Part 1 – The Haven

It was the same nightmare again. The hands grabbing at her, the harsh lights glaring down from above as the needles pricked and jabbed at her body. The way she’d hear the voice in her lungs and the voice in her mind both scream out and beg her tormentors to stop, only for both to go ignored.

“Tigri?”

The images in her mind’s eye went dark and light started to seep past Tigri’s eyelids. She opened them as sunlight began to fill in from the mouth of the den and illuminate her surroundings: the earthen walls, the small pile of dried berries in the corner, and the small resin and metal containers which they used for safekeeping that she and her brother found washed up along the river.

Tigri sat up in her bedding and looked down. Her legs were both there, along with her gray pelt, and past them was a pile of dried straw and reeds. The strip of sullied cloth that she’d loop around her wrist to show she didn’t belong to the wilds outside town was lying just beside it., Further off next to the den’s wall, there was a trio of bottlecaps—the first pieces of salvage that she’d found since escaping the place with the harsh lights.

“Tigri?”

Tigri turned her head towards the den’s mouth as an approaching shadow blocked the morning sunlight coming through: another Espurr. His mouth was firmly closed, but she’d heard his mind’s voice in her own as clear as day. That was Stig, her brother, or at least she called him that since he was the closest thing she had to one. The two of them had fled together from the place with the harsh lights a couple of years ago and kept going around in search of refuge until they’d made it here to Abri. Something about ‘Tigri’ and ‘Stig’ still sounded strange to her, but apparently most Pokémon here took names based on the sounds that came naturally to their speaker’s tongues, and they’d done much the same to fit in.

It was just as well since Tigri wasn’t sure whether or not she or Stig had names back in the place with the harsh lights. Let alone whether or not they’d sound any better than the ones they’d chosen.

Stig’s eyes and mouth remained locked in place, as was common for their kind. A number of the other villagers told her in the past that they found it a bit strange and eerie, but it’d never bothered her since their faces always felt overly expressive. Like they just had some instinctual compulsion to let the whole world know their feelings.

A part of her was thankful that Espurr weren’t like that. She could only imagine how awkward it’d have been if all their neighbors further along the path that ran by their den could tell when she’d been having nightmares.

“Are you okay, Tigri?”

Stig spoke with the voice in his mind again, the voice that they and others of their kind could better control who overheard it. There was a pang of concern to it as he came deeper into the den and looked over at her. Tigri locked eyes with him briefly, before she sighed and got up, answering him with the voice in her lungs.

“I’ll be fine, Stig,” she insisted. “It was just one of those nightmares again.”

Stig stared at her briefly before taking a cloth band off the ground in front of his bedding and slipping it over one of his arms. He continued and stepped out into the light outside, before waving back at her to follow.

“If you say so,” he said, faintly moving the corners of his mouth. “Though we should get going. The jobs on the bulletin board tend to go quickly in the morning and Rouge is probably already waiting for us.”

… Right, they would be working outside the village today. And the sooner they got to it, the better.

Tigri snatched her own cloth from beside her bedding and slipped it over her right arm. She noted to herself that she ought to wash it sometime soon to get the dirt that’d caked onto it out, but she supposed she had bigger priorities at the moment.

Tigri stopped to let her eyes adjust to the morning light after stepping out of her and her brother’s den. Whenever she’d look back at it, she’d see the trees of the forest off in the distance, almost as if they were living in the wilds.

But then she saw the other dens and nests neatly lined up along the clear dirt path under the shade of tall branches overhead, to hide them from view from above. In front of them, there’d occasionally be a small container set out such a box or a basket, to hold messages that the others called ‘mail’ which would occasionally be left for them. And further still down the path, there’d already be a glimpse of simple huts and trails of smoke coming up from them.

The main square of Abri, the little haven where Tigri and Stig lived, and where the bulletin board with the morning jobs was.

---

Even with it just a few minutes north by walking from her den, Tigri wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to entering the center of Abri from the village’s outer parts. It was a collection of simple huts and shelters fashioned from tree branches and leaves which were laid out in a village square. As the place where almost all of the Abri’s shops and amenities were located, it was the beating heart of the village, and the main place for its residents to gather together:

For special occasions, for important announcements, or merely just to wile away time in each other’s company.

