Prologue
Persephone
The Vulture Queen
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2014
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Discussion of animal and child abuse, although the actual acts will never be shown on page or gone into in detail. Occasional self harm, sometimes shown. Will be warned for in chapters where it appears.
Cast Page: Contains Spoilers
prologue: thawing
They’re talking about you again.
You don’t understand many of the words, but you know the tone. Talking more in breath than sound, trying to sound quieter than they really are. The same mock concern they take on the moment they turn away from your table, like they aren’t still in the same room.
But you don’t care. You don’t really care about anything anymore, except maybe for Mother. You wonder if she’s thought of you in the last few… days? Weeks? Months? Between the capsule and the trailer you haven’t had many chances to be outside and count the changing skies and you aren’t sure if the humans work and leave once a day or not.
No, as much as you’d like to believe it you can’t imagine she cares about you anymore. The nine-tails only keep two of their litters to train. It lets them keep the territories intact. When the unchosen become three-tails they set off on their own. Your body and mind and comfort are your problems.
And, because you don’t care, those things are now the people in ice-colored-metal’s problems.
They keep you alive. They try to coax you into eating things that help with the bruises and scars. You won’t, because it’s your mouth and you eat what you want. Which is nothing. They took a capsule out once and you bit them. They let you sleep on the table instead of in a cage like the others, and you’ve learned to sleep in the dark while the humans are away and rest on the table in daylight, keeping an eye open for more capsules.
There’s a new human, this time, talking with the faux-ice humans. Young and female. Like you. You caught a glimpse of her mane when she walked in. Thick, curly and went a little past her shoulder-blades. Light-yellowish, like the fire-tails in the stories you’d been told as a kit.
It had leaves in it, some dirt. Even from a distance it smelled unclean, although humans seemed to have a higher tolerance for that. It would be pretty if cared for and you want to run your paws and tongue through it to clean it up like you would for your own coat.
You suppose you still care that you look like a fox should. But presentation is sort of like breathing, so you aren’t sure that counts.
The human approaches you again, with the other humans behind her. She walks up to your table, glancing to the side at the cages as she does so as if this isn’t premeditated, and stops at the edge. You cast him the sort of wary, frigid look that only an ice-type can manage in response.
“Hey,” she vocalizes. “Can I pet you?”
You don’t understand the words, but she offers her paw, keeping it head-length away from your snout. She doesn’t smell nervous. Is this how humans communicate social receptiveness? You haven’t had much chance to see that behavior.
It takes you a few seconds to decide, but you eventually do move to push your face against their paw, rubbing your scent glands against it. Her paw is warm, but not unpleasantly so. You sneeze and a burst of cold air radiates from your body as it compensates a little for the heat. The human recoils for a second, probably on reflex, but puts her paw back up to your head when you look at her expectantly.
*
She’s back the next time the ice-metal humans are.
This time she opens up the door and looks at you.
“You want to go outside?”
The words are mostly unfamiliar, but you grasp the intent. Yes, you decide, sunlight heat and flower smell would be nice. Rising on your paws is painful as you feel the muscles and skin ripple around your scars and bruises, but it doesn’t feel like anything tears. One of the humans picks you up gently and cradles you in his arms, like Mother and Father would in their jaws when you were a kit. You are unsure how you misbehaved this time. Was it not a genuine offer? A trick?
No. They set you down in the grass outside. Just a different way of communicating.
The sun and air are much warmer on the surface, but your body quickly begins cooling itself and the air to adjust. At the end everything around you is still the same temperature, but you can feel the sunlight striking your fur. And smell the foliage. They’re different flowers than you have on the mountain and there are far more of them. You absent-mindedly walk up to one and wrap your jaws around it to get a better feel for its taste and texture. The young human pulls you away.
“If you want food, they have more vulpix-friendly stuff in there.”
Her tone is cheerful, but you recognize the pleading edge and the ‘food’ vocalization. You turn away and walk closer to the road, puffing up your tails behind you in a show of defiance. Before you reach it, a much larger pokemon cuts you off. He’s quadrupedal, red and black colored and you can feel radiated heat enter your personal blizzard. Fire-type. Big fire-type.
He notes your reaction and adjusts quickly, holding his tail still and lowering himself to the ground before rolling on to his side.
“Didn’t mean to scare you. Just want to play.”
It’s a feline dialect. Close enough to your native vulpine to understand, even if you aren’t sure you got all the possible subtext.
You cock your head. “Play?”
“Yes. Chase each other around or—” He stops short and rises to his paws before slowly walking towards you, head down. You allow him to brush his face against yours. “You’re sick?” He asks. “Hurt. You should get that fixed.”
