"You know what?" said Chirin, looking down at his ash-soiled wool and 
flippers as he walked. "I sooo want to clean myself. I wonder if 
there's water nearby."

"We could wait till we get to the lake, you can wash yourself then," 
said Selden as Chirin fingered the feather still stuck on his ear.

"I know, but I want a nice clean fresh feeling as I journey. I feel 
it's important that I clear off all parts of the sneasel spell that 
still linger. And, how this ash...lingers." He giggled. "what I want 
is to be all flaaffy again. Or as much as I can be, with this--pallor 
of unowns that lives now in my head."

He clenched both teeth and fists against the knot of pain, right 
behind where his head jewel might be when he evolved. What if they 
had tainted the light that would one day grow there? Was every blow 
of pain a stone striking it? "I'm okay," he said, throwing the 
reassurance at Selden, and they walked on. 

He could not worry. It would only fray at his soul's strength. 
Finding a choice patch of clover he stopped to graze. He saw the 
wheatfield up ahead, and Selden bounding out towards it. Rather than 
call him back--that was going backwards, and they had begun the 
journey--Chirin jogged over, taking it easy. 

"I found water, Chirin! Look, I found water! Look!"

Chirin stopped beside him, at a mud puddle by the wheatfield's edge. 
There was just enough water to perhaps have a bath. He sniffed it, 
though, and it smelled faintly foul. Water left to stand too 
long. "You're good at finding water," said Chirin, "but this isn't 
quite enough. I'm sure I heard a trickling brook or something up 
closer to the lake. How about we head up there? I'll need your help 
finding it."

Selden sparked with pride. "Right away."

When they at last found a trickling stream Chirin rolled in the ice-
cold water, washing himself bit by bit. The chill shivered his skin 
and REALLY woke him up. 

"Flaaaaaf! Phos and Watakko in the waves!" He gave a last roll, 
strangely relishing the cold pain. "Cohhhlllllld!"

He sprang to his feet in sparks and giggles, and shook himself off. 
He was wet, but clean. "Thanks for watching this." He picked up the 
feather from Selden's feet, and finding new caterpie silk, he strung 
it around his waist in a new belt. He might need it again some time. 

The breeze on his wet skin pricked him with shivers and put a 
briskness into his steps.
Chirin paused to browse some bushes. He ate only the ones he wanted, 
selecting with his lips the green healthy leaves and skipping over 
sickly or yellowing ones. It was a berry bush but the berries were 
either gone or dried all up. He moved along and nibbled some pine 
needles, careful to avoid getting his stuck by sharp tips. 

It couldn't hurt to have some more of these wheat seed-heads as well. 
After an enjoyable crunch on them, Chirin quickly moved on, hurrying 
Selden in front of him. Far out over the field he saw the flicker of 
human lights, from inside their strange caves. So they, too had 
lights like the Denryuu? The stories said that Denrai had cast off 
their lights. Recalling Farmer and Annie, he didn't remember them 
having any ampharan bulbs. But perhaps they were a different sort of 
*denki*. 

Selden couldn't see the houses from his height. If he had he might 
have felt a longing rise up in him. Home was with Chirin now, but 
long ago there had been another kind of home.

Chirin snapped a seed-head off in his mouth, passed it to his flipper 
and gave it to Selden as they walked.

"Thank you," said Selden as he chewed, looking at Chirin like he'd 
bestowed a great gift on him. Chirin smiled back, but it was fake.

He felt unowns in orbit both around him and within him, monitoring 
the light-paths that his thoughts and feeling took, rewarding him for 
obeying their dark wills with an absence of pain. He was bound up in 
a web, and the Ariados was just biding its time, waiting till it got 
hungry. Like a dark Phos rising to his right, a Persian waiting to 
pounce.

Hone his gift. Mure had told him that was the only way he might ever 
be free. She had said he could push aside anything with it, but he 
couldn't use it for much of anything. He feared she was wrong, but 
for that the dead knew far, far more than the living could imagine. 