The walk into the square always went by in the same order coming up the lane from her den. First was the enclosure of split logs-turned-counters where the local family of Kecleon ran their ‘General Store’. Their son—’Achille’, named after someone from their old life that his parents had taken a liking to—was setting out the day’s wares of berries and odds and ends that they’d turned up from beyond the forest surrounding Abri. On the other side of the path from the General Store was the local ‘Bank’ that had been fashioned from a stony den with a simple hut built over its entrance, which Mache the Gabite jealously guarded. Achille’s family apparently got the idea to help her set it up after the Dragon-type stumbled across a hoard of human coins in the Mazewoods. It had taken some explaining for the villagers who were around at the time to wrap their heads around the idea, but the Kecleon explained that using the coins as an intermediary for trades as something called ‘money’ would dramatically reduce the amount of haggling over whether such-and-such berry or pebble was a fair trade for each other…

Tigri wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing. Some of the locals who had been around long enough to live through the introduction of money into Abri swore that there had been more arguments among the villagers ever since they started using it. There was also that part of her that wasn’t sure if she felt comfortable about the idea of the Pokémon here using a human practice so casually. Especially when Abri had been founded as a refuge for Pokémon that either didn’t want to or couldn’t live in the wilds to hide away from them.

Next up was the square’s center, along with the round, sunken pit in the middle that was ringed by rising sets of barriers that formed crude seats with a slightly elevated stone on its right side—Abri’s battlefield. A place for locals to spar whenever Lind the Chesnaught was there to run his ‘dojo’ out of it, and when less combatively-minded Pokémon were gathered nearby, a public forum to make public announcements. Elder Gide or Ticho, Abri’s Aegislash leader and his Farfetch’d assistant who also helped manage the bulletin board, usually did the honors. The two were there that day and seemed to be waiting on Lind to show up, as they talked about something involving the berry harvests that sounded a bit worrisome from their tone of voice.

Tigri decided she would be happier not knowing what was going on, and walked along the battlefield’s rim. Watching over them from posts raised at regular intervals along it were the wooden carvings of Abri’s Founders. The Pokémon who’d founded the village, so long ago that nobody in it could agree what the names they gave themselves were and remembered them by epithets like ‘Lucario the Wanderer’ or ‘Weavile the Runegiver’.

Varen’s Storage Shop came next, where the Diggersby proprietor kept a watchful eye over the belongings of residents who’d run out of space to store them, including the residents who hoarded food for the winter. Tigri had always wondered how secure those belongings were at Varen’s when rickety walls aside, the part of the shop aboveground had been built in almost the same style as the unwalled pavilions that most of the other shops and buildings in the town square had. She supposed it must’ve done something, at least, since Varen apparently did a good enough job at keeping her customers’ belongings in one place to make a business of it. Couaf and Farel were in front of her shop today, old friends who had led her and Stig through the Mazewoods back when they were still on a Team like her own. Elder Gide had tasked them to be Deputies for Sheriff Ron earlier in the year, though something about them seemed unusually on-edge that day.

“I can’t believe Ron, how on earth does he just sleep through a human roaming through the meadow?” Couaf fumed. “If I hadn’t found the trail that human left behind, we’d never have known about it!”

Tigri stiffened up and bristled at the pair’s chatter. She’d heard stories of how humans had been heroes or saviors for other Pokémon, but that wasn’t the case here in Abri. Being discovered by humans was a source of perpetual dread for the villagers, and everyone had an unpleasant story of their own involving them or else knew someone else who did.

Stories of fleeing from horrid places like the one she and Stig had. Of being abruptly snatched away without mercy or pity and crammed into cages. Of suffering through just about every conceivable torment because of a human or one of their partners.

“I told Elder Gide that we needed Pokémon who could stay alert for guard duty,” Farel sighed. “At least the trail didn’t go into the forest outside town, so Patron and his pack’s Illusions must’ve done their job keeping the Barrier secure.”

Tigri glanced up at the shading branches overhead. Their cover from the sky above was a welcome reassurance that they were currently hidden, even if she wasn’t sure how reassuring it was to know that it was because of Patron and his pack that they hadn’t been discovered yesterday.

Word around town was that he and Elder Gide had been getting into increasingly bitter arguments about food lately. Based on the chatter he and Ticho had regarding the berry harvest, Tigri supposed that it wouldn’t be long before he made an unwelcome appearance in town.

“Heeeey!”

