Her Pokeballs are at her belt, and she waits by the trail.
She looks... troubled. It's hard to tell, but Timu, accustomed to the less-emotive ways of the Guado, probably can.
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Timu heard down the grapevine about the Four Fields, and the understanding of how serious it must be for them to be re-opened to everyone. She's been troubled with the introduction of Mega Evolution and Dynamaxing for reasons she has problems communicating to those who didn't live through Spira's final days of Sin (or any days of Sin, for that matter), though she bears the Dynamax band on her person in a show of trust for her efforts.
...
She receives the message as her Moteray rests on her lap at the Pokemon Center of Cerulean, who is benefiting from learning to sit still and rest sometimes. Maybe it goes for her, too.
She considers it for a few minutes before making a response with her own special-made phone to account for the realities of being someone with hands not made for handling this kind of technology otherwise.
>I'll be there soon.
>I'll let you know when I'm on the boat there and when I arrive.
Dutifully, Timu does these things. When she arrives, she's dressed as she usually is, now with her Hestrol friend floating along in the air not far off from her side. It might be dangerous... but months of being a Drifter has helped prepare her for many forms of 'might be' dangerous.
"Sable," Timu greets. "I'm sorry it took me some time to come." she bows in that cultural form of apology that she has never quite unlearned from her Spiran heritage.
When she straightens up, her expression softens a touch as she brings a hand up over her chest. "Are you all right? You're looking intense."
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Sable isn't wearing a Dynamax Band, but only because she has an alternate strategy for facing large Gears and Pokemon at the moment. ...Well, not only. But that's the main reason.
Still, when Timu messages her...
>thanks
>it's ok i have to get there from armlock too
So it is that Timu is not particularly late when Sable is waiting for her, because it took them both time to get here. How much? Don't worry about it.
"Timu," Sable greets back. "Hestrol." Her own Pokemon are currently in their Pokeballs. "I don't mind," she says. "I'm glad you came."
Timu's expression softens such that even Sable can see it. She hesitates. "I'm..."
"I'm not," she admits. "That's why I want to come here. When I was little I came here with..."
She trails off. She shakes her head. "With my parents," she finishes. She gestures to the trail. "It's a ways' up. ...Can I tell you something? It's kind of a secret..."
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Sable's not okay. Timu picks up on that before she Sable speaks her feelings, and she nods. Something about coming here with her... parents. That pause, and the mention that it's a secret.
It reminds her of something else. She nods a second time.
"All right... Hestrol, please return," Timu holds out the Pokeball, and the large whale-like Pokemon disappears with lingering whale song in response to Sable. Whether a Pokemon can truly understand and/or risk telling a secret or not, the core of the idea of it is respected.
"I'll listen," the Guado responds as she draws her healer's staff to help with the walk up.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
The mounain trail is pretty; the coastal highlands are rocky and dotted with trees, but far above on the volcano proper there is snow, even here. Sable looks out towards the path above, and remembers.
There was always something about Timu that was easier to talk to, than some people. Sable can't put her finger on what it is.
"...Thanks," she says, and waves to Hestrol as the Pokemon disappears. Then... Timu says she'll listen, so--
Sable starts up the path.
"...So, my parents are okay," she says. "It occured to me it might sound like they're not. But they are. I was talking to my dad last night. ...It's what made me think of this place."
"Because..." She gets to the secret part, eventually. "I spoke to Mom the other day. I asked her... about some things I'd seen. Some things I'd heard."
Sable looks down. "I don't want to get her in trouble or anything, but..."
"But she's part of Team Rocket," Sable explains. "That's the secret. ...She says that they're going to change Energy Nede, and that I should stay out of things and be safe, while they do that. That it's going to 'set up our family'."
"But I don't like the things they do..."
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Timu looks up towards the peak from their distance, eyes closed for a bit as she thinks of the time that she and her sister had to brave the harsh, cold environments of Mt. Gagazet. They're far from where the snow collects, but the memory holds.
She listens intently along the way when they get moving, as Sable clarifies about whether her parents are okay... and then it goes to her Mom. She doesn't want her in trouble or anything, but...