His freedom was the beacon to which other freedoms would flock--
Goldie's, Azalea's. 

Chirin stuck to the forest's edge as the pre-dawn light mounted. He 
dared to hope that maybe his gift, or Mure herself, would reveal 
things to him about his family, that something in this world would 
finally speak up and tell him what the hell happened.

He smelled other Pokemon--Stantlers. Far out to the northeast he 
caught glimpses of a few of them grazing. They usually stuck to 
forests but perhaps in the unborn morning they felt safe in the open.

For a moment he thought of joining them but he had many things to do. 
He had evil to commit. He took the stantlers' presence as reassurance 
that there were probably no big enemies around, and headed on up. 

"I still don't know how we're going to find a friend for Goldie," he 
confessed to Selden as they stopped for another bite. He stood there 
chewing. "Whom do I ask? Anyone who says yes, must have a heart 
filled with light. And I'll be condemning that light to dark." He 
looked northward past the forest's edge. The trees bent and blurred 
through tears. "Every stone I step on to the light is just...sinking 
me down into deeper dark."

He was taking a different route back to the lake and would reach it 
far from the island. Not that he could go back there yet. It had all 
been like a mating gone bad, mixing with his essence and cursing him 
with disease. Who knew what else they would breathe into his body if 
he returned? 

No, this was why Mure had told him: *Hone your gift.*

The sky was blushing purple and pink, down beyond the peaks of many 
pines. Phos was soon to rise up on a day full of deceit. Chirin 
prayed for something, anything, to stop his taking this plague one 
step further. He had set out so positive this morning, so refreshed, 
but now the spring was gone from his gait. 

His first task.

The only thing that kept him on was the hope that he could someday 
set it all right.
Chirin stopped and looked up at the sky in despair. So many choices 
he had, and not one of them had any light. He could find a friend for 
Goldie like the unowns had ordered, and send someone down there to 
live the same lightless life she did. A life he had refused for 
himself and Selden.

He could wait, practice using a gift he knew next to nothing about, 
and maybe after many, many years he would drive the unowns out of his 
mind and be free to talk about, sing about and think about them to 
his heart's content. And meanwhile Goldie would shrivel up down 
there. 

He could try to rescue her, and die trying. The friend path seemed 
the most well-lit. But he just couldn't do it.

"We have time until we reach the lake," he said to himself. Selden, 
taking advantage of the stop to graze, didn't hear him. Chirin looked 
around, pondering a target for practicing. 

Why not his own mind? If he was to drive out this evil spirit he must 
learn to safely travel the terrain it had burrowed a home in. He 
tried to recall how it had felt when he had driven out the dark ghost 
out by Moonhome.
He focused on his own pink nose. A spark danced into life upon it. 
Selden giggled at the cross-eyed flaaffy making sparks on his nose. 
Chirin had to giggle back.

Warmed up now, he refocused his concentration, getting a feel for the 
electricity already present in the air, especially around his whole 
body. A thrill ran through him, exciting but fearful, as he realized 
he might be sensing souls in the air, that that was what caused these 
invisible electric currents everywhere. 

He directed his *denki* sense towards him, marching it up the bridge 
of his long nose. The tiny electric sense he had picked its way 
carefully through the threshold of his skin. It was strange, but once 
inside himself, he found it easy not to touch anything. For the first 
time he began to appreciate all the complexity of his own body. All 
electric currents, extensions of his *denki*, following paths, 
keeping him alive and content and comfortable. They were taking care 
of countless tasks that he had never imagined went on in there.

He was in, now, and it was time to head back, to that place in his 
mind and body where the unowns had sown their seeds. Filing past the 
currents of his body he reasoned that it would be easy to see if 
something was going wrong.

If he could do this to himself, fix this illness, what would stop him 
from helping others? So many beings out there in the throes of an 
ailment...

If Chenja had had this gift too, no wonder she had been such a good 
healer! He had never realized...