Tigri turned her eyes up towards a chirping voice that rang out through the air. There, up ahead, was Carat the Shuckle’s juice bar with stump stools set out in front of a split log counter, and more importantly, their destination just past it: Brais the Fletchinder’s ‘Post Office’. It was a place where Pokémon passed messages left on stones or chips of wood to one another, sometimes with a bit of help from Brais if they couldn’t read or write well in the village’s runes. The Fletchinder was on duty that day behind a low-slung counter in an open-walled pavilion, looking up with a chunk of bark in her beak. And off to her side, waving his wings excitedly, was Rouge. Brais’ Fletchling child and their teammate who served as their spotter on Team Aspirant.

The Fletchling swooped forward and settled on the ground, ruffling his feathers as Tigri and her brother walked up.

“I was starting to wonder when you’d come!” the Fire-type chirped.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Rouge,” Stig said. “Are there still missions left on the bulletin board right now?”

“Yeah! Yeah! There’s still plenty!” the Fletchling insisted. “Except… I’m not sure if there’s many left that you can reach.”

A flash of unease pulsed through Tigri’s mind before she turned towards a wooden board on the other side of the with pegs driven into it. There, a Rhyhorn and a Greninja pulled a wood chip hanging from one of the topmost pegs before making their way off—Orne and Nobi from Team Rapid. The wooden chips that the missions were listed on were always ordered with the hardest and most dangerous ones put on the top with the easiest ones were sorted towards the bottom since the stronger villagers would usually be tall enough to reach such heights on their own.

Except… it looked like most of the bottom half of the mission board had already been picked clean.

“… We have ways of getting things from higher up if we have to,” Tigri insisted. “Let’s see what’s left for us to choose from right now.”

Tigri shuffled along with her companions for the bulletin board and… nothing. Not a single footprint or slash-shaped rune to be seen beyond a faded ‘Ori was here’ in the wood from the time the local Smeargle artist had vandalized it after binging on overripe berries. Tigri turned her head down, her face and eyes remaining unmoving as the voice in her mind hissed in frustration.

“Ugh. Of course.“

“Don’t get down so fast, Tigri,” Stig’s own mind-voice answered in her head. “Looks like there’s still one of the easier missions left.“

Tigri glanced up, just in time to see Stig hold out his arm and focused on a blank chip near the bottom right of the board. He twitched his ears as a faint pink aura settled around the wood chip and an unseen force tugged it from the board. He dispelled his mind’s grip on the chip and let it fall to the ground, where much to Tigri’s surprise, there were neat rows of small gouges carved into it. Tigri didn’t recognize all of them, but they were clearly village runes. Supposedly, they looked like that thanks to being based on scratches that Weavile the Runegiver used and taught Abri’s first villagers to read long, long ago, mixed with footprints to represent their creators and the jobs they did. Kind of like how the Kecleon footprint by the spot for the requester on this one could be taken to mean ‘Kecleon’ or ‘merchant’.

There were a few possibilities as to who had left it in particular, though the small group of runes above it left no room for confusion:

“Looks like Achille needs someone to help gather stock for him to sell from the river in Longbloom Meadow,” Rouge said. “The salvage that washes up there can get a bit bulky, but there should still be stuff that will fit our sled which we can take back.”

Tigri paused. It would’ve been a straightforward mission. One that they’d normally be able to complete quickly enough to be paid before going to sleep that night, and one that they’d done before, except…

“Are we sure that this is a good idea?” she asked. “The Furfrou Brothers were saying that they’d spotted signs that a human went through the meadow recently. Maybe there’s a reason why nobody’s taken this mission yet.”

Rouge stiffened up and squirmed uneasily. He must not have overheard Couaf and Farel earlier given his sudden lack of enthusiasm. Stig for his part didn’t look particularly fazed, as her fellow Espurr shook his head with a dismissive harrumph.

“Look, we’re all small and it’s fairly easy to hide among the flowers if we have to,” the male Espurr insisted. “Besides, Couaf and Farel have always been paranoid types. Who’s to say that they didn’t mix up those tracks with some from ones from the Wild Pokémon that go through the meadow?”

“Aegislash!”

Tigri’s ears flared as yelps and startled cries in the square rang out behind her. There, appearing in a flash of magenta from the northward path into it, were a trio of Zoroark: a younger-looking male and female who flanked an older male with mussed fur and a set of scars on his right arm.