She's a part of Team Rocket. Timu's hands tense at the mention, but doesn't speak over Sable as she talks about what her Mom said to her. All this, to 'set up their family.'
Timu walks ahead when she sees some rocks set in a way that make for a good makeshift seat. (This is probably not a coincidence, with how much of Energy Nede is carefully maintained and engineered.)
Timu takes in a breath, and there's a brief moment where her posture might appear judgmental and ready to peer down one's nose - something distinctly a gesture of Guado culture, if one done subconsciously rather than with intent to speak down. Timu lowers her gaze as she rests with her staff horizontal on her lap.
"I... I lived through something like that, too," Timu responds to Sable at last. "With my father. It's... it's awful when they do cruel things to other people, and say it's for our sake."
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Even at its worst, the peak of this dormant volcano is nothing compared to sacred Mt. Gagazet. But it has a resemblence, all the same.
Timu tenses, but Sable doesn't notice. She's focused on the path ahead and on what she's saying.
She notices the rocks, too. She glances at Timu--and decides to angle towards them.
But Timu's posture does seem stiff to Sale for a moment, an she prepares for whatever the reaction might be--excep that, now seated...
"...Really?" Sable wonders. It's not what she expected to hear. "I thought... I thought you might understand, because you've been through 'war'. You've seen people hurt. I didn't realize..."
Maybe someone else would apologize for bringing up a bad memory, but it doesn't really occur to Sable in the moment. "Yes," she says. "We have... secret traditions," she explains. "Our ancestors used to be stealth operatives who served nobles. So I'm not exactly... I mean..." She hesitates. "I don't think it's bad, to do things outside the law. But hurting people who aren't involved is too much. That boy whose Pokemon was stolen, in Fuchsia..."
"She said that a lot of people will be hurt. That change does that."
"...I don't like it. I want a better way than that."
She looks up to the sky. "...I don't think it's just for me. Not really."
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
"It's fine," Timu reassures as Sable trails off about not realizing, a gentle shake of her head. Is it? She's still someone who benefitted from that rotten social order. Her education, her (then) resources, and to a lesser extent having been able to afford and enjoy some of the best Blitzball coaching and training one could have asked for growing up. It's as far as she interrupts before Sable speaks about secret traditions.
She exhales again at mention about that crying boy who had a beautiful Pokemon taken from him.
"If my sister and I only did what we were told, and thought nothing more... staying within 'the law' and 'traditions' might have made everything worse." Yuna might not have won her decisive victory in which the very Cycle of Sin would finally be broken after a thousand years, had she just did only what she was told and never questioned or did anything else.
"...I have trouble understanding," Timu continues. "Speaking as a Visitor... Energy Nede has been nothing but kind and wonderful. It doesn't seem like anyone wants for food, or shelter... or friends," she looks to her Pokeball belt, four members strong.
"Though... maybe the idea of us coming - the Visitors - and the Ten Wise Men might have changed everything. Where I came from, we used to believe Spira was all alone by itself, thanks to a terrible monster we called Sin that lived in the waters around Spira for about a thousand years. Then... so many people showed up, one day. We called them Otherworlders."
Their word for 'Visitors.'
"So much changed in a hurry then... I wonder... if it's like that for everyone in Team Rocket, too."
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Sable takes the reassurance for now, anyway. Whether it's cosmically 'all right' or not, she accepts that it's fine at least to have said what she did. And so she says more.
Her sister and her... Sable listens, then. "I see..." It could've made it worse. Sable is thoughtful when Timu explains. She has trouble understanding, because of what they never lacked.
Change...
"Otherworlders. Like our 'Visitors.'" Sable makes the connection immediately. "A monster... That's terrible."
"She said something like that," Sable says, nodding. "That change is happening either way. ...She's... she's mistrusted our government for a while, I know. She had a big falling-out with the Professor she used to work for... she thinks I was too young to remember, but I put it together. Why we left Fuchsia."
"She said that... I might come around to her point of view. If I gave it time. But I don't want to. Just accepting that people are going to be left behind... I don't like it."
"...Dad said that h's ready to accept a lot of things, if Mom will stay with him this time. But seeing how I felt, I think he might try to talk to her..."