You slowly lay down and show him your stomach. “How do you heal this?”
His eyes narrow. “Do you have a ball? Or have they tried potions? Those look old and improperly healed, but…” He shakes his head. “You’ll need to get those looked at before we can play. And eat. You look undernourished. Are they providing food or…?”
You tuck your tails between your legs, turn around and head back inside. You don’t want to talk about it. What happened. What happened after. Why you don’t care. He seems well-meaning, and he shouts after you that he’ll be back to play later, but there are things that a healthy fire cat with a gentle (if poorly groomed) human mother won’t understand.
Still. The human seems to like you, and she at least takes care of her cat. She’s not like… like they were. You wonder why she came back, why she cares about you, and you realize that maybe she wants to put you on your team. You’d leave the room. She’d put you in a capsule, sometimes.
But it’s something to hope for. And you’ll take it.
*
You eat that night. The food is dry and bland, but you get some down your throat before your stomach gets upset. Then you let them spray things on you (which sting and hurt) and put you into another capsule. They keep you in it until it’s bright out again.
You stretch out with your front paws and feel your belly react. It hurts less than it did when you went in to the capsule. You roll onto your side and move to scout out the area with your tongue, but you’re met with a spray of water when you do so. On reflex you uncurl, climb to your paws and hiss blindly in the water’s direction, kicking up a frozen mist around you in the process.
A human forepaw reaches down to your arched back and you bite the air around it before bothering to take in more information. It’s the young female human. She seems a bit startled, but not angry. You calm down a bit and let her stroke your back, but you won’t warm up the air for her while she does it.
After a few strokes she reaches down to pick you up, doing so by wrapping her arms around your side and hugging you to her chest. Won’t touch your underside. But she’s less gentle when she drops you down on the table (you still land perfectly, of course) and you feel the bump less.
“She’s doing much better,” one of the humans says. “We’re very thankful for your help in this.”
The female laughs. You know that sound well enough, but it doesn’t seem to be threatening. The last times you heard it were followed by violence. This one is only followed by a chunk of delicious smelling food the size of your head being dumped in front of you.
“Not all at once,” the female says. You can guess the meaning, and it’s unnecessary. You couldn’t possibly eat this in one go if you wanted to.
You end up getting much closer than you would have thought in the end, but half of it’s still left. That goes to her cat, who devours in three bites a chunk that took you dozens. She talks to the other humans for a bit after while the fire cat tries to make conversation with you. But he’s very large and his voice is always approximating a growl, even when he seems to be happy.
The human leaves you a while later with a thorough head scratching.
*
They aren’t back the next day. Or the next week. Or the next month. You let them spray you with nasty liquids and put you in a capsule and cut you open (while you’re asleep, but still) but she never comes back.
And with every day you sit on a table doing nothing in particular, watching the humans care for sicker creatures until they leave and their sunlight stops, you remember a little bit more why you stopped caring.
Eventually your stomach is fine. They let you lick it again and everything, and you can only feel the scar if you really press your tongue down, doing your best to weave it between all the tufts of fur. And you still don’t know what comes next. You don’t know if you care.
Maybe you would’ve sunk back into the cold darkness behind your eyes, the living death, if you hadn’t received another visitor one day. A very rigid, well-groomed human female. The age where you suspect even her chosen two kits are going on their own to start their litters. There’s another canine with her, but an odd one. Not in his body (brown with what seems to be a built in collar - you hate collars), but in his posture. Unmoving, unflinching. Standing guard for some unapparent threat at all times, only breaking to survey his surroundings with disinterest.
Then the human tells him something and he moves. Deliberately, quickly and all at once. Practiced, formal. More machine than animal. He hops up on your table with an agility you wouldn’t expect from a non-vulpine canine, and you feel the shock wave ripple through it when he lands. But he’s up on his feet a second later, looking at you with the same passive disinterest as he did the walls. His eyes are unyieldingly staring into yours, and you have to break off eye contact first. He doesn’t try to rub his face against yours or get your scent. Instead he simply stands there. Waiting.
Waiting for an order from his human. Waiting for words, more exactly. The human talks, the dog translates.
They give you an offer, a purpose, a chance.
You wonder if becoming one of their moving statues is any better than your apathy. But at least it’s something to do. Something you can do without caring, if you have to. And maybe it’s a future.
You accept their invitation.
[The following excerpt was predominately written in English with individual words or sentences slipping in to Nahuatl or Spanish]
I’m not sure what to do with this. Miss Freeman just gave me a notebook the size of my hand and told me to write down whatever I wanted in it. I understand why she did it. I stop talking (stop moving, almost stop breathing) most of the time during therapy when she asks about the big things. Or the little things. Or anything about me. Which seems to be the only thing she wants to know about. We’re stuck. The book is to say things to the page, because it might be easier to just show her a book rather than saying words at her.