“Oh great, Patron’s here,” Rouge muttered. “So much for it being a pleasant day today.”

Right. Unlike the inhabitants of Abri, the Pokémon of Patron’s pack and many of the Wilds that lived nearby took names based on their feats or accomplishments in life. Tigri guessed that such names must not have sounded as on-the-nose to them as they did to her and her fellow villagers. The younger Zoroark at Patron’s side growled at passersby and cowed them out of the way as the elder Zoroark sauntered forward, heading straight for Elder Gide. The Aegislash looked up as Patron stopped with a glaring crouch before the Steel-type narrowed his own eye with a low, metallic-sounding sigh.

“What do you want, Patron?”

“Our tribute. You villagers are supposed to have those berries for my pack every moon,” the elder Zoroark spat. “Do you honestly expect us to be able to maintain those Illusions which keep your village hidden when our kits are whining for lack of food and their elders’ bellies go empty?”

Patron and his pack had always been a bit baffling to Tigri. Apparently, they were one of the groups of Wilds that the town had struck an alliance with, which had happened some years before her and Stig’s arrival.

Word among the villagers was that they’d lost a battle for territory in the Mazewoods before being forced to find shelter beyond it. Whatever the story, they helped keep the town’s entrance to the meadow outside the Mazewoods hidden through a ring of Illusions to disorient outside intruders and allowed the village’s carnivores to scavenge wherever they lived. In return, every month, Abri and its inhabitants would surrender a share of the berries and plants they gathered and grew in tended patches.

One would think that such an alliance ought to have kept both sides as close and friendly to each other, and yet, for as long as they had been around, Patron and the others in his pack never bothered to hide the fact that they looked down on the Pokémon that lived in Abri. Some of the older Pokémon who lived in Abri said that their alliance with the town only began in the first place after there had been a fight between them that ended with members of his pack taken prisoner followed by a treaty of friendship made afterwards to settle things down.

Tigri didn’t know how true those stories were, but it’d certainly explain a few things if they were. Whenever the harvests were leaner, Patron would simply threaten that his pack would stop hiding the village. A state of affairs that nobody in the village could tolerate for long, and one way or another, it would eventually fall to the villagers to grin and bear any shortfall until the next month.

She assumed that that was what he was up to now, and Elder Gide’s reaction all but confirmed it.

“Patron, the berries have been slow to ripen this year,” the Aegislash huffed. “I understand that you and your pack are in a precarious situation, but everyone else here is, too. There are some things that can’t be rushed and you know it.”

“Well, that’s your problem and not ours, now isn’t it?”

The male Zoroark flanking Patron trained his gaze on a Skiddo in the crowd, who stiffened up with a sharp yelp. Tigri briefly felt feathers rustle against her fur and looked up to see Patron’s other lackey shooting a predatory gaze over at Rouge, who squirmed and ducked behind Stig.

… Tigri knew that Patron and his packmates were hunters, but with that smirk on his face, he wasn’t seriously threatening that they’d…?

“We’ve been having some bad luck ourselves lately. As I’m sure you already know, our current territory doesn’t exactly have rich hunting grounds,” the Zoroark reminded. “If you’re not going to help keep us fed, perhaps some of my packmates will just go ahead and start making up the difference with some of your village’s empty mouths-“

Elder Gide shot forward and slammed his shield into Patron’s face with a sharp, flinch-worthy smack. The leader Zoroark flew off his feet and hit the ground with a thud. He righted himself and flashed his teeth with a low growl when there was a metallic glint and the sound of swishing air. It took a little bit for Tigri to see it, but as the dust settled, she saw the Aegislash had grasped his shield with one of his tassel arms and leveled the point of his bladed body at Patron’s throat. The younger Zoroark snarled and flashed their claws at Gide, only for the female to summarily crumple to the ground from a spray of pin-like projectiles sailing in. The male underling sprang back in surprise, and Tigri whirled her head over in the direction of the Pin Missile to see Lind the Chestnaught glaring off from the side. The male underling had a brief flash of alarm cross his face and began to move his paws as the surrounding air started to distort, only for the Dark-type to abruptly stop with a squeaking yelp.