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Some manner of distrust and fall-out, in years past before Energy Nede found itself linked to (Fil)Gaia and the natural satellite that Spira rests upon. Timu can't fathom what could have gone wrong from her short stay in this (fragment of a) world, head bowed again as Sable talks of why they left their original home elsewhere in Fuchsia.
To hear out the fears of people going to be left behind... and the trouble about whether Sable's own father might accept this line of thinking if they both get together again.
"She sounds afraid of being left behind," Timu says of it. "My father once impressed the ways of the Guado were as they were for our prosperity... but all of it was just to be cruel to people who lost loved ones to Sin." Timu shakes her head again, as her fingers clench around the staff at her lap.
"The people I lived with - the Guado - did terrible things in the name of 'tradition' and 'their ways.' After Sin was destroyed for good... the rest of Spira didn't forget what people like my father did to them." The Guado teenager straightens, somewhat. This isn't Spira, she's far from there, and as far as she knows or cares, she may never set foot there again - even if a part of her will always feel a little homesick. The lack of the presence of pyreflies anywhere feels like an entire color is lost to her sight as a Guado, and yet...
"Some things will never feel 'okay' ever again... and... it's hard to adjust to that."
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Sable doesn't know the details. Her mother was nver very willing to talk about it with her. But Timu has some thoughts.
"Hm..."
"Afraid of being left behind..." Sable wonders about that. But instead of only thinking about it, she sets her sea-gray eyes back on Timu again. "Taking things at the expense of others?" she wonders. "I guess it never really... seemed necessary, to me. We have everything anyway."
What people like her father did to them. What wouldn't be forgiven...
"I don't want that for her," Sable decides. "I told her... I told her that I'd find another way. And that I'd show her what it was. She didn't really believe I could do it, I think.."
"I've never... I mean, she's always told me I could do whatever I decided. So I think there's something that doesn't add up..."
"Did your father listen to you?" Sable wonders.
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
It doesn't make sense, does it? To be told one could do whatever but then have it suddenly become stringent in defiance of this 'whatever.' In the time Sable's sea-gray eyes meet Timu's indigo ones, there's a meeting of sympathetic feelings in there.
"Not at first," Timu shakes her head. "The Guado tradition places - placed - a lot of emphasis on respecting your elders, their decisions, their word. No matter what, Guado affairs were kept within the Guado, and whatever our leader decided..." There's an anger there, boiling over. The anger as to how someone as truly rotten and awful as Seymour and his destructive ways could have been so enticing for the Guado to follow even beyond their self-preservation.
Timu exhales. "It... took a lot of doing, and... my sister and I didn't do it alone."
"If anything... it's a miracle at all he listened, then," Timu says, her grip on her staff lightening as she parts one hand to go over her chest. "...I hope your mother gets that same miracle too, before she hurts so many people in a way she can never take back."
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Not at first. Sable nods. She noties that anger, despite what difficulties she often has reading feelings. So she watches Timu a moment longer.
"I see," she answers. "It was really hard, then. ...You were angry..."
Should she be angry? Sable isn't sure. It's hard to figure out what she's 'supposed' to feel.
"Not alone..."
A miracle, then. Sable nods. "...Mom always taught me to question authority," Sable says. "She didn't seem very happy when I questioned hers..."
A nod. "Thanks. I know it might seem strange, since... We have so much already. But I guess people are just people..."
There's a noise, then: a howl, from farther along the mountain.
"...?" Sable wonders, and starts to stand. "Did you hear that?"
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
'...You were angry...'
Timu slowly nods at that thought. "I still am," that quiet addition to that part.
The two of them are left to muse about the nature of people being people for far too short a span of time, before a howling noise can be heard in the distance, and the Guado perks up. She rises from her makeshift seat as if there's a sense of urgency. It's ingrained from how dangerous life is in Spira among its envious, hatred-filled lingering dead.
The comparative comfort of the land of Energy Nede has not wrung that out of her.
"That must be a Pokemon... didn't you say it might be dangerous?" Timu asks of Sable, as she grabs hold of one of the Pokeballs on her person - Hestrol's - looking to Sable as if waiting for her word or her idea on what to do next.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
She still is. "I see..." Sable nods. "Okay."