But I can’t really trick my brain like that because, first, I’m blind. That sounds… looks… wrong? Metaphors, yuck. (Wait, is it simile?) Brings me to two. I think in Nahuatl and Spanish and while I pick up some English here and home, close to border, it is hard to put thoughts into English thoughts into English words. I think I have just write things in not English here, but can’t check.
Oh. Back to blindness. I know I can’t read this. I could use a computer, talk to it and listen to it say my words but I’m doing this because I don’t want to say things. No, I have to write.
I put the pen down for an hour. I think I know how to do it now. Talk like I’m not talking to Miss Freeman but to someone entirely new and… someone who doesn’t exist.
Hello. My name is Cuicatl Tlaloc. My dad renamed me Valentina Cabello after the occupation. I like it a little bit. It’s a double (NOTE: what is this called? Like a metaphor and a joke) after my mom. My mom is a goddess of water, fertility, other things. The name is made up and it sounds made up and I like it because it’s almost like a superhero’s secret name. Except, their secret names are the public ones. So is mine. No one can pronounce Nahuatl words and they either start apologizing or raise their voice. It’s a little nice, knowing who I can trust and who I can’t. But I don’t like beingmore of a burden.
I was born in Anahuac (Mexico). Grew up there. And
[The rest of the entry was originally written in Nahuatl and translated at a later date]
Today. I want to write about today. Or tomorrow. Miss Freeman says I have to make a choice very soon about what happens when I leave. I can go on… I don’t entirely know what it is. A lot of walking? I would get a pokémon? They kept using talking about television. I don’t like having translators in the room and Miss Freeman talks too fast when she’s explaining things. I know I would get a pokémon and mostly be let on my own.
The other option is an orphanage. Here in Alola. Where people would have questions. But I know I couldn’t do anything to justify my presence and if I could the adults wouldn’t let me do it . And since I can’t the adults would be annoyed with me and the kids would mock me.
There really isn’t a second option. I want to feel the sky again. And a pokémon would be nice…
I’m not sure what to do with this. Miss Freeman just gave me a notebook the size of my hand and told me to write down whatever I wanted in it. I understand why she did it. I stop talking (stop moving, almost stop breathing) most of the time during therapy when she asks about the big things. Or the little things. Or anything about me. Which seems to be the only thing she wants to know about. We’re stuck. The book is to say things to the page, because it might be easier to just show her a book rather than saying words at her.
But I can’t really trick my brain like that because, first, I’m blind. That sounds… looks… wrong? Metaphors, yuck. (Wait, is it simile?) Brings me to two. I think in Nahuatl and Spanish and while I pick up some English here and home, close to border, it is hard to put thoughts into English thoughts into English words. I think I have just write things in not English here, but can’t check.
Oh. Back to blindness. I know I can’t read this. I could use a computer, talk to it and listen to it say my words but I’m doing this because I don’t want to say things. No, I have to write.
I put the pen down for an hour. I think I know how to do it now. Talk like I’m not talking to Miss Freeman but to someone entirely new and… someone who doesn’t exist.
Hello. My name is Cuicatl Tlaloc. My dad renamed me Valentina Cabello after the occupation. I like it a little bit. It’s a double (NOTE: what is this called? Like a metaphor and a joke) after my mom. My mom is a goddess of water, fertility, other things. The name is made up and it sounds made up and I like it because it’s almost like a superhero’s secret name. Except, their secret names are the public ones. So is mine. No one can pronounce Nahuatl words and they either start apologizing or raise their voice. It’s a little nice, knowing who I can trust and who I can’t. But I don’t like being
I was born in Anahuac (Mexico). Grew up there. And
[The rest of the entry was originally written in Nahuatl and translated at a later date]
Today. I want to write about today. Or tomorrow. Miss Freeman says I have to make a choice very soon about what happens when I leave. I can go on… I don’t entirely know what it is. A lot of walking? I would get a pokémon? They kept using talking about television. I don’t like having translators in the room and Miss Freeman talks too fast when she’s explaining things. I know I would get a pokémon and mostly be let on my own.
The other option is an orphanage. Here in Alola. Where people would have questions. But I know I couldn’t do anything to justify my presence and if I could the adults wouldn’t let me do it . And since I can’t the adults would be annoyed with me and the kids would mock me.
There really isn’t a second option. I want to feel the sky again. And a pokémon would be nice…
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