It was Team Rapid’s Greninja, who had snuck up behind the Zoroark and cornered him with a watery blade leveled at his throat. The female Zoroark stumbled up, but after glancing around the square, her fighting spirit swiftly ebbed away. It wasn’t hard to see why: all around the square, the villagers had closed ranks and ringed the three Wilds with growls of their own, while others were hurrying in from further off ready for battle.

From the ground, Patron remained fiercely defiant, as Gide glared back down with a look that looked as if it could pierce the pack leader’s very pelt.

“Don’t ever make a threat like that again to my villagers, do you hear me?” the Aegislash growled. “If you’re really so confident that our present arrangement means that you can deal with us as you please, we’ll drive your pack back to the Mazewoods so you all can try your luck holding territory there again. Tonight.“

Patron visibly wavered, and even though she couldn’t make sense of their thoughts and feelings as she could with most other Pokémon, Tigri could see as clear as day that the threat had visibly spooked his underlings. There was a brief pause as she heard the male of the pair squeaking something along the lines of “w-we weren’t actually going hunt anyone” from behind Nobi’s watery blade.

Elder Gide wavered for a moment and let Patron go. The Zoroark shot up and dusted himself off, with his female underling scurrying over, as Team Rapid roughly shoving the male back to his side.

He turned away, before sullenly growling to his packmates.

“Ombre, Chasseur. We’re going.”

The three turned and slunk off for the northern path as the villagers parted ways, a few of them throwing in jeers from a safe distance as the Zoroark passed. The elder Zoroark hesitated briefly as the other Zoroark scurried off with their ears pinned tight against their heads and looked back at Elder Gide with a sharp glare.

“This isn’t over, Aegislash. Not by a long shot.”

There was a moment of tense silence as Patron followed and moved his arms. The air shimmered afterwards and the three abruptly vanished in a flash of magenta light. An uneasy silence followed as the villagers began to disperse and the village square began to return to normal, or something approaching it anyways.

Even so, worried murmurs about the whole episode still floated here and there through the air, and the more Tigri thought about it, the more she was starting to have doubts about taking the mission they’d found.

“… Maybe it’d be for the best to stay home today,” she murmured. “Between the human sighting and Patron going and making threats like that…”

“Hrmph, that sounds more like an argument to keep going,” Stig retorted.

“Yeah! Imagine giving a bully like that the satisfaction of pushing us around!” Rouge piped.

Tigri hesitated and looked off towards the northern end of the town, to the route they would need to take for their mission as her thoughts drifted back to her past before coming to Abri. Team Aspirant wasn’t exactly a strong team, and if trouble came, surely one like Team Rapid would fare better against any dangers they came across.

Tigri snapped to attention as her stomach growled. She looked down at her body, and then over at Stig and Rouge. The three of them looked lean and like they hadn’t been eating much lately, and based off the exchange just then, it was likely that the food in the village was about to get tighter still.

The Espurr hesitated. She still wasn’t sure this was a good idea, but in light of their present troubles, did it really make sense to just keep hiding away?

“Come on, let’s go and get our sled from Varen’s shop,” she insisted. “If there’s going to be trouble coming, we might as well stock up before food becomes too tight.”

---

Varen kept the items that she stored in her Storage Shop in a warren of tunnels that the Diggersby had dug to provide the space that she’d use to hold onto things that were beyond the space of local villagers’ nests and dens to store. Some of it was clutter like a portion of Mache’s collection of glass beads or the scavenged rugs that Achille and his parents kept for whenever one of them went off to ply their trade deep in the Mazewoods. Others were taken up by tools that local Teams like theirs kept for missions where their bodies or their abilities alone wouldn’t suffice, including the sled which Tigri and her teammates had built for salvage-gathering missions like the one they’d accepted.

They’d cobbled it together from a dish of green resin and a pair of cords they’d pulled from the river. The sled was easy enough to pull over smooth surfaces like layers of snow, but the way it scraped against the dirt and pebbles along the path to Longbloom Meadow always grated Tigri’s ears.

CHUNK!

Tigri briefly lost her focus as the weight against her mind dropped and the cord she’d been telekinetically pulling at fell in the dirt. Off to the side, Stig came to a stop as the cord he was levitating visibly sagged. She looked back at the sled, where she saw that its resin had glanced off an exposed root in the dirt and turned it at an angle. Her brother let go of his own cord, before rubbing a paw at the back of his head sheepishly.