Energy Nede's Ghost Pokemon tend more towards mischief than malice--but this may not be a ghost. And it may indeed be dangerous. Timu mention what it must be, and Sable nods. "...Yes," she says. "It must be..."
She nods. "The volcano is dormant," she explains. "But the Pokemon out here don't see people as much, so they're wilder."
"If one of those is this close to town..."
"Awwoooooooooo!" the howl comes again, and emerging from behind some rocks ahead is a canine creature with a heavy gray mane and dark orange-red fur. It has a litle horn on its head, and strange curls in its coat.
It barks once, and then starts to run up the mountain.
"..." Sable consiiders. "...It's not as dangerous if we both go," she says. She pulls a Pokeball of her own. "Artan," she says.
The Dratini appears in a whirl, curling in the air and then straightening again to look at Sable. The rocky terrain won't bother him much.
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Timu watches intently as the howling Pokemon reveals themselves to Sable's read on the situation. They're barked at once, but then it is the Pokemon who runs up the mountain instead of chasing them off.
"...Right," she nods to Sable as she holds her Pokeball close. "Hestrol, come," she says, letting the larger whale-like Pokemon out with another trilling of whale song.
"We're right behind you two," Timu says to both Sable and her friend Artan. Timu might be the faster climber and pursuer for physiological reasons, but she's entrusting Sable whom would know the lay of the land better.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Hestrol's return gets a nod from Sable. "Okay," Sable answers Timu when she says she's right behind, and starts off. Sable mentioned the secret traditions of her family; now they are easier to see in the surety of her feet and the swiftness of her walk. She moves immediately into a half-crouch, walking quietly and carefully without making any noise.
And they walk up the path for a while, the Pokemon occasionally peering back at them and barking again before running off.
"You're angry," Sable reflects, after the second time. "...Should I be angry?" she wonders.
"I don't know..."
She comes to a stop for a moment as they walk, and they have been a bit of distance by now; a curving path along the volcano's side.
"I don't know how I'm supposed to feel..."
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Timu finds herself impressed in Sable's sense of movement and agility as they ascend and pursue. She probably could take a Guado Guardian by surprise, the way she keeps herself quiet all the while. It's a discipline she herself is not trained in, but she has little issue matching Sable's half-crouch.
"I would be," Timu replies in a quiet voice as she comes around the curving bend of the dormant volcano's side. Hestrol may not have been the play for being a stealthy Pokemon, but she is of a Timid nature and some of that just works in her favor.
"But... it can be hard to feel that way, when you're told you're not supposed to..."
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Sable has shared with Timu a couple of big secrets now; technically her family's abilities are not totally hidden, but she still doesn't make a habit of talking abou it.
But she's noticed how gracefully and swiftly Timu can move, and doesn't seem to have any doubts that she can keep up with Sable.
As it happens, the stealth they manage is helpful; there are other Pokemon lurking in the tall grasses of this place, some of which could be fairly strong. But they are not so wary that Sable cannot talk with Timu quietly as they follow the Pokemon ahead.
"I see..." She nods. "I love my mom," she says. "She's always protected me. She doesn't think I know, but... I know."
"...But I don't want to be protected from this. If I'm going to live up to our family's traditions... then I need to be willing to challenge danger."
"Even if it means challenging the 'lord' she's chosen."
The Pokemon ahead darts off--and Sable suddenly speeds up, to chase it.
When they come to a stop, there will be a tiny shrine, upended, rocks spilled out along the ground in disarray.
The Pokemon waits for them there.
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
To love one's parents and still have to come to grips with things you can't agree with... Timu stays quiet as Sable works out her feelings of having to confront her own mother about her choices, and her own personal resolve. One of her hands goes over her chest in thought, as they keep in pursuit -
And the abrupt increase in speed pre-empts Timu from verbally weighing in as she chases after, and at the seeming end(?) of the chase...
The Pokemon waits for them there - no longer barking, or running off, at least in the moment. Timu stands up, and plants her staff's tip on the ground gently as she takes it in both hands while her Hestrol friend peeks out from behind her.