Chirin had lost himself in fantasies as he wondered through the 
silent workings of the places inside him. He was finding nothing 
apparently wrong, although it was beyond him to see just how this all 
fit together. He was a newcomer to this forest, and had barely begun 
to learn how to read its signals and pulses. And if he tried to reach 
out and manipulate something, how did he know it wouldn't be 
something he wasn't supposed to touch? As he went along he realized 
that the unown disease wasn't just going to pop out at him. Like 
sneasels in the shadows, they hid.

"Chirin? Chirin?"

Selden was calling him. Chirin opened his mouth to answer, but he 
felt a long, long way from himself. What he saw out his real eyes 
appeared fractured, like a memory. He scrambled his little *denki*-
sense into chaos, which abruptly snapped him out of where he had 
been. Selden was looking at him with the beginnings of fear.

"I'm okay," he said to the lamb. "I was just meditating."
He and Selden continued on, Chirin reluctant to have to put aside 
trying out his "gift," but one thought of Goldie sitting down there 
in that cave alone helped him order his priorities right. Having a 
friend down there would help her, and when he finally mastered his 
denki-sense he would be able to get them both free. 

Maybe there was someone out there so lonely, so desperate for a 
friend, that meeting Goldie would help them. Even if it meant falling 
under the spell. He tried to tell himself there was someone out there 
to whom freedom and light didn't matter.
If he could explain to the prospective friend the exact situation, 
and the pokemon still agreed, that would be the only way. He would 
not omit anything. They had a right to know all that Chirin had not 
known when he had come ashore on that island and fallen in its trap.

Oh, but who wouldn't want to help a little baby marill...Who would 
really imagine all this until it happened to them?

A noise up ahead stopped him cold, followed by air soaked with the 
scent of enemies. Chirin sparked for Selden to stick close, and felt 
the lamb by his tail.

"What--what is it?" Although by his tone of voice Chirin could tell 
he smelled it too.

"Enemies, more than one of them." There was no mistaking a burning 
smell mixed with a reptilian one. An Arbok of fire? Or more than one 
enemy at a time? 

There was no time to wonder. Chirin felt for an apricorn that wasn't 
there as he ducked into the forest, herding Selden ahead of him.
"We'll take another way to the lake," he said, hurrying them both 
deeper into the woods. "If there's a fire hunter, we can cross the 
river if we have to."

He swiped aside bushes in their way, cautious of predators ahead as 
well as behind. His senses were all attuned. They had been lucky so 
far. Anything could have just pounced on them before when Chirin had 
been practicing his gift. 

"Darkness stalks and demons pounce
The lake-spirit laps and enslaves me.
Phos don't let me lose my light
The only light you gave me."

He said the song under his breath, chanting it deeply as he pushed 
further into the forest.
Chirin slowed down, wanting to listen better. Any enemies a wide way 
around would have heard them in here. But as long as Chirin noticed 
them first...

He stood still and all the tiny little early-morning noises--pulses 
of wind, birds in the trees, the scamper of something tiny in nearby 
bushes--all seemed to louden. 

"Is it--safe yet?"

"Shhh..." He petted Selden's head around his ear. They waited a while 
longer. 

He heard nothing more. And he smelled nothing either, from here. 
Whatever it was, they must now be west of it. So it had been even 
closer than Chirin had thought. 

"I don't know if we should go to the lake from here," he said 
finally. "If we go north, we'll be on the west side of 
whatever...whatever we smelled. And it'll smell us. It might smell us 
anyway, I think we have to head straight out there."

"But--the humans are that way," said Selden. And he had a point. But 
Chirin didn't know what else to do.

"We just might have to double back the exact way we first came here. 
At least we'll know our way around." And there would be a greater 
chance of finding...a friend...on the west side of the lake, which he 
knew was the most magical part. He remembered, vaguely, a fox of 
stars and a dog of water...a great yellow being who spoke in his 
head. A gathering of many pokemon in a long-ago summer.

"Phos is soon to rise and my light-path calls me," said 
Chirin. "Let's go."
And if there was any place where he might still find anyone who could 
help him rescue Goldie and free his own body, it was at that great 
tree by the west shore.

It was still before sunrise and the trail was fuzzy, mottled by deep 
shade. Their own luminescence cast their shadows loosely in front of 
them. Chirin listened and he thought he heard something going on up 
in that place to the north where the enemy had been. The enemy had 
been right in their path, as if it had gone there, on purpose, to 
intercept them. A reptile of fire... Might it be the Lizardons of 
legend...the great orange flame dragons? Chirin had never seen one 
ever, but had heard that once in a while one would pass high 
overhead. The coast where Pharos lived and the mountains around it 
were luscious and green because there was so much rain--almost as 
many rainy days as sunny ones. This rain had been one of the things 
to keep them safe. It subdued the marowaks and fire-type hunters. And 
the ampharos abounded.

When they stopped to rest, Chirin prostrated himself at the foot of a 
large tree, pleading it to lend him help with its forest magic in 
warding off the enemy. He wanted to think it was only an animal 
seeking food but knew otherwise because of the feelings inside him. 
The lifting leaves, the nodding branches, the flickering shadows all 
told him: it was Them. By now he knew the warnings of his ancestors 
should never be ignored. They spoke to him out of care and love. 

"Forest wise, 
Forest full of pharamps of my blood
Who gave me my light
Please help us."

Chirin twisted away from the tree and picked up again at a jog, 
flashing his light for Selden to follow.
He searched the feet of the forest for a sign that they were going to 
be all right. Had the tree heard his prayer? What ancestors had 
gathered about him as he had spoken? 

Phos's gentle light came feeling through the tips of the trees, 
shining at their backs. And in the still-shady depths Chirin saw 
something small and pale lying on the ground ahead of them on the 
trail. He sped up and ran to it. 

"What are you?" He bent over the strange little branch of wood or 
bone, and sniffed it, before picking it up and turning it in his 
hands. "It's an antler," he said to Selden. "A Stantler antler."

Selden, despite having been close to terrified moments ago, giggled a 
little at the two words. Chirin's mind was racing through the pool of 
all he knew about stantlers and autumn and what this might mean. 

He sniffed it again, rubbing it against his cheek. It had fallen 
within the last day. A young animal had dropped it, for it was barely 
longer than an apricorn was wide, with barely two tines. It wasn't 
quite the time for stantlers to shed their horns, that happened in 
late fall usually, and all within half a moon...but there were 
exceptions to everything. This horn had been dropped for him by a 
creature more of this forest than Chirin would ever be. 

What if a Pia had dropped it? It was small enough for a Pia... He 
held it out and tried to picture it on a Pikachu's head. The more he 
thought about it the more it made sense. Pia or Stantler, it was a 
sign that change was coming. 

He had spoken to the forest and it had just answered him. "Change is 
coming to us, and we have to shed...what has happened this year. So 
the forest is saying...time to let things go."

Was it telling him to let the matter of the unowns, just be?

He fingered the antler one last time, then secured it to his belt, 
where it lay against him, just behind his hip.
They had walked a while longer and left the enemy behind. As they 
stopped in another good spot and browsed the greenery, Chirin turned 
and faced Selden, smiling as Phos stood up and stepped higher. Unowns 
lurked in cold dark waters and Chirin had spent days dwelling deep in 
foreign places, but it was morning. He had almost forsaken all of 
this. And now his quest weighed on his back and mind and being, 
but...it was morning. The air was warming into a sunny day, and the 
ancestors had blessed him by putting him here to enjoy it. 

"Let's play a game," said Chirin, swallowing and flicking away a 
tear, made frisky and fresh by the touch of the light. "I'm a 
Stantler."

"Can I be one too?" said Selden.

"Yes, you're my little brother stantler. But--" He glanced behind 
him, flashing his tail in what would have been an alarm except for 
its more steady, predictable blink. "A big Ringuma is coming! We have 
to run!"

"Maahhh!"

Selden ran alongside Chirin, who had not realized how playing this 
could help them reach the lake even faster! 

He turned around and faced Selden, making a mock charge. They butted 
heads in a buzz of *denki*. Chirin let Selden overcome him and rolled 
over, kicking and laughing as Selden climbed on top of him.

"I win!"

"Ahh..." Chirin grabbed Selden and hoisted him up in the air. He 
jumped up to his feet, still holding the lamb. 
"Rrrrringuma!"

"No! No!" Selden kicked his little legs with glee, pretending terror. 
But the ringuma that had really attacked them all that time ago was 
long gone and far removed. 

"I'm carrying you to my den," said Chirin, continuing along the trail 
with Selden. "When I get hungry you're going to be my dinner. Haa 
haa." His laughing came out like bleats.

Selden kicked and Chirin let him "get away." Selden ran up ahead and 
Chirin ran after him, but then ducked behind a tree. He came out 
again, no longer a ringuma. "Little brother!" he called and Selden 
turned around. They ran to each other.

"I heard you getting attacked by a Ringuma!" said Chirin. "I'm so 
glad you got away. I know where we'll be safe--the river. Let's get 
there before the ringuma comes back, little brother. And pretend," he 
added switching back to his normal Chirin voice, "that the ringuma's 
gone to get his family to help. But they won't get there yet. Come on 
little brother, let's get to the river!" he said, switching back into 
play. And the two Stantlers/sheep headed west again.
Chirin saw the break in the forest, light sweeping freely in the sky 
ahead of them, accompanied by the animated talk of the rash river. 
The spirits calling to him from out there infused his legs with too 
much energy and he hopped into a run. 

"Come on!"

Chirin stopped just short of the long beachy bank and took a careful 
sniff and look around. He edged out of the cover of the woods and 
when he realized it was safe, he called to Selden. 

"Ahhhhhhh!"

His body met the warming sand on the bank as he dropped down. He 
writhed on the ground and loved the light. It was going to be a warm 
day. "Oh, Mother Megga, oh Watakko above me. So warm...ahh..."

He closed his eyes. He wanted to lie here a little while longer...and 
why not? He rolled over on the stantler horn and decided that was not 
the most comfortable thing to do, and stretched himself around on the 
ground more carefully.

Selden sat and watched Chirin curiously, then looked away from his 
squirming rolling friend out to the water. Suddenly wanting a nice 
cool drink, Chirin got up and made his way to the river. He ducked 
his snout in and drank the cold water in gulps, lapping it in. He 
sank in, feeling the pull of the current. "Come on in. I'll help you 
swim across."

"Thank you," said Selden, feeling like a burden again as Chirin let 
Selden climb on and get a hold of his shoulders. He started the 
paddle across the strong river, but relishing the challenge and the 
cold, still feeling playful and up to anything. The sickness from the 
pokénip had lifted away and left him refreshed. Now that Phos was 
above them and shining with confidence, everything seemed more 
possible. 

As he swam he had no spare breath to sing, but his mind received song 
nonetheless. He paddled to its rhythm, overcome by a strange thrill, 
his teeth chattering in the cold waters.

*Roll on the wind, cloud, scurry...
Out in the blue fields that know no end
The day is short, so hurry...
Watakko made you to bound and blend.*

He reached back with one flipper to belatedly check his belt and make 
sure everything was tied securely enough to make it across with him.
Chirin allowed himself enjoyment on the swim, letting the current 
help him, sweep him further south than just cutting clean across the 
water. The human village was plainly in sight on the other side, and 
he preferred to skirt it widely on his way back to the lake at last. 
It would also take him further from the island, although he was too 
late to save himself from what it had done to his head.

He lugged himself and Selden ashore, and wrung his wool ruff out, 
shaking his hair off too while Selden shook his whole body. Both of 
them were looking at the human village way off to their right. It 
stood there like strange-colored outcroppings out past a sea of 
grass. The smells were familiar but far from comforting. He smelled 
Farm smells, and knew that Selden's old home was near. He hadn't been 
in this very spot before, but he was soon to travel to places where 
they had been. 

"I guess this is it," he said, wandering out into the grass. In a 
copious patch of clover he flopped down, sensing no enemy presence 
nearby--save for the humans, which he would easily see coming out 
here. Knowing you could see whatever was coming was the underlying 
reason why he loved wide open space. 

"Yeah, I guess so," said Selden, standing before Chirin's face, which 
was buried and happily munching in thick clover, soon to succumb to 
autumn's nip. But, enjoy all things while you can!

"Mmm...oh, Selden," he chewed and swallowed, "this clover is straight 
from Phos's fields." He didn't need to tell the mareep twice as 
Selden took to grazing some too. 

Selden stood up and looked around again. "I...I remember being here 
before."

Chirin smiled, a tendril of clover hanging out the side of his 
mouth. "You remember being very close to here. But i think we will 
pass by your old farm." He briefly wondered if Selden would want to 
go back. The lamb had grown a lot since leaving. He had become 
trimmer and harder--tougher. But his face was very much the same, and 
when he looked at Chirin it held a look of innocent admiration that 
made Chirin a little uncomfortable. Selden was maybe at the point 
where Chirin had been when they'd reached the farm but seemed so much 
younger.

"I want to see the farm again. Can we go there just a little while?"

"Of course...as long as it's safe." Chirin got up and stroked his 
full belly. He trotted along through the cool dewy grass, nipped by 
his own wet wool but swarmed by wonderful chills. Selden followed.
Chirin loped along, breathing in the breeze and nibbling red clover 
blossoms as he passed by them. No matter how full he got he couldn't 
get enough of those...ahhh! 

"Clover blossoms
Make me swoon!
Let me dive into your sweet sweet taste...
Mmmm..." he paused to consume,
"Luscious petals and scent of grace!"

Selden admired his friend's song. Chirin knew it wasn't one of his 
beat but he didn't care, those songs he sang in the throes of such 
pleasures were always his favorites. 

His romping in the grass bounced to a gentle stop, as the feeling of 
walking on sacred ground became more acute. He ran ahead, suddenly 
knowing where he was and where the old stone he had made a form on, 
was in the brush. Memories soared back to him, of Mecha and Razkel 
and Calima and everyone he had been here with. The farm was very, 
very close. Up by the top of the hill, the silver-vine electric fence 
stood gleaming in the morning sun.

The grassy slope looked smaller, and older. The stalks had gone to 
seed. The waving green was turning color, Haru's golden sway. Back in 
the brush and the forest's edge, the vines were flecked with yellow, 
and smelled of fall. A light shower of leaves twirled down over them 
as Chirin led Selden to the rock.

The form's lines were all but washed away by weather. In the pattern 
of the stone's skin, a few faint marks still stood out. Chirin's own 
inexpert artistic past stared back at him, faded as his memories of 
making it. He had recalled all these places in glory, a great drama 
played out with all the spirits in attendance, all adding their 
spice, the extremes of light and the extremes of dark clashing in a 
bang like Farmer's fire-stick.

But it was all a lot smaller than that, he knew now. A little bolus 
of memories in his head was where he still heard and saw and smelled 
when had happened that night. And looking around he saw the echoes of 
it. The grass...the silver vines...the hilltop remembered. 

And so did the stone. Chirin searched around for a rock to draw a new 
form on it. He would get some mud, some berries, if any still grew on 
the bushes...

The sound of a mareep--a strange mareep--reached his ears. Chirin 
looked out at the hill, where Selden was hesitantly walking up to the 
fence. Two mareep, their wool like clouds landed, stood idly munching 
the grass there, and watching him and Selden.
Chirin put the sharp rock that he had found, down on the stone, and 
sauntered over to Selden. Both of them stopped well short of the fene 
and just looked up, as the two mareep, so clean and fresh and 
unmarred, looked down at them, as a third one joined.

The field had sprouted new mareep or something...It brought a flock 
of sparks running over his skin. While he had been gone in the awful 
storm, something here had sprouted anew in the wake of the rain. 
Where had they come from? 

"Who are you?" said one of the mareep, to Selden, who was no longer a 
tiny lamb, especially seen in the company of other mareep now. "And--
what is your friend there?" They looked at Chirin himself with a 
strange, half-fearful look, as if he would bite.

*Farmer will send you to market...Farmer will kill you...Come with 
us...be free.*

The words rammed at his mouth from inside him. But the memories of 
the arcanines, the storm, and the horrible burrow, all rammed them 
back down his throat. Watakko or Mother Megga or whoever had sent 
these cloud-mareep down, would send another flock of them. And 
another, and another, and Chirin knew that it was not Watakko, but 
humans, who had put these mareep here somehow. Humans had done it on 
purpose, to kill them when it was time. The thought was so twisted 
and disgusting he was ashamed he had even come up with it. But it 
must be true. The fence to keep them in, no memory of their homes or 
parents...it all fit into a ghastly puzzle. Humans had taken his 
flock, hadn't they? Was any perversion beyond them?

To save these mareep he would have to go to the humans themselves. 
Use his gift to help? Maybe. If this gift could somehow cool the 
anger humans held against his kind. Beating them down would do 
nothing but make more dark. They had to be allowed to see light. 

Had Denrai been wrong to cast them out over the dark sea? Had he made 
a hasty mistake?

"He sure is a *quiet*, er, fellow," said one of the mareep. "Where'd 
you come from? You look a wreck, all wet."

"We came from over the river," said Selden, sounding under a 
spell. "I--I used to live here."

"You did?" said one of the other mareep, peering at them both 
curiously, but then a growlithe shouldered its way forward. At its 
warning growl and bark, Chirin and Selden backed down the hill.

"We didn't come here to hurt anyone," said Chirin. "We're just 
passing by."

The tiger-dog's growl exploded into angry barks.

"Go, go, get-out-of-here, wild pokees!"

Chirin abandoned his plans for the stone. He led Selden back down by 
the edge of the forest, sparking to the growlithe in warning even 
though the silver vines separated them.
But he passed by the stone again, he had to to continue heading 
north. He ran his flat flipper hand over the smooth rock and put his 
face to it, and closed his eyes briefly. He gave it a lick. And he 
concentrated, absorbing a piece of its essence as he gave it another 
piece of his own. He focused. 

"We must go on," he translated the message it told him. "We can't 
stay here. Selden...I wish there was a way you could stay here. You 
must miss it." As much as he liked having a friend along he knew he 
would encounter more danger.

"I do, a little," said Selden as Chirin picked up going again, trying 
his best not to react with instinctive fear at the growlithe's 
flaming barks. Another dog, a Houndour, he now joined the growlithe's 
side. They both served the humans in their nest of dark, helping them 
spread shadows over his own kind. For now, there was nothing Chirin 
could do for these mareep but continue on and let them live on in 
their pasture there, unaware that their light-paths would be cut 
short. Someday he would go to Farm and speak to the humans 
themselves. He would find this "market," this burrow of flesh-eating 
human things, and shine them all out, with Selden and Azalea and 
whoever else came to help him. 

They could even be in league with the lake spirit.

It was all too much to think about. Chirin brushed gently against the 
trees and bushes they passed, speaking to them and sensing what they 
said to him as he approached and passed by. He felt their sorrow, for 
they had watched Farm all their lives. All dead, all crushed, all 
pining. 

The fire-dogs' eyes glittered as they growled down at Chirin and 
Selden, who passed them by their right shoulders.