“Sorry, I didn’t notice that root there, Tigri,” he said. “Though at least it doesn’t look that hard to get around. Help me lift the sled a little bit off the ground and it should be easy enough to clear.”

Tigri sighed and breathed in as she focused her thoughts on the sled itself. There was a pulsing feeling in her head as the resin dish rose from the ground little by little. After getting it high enough to pass the root, she pulled it towards herself along with Stig, when a sharp chirp filled the air.

“Hah! Did you see the looks on those Zoroark’s faces! It was priceless!”

Tigri lost her focusand the sled fell against the root with an audible tonk before sliding forward. She briefly saw Stig darting aside, and sprang back herself before the sled could run into her.

She turned her head upwards, where Rouge was there twittering from a branch above them with his chest feathers proudly out and sighed. She’d been starting to get used to Rouge’s habit of running his beak off, but even after almost a year together on Team Aspirant, he still had a way of breaking her concentration at the most inconvenient times.

“Rouge. Stig and I need to be able to focus while we’re pulling the sled,” she sighed. “Also, we’re about to go through the fringes where Patron and his pack maintain the Illusions around Abri. Maybe keep the laughter to yourself until after we’ve made it through the Barrier, hm?”

Her words came out a bit snappier than she’d intended, and from Rouge’s chastened reaction from above, he must’ve noticed himself. The Fletchling ruffled his feathers uncomfortably before Tigri’s ears pricked from Stig stepping forward as look up at the Fletchling himself.

“Not that the moment wasn’t pretty funny, but probably shouldn’t rub it in too hard, Rouge. I doubt whoever’s watching over the path today would pick a fight over it, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone from Patron’s pack gave a village they were upset with the run-around,” Stig said. “Besides. Based on our surroundings, it looks like we’re going to need you to stay closer to the ground as our lookout.”

Rouge tilted his head, before fluttering down to the ground. He came to a hopping stop and turned aside with an uneasy twitter.

“… Right,” the Fletchling said. “I suppose it would be pretty embarrassing to get separated from each other from less than a couple of wingspans away.”

Tigri and Stig returned back to the cords of their sled as the Fletchling carried on down the path. It was best not to fall too far behind along this point of the path since the Barrier was kept up by active effort, and as such its Illusions were prone to shifting or opening and closing behind Pokémon that traveled through it.

She and her brother pressed on, levitating the pull-cords and tugging them with their mind’s strength as they followed after Rouge. It was usually hard to notice the edge of the Barrier while approaching it, since Patron and his packmates typically made its Illusions quite convincing. All the better to confuse and disorient unwanted intruders attempting to pass through, and the reason why Rouge carried out his role as Team Aspirant’s lookout from the ground whenever they approached this stretch. The Fletchling carried on as he normally did when they came here, walking ahead with an occasional hop forward as he’d go over to pebbles laid out along the edges in a zigzagging pattern on opposite sides of the path and periodically breath out a couple embers along the route’s edge.

Everything went as they always did, except after a little ways down the path, Rouge spat up a few exploratory embers again, which was suddenly followed by a sharp pop.

“A-Ah!”

Tigri abruptly dropped the cord as Rouge flitted back back with a start. She ran over with her brother, building pinkish light in front of her forehead as she caught up with the Fletchling. When she reached Rouge’s side, she stared briefly and let the light in front of her head dissipate as she saw the culprit for the pop among the brush: a burst lump of charred resin wrap resting amidst a small mound of broken glass and resin fragments.

Stig caught up along with them with a panting huff and looked at the mound beside the path himself. His mouth curled down with a frown, before he started retracing his steps back to the sled with a quiet harrumph.

“Boy, someone’s going to get an earful over that,” he said. “I thought that Elder Gide told everyone not to just dump unwanted salvage out on the fringes like this.”

Tigri shot an askew glance at the mound of ruined salvage before returning to her pull-cord and continuing to tug the sled along. What on earth had happened to compel one of the villagers to leave behind such a mess? Salvage like the sort they gathered from the riverbank in Longbloom Meadow was usually treasured since it wasn’t possible to make it in Abri. Such items typically were only discarded when they were completely ruined or soiled beyond any other possible uses, which she supposed everything in the pile was.

Even so, she could’ve sworn that spent salvage like this was normally buried or burned. She knew that the older Pokémon in the village said that it used to be much rarer for salvage to wash up along the river when they were young, but had the Pokémon in Abri really gathered so much that they were having trouble dealing with what they weren’t able to use anymore?

“Ah! I think that’s the Barrier just up ahead!”

Tigri raised her eyes and slowed to a stop alongside Stig as she noticed that the sunlight coming down ahead of them seemed a bit strange: the shadows on the trees up ahead weren’t lining up with where they ought to have been at this time in the morning. Rouge batted his wings in the center of the path and spat up a spray of cinders. They sailed through the air on the path’s edge, as holes of magenta-colored light opened up, with rays of sunlight visible through them.

It was as good a sign as any that they’d found the edge of the Barrier—the wall of Illusions that ringed Abri to hide it from the outside world.

“Looks like Patron and his pack cast their Illusions closer to the village than normal this time,” Stig said. “I suppose that’s one way to tell they were annoyed by what happened in the square…”

Tigri turned her head over to Stig and gave a worried tilt of her head.

“Are we sure that it’s safe to go ahead?” she asked. “Patron sounded a bit more upset than he normally is when he’s annoyed about tribute, and if they’re messing with the Illusions themselves…”

“Nah, you know how he and the others in his pack are. Always quick to make threats until Elder Gide or one of the tougher villagers stands up to them,” Stig insisted. “Besides, I can still see the guiding stones along the path. It shouldn’t take more than a small peck from Rouge for him to make sure they’re real as we go along.”

Rouge batted a wing back in reply before going over to the nearest stone along the path and pecking at it. It visibly budged and rocked, a clear sign that it wasn’t part of the Illusion.

So far, so good. Tigri and Stig paced forward, taking their time to allow Rouge to make his checks as they made their way deeper and deeper into the wall of Illusions.

---

Tigri turned her head back after seeing what was probably the dozenth rock along the path and saw that the way back to Abri suddenly curled back at a sharp right turn. She supposed that the Pokémon keeping up the Illusion today weren’t going to make turning around easy. Though at least didn’t seem to be interfering with their trek out of the village…

“Are you sure you’re okay, Tigri?“

Tigri fidged her ears as the voice from Stig’s mind filled her own. She turned over towards him as they carried along down the path, and saw he had already been looking at her. The entire time, he dutifully kept his mouth clamped shut as Rouge continued scouting the route up ahead.

“You just have seemed a bit wound up from that nightmare this morning. Maybe it’s just me worrying as a brother, but-“

“Stig, I’m fine,” Tigri huffed back with her mind’s voice. “It’s just gathering salvage, it’s not as if we’re going out into the Mazewoods like the tough teams.“

She drifted in her thoughts as the scratching of the sled against the dirt and pebbles lingered in the air. Even if the Furfrou Brothers’ chatter about the human sighting had been a bit worrisome to hear, their mission was much the same as others that they’d accepted in the past.

So then why did she have this gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction? It wasn’t just worries over whether or not things were really safe, no… it was something beyond that.

She thought it over, before speaking with her mind’s voice in reply.

“I… just wonder if we’re really making a difference sometimes, Stig. We haven’t ever taken a mission further out than Longbloom Meadow and sometimes it feels like all we have to show for it is getting ourselves a bit more food in the seasons when we don’t need it the most.“

“I mean, that’s why half the Teams in Abri do those jobs Ticho puts up, right?” Stig replied. “Though I thought you said that you wanted Team Aspirant to help Pokémon that had been hurt by humans like us.“

Tigri stopped and let her pull-cord fall to the ground, and turned to see Stig doing much the same. He let go of the cord and set a paw on her shoulder, this time moving his mouth to speak.

“Part of that is also being there to help them with the little things, Tigri. Even if they don’t always seem to make an obvious difference.”

Tigri fell quiet and looked aside. She knew in her mind that Stig wasn’t wrong, but…

“Guys! Guys! I think that I found the end of the illusions!”

She snapped to attention and looked further down the path where Rouge was waving a wing for attention. She must not have been paying attention, since from Rouge’s distance, it would’ve been easy for a sufficiently devious Illusionist to get them lost from each other. She turned her mind back to the pull-cord of the sled, and made her way along with Stig. Three guidestones in, and the sunlight began to filter in through the treetops in the way they ought it was supposed to, when she noticed it:

The sweet smell of flowers in bloom hanging in the air. A sign as clear as day that they’d almost there at Longbloom Meadow.