"...Did they mean to bring us here?" She asks aloud. The shrine reminds her of some of the ones at home, at a glance.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Sable is on a path Timu has seen for herself, though perhaps one that will not end quite the same way. ...Her relationship with tradition is different. All the same, there is a similarity, and Sable is slowly making her own way through what it means.
Less slowly, she pauses at the end of the chase. The Pokemon is now identifiable as a dog-like creature, its heavy fur insulated against the chill of this part of the mountain. There's something rocky about its mane, the way its eyes are hidden, its curled tail.
Hestrol gets a look, as that tail wags. And Sable comes to a stop. "...They must've..."
Timu may sense it first; the sense of an unquiet spirit here, as another howl comes, not from the Pokemon, but from no direction and all directions at once.
The rocky Pokemon turns, and noses at the fallen rocks, whining once.
"I don't understand..."
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Timu meets the chill with an intoned cast of Regen, empowered by the White aspect of Fire by the Blessing of Althena, leaving a gentle warmth focused within an area rather than a specific target for the quartet to stay comfortable against the mountain's cold.
Her eyes open to the howling noise that doesn't come from the Pokemon in front of them. Startling, but not frightening, as Sable speaks of her bewilderment.
"Sable... this place, it... it might have been important to someone, once," she steps forward, calmly despite the sense of threat and danger by the howling. "Where I'm from, the dead often linger in the form of pyreflies, bound by hatred or jealousy of those who still live."
"There's... no pyreflies here," Timu reassures, such as it is, as she takes a few steps forward to gauge the canine-like Pokemon's reaction, "but... with the Ghost-types of Energy Nede, someone might still be here."
It is the Guado way to watch over the Farplane, as it was impressed to her, but she never had the talent for manipulating pyreflies like her sister - or most of her people, even.
"Sable... this might be someone's grave, or shrine," she says, as she kneels down, "would you know how it might have looked?"
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Sable notices the warmth by the absence of the chill, suddenly, and connects it with Timu's chant. She looks at Timu for a moment. "So that's your magic..."
But the howl comes, and Sable closes her eyes for a moment, focusing on her inner senses. She starts to recontextualize her surroundings, under the mediatative reassurance fo Timu's understanding. Sable nods. "I see..."
Hatred and jealousy. "That's scary."
But with no pyreflies here, it's different; the Pokemon looks towards Timu as she approaches, and then that Pokemon looks back at her. "Grow," it says, and trots away from the little shrine, its tail wagging when it turns around to look at both of them again.
"I see..."
When Timu calls it a grave or shrine, the Pokemon calls, "Lithe!"
Sable steps closer and kneels down next to Timu. "...Yes," she says. "I recognize this type of structure from some old stories. Should I..."
She considers Timu's instruction. "...It's broken," she says. "But it could be fixed... Should I fix it?"
She can't ask Timu to; Timu doesn't know how it looks. But the sense of Presence grows on both of them. Whatever howled, it is watching, now.
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
With the canine Pokemon's permission, Timu makes what surveys she can in confidence and relative peace even with the chill of an anguished spirit bearing down upon everyone.
"Stroooo---" Hestrol sings her unease in the situation, though as a Normal / Water dual-type, most Ghost-types are already at severe disadvantage for doing her harm. But that does not grant one resistance to fear or unease, after all.
Should Sable fix it?
"You may be the only one who can," Timu reassures as she rises. "I wonder if that's why they came down the mountain to beckon us to them," she says of the canine Pokemon that appears to welcome them to the aid of this shrine and who it honors.
"...I can keep the chill away while you work," she assures Sable. The ability to channel the healing aspects of flame may very well be the reason why the group she ascended Mt. Gagazet with were able to survive its harshest, most bitter cold, and she was younger then. She's a stronger person, now.
"Let us help you," she says to the Presence, such as she can ask. She doesn't know what the culture of Nede is as regards the lingering dead, and she doesn't have the capacity to Send. (There isn't a Farplane here in Energy Nede, even... is there?)
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Artan whirls around, looking curiously. He's still here! "Tini?" he wonders. "Draa...." He is a little shy, of all this, but he floats up near Hestrol. "Dra..." He is trying to be reassuring. But Sable is still unsure.
Timu says she may be the one who can, and Sable nods. "I see..."
Sable nods. "Okay," she says. It isn't so bitterly cold as it was on Gagazet, not here. Timu is stronger, and this situation is not so bad... though with the Presence waxing, it is colder than it was before. Perhaps that power will be needed, after all.
It watches, still. There are no Pyreflies to send, but Timu has its attention. Sable, in the meantime, starts to pick up the rocks.
The Growlithe, for that is what it is, despite its strange appearance, watches with interest. It takes a little while; it's colder, while it happens, because the Presence watches ever more carefully, but Sable barely notices thanks to Timu's warming magic. In time, she has it settled. The little shrine is filled with rocks in the proper arrangemennt again, and closed once more.
The Presence howls one more time, and starts to abate.
"...Those left behind," Sable murmurs, recalling what Timu had said earlier.
"I don't know how I should feel, but..."
The Growlithe wags her tail, and seems more 'present' somehow now, barking again once and approaching the two.
"...But I don't have to know alone, do I...?"
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Hestrol and Artan share a moment together, surrounded by uncertainty beyond the conjured warmth that helps keep the colder air at bay.
Timu watches intently as Sable puts the shrine back together, holding her breath and watching closely for anything amiss or dangerous - though as she's not from here, almost anything could be construed as amiss, dangerous, or worse. It was warned ahead of time that this is one of the more wild areas of Energy Nede, and it is good that they all went together.
Hopefully they all get to leave together, too.
With one final howl, Timu's hands clench her staff in bracing until everything seems to calm - and Sable murmurs her feelings. Peace, in these uncertain times on Energy Nede, seems to find at least a small place in the fragment of a world to be.
"I don't think anyone should," Timu says to the question, as a smile breaks through the ingrained Guado stoicism to the Growlithe showing what seems like appreciation. There aren't pyreflies here, and whatever systems in place for those who pass are beyond her scope, but...
"I think you did it," in confirmation of seeing to the anguish of whoever lingered here.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
Sable works slowly and carefully. No more danger appears besides the watchful Presence. This is a wilder part of the world, but the other Pokemon are avoiding this place.
The four of them ar still together, for now.
But here there is peace, now. It's calm again. Timu answers Sable's question, and Sable nods. "Right..."
The Growlithe approaches Sable where she is on the ground and starts to lick her face. "Ah?" she starts, and then reaches to pet the creature.
"...Okay," Sable says. They did it...
"Thank you," she says. "I don't think I could've helped him otherwise, and..."
"And that's what I want, I think."
Artan floats near Hestrol, and then, with a bump of his tail to the other Pokemon in acknowledgement, floats over to the Growlithe. "Ti..."
Sable says, "I..."
She hugs the Growlithe, suddenly, and the Growlithe wags her tail.
"I think I feel..."
"Mostly I just feel sad, Timu."
<Pose Tracker> Timu Guado has posed.
Mostly, Sable feels sad. Timu takes in a breath as she thinks, in brief, of some of the awful, scary things she ended up witnessing first hand. Things no one should have ever had to see, all but thanks to the cruelty to the likes of Seymour and Mauri whom both visited such awful things on Bevelle.
Hestrol lets out a gentle 'strooo-' in acknowledgement of the bump, as she flits closer - but in respectful distance of Sable and a friend she's made today.
"..."
"Me too," Timu says.
<Pose Tracker> Sable Aomori has posed.
<poem> Sable knows Timu has seen a lot, even if she doesn't know exactly the things that she's seen. She can trust her on this.
Sable hears Timu's answer, and nods. "Okay," she says.
The Growlithe barks again, and licks Sable's face once more before she pulls back.
"...I feel like she wants to come with me," Sable says.
"But I..."
She starts to stand, pushing up against the ground and getting to her feet, to look up at Timu, even taller than she is.
"...Thank you," she says. "Not just for the help with her, but..."
"I hope it's not like it was with your father. But whether it is or not, I appreciate... that you know."
"...Let's